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Hosting - problem seeing new site

noel1
Dabbler
Posts: 18
Registered: ‎07-07-2009

Hosting - problem seeing new site

My website became corrupt (nothing I had done) so I used the opportunity to wipe everything and upload a new one. That was a couple of months ago - I am still trying. I have followed all the notes on php and MySQL etc, filled in all the config page but can only see a blank www.vipbroadcasting.co.uk. It is not the first time I have uploaded a website but this one is beating me. If PlusNet does not give support, is there a step by step instruction to figure out why it will not show. 

15 REPLIES 15
spraxyt
Resting Legend
Posts: 10,063
Thanks: 674
Fixes: 75
Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: Hosting - problem seeing new site

I assume you uploaded all your files into /public - and getting a white screen suggests there is an index.php file in there. My guess is that there is an error in the file so it produces no output. So a few questions for starters:

Are there likely to be any PHP errors in your code. Unless you've turned on error reporting (using .htaccess) it won't report those.

How did you create your PHP files? Did you use a text editor such as Notepad to ensure they started off with correct line endings?

Assuming the PHP files are proper text files did you upload them using ASCII format transfers? Some FTP programs default to binary.

For diagnostic purposes I suggest starting with a traditional "hello world" program. For example copy the three lines

<?php
echo "Hello world!";
?>

into a text editor and save the file as helloworld.php then FTP it as an ASCII transfer into /public. Its file permissions (sometimes called chmod) should default to 0640 which is OK. Now browse to your-web-site/helloworld.php - does it display Hello world!? If it does the answers to the questions above should help determine the next move.

David
noel1
Dabbler
Posts: 18
Registered: ‎07-07-2009

Re: Hosting - problem seeing new site

Hello David

Thanks for your help 4 weeks ago! 

I uploaded helloworld.php into public having copied and pasted your example and then tried searching for it but got the "oops file cannot be found." I usually build my own wordpress sites but this time being busy, farmed it out to India and saw it absolutely fine on their servers. Having followed all the Plusnet directions, this is where I am. 

This is probably a stupid question to someone like you with good experience. I followed the instruction on each area mysql/myphp/ user name/ dbhost/ and changed the config page accordingly. This is all I changed - should I have changed anything else?

 

Really is getting to the point of taking it away from Plusnet and hosting it on another company like Bluehost where I get help if anything is wrong.

 

Appreciate your help anyway! Need my new site up!

 

Thanks

Noel

spraxyt
Resting Legend
Posts: 10,063
Thanks: 674
Fixes: 75
Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: Hosting - problem seeing new site

When one browsed to your site previously a blank page was shown. However it now shows content and navigation works. So changes you've made have fixed the previous problem.

The site contains one article entitled BACK SOON with a NEW SITE created on 14th March 2016. However it's permalink (which appears in the address bar) seems to be hello-world, but that's a detail which doesn't affect site operation.

Essentially you now have a working site built on the 2016 theme. Is this what you expected or should there be more content and a different theme? If the latter where have you put the theme files and associated MySQL tables?

Since site navigation using categories and dates works an appropriately modified .htaccess file must exist in /public. Linking to login invokes a separate file hence ,htaccess must contain a test allowing an existing file to be processed. In this context helloworld.php if present should count as an existing file. Since requesting this file results in a missing file error it would seem the file isn't there; is its name spelt correctly with the correct .php extension and all characters lower case?

David
noel1
Dabbler
Posts: 18
Registered: ‎07-07-2009

Re: Hosting - problem seeing new site

Hello David

Thank you for your support!

 

Interestingly, the 2016 theme just appeared - it is not the theme on the intended upload. I am able to change appearance - just added a picture to the front page, but this is through www.vipbroadcasting.co.uk/wp-admin not ftp. The difficulty seems to be uploading the new site and theme. It would appear I could totally rebuild the site 'live'.

Appreciate your valuable assistance

Noel

spraxyt
Resting Legend
Posts: 10,063
Thanks: 674
Fixes: 75
Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: Hosting - problem seeing new site

At the moment your website is running WordPress version 4.4.4; the current version is 4.5.3. Before doing more I suggest you use the updater to bring the site up to the latest standard. You do this by logging into the dashboard and selecting the update panel top left. Then follow the prompts to update core files, plugins and themes.

The Twenty Sixteen theme is the default one that is used after initial WordPress installation until you install and activate a different theme.

Do all the files for the theme you want to use reside only in a single zip file on your PC and nowhere else?

David
noel1
Dabbler
Posts: 18
Registered: ‎07-07-2009

Re: Hosting - problem seeing new site

Hi David

 

All updated including plugins.

This is the first site I have not made myself (farmed out abroad). It is a single .zip file uploaded and unpacked into /public. I went through the Plusnet hosting sql and php set up, changing the config.php accordingly to match the new name, user, password and host.

I do notice that the databases folder when opened contains the correct database but that folder appears to be empty. Should there be something in this folder?

Thanks

Noel

Oldjim
Resting Legend
Posts: 38,460
Thanks: 787
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Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Re: Hosting - problem seeing new site

Not a direct answer but the way I do it with Wordpress is to build the site on my PC using XAMPP them move it to the live host using this plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator/

noel1
Dabbler
Posts: 18
Registered: ‎07-07-2009

Re: Hosting - problem seeing new site

Thanks very much - worth trying later today. I will let you know if I succeed.

 

spraxyt
Resting Legend
Posts: 10,063
Thanks: 674
Fixes: 75
Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: Hosting - problem seeing new site

Hi Noel, it's encouraging that the site updated OK. Smiley

I think where you are now takes you beyond what @Oldjim mentioned. From what you describe it seems like everything, including the required theme, is probably in place, just needing activation.

To check this please check the content of folder /public/wp-content/themes. You should find there is just one file, index.php, in there along with several folders, one for each installed theme. The index.php is there to keep browsers out of the folder, don't change it.

One of the folders will be twentysixteen and there are likely to be several others with twenty* names. I'm hoping you will also find another folder, eg mynewtheme, which is the one created by your contractor. This will contain around 20 files and folders CSS, images, js and languages. Do you have such a folder? If you can confirm this is there we can move onto activation.

As you've discovered the top level /databases directory contains a folder with your database name. All the MySQL files for the database are below that even though File Manager does not display them. KEEP OUT is the best policy to follow with that.

David
noel1
Dabbler
Posts: 18
Registered: ‎07-07-2009

Re: Hosting - problem seeing new site

OK - there's 2014,2015,2106 and

Avada and Avada Child.

Avada child has just five but Avada contains a folder called languages and a load more but only reveals files as far as b !

I believe this is the file - it is also one of the choices available online via wp-admin

Are we getting there?

noel1
Dabbler
Posts: 18
Registered: ‎07-07-2009

Re: Hosting - problem seeing new site

That wasn't very clear. I meant I believe Avada was the theme chosen.

 

Oldjim
Resting Legend
Posts: 38,460
Thanks: 787
Fixes: 63
Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Re: Hosting - problem seeing new site

Are you sure

Given it was generated by a third party he will have created the child theme and that is the one which should be active as it automatically draws what it needs from the parent theme

spraxyt
Resting Legend
Posts: 10,063
Thanks: 674
Fixes: 75
Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: Hosting - problem seeing new site

Yes, it looks like Avada is what you are after.

Next step is to login to the dashboard and go to Appearance -> Themes. The display should say Twenty Sixteen is the active theme. If you hover the mouse over the Avada panel you should find Activate and Preview buttons appear. For starters I suggest clicking Preview. If the resulting page looks OK, click the X top left to close the preview, then click Activate to make the change permanent.

Hopefully this will bring up the required theme. Otherwise re-activate Twenty Sixteen.

David
noel1
Dabbler
Posts: 18
Registered: ‎07-07-2009

Re: Hosting - problem seeing new site

Not out of the woods just yet. Interestingly the Avada Child reveals the code for a flash logo which was included in the new site - I have left this live to see. It does not appear on the Avada (that I can see).