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@jsnover wrote:
Can we change the title to include RESOLVED: at the beginning?
Fine with me if a Moderator agrees.
One more follow-up comment, which should tie this 2-day-old thread up nice and neat.
I’ve reactivated the SYXtra plugin (1.9.8) , because before this problem happened I had been using several of its features and really liked them. All those nice features are back now in full working order on my site.
I’ve restored Christine’s new URL to my network, without difficulty. That curious string of text at the bottom of my website did not return.
All’s well with my site at this point. Hooray!!!
And again, thanks to all who contributed to solving my quandary. Special thanks to jsnover for her first-rate sleuthing to turn up the known WP issue of disappearing menu items.
I appreciate everything you guys did to help me, and now I hope this thread will enlighten somebody else who encounters this problem in the future.
@cascoly wrote:
your symbiocard.xml shows you currently have 56 categories – is that correct? a few of us have over 100 categories and I’ve not seen any problems like you reported, so it may be something to do with your host rather than the sym theme itself.
[those not interested in techy details can skip next paragraph] categories have been giving me trouble with my global database collection, since they’re not stored consistently – at least the xml file isolates them, but sometimes they contain ‘< ' and other times '<' so parsing is a hassle. however, they are stored as 'long text' which means there should be no limit to total length.
I haven’t counted my current categories, post-downsizing, but 56 sounds about right.
My host is Bluehost. I signed up 3-4 months ago (el cheapo $4.95/mo setup) and about 2 months ago upgraded to the “premium” package ($19.95/mo I think). It doesn’t seem like there should be any artificial limitations on that, but there were.
Steve, I read your techy last paragraph, didn’t understand it a bit. Others surely will. So glad we have you tech-types on the team!
OK, folks, here’s my report on how the Bluehost techie was able to increase the number of Menu items I’m allowed. Please note that he did this. I didn’t, and since I don’t have a clue about any of this this, nobody could pay me to touch my php settings on my own. 🙂
He told me he was “working on the php code max input vars and adding code” to my file. Then he walked me through what he had done, this way:
In my Bluehost Control Panel:
1. I went to File Manager.
2. I selected the Home Directory and in the same dialog box clicked “show hidden files”.
That opened up a 2-column page.
3. On the left-hand side, I clicked the globe beside public_html, which opened up a new set of files on the right.
4. On the right-hard side, I selected .htaccess.
5. With that selected, I clicked Code Editor in the menu bar at the top.
6. On the dialogue box that opened up, I left everything set as it was, then clicked Edit.
7. That opened up a snippet of code that included the following, whose date & time stamp showed it had just been edited.
# File modified on Wed Sep 18 13:57:13 2013 by server
# For security reasons, mod_php is not used on this server. Use a php.ini file for php directives
# php_value max_input_vars 9000
It was that last line “input_vars 9000” that had been changed from the default number (I think he said it was 2000) to 9000.
And that process seemed to quadruple the number of menu items I’m allowed, from 20 to 80. I can live with that!
@christine wrote:
Pleased you have it sorted (and more pleased that it was nothing to do with my site 🙂 )
Thanks, Christine. I already mentioned to you elsewhere in this process that I have a tendency to over-complicate things. My mind likes things neat and tidy. I keep my image-storage files that way. It’s how I naturally want to approach a new project like this website: try to organize the heck out of it. Sometimes that works, sometimes not.
And please know that I never did think the mess I woke up to two mornings back had anything to do with your site! Just that a whole bunch of “stuff” happened at once, including that strange string of text about your site at the bottom of mine, so sorting it out was confusing. I’ll add your new URL back into my network today.
@christine wrote:
That looks much tidier – I expect your visitors will appreciate it more as well as there will not be so many clicks to reach the images they are looking for?
Well, it may look tidier (because obviously it is), but it does mean that a visitor looking at my site for some specific kind of jay, for example, or a specific type of ground squirrel will probably have to use the search feature, rather than go directly to the page containing just that species, because there will be a large jumble of different types of subjects on most category pages. However… that’s okay. And it’s especially okay since that may lead them to other sites via our global search that could have the exact image they need, even if mine doesn’t. All in all, it’s a good thing.
As somebody else pointed out in another thread, most people will find their way to any of our sites through Google, so they’ll have done that search already before they even find my site.
I’ll get back later with the info on how to increase the number of permitted categories. But for now… I’ve got a bunch of new images shot last evening I’m dying to start work on!
REPORT FROM THE WEE HOURS
Well, I “slept on it” until about 3 AM Mountain Time. Woke up understanding what I needed to do, and I’ve just done it.
It was obvious (probably to all but me): I needed to simplify my system. And I’ve just done that. No need for so many categories in the main menu, so most of them are now gone. I can add in judiciously as need be, but now I know I have a limit (and at least I now know what that limit is).
My call to Bluehost yesterday resulted in an increase from 20 categories allowed in my menu bar to 80. I figured that out by counting how many were left when I went over that and the number then collapsed back to 80. Clever, no? 🙂
So I’ve reconfigured it to eliminate the 2nd-tier sub-categories. (I can always add a few back in, where I have a really large number of images in the sub-sub cats.)
You can see here what I’ve wound up with: http://bestnaturestock.com/
AJT, I will come back tomorrow to walk back through the steps for increasing from 20 to 80, in case somebody else wants to go over the default limit someday. Right now… I’m heading back to bed.
UPDATE: Well, I decided to dedicate this afternoon/evening to photography. No work on the website. Tomorrow, I’ll contact Bluehost again and see if there’s a way more progress can be made.
Aaaargh.
PROGRESS, BUT IT’S NOT PERFECT YET…
Well, the system has allowed me to add categories, but it’s also dropped off the last batch in the series.
Birds are there through Towhees, but gone are the Warblers, Woodpeckers, Wrens, plus whole long lists of Beasts and Bugs categories I just added this afternoon. Check here to see what I mean: http://bestnaturestock.com/
Stay tuned, everybody, and thanks to you all for the great help to this point. SYS is beginning to feel like a real team, which is nice.
@ajt wrote:
@marthamarks wrote:
QUESTION FOR MODERATOR: Should we retitle this thread to be more specific and useful, perhaps “Disappearing Menu Items” ? Others may hit this problem in the future, so perhaps this will help somebody else down the road.
Done. Could you tell us, what exactly was done?
I will get back to you with that info. Before too much high-fiving however, see my next note…
Wow!!! There may be some legit complaints about Bluehost’s service, but I gotta say: this is the 3rd time I’ve called them with problems that baffled me, and each time the tech support has promptly and accurately solved my problem.
This guy had not heard about the WP menu-limit situation. He excused himself for a few minutes while he searched the database and consulted with another support person. Then he came back on, asked me to add a few menu items to my site to see what would happen. I was able to add them w/o difficullty.
What he did was add a new php line in the Home Directory to up the menu limit to its max of 9,000 items. Waaaaay more than even I will ever need. He then walked me into the back files to show me where he had made that change. I could lower it if I wanted to, but he said that’s probably the max possible. I’m leaving it set where it is.
So now my menu bar is already starting to take shape again. I’m going to start rebuilding it again, and if all goes well this should give me back the site I wanted. (You can see the improvement already: http://bestnaturestock.com/)
Thanks again, jsnover, for pointing me in the right direction. Having read that first link, I was able to explain to the support guy what had happened. Not sure I’d have known enough otherwise to explain it for him to understand.
QUESTION FOR MODERATOR: Should we retitle this thread to be more specific and useful, perhaps “Disappearing Menu Items” ? Others may hit this problem in the future, so perhaps this will help somebody else down the road.
Just one additional FYI note, before I call the techies.
I just counted the number of category and subcategory menu items that my site seems to wantto allow me. It’s 19 items (Birds A through B). Not even close to the total I had up 2 days ago or what I’d like to have going forward. I may be totally unable to set up my site the way I want it. Wow.
Now to call the techies…
@jsnover wrote:
I did a quick search and it appears this is a known issue. I have no idea if this is the whole story, but check out these articles
http://sevenspark.com/wordpress/menu-item-limit
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/the-menu-has-a-limit-of-49-links-of-pages-in-the-navbarYep! That’s the answer, right there. I just read the first link info, not yet gotten to the 2nd, but you’ve nailed it right on.
Here’s the relevant text from your first link:
So why does this happen suddenly and without warning?
Sometimes this issue manifests as a user reaching a simple limit: they’ve added 50 menu items. They try to add the 51st, and nothing happens if they’re adding it at the end. Or if they add it in the middle, the last menu item is dropped. The limit is 50, so every time they add X more items, the last X are deleted.
Much more distressing is the case where a user has happily had 120 menu items for the last month. Then, one fateful day, they go to manage their menu, as they have new content they wish to add. Upon adding their 121st menu item and saving, they find that suddenly, to their horror, the last 40 menu items have been deleted. How could that happen? The POST vars limit should have prevented them from adding 120 menu items in the first place, right?
So, now… Thanks to jsnover, I do know what’s happening. That part in boldface exactly describes my situation.
Now I’m wondering if a quick call to the friendly techies at Bluehost — to explain what’s happened and ask if they can set my quota of menu items higher — would do the trick. It worked that way when I was having a problem uploading images larger than 10mb. Maybe it could work that way with this???
Worth a try. I’ll do it and get back to let ya’ll know what the word is.
And again… thank you, jsnover. Your help is much appreciated!
Yes, jsnover, you’re right that all my images and categories are intact. Thank heavens for that! And thank you so much for checking it out.
I hadn’t actually navigated to one of my images pages, but you’re right: the PayPal logo is still there too. That’s odd since I thought I’d put that into position using the SYXtra plugin, which is currently disabled. So that’s happy news, too.
What really has me puzzled, though, is my Mysterious Disappearing Menus. Two days in a row, my menu bar has vanished, along with almost all the categories that made it up. I restored it night before last (as I said earlier), it was there yesterday moroning, then last night it was gone again.
Fortunately, the images are all still associated with their categories, so I don’t have to redo everything. And the Image Categories still exist too. They just have vanished from the Category Menu.
I noted before going to bed last night that the tick-box at the bottom of the Appearance/Menus page didn’t have anything checked. When I checked that, it did restore the partial menu that is left. What I saw on my home page was the same as I see on my Menu page: Birds A-M but only through the B category. No other main category or sub cat shows. They’ve all disappeared again. (BTW, the very appearance of my Menu Bar page is different from how it looked when I started this project. Not sure that matters, just making note of it.)
So, something is “eating” the category organization on my menu structure page.
Two possibilities:
Do I have too many categories and sub cats for the system to cope with it? I do have a lot (with more planned to come), but there have been no problems up til now.
I just crossed the 1,000 images threshhold 2 days ago. Now have 1,017 up, as you saw. Somewhere recently I read on on of the threads that there’s a reset of some sort after you reach the 1000 level (for pages? for images? I can’t remember). So is it possible that’s what happened? Have I somehow been “reset”?
I can take the time to rebuild my full taxonomy of categories, as I did 2 nights ago. But it takes a long time, and I don’t want to do that only to see the whole thing vanish again.
Yikes, this is just so odd!
@Imago Borealis wrote:
I just visited your site:
The slide show is there but your menu is gone (except for home).I am sorry for your troubles and hope you get it all sorted out and fixed soon.
Thanks, Imago Borealis. You’re seeing the same thing I am. As soon as I figure out why the menu bar disappeared, I hope to get it all back. That menu is the most important thing, obviously, and the fact that it disappeared twice in two days must point to something. I’m just not sure what.
If anybody else has any thoughts or suggestions, please shoot ’em out!
I did this too and wound up with the same long string of text at the bottom. But other stuff happened to my website last night and today… before I made any change to Christine’s URL on my site. See the other thread “Strange Things Happening” for more info.
Has anybody else had something happen like this?
