All you WordPress whizzes out there
Maybe you can help me with a persistent problem I’m having setting up a website on WordPress for selling Gerard’s book. I’ve designed blogs before – obviously – but this bookselling website has a different format and I’m struggling with a glitch that I can’t seem to remove.
When I was first fiddling around with it, I apparently loaded a particular photo on the sidebar. Later on I decided I wanted neither the photo nor the sidebar, and got rid of both – that is, I thought I got rid of both. The photo is gone from the media library and the sidebar is gone from the page – except a little something remains. There’s a small black lozenge-shaped mark to the right of each post, and if you click on that mark it takes you to the original photo that I deleted. I can’t delete the photo from the media library because it’s not in the media library anymore, but obviously it’s still somewhere on the site (as is the sidebar, I suppose). But if I can’t find the source I can’t get rid of it.
On the home page, where I have photo-links to each post (a post about the book, a post with Gerard’s bio, and so forth), there are also little gray squares above each link. I believe that these are also remnants of the early sidebar photo (“placeholders”?). I want them gone, too, and nothing I’ve done so far has fixed the problem, including putting some CSS into the mix which is supposed to do something-or-other but did nothing. Also, when I try to click on these little gray squares, they don’t lead anywhere.
Hiring someone to design a site would be incredibly expensive, whether one wants a simple site (as I do) or a more complicated one. A friend has offered to help but is terribly terribly busy and so far hasn’t gotten around to it. I’m getting very close to finished with all the other minutiae involved in this endeavor, and it occurs to me that some of you readers might have an idea of what to do. Thanks in advance!
If you have a premium website, you should be able to get help from WordPress. The folks there have solved every little problem that I’ve thrown at them over the years.
All I got is WordPress delenda est.
It is probably a snippet of javascript that hasn’t properly released resources (called a detached element) you’ve deleted. That is, they’re still lingering in your code. Your browser should have some sort of developer tool that allows you to hunt them down. However, fixing it might take noodling with your javascript which might be a bridge to far for you.
If you do locate the javascript code post it, that might point to the fix. Or better yet, as suggested, once located send it to WordPress support for help.
Loquitur Veritatem:
I’m not sure what you mean by “premium website.” My sites are not hosted at WordPress itself, and I don’t think there’s any way to get help from them. Is there?
They should support their code regardless of where it is hosted.
I don’t think WordPress will help if you are self-hosted. Hostinger told me to go to Fiverr because they didn’t do real support…no one ever responded back to me at Fiverr.
Commenter ambisinistral described the possible nightmare of finding the issue. Too late to just start over?
Weren’t able to do backups? I do backup before venturing too far. Saved me today after trying the Weaver Theme… Geez, Themes!?! Free WordPress used to be so easy before that Block Editor showed up.
Heck, I’ve spent much of today with Bing AI trying to get a CSS script for Quote Style that will align text to the left (like your site here). Did finally get another script that I liked, but still no text-align left – something buried in my theme’s code somewhere, I guess, is set for center.
Neo,
Do you know about browser developer tools? Browsers such as Chrome and Firefox allow you to open a window on your desktop that displays the html, css, and code, such as Javascript, that make up a website.
I, as a novice web developer, or anyone else with more experience could go to your site, check it out thru the developer tools and maybe get a clue as to what is going on.
https://mhthemes.com/support/knb/browser-developer-tools-to-inspect-code-wordpress-websites/
Karmi — it might not be so bad. Using Edge they had a step by step process for clearing up the issue (if detached elements is the problem). It was well documented.
ambisinistral:
Nice tip on Edge! I don’t use it, but their Tools look better set up than the Firefox does. Still too advance for me—probably, but I like the setup Edge uses. I may test it just to see how it works…
Had a similar issue to what Neo is dealing with long long ago—back when I did all my posts in HTML. Had a weird small square object that started showing up on the bottom of my webpages…turned out to be some HTML mistake in one of the recent posts I had done. Corrected whatever it was and that got rid of the little square.
My wife sells her books through Amazon. She self publishes them. Not sure about any of what she does. Can’t ask, she is in Hospital 2nd time in 3 weeks.
@ Shirehome > sorry to hear your wife is doing so poorly – best wishes to you both for her health and recovery.
I’m definitely not a WordPress whiz, but I was curious about what “Phind” would say, so I simply copied the text of Neo’s description of her first problem. I then pasted the text into Phind, which is supposed to be an AI chat machine that’s good for IT problems. Below, I’ve copied the FIRST PARAGRAPH of Phind’s response. Anybody can do it. Follow-up questions are easy, and the sources used for Phind’s responses are cited.
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Neo:
I apparently loaded a particular photo on the sidebar. Later on I decided I wanted neither the photo nor the sidebar, and got rid of both – that is, I thought I got rid of both. The photo is gone from the media library and the sidebar is gone from the page – except a little something remains. There’s a small black lozenge-shaped mark to the right of each post, and if you click on that mark it takes you to the original photo that I deleted. I can’t delete the photo from the media library because it’s not in the media library anymore, but obviously it’s still somewhere on the site (as is the sidebar, I suppose). But if I can’t find the source I can’t get rid of it.
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Phind:
To address the issue of the black lozenge-shaped mark remaining on your posts, indicating the presence of an image that you’ve deleted, you can use several methods to locate and remove the image reference from your WordPress site. Here are steps you can follow:
Using Image Source Control: If you have access to the Image Source Control plugin, it can help you find where the image is used on your site. This plugin creates an index of images within posts and pages, including those used in the sidebar or dynamically added through blocks or shortcodes. You can use the “Image-Post Index” feature to find the image title and locate posts using the image. Then, edit these posts to remove or replace the image (reference 2).
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P.S. Here’s a link to the source used by Phind for the paragraph I copied above. (What’s called reference 2). This also looks like good information.
https://imagesourcecontrol.com/blog/find-used-image-in-wordpress/