Just upgraded from Newspaper 4 to 8 at http://www.automotivereport.net. Not only does the home page layout no longer look the same as under 4 (I’ve tried different style settings), but all the content is missing — no logo in the header, no stories on the page, no sidebar, just some of our categories and some code (unlike secondary pages, which look different but do load the old content). We may use a different style for the site, including the home page, but how do I get the home-pag content to load? Also, and far worse, I can no longer access the WP dashboard to make any changes. Text message warnings load above the login area, and when I log in, all I get is a text list of warnings, no WP dashboard. Please help.
My web-hosting support was able to help me resolve the WP login problem, so I again have access to the WP dashboard. They also told me that my site was using a “child” of the Newspaper 4 theme (I don’t know what that means) before the upgrade to Newspaper 8 and that might be why the home page is not loading correctly and why our logo does not appear in headers. Is that an issue for which I may receive support from you guys?
Also, now when I try to activate the Newspaper 8 theme, I get this message:
wp booster error:
Please update your [tagDiv social counter] Plugin!
Fatal error: Call to undefined function mb_detect_encoding() in /home/forkum/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 3086
Hello Allen,
Please keep in mind that what you want to do is a BIG update and the theme will be broken because it is totally another theme, sorry!
In order to achieve the best results after you will install the latest update you have to follow some rigorous steps like this -> you have to delete both of your themes, child theme, and main theme. All your customizations from your Newspaper 4 theme will do not work because all the files from this were changed in Newspaper 8.1 and as the main theme and also you lose all changes.
The Newspaper 8.1 is a whole new theme so an update from 4 to 8.1 may cause the same issues as switching to another theme (but we did try to maintain compatibility where ever possible).
Always make a full backup of your current installation – https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups and then do a clean update, meaning that we recommend that you delete the old version of the theme before uploading the new one – https://forum.tagdiv.com/how-to-update-the-theme-2/ update also the plugins that come bundled with the theme files from the /plugins folder. In the “how to update” guide is specified that you will have to run the script that will import from database your settings.
The shortcodes have been changed so old ones will not work anymore. Please note that old files customization or custom CSS will not work with the new version and you will have to adjust or re-add them. Bottom line is that newspaper 8.1 is a whole new theme built from scratch.
Unfortunately, you will have to clear your agenda and spare a bit of time to adjust all your settings to the new version of the theme.
Hope this helps and let us know how it goes!
Thank you for the message!
Thanks, Catalin. I thought it might be something like that. Will get to work on it, but I may have more questions!
