Question about the customizer

[laura]

@weaver

I’m trying to teach myself how to use the customizer, but I don’t know if I have encountered a bug in the process.

I used appearance –> customize to start it up.

I proceeded to make a change on one of the text widgets on the right sidebar by adding in some inline css.

I was prompted to click on “Publish”

I then wanted to exit out of the customizer by clicking on the X on the upper left hand side and then I got this error:

Sorry, this page doesn’t exist.
Please check the URL or go back a page.
404 Error. Page Not Found.

The only way to get back into the site was to click on the back arrow in my browser.

The url shows:  primary domain/admin

This has happened on more than one of my test sites. It doesn’t look like my changes were saved either.

This seems to happen intermittently and I can’t seem to recreate it enough.

Everything seemed ok until I tried to exit out of the customizer when I was finished.

Is this a bug?

[Weaver]

I don’t know what might be going on.

Changing widget content from the Customizer is built in to the Customizer, and doesn’t have anything to do with the theme options.

I do know that without the Classic Widgets plugin, the Customizer doesn’t seem to handle widgets as I might expect. At some point, the Customizer switched to just working with totally new Block Widgets, and it takes the Classic Widgets plugin to make them work as expected.

That is the only thing I can think of that might create issues with the Customizer.

 

[laura]

This reply has been marked as private.

[Weaver]

Hmm…

The blog5 does seem like a big clue. I know there are ways to install different parts of WP in different directories. There a bunch of wp-config.php settings that have to be just right for everything to work.

Sub-directories are also something found in multi-site WP installs.

But switching back to a different admin directory is not something that should happen.

But I really don’t know why that might happen. It is very unlikely a Weaver issue.

I would searh for the problem – something like:

Exiting from WP Customizer goes to wrong admin directory.

(I didn’t try that search as I am currently travelling and I’m mostly just trying to keep up with posts.)

 

[scrambler]

I have the same problem on my test site with the customizer in what mode.

In my case, I have two sites in two separate sub folder, One subfolder has the main site, and the second sub folder has the test site.

On the test site, when I do and edit inside the customizer, publish, then close the customizer (X), it goes to the url with the main site subfolder instead of the test site, and therefore asks for a login….

Basically, I am in the test site on the customizer, the URL is something like

https://www.nicolatrwst.com/testsite/wp-admin/customize.php?return......................

Then I exit and it goes to something like

https://www.nicolatrwst.com/mainsite/wp-login.php?redirect_to=...............

the strange part is that if I am in “where” mode it does not do it, only in “What” mode….

[laura]

@scrambler

@weaver

This happened again today when I was trying to change a background color to the container area. I was in “Where” mode.

The confusing thing for me is that is seems to happen randomly. I was on the same site earlier today changing a sub menu color and everything seemed to function as expected, but for some reason, it seems to malfunction intermittently, which makes it hard to establish a pattern of whether I’m causing this or not, but if it’s happening to @scrambler, I guess there may be a bug somewhere.

I’ll try to do a search that @weaver suggested about “Exiting from WP Customizer goes to wrong admin directory.”

I was trying to learn the customizer, but this is really annoying and I never had any problem with the Legacy interface. Will it continue to be supported as long as I have the Weaver Support Plugin installed? I understand there will not be anything new added to it, but for now it serves my purpose for my existing test sites that are not going to change much.

 

 

[laura]

@weaver

@scrambler

I posted this issue on the WordPress Support Forum a few minutes ago:

Exiting from WP Customizer goes to wrong admin directory

There seems to be a problem with the customizer after I make a change to my website when I try to exit the customizer by clicking on the “X” in the upper left part of the toolbar, I get a white screen with an error message that says,

Sorry, this page doesn’t exist.
Please check the URL or go back a page.
404 Error. Page Not Found.

The url that the customizer returns to after an update is incorrect. My WordPress installation is in a sub directory which starts out ok before my change, but after I click on “Publish” and click on “X” to exit the customizer, I get the error message above and my url does not include the subdirectory name.

Before an update, my url looks like this:
https://MyDomain.com/blog5/wp-admin/customize.php?url=https%3A%2F%2FMyDomain.com%2Fblog5%2F

After an update, my url looks like this:
https://MyDomain.com/wp-admin/

I also get the following message after the update:
Sorry, this page doesn’t exist.
Please check the URL or go back a page.
404 Error. Page Not Found.

When this happens, I have to click on the back arrow to get back to the website, but I cannot exit the customizer.

This error seems to happen intermittently and randomly and I cannot seem to find a reason that this happens. Sometimes everything functions ok, and then when it does happen, it does so repeatedly and it becomes extremely annoying.

Could you please look into this?

Thank you.

[laura]

This is a reply I received from one of the WordPress moderators regarding this issue:

“The query string for your customize.php URL is unusual. It involves ?url=https://whatever. The normal query string is ?return=https://wherever you currently are.

The unusual query string would be due to your theme or one of your plugins. To find out which, switch to a default Twenty* theme (2021 or earlier, later block themes hide the customizer) and deactivate all plugins. The customizer URL should now include the normal ?return= query string. Restore your usual theme and plugins, one at a time, checking the customizer URL after each. When the ?url= version returns, the last activated is the cause. Take up the issue through that module’s dedicated support channel.”

I was not able to recreate the problem after disabling the plugins so far.  I did not switch themes. Which theme would be good to switch to? The themes I have to switch to are block themes and I am not using the block editor. I have Gutenberg disabled. Does that matter? The issue I’ve been having has been intermittent, but I’ll try it again.

In the meantime, I would prefer to use the legacy interface since it’s easier for me to use and I’ve never had a problem with it.  Will it continue to be supported as long as I have the Weaver Support Plugin installed? I understand there will not be anything new added to it, but for now it serves my purpose for my existing test sites that are not going to change much in the future.

[scrambler]

It does not matter what theme any standard WP will do.

[Weaver]

Did you happen to open the Customizer via the Customizer link in the Legacy Admin page?

That is the only link to the Customizer actually generated by the theme, so it may be the problem.

[scrambler]

I don’t, I go to the customizer from appearance customize.

@weaver, you can check on my test site if it helps.

[laura]

@weaver

I have opened the customizer through the Customizer link in the Legacy Interface, but I have also opened the customizer through the left side tool bar by clicking Appearance —> customize.

I don’t remember which way I opened the customizer when I got the error.

[Author]

Posts