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[sotjoom2 Friend sotjoom2Join date: January 2010Posts: 47Downloads:0Uploads:10 Thanks: 5 Thanked: 3 times in 1 posts]

#148613

Below is a post I made a few days ago under another account. At the time I didn’t realize how hard this problem would be to crack and I also used my personal account to post it. Instead, I should have used the account related to the site I am building. So here it goes again.
I copied and pasted from the other post, the link to the other post is:

http://www.joomlart.com/forums/topic/bizarre-blank-home-page-with-teline-iii/

Also, here are a few more information about the site: Joomla 1.5.15
Apache, PHP5, SQL 5.x Cpanel based server

OK, I am no newbie in Joomla and by now I am pretty familiar with Teline III, having used professionally all three versions.
Hold on for the ride because this is a long one, but I promise it’s worth it.

I built a large site using Teline III and luckily the template is so well built that I didn’t have to make many changes to the code except for minor graphic/CSS tweaks and a few changes to accommodate the way I work with Joomla. (Mostly strategically inserted comments and a couple of custom positions).

The site sports a lot of components, too numerous to list all. Among the big ones are:

* K2
* Jomsocial
* MyBlog
* Jomcomment
* Virtuemart

And many more minor ones. But all of them work pretty well.

Because I modified the ja_news modules (mod_janews2 and mod_janews_fp) in the Home page to work with K2 instead of the Joomla content, I had to sacrifice, at least for the moment, the color coding those modules allow.
Also, because I was working with a partner, we mis-communicated and somehow the Jazin plugin created another menu called “Main Menu” (in addition to the default Joomla menu) which contains a “default Home Page” link (as well as the one in teh magazine menu).

Amazingly, the site worked pretty well for at least a month even with this weird set up. I discovered the duplication when at some point it loaded an alternate home page. I went to look at the cause and I discovered the duplicate Main Menu and relative “Home” default link.

But that’s not the problem I am having. I am listing it here in case it’s relevant and in a staging site I have already fixed the issue.

The really weird things I am experiencing are these:

1) ——————————————————
The Magazine Menu Links, which by now are independent of the Jazin plugin, are out of order. The Home Link is in the third spot in the list, preceded by 2 additional links and relative sub-menus (see image).

However, in the front end, the first two links are not present at all (they are published but they are not in the site’s menu

When I first tried fixing that, by simply repositioning the “Home” link into the first spot the first occurrence of the issue I am posting about showed up: The home page (and the site) went completely blank. No code, no nothing. A plain white page.

When I reverted the position of the home link it didn’t fix the issue. Eventually, the fix that seemed to work was to upload again the “index.php” and the template.xml files of the teline 3 template from my local backup. After doing that, the site was restored.

2) ——————————————————
In a second instance, I added a link manually to the “Magazine” menu by duplicating an existing menu link and then opening it and saving it as a submenu of a top level menu. Once again, when I went to the site, the main page was blank.

This time the earlier fix did not work, I also had made a backup of the database right before my menu change. So I restored the database at the point right before the change. When I tried the site again it was working fine.

3) ——————————————————
The final time I encountered this issue (except for the times I created it on purpose on a staging site for troubleshooting) was when I tried to include a new Module on the home page. Since my mod_janews2 was modified to work with K2 and has a new name (mod_janews2_k2), I figured I’d try to load the older version of the module, that’s still on the site to display both the K2 news and the Joomla news articles in the same fashion.

I set up the module and I loaded it, I went to the site and it was blank again.
This time, restoring the database to the point immediately before the module creation did not fix the site.
Next I tried the other fix that worked, namely restoring the index.php file (and the XML as well) from my local backup. That too did not work.
At this point I went to the Template manager and I loaded the original teline_iii template I keep there for reference (my own template was named sot_teline_1). Once I loaded the original teline_iii template the site worked fine.
I also tried other templates (like Beez) and the site worked.
I reloaded my sot_teline_1 template and once again the site was blank.

Eventually, the fix I found was this:
a) I have a copy of the site in a subdirectory. So I took the sot_teline_1 template from there (it was an almost exact copy except for 2 lines of CSS in one of the css files) and I downloaded it locally.
b) I took this sot_teline_1 template and renamed it to sot_teline_2. I also performed a global search and replace to change the name of the template in the XML file and elsewhere.
c) I uploaded this template and I switched the site to using it.

This worked fine, but later I performed a “Diff” (using WinMerge) and except for the name of the template and one other line of code, the two templates are identical. The line of code I mention is innocuous (deleting or adding it to the respective templates makes no difference in the live site).
I continued switching between the two template after making minor changes to each to reflect the few changes I found and sot_teline_2 always worked while sot_teline_1 never worked again.

This is it for now. I have created a clone of the site to continue the testing and what I am finding is that I can easily recreate the issue and I can always revert it by loading a backup of the site+DB after each “Blank crash”.

Also, every time this happens I can load any other template, except the one that was live at the time I blanked the site, and restore access to the site.

Bottom line: I am completely stumped.

Here are a few more thoughts:

a) I know Teline 3 writes a lot of HTML using PHP and Javascript and I suspect that interaction is blasting the site, but unless those changes are written permanently to the template files, I don’t understand how it’s possible that a template can become corrupt like that.

b) Even if Teline 3 is rewriting some code, where is it? The two template I am testing are identical in every way.

c) This happens whether Jazin is turned on or off. It doesn’t seem to matter.
Ditto for the presence or absence of the extra “Main menu” and relative “Default Home Link”. In a third staging site I have loaded (all a clone of the original) I was able to reproduce the blank page under all different Jazin>menu>home settings

d) One thing I failed to mention is that when the extra “Main menu” was created (because my partner changed jazin from Magazine to main menu) the result was not only 2 default home links, but also both the “Magazine” and the duplicate “Main menu” menus had an asterisk next to them (indicating “default” menu status). How is that possible?

e) I cannot claim that I have Teline 3 mastered. There is still a lot I don’t know about it and maybe I am missing an important clue. My partner, whom wrote most of the code to switch Megamenu, mod_janews2 and mod_janews_fp from Joomla to K2 is also stumped by this behavior and he knows a lot more about the inner workings of Teline III Than I do.

f) Since I installed Teline III I am pretty sure that a new version of the template was released. Has it? Should I try the new version and see if things get better?

Thank you for reading all this. I am sure you’ll agree this is a very puzzling problem and I hope someone will have some answers or at least a good lead for me.

UPDATE:

I have just tried a new tactic. I have a virgin Teline III template locally and on the site I have the template derivative that is not working loaded.
I have diffed every file in the template and realized that all files seem identical except for minor changes.

However, I also decided to upload, one by one, files and folders to the live template from the virgin Teline III template I have locally.

I started with index.php, to no effect
My very next move was to upload each folder individually (trying to bracket the offending file).
The very first folder I uploaded was “libs” where the cufon is.
Amazingly, the site came back to life. I never even thought of looking there. Now I am going to restore, reproduce the issue and upload one file at the time until I find the culprit.

NEW UPDATE:
When I substituted the file ja.object.5.php with the one from the new teline iii template the site worked.
Switching back the site again broke.
However, switching the same file from the sot_teline_2 template (the one that works) produced no such result.

———————————————————-

Note from new post:
At this point I gave up. Apparently, more than one busted file can create this problem. I am planning to download a brand new version of Teline III and merge the changes I made to it anew. Hoping that in so doing I can eliminate the risk of blowing the site. However, I still would like to know what is going on with the bizarre menu behavior (so far I have not even tried moving menu items up and down) and I’d really like to know what support says about this issue.

Thank you.

[sotjoom2 Friend sotjoom2Join date: January 2010Posts: 47Downloads:0Uploads:10 Thanks: 5 Thanked: 3 times in 1 posts]

#332475

I wanted to post here a bit more info about the “Magazine” menu.
Not only there are those “Ghost” links in the menu as above, but when I go to the module manger this is what I see in the link selection box:

#——>>Magazine
Armed Forces Newsfeeds
– US Marines
– US Navy
– US Air Force
– US Army
SOT Community Blog
– SOT Blog
– Webmaster’s Blog
– Chairman’s Blog
– SOT Staff Blog
Community Terms
– Community Terms

#——>>magazine
Home

#——>>Magazine
News
#——>>magazine
About SOT®

#——>>Magazine
– Use a Trademark
– Seal of Assurance
– Fast $ Facts
– MyBlog

#——>>magazine
– From the Chairman
– Programs
– About SOT
– Media Area
– Press Releases
– Chairman Remarks and Speeches
– Who we are

#——>>Magazine
Community
– Community
– Thank you Videos
SOT Legal

#——>>magazine
Community
– Community Registration
– Scouts – Send a message to the troops
– Thank you TO the Troops
– Thank you FROM the troops
– Webmaster’s Blog
– SOT Members Blogs
Donate!
– Donors
– Mail a Check
– Company Product
– Wills/Trusts/Insurance
– Combined Federal Campaign
– Donate Vehicles
Military News
– Afghanistan
– Iraq
– In the News
– Syndicated News
Forum
Contact SOT
SOT Admin Area

#——>>Magazine”
– Website Maintenance Messages
– Thank you

#——>>magazine
– SOT Admin Manual
– Website Reports
– Event Submission

Here is a picture of the same thing that I collaged together hoping to make some sense here:

The behavior in the menu proper, or at least part of that behavior seems pretty clear to me. What I am seeing are Categories I created in the Joomla Category Manager.

The reason they don;t show up could be because of the changes we made to the front page modules when we switched them from Joomla to pulling K2 categories, but as far as I know, we never touched the “jazin” plugin and relative code. The fact that it’s still pulling Joomla categories seems to confirm that to me.

However, I have no clue what could be wrong in the displaying of those same links in the menu. Why are they ignored?

[Anonymous Moderator JA DeveloperJoin date: September 2014Posts: 9914Downloads:207Uploads:152 Thanks: 1789 Thanked: 2008 times in 1700 posts]

#333647

Hi sotjoom2

I am checking your issue. I will inform you very soon

[sotjoom2 Friend sotjoom2Join date: January 2010Posts: 47Downloads:0Uploads:10 Thanks: 5 Thanked: 3 times in 1 posts]

#333767

Thanks. In the meantime I have fixed the issue by deactivating the Jazin plugin and deleting the extra main Menu it created. That seems to have solved the issue and the site no longer generates the empty page.

However, I am still a bit unclear of all the things that Jazin does. There could be some features we are missing because of it.
Also, as I have noted in my post, we have modified the site to work with K2 so I am aware we no longer have the color coding active. Seems to me jazin mostly is needed for creating the menu and keeping the color coding straight. If that’s all, then we are cool for now and we may revisit the issue later when we will try to make the color coding part of the site again.

Thanks

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