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LeStatisticienParticipant
I repeat below a portion of a post just made at another page; because I feel the general points being made should be shown here as well.
Essentially, we should assume a non-ending evolution of development environment that comprises the combination of WordPress and Genesis Framework. That evolution will forever threaten the viability of Genesis-based web sites built on features that are deprecated as the evolution unfolds. (This means threatening some peoples' businesses, as happens for many who are affected by WP upgrades.)
So the holders of websites with those deprecated features need to plan an early migration into environments where the features are no longer needed. An inexpensive way of developing such a plan is to keep track of and use the free Sample theme updated by StudioPress after each upgrade. This may not be the elegant solution; but some people need it.
Here is my story.
Essentially, I installed the Genesis Sample Theme (GST) as a replacement of my existing theme (the one that crashed), and then build into the newly installed theme those features of the old one that have not been captured properly by this ‘migration’ from one theme to another.
I am running a consultancy with one website whose primary purpose is to support my professional efforts. Paying $360 per year just to maintain one web site that is not available to the general public is not good expenditure management.
The Genesis Pro package for $360 per year is great for people selling themes and those whose businesses is to provide site development assistance to various clients.
Finally, we do have the advice that old Genesis-based websites should continue to run and that the StudioPress programmers will continue to make security-related updates; but what that advice does not address is a situation where you have modified your acquired StudioPress theme in such a way that your product inevitably crashes when you upgrade to WordPress 5.8.
August 4, 2021 at 6:16 pm in reply to: Which still actively supported theme most closely resembles Academy Pro? #504376LeStatisticienParticipantI report below what seems to be an effective solution to the problem I raised above. I do this post because I feel that the outlines of the solution could help a lot of people with Genesis-based websites that have crashed following upgrade to WP 5.8.
Essentially, install the Genesis Sample Theme (GST) as a replacement of your existing theme, and then build into the newly installed theme those features of the old one (the one that has crashed) that have not been captured properly by this ‘migration’ from one theme to another.
The critical benefit is that if your crash was due to some feature of the old theme (you modified what you purchased from StudioPress) that is simply incompatible ( without doing changes under the hood) with the new combination of WP 5.8 and Genesis Framework 3.3.4), that incompatibility seems to disappear when you ‘migrate’ to the GST. This disappearance is what I have experienced. (Yes, there is some tweaking to do in order to recapture all the look and feel of the crashed website; but in my case this workload is quite tolerable.)
I would prefer to do a theme-migration of this kind to one of the themes now available within Genesis Pro; but here is my issue: I am running a consultancy with one website whose primary purpose is to support my professional efforts.
Acquiring Genesis Pro so that I can freely choose among various themes and have other important functionalities (as if I am a web developer) means that I’m paying $360 per year just to maintain my one website which is not even available to the general public.
I am willing to bet that a lot of people holding Genesis based websites that have now crashed, with the upgrade to WP 5.8, are in exactly the following boat: the Genesis Pro package for $360 per year is great for people selling themes and those whose businesses is to provide site development assistance to various clients. But there is another class of Genesis applications users for whom that is quite an elaborate expenditure just to keep one website running.
“But why not find a third-party theme that resembles yours closely and already has the said compatibility”, you ask? Well, this sudden crash of my pre-existing website is an important wake-up call which says this: stay close to the well endowed company that will feel immense pressure to respond quickly to WP upgrades in what it puts on sale or makes available free. (Keep in mind that this pressure is not enough; because you also need to have financial and human resources to pull off that rapid response and stay in business.)
Finally, we do have the advice that old Genesis-based websites should continue to run and that the StudioPress programmers will continue to make security-related updates; but what that advice does not address is a situation where you have modified your acquired StudioPress theme in such a way that your product inevitably crashes when you upgrade to WordPress 5.8.
For example in my case, I suspect that two plug-ins that affect scrolling functions and also preempt the use of a portion of the page space are causing the new version of the Genesis Framework to not work correctly with the website that was working fine before I upgraded a WordPress 5.8.
August 4, 2021 at 6:09 pm in reply to: Which still actively supported theme most closely resembles Academy Pro? #504375LeStatisticienParticipantThanks Victor. You hit the nail on the head regarding my problem. Below I report my solution as a direct 'reply' to my last note, so that it will be appropriately catalogued by their computer.
LeStatisticienParticipantHello! I wish to report that the problem reported above exists in the parallel version of Academy Pro at my host (where the upgrade of WP to 5.8 was totally independent of my actions).
When you Add a new page, the screen that opens is 100% filled with titles and rows dealing page parameters (starting with Theme SEO Settings, and ending with Robots Meta Settings).
The first thing you should see is “Page Title” followed by an invitation to start a block. Then was you extend the text in your block the page-parameter items should just push down smoothly to make room for the new text. That is not happening.
Instead they stay stuck after 9 lines of text go in, and the new text starts ti slid under the page-parameter stuff.
I did upgrade to Genesis 3.3.4.
This looks like a very tricky programming problem, however, since the boundaries of the lower edge of an ever-growing block of text may be hard to ‘see’.
LeStatisticienParticipantThanks Victor. I have a deep problem even when I add a new page (Academy Pro). I get about 8 lines of text following the page title, and the remaining text is "covered" by a set of "page parameters" (Theme SEO Settings, Scripts, Page Restriction, etc.) in the sense that the remaining text lines slide 'under' the screen space used by these parameters. It is as it this screen space is layered on top my my text.
At the end of the list of parameters (and the space they occupy) you can see a piece of my text peeking out underneath. The set of page parameters are not pushed down as you add text to your block.
I went to Add New Page for testing; because this problem has cropped up with every other page I had prior to the upgrade to WP 5.8. Indeed as soon as I try to see an 'old' page the screen is 100% covered by the parameters and their empty rows. You have to click on a tiny triangle in the top right-hand corner of your screen and then you see your page title and a few lines of your text 'peek out' at the top of the screen. The remainder of my text is completely buried under the rows belonging to the page parameters..
Perhaps the WP upgrade process has been corrupted at my machine. I did make a backup using "WP All in One Migration" before I started the upgrade; but I am thinking that I should immediately regard Academy Pro as unreliable legacy software (unreliable in the sense that as we go forward with more changes in WP and revised plug-ins I risk having this sort of issue blowing up multiple hours of work effort! I've already put in more than 12 hours since the upgrade to 5.8 and am reluctant to deepen my time investment in this software product.
Your note suggests that there are several variables that could cause my issues; but it is quickly looking as if a time investment into something assuredly designed to work with WP 5.8 looks more sensible that juggling these variables to try and find out why I am having this problem.
I write thais note in the hope that I am just "missing something" that you will bring to my attention. I have ensured that the Genesis Framework is up to date.
Thanks in advance for your consideration.
LeStatisticienParticipantThis Forum has been so helpful to me that I want to take the time to make the following report on an important problem for those who wish to use their wordpress-based sites for knowledge conveyance. What follows refers to Academy Pro Theme (called “APro” henceforth).
All the way back to 2016, you will find questions in this Forum about how to hold a menu on the screen while the user causes a long text to scroll along.
I started with the Genesis Plug-In named “Genesis Simple Sidebars”, recommended by Anita, and then set about trying to find a way to force it to stay on the screen while a long text was being scrolled beside it.
I spent a few hours investigating three solutions, and can now report that the plug-in named “Q2W3 Fixed Widget” is the only one of the three that works elegantly for me inside APro. (I may have made mistakes in configuring one or more of them, however.)
As you see above, this route was recommended back in 2016 by Carasmo. However, he/she said little about how we get to the desired result, so I will add some commentary on this point.
Fortunately, the Genesis software engineers designated an auxiliary menu as a widget, and prescribed that it be placed in the sidebar area that you’re able to set aside as part of your page configuration.
As you select this widget to go into the sidebar, “Q2W3 Fixed Widget” causes a new option to appear — “Fixed Widget”, which you select by clicking into a box.
Make sure that it is the last widget in the sidebar, otherwise you will have a visual mix-up of widgets as you scroll along. Having it at the last widget is great; because you now can make your menu as long as you wish!
A slight annoyance is that the configuration of “Q2W3 Fixed Widget” invites some confusion due to lack of completeness and clarity in the instructions.
LeStatisticienParticipantThanks Anita, and apologies for bothering you on this.
LeStatisticienParticipantJust checking please -- does any one know whether Genesis has built a fixed sidebar menu module whose implementation is more elegant and less prone to bugs than that available at https://wordpress.org/plugins/q2w3-fixed-widget/ ? I gather this program is compatible with Genesis themes; but I am just checking in case Genesis engineers have built similar functionality for the Genesis Framework.
FYI, I have setup and have running the Genesis Simple Sidebar plugin and it is nice, except that on long posts I would love to have the menu in the sidebar stay fixed as the text scrolls by.
Thanks in advance.
LeStatisticienParticipantSorry, I did not add the PHP template. I will go back through the instructions and try to fix this issue. Thanks for your prompt help.
LeStatisticienParticipantI owe it to StudioPress to help others who might have my issue by citing the following link: https://my.studiopress.com/documentation/usage/wordpress-features/create-and-use-navigation-menus/
The exposition on this page is very well thought-out and clear, and it solved my problem.
I am a decent programmer (though in a quite different field of programming), and I want say how immensely impressed I am with the quality of the functionality of menu creation available for Academy Pro. The only bother is that side-bar menus are not covered. Did StudioPress create this code or did the WordPress consortium? In any case it is great stuff!
I actually analyzed the menu creation code at lines 80 to 109 of the source code for the sample page for Academy Pro, and there are so many HREFs to the same file (or other Genesis files), as well as what look like specialized functions that I wondered how that approach could ever be generalized. And yet that is exactly what has happened in the functionality built into Academy Pro.
So ... good show! (And I am not even mentioning the quality of the documentation made for us clients -- a big investment, so thanks for this too).
September 30, 2019 at 10:38 am in reply to: Academy Pro – adding Registration and Login forms #493806LeStatisticienParticipantThanks Anita. I was just looking for a confirmation that I would have to make or find the code needed to use Registration and Login forms with Academy Pro. I was headed to modifying the theme into one where memberships would be sold, and (from time to time) people would be invited to enroll in specific courses, which would probably be delivered with LMS software. The benefits of membership would be access to special blocks of rare and valuable information. The selling of this access, via various enticements, would be the main burden of the adapted Academy Pro.
So the Registration and Login I have in mind is not to a course. It is a matter of people getting access to the special members-only files. Building this functionality into Academy Pro in the future would widen its use case, i think.Cheers!
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