sidebar disappeared

[Roxanna Whittington]

After the last update my homepage sidebar disappeared. How do I get it back?

Thanks Roxanna

[Bill Robbins]

Good Morning Roxanna,

Let’s see if we can track down what’s missing. I took a look at your home page and saw quite a few widgets there. Which ones are you expecting to see that you’re not and where should they go?

Thanks,
Bill

[Roxanna Whittington]

the default sidebar thats on all the other pages

[Bill Robbins]

Gotcha. That one is not part of the home page template by default. If you edited the home page to include that, you’ll need to restore a backup of your changes to the update to bring it back there.

If you run into trouble, let me know,
Bill

[Roxanna Whittington]

Its been so long since I set it up I don’t know what I did all I know is that I had a sidebar on the home page and now its gone?

[Bill Robbins]

I can understand that. The home page had to have been edited in order to have the default sidebar there.

Do you have any backups?

[Roxanna Whittington]

only the ones thru Bluehost.

[Roxanna Whittington]

I looked back thru our emails and can’t find any where we edited the home page to add a sidebar. And I’m not sure exactly when it disappeared so I’m not sure if going with a backup will work. ANd then wouldn’t I have to update everything again and lose it again?

[Bill Robbins]

Does the rest of your home page look like you’re expecting; besides the missing sidebar? You could use the default page template instead of the home page one. It does use the default sidebar. Thinking about this a bit more, adding a traditional sidebar to the home page template wouldn’t be simple since each home page section is designed to be full width.

You can place customized theme files in what’s called a child theme. That lets you update the original theme without losing your modifications.

[Roxanna Whittington]

Ye the rest of the home page looks fine. You can see where there is room for the sidebar on the right, it’s just not there.

“You could use the default page template instead of the home page one.” How would I do that? ANd would I lose the home age layout I have now?

[Bill Robbins]

Looking at your home page and the Custom CSS that’s been added, I don’t believe the sidebar is missing. It looks like the number of products per row in the featured post widget was adjusted to be four per row instead of three. I believe the update adjusted the underlying css for those changes and switched it back to three per row, but since the width is for four, there is a space there.

If you look at the widgets below that, they are full width. If a sidebar was missing, they would be about 75% width too.

Give this a try:

1. Go to your theme options page and choose the Advanced tab.
2. Scroll down to the Custom CSS box and add this:

   
   .product-list ul.fly-in li:nth-child(3n + 1) {
   	clear: none;
   }
   
   .product-list ul.fly-in li:nth-child(4n + 1) {
   	clear: both;
   }
   

3. Update your settings.

Let me know if that doesn’t fill in the space for you.

Thanks,
Bill

[Roxanna Whittington]

Yeah I do remember we changed it to 4 but I added that code and it didn’t bring back my side bar it just removed the space for it?

[Bill Robbins]

Changing to 4 is pretty simple. I believe that’s what we did. I don’t remember adding a sidebar there; that would be quite tricky and unusual. Since you didn’t find a reference to that in past emails I don’t believe it’s something that I helped you set up.

[Roxanna Whittington]

Well… all I know is that I had a side bar on the home page and now I dont and I want to get it back

[Bill Robbins]

Restore the site via BlueHost. That would be the fastest way to have things back as they were. Don’t update the theme after that. There is an option in the Advanced tab of the theme options page where you can turn off updates. I would use that option and that will keep you from losing any edits made to the theme via an update.

When you’re ready and have time, you can create a child theme. Move the modified files into it and that will preserve them through an update.

[Roxanna Whittington]

Ok Thanks for all your help!

[Bill Robbins]

Anytime Roxanna 🙂

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