ERROR: The themes directory is either empty….

This topic is: not resolved

Tagged: directory empty, error messsage

This topic has 10 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 3 months ago by WPMuse.

Viewing 11 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

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September 26, 2013 at 4:17 pm #64385

WPMuse
Participant

Just noticed on this site (http://ParacordPaul.com) that in the dashboard in red is:

ERROR: The themes directory is either empty or doesn’t exist. Please check your installation.

The theme is OutReach 2.0. I checked here in the forums and on Google and everything mentioned doesn't seem to apply to this site.

The theme is there, the CSS has the theme info at the top -- compared with a fresh copy of OutReach's style.css. The theme's directory is 755 so I'm not sure what is causing this.

The theme is displaying properly and the site seems A.O.K... Can someone point me in the right direction? TIA!
http://ParacordPaul.com

September 27, 2013 at 6:34 am #64452

AnitaC
Keymaster

Can you provide a screenshot of what you are seeing in the dashboard?

Need help with customization or troubleshooting? Reach out to me.

September 27, 2013 at 8:31 am #64460

WPMuse
Participant

Hey, Anita:

Here you go! 😉 Dashboard and top of theme page where you can see Author: "By Anonymous" and no version with the CSS theme info above all in bold.

Thanks for the help!

September 27, 2013 at 12:24 pm #64491

markmelch
Member

The 1st thing I would try is to activate another theme, like Twenty-Thirteen, and then re-activate Outreach.

September 30, 2013 at 11:59 am #64805

WPMuse
Participant

Hey, Mark:

Activated Twenty-Thirteen. When I did that Outreach was gone and no longer available. Re-uploaded the core theme files via FTP, and then was able to choose the theme and reinstate.

I am still concerned why this happened. What was the catalyst? Nothing on the site has changed -- no new plugins.

Was it 3.6.1 or a plugin updating to 3.6.1? The fact the same files being re-uploaded to the Outreach directory when deactivated in some way solved this doesn't make sense. The files uploaded were exact copies of what was there before...

How can I prevent this from happening again if we don't know why it happened this time? Thanks! 😉

October 3, 2013 at 1:20 pm #65237

WPMuse
Participant

Update.... Logged into the site today and the error is back.

ERROR: The themes directory is either empty or doesn’t exist. Please check your installation.

Same as the screenshot previously provided above.

Apparently this is a technical issue I should submit a support ticket for?

October 3, 2013 at 4:31 pm #65268

Summer
Member

what does your wp-content/themes folder have in it, as in a complete listing of files and folders? Does anything in there look off? Have you tried doing a security scan on your site, just in case?

Try using: http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/scanner/

WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After Dark

October 3, 2013 at 4:38 pm #65270

WPMuse
Participant

Thanks, Summer...

This site is verified clean and not blacklisted. 😉 The wp-content/themes looks fine too -- Genesis, OutReach,
TwentyThirteen, TwentyTwelve.

The site is displaying fine.... Just want to determine what this is about -- I hate not being able to find a solution.

October 3, 2013 at 6:43 pm #65288

Summer
Member

I've only seen something similar to this twice before. Once, the problem was a physical issue on the server's hard drive that the ISP's techs hadn't discovered yet, and the other time was that files had been uploading via FTP not in binary mode... something that most modern FTP apps have on by default.

The fact that the theme description is just the first few lines of the CSS file and not the normal display seems to point to a problem in Outreach. Since the other themes display that information correctly, that sort of eliminates an issue with the framework files and the WP core files. Maybe a corrupt include file or something... that's why I asked about the files. If all the files in themes/outreach are exactly the same as on your computer, and they're all the same size, I'm not sure what else to check.

WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After Dark

October 4, 2013 at 8:48 am #65351

WPMuse
Participant

Hey, Summer:

Appreciate your input -- I agree with your comments. The site is on a VPS and none of the other WordPress sites have this issue so that eliminates the server.

I also use FTP Voyager all day long on tons of other sites too, set to binary, no issues. I've put in a formal support ticket to see if the good folks @StudioPress have any ideas and will report back here for others in the future.

Thanks again! 😉

October 4, 2013 at 9:54 am #65361

WPMuse
Participant

Said I would report back.. Here is SP's response:

Please check the wordpress.org support forums as I have seen it be an issue with the past couple of versions of WordPress.

Explained I already did that, it is only this site, and that I work on multiple Genesis/child sites on the same server and many other servers and only this site is behaving in this manner and that I was hoping SP would be open to helping me determine what about this particular site is causing this.

There's multiple threads about this over in the WordPress.org forums. It's also perfectly possible for it to happen on one install on the server and not the rest. It's not specific to our themes.

Soooo, if I do figure this out, I will update for others... 😉
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