Thanks, but I think I figured it out by myself.

  • Unknown's avatar
    broodcoffeetalk · Member ·

    A little while ago I posted a question and a general rant on here. I was trying to update my existing site with no success, and it was causing me a lot of distress. I think I have gotten it done by migrating (if that is the correct word) to another Theme.
    My only real question remaining is—why does it look so different on the WordPress app than online? The sidebar with Categories and my other Sidebar content is invisible. I fixed it for myself by enabling Desktop mode, inside of Tablet (I’m using an iPad Pro). Is there some way to keep that enabled all the time, even if the visitor has a mobile device?

    Thanks for your response, and sorry for the rant earlier. I knew this was easier than it appeared.

    Site: https://broodcoffeetalk.wordpress.com.
    WP.com: Yes
    Correct account: Yes

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    Hello again, It appears that your other thread has been inadvertently deleted rather than merged with this one. I’m not sure what happened.

    Regardless, I hope you saw my first reply in that thread that you received some assistance regarding grouping your subjects at https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/grouping-posts-by-subject/ and that if things here are new or unfamiliar, we do have learning resources listed at https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/new-to-wordpress-com-resources-to-get-started/

    About your questions in this thread, which app are you using? You mentioned you’re viewing on a mobile app? Is the sidebar not visible below your posts? Can you take a screenshot and share it with us? https://wordpress.com/support/make-a-screenshot/

  • Unknown's avatar
    broodcoffeetalk · Member ·

    Hello, Just Jennifer:

    (Firstly, let me apologize if I have already posted a response to your comments. I can’t even to find where it might be, if I did. For the purpose of this exercise, let’s pretend I did not.)

    Yes I did receive a response before about using Categories…but the issue this time was that even though the Theme I was using allowed widgets (or so it said)—it did not. Had it, I could have just set it up with those. But when I clicked/tapped on Customize to set up the Categories, it said that the theme offered 3 widgets, but that they were not enabled (I forget the exact wording) on that page. The display of that page was just blank.

    That was the main source of my dissatisfaction, was the inability to just change the coding on my original site to add that.

    I tried to Preview my existing site on several different new themes, and I got the same message, many times. Finally I found one that worked, and there you go (or, as the British would say, “Bob’s your uncle!”. No, I don’t know exactly what that means either. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob’s_your_uncle .)

    So I now have a shiny new site that I am very pleased with. I will try and send a screenshot, but it’s basically a “dark” version of my site, without the Sidebar content. And, it goes away (has all content and sidebars) if I choose the Desktop option.

    So, the question would seem to be: is there a way to keep the Desktop option the default all the time, regardless of device? I went to all this trouble so visitors could choose the content each wanted to read. (It is a Mulligan’s Stew there, with all sort of different topics bumping into each other.)

    Thanks again for your response.

    Site: https://broodcoffeetalk.wordpress.com.
    WP.com: Yes
    Correct account: Yes

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    Yes, there’s something odd going on here. Your reply didn’t show up for me when I looked in earlier today. Sorry for the trouble.

    If you are talking about broodcoffeetalk, then the theme you’re using is Plane, which is an older WordPress.com theme. There’s more on setting it up on the theme’s showcase page https://wordpress.com/theme/plane

    You’re more likely to encounter the message you’re hinting at, about widgets not being available on a page you’re viewing in the Customizer, comes up when there’s not an area that supports widgets on the page. Do you recall whether that happened in Plane or one of the other themes you tried?

    As far as your question about you setting the desktop version as default for your visitors, I don’t believe it is. (I do want to note that in both FF and Safari, there is a contextual message in both browsers about viewing the desktop version, but that is up to your site visitor.)

    I looked at your site on my ancient iPadMini2, both in FF and Safari, and while I did see your site’s posts on your homepage, your sidebar never came into view there. Is it possible you’ve got infinite scroll enabled? https://wordpress.com/support/infinite-scroll/ If you do, I might suggest turning it off and setting the number of posts on your site’s homepage to only a couple or 3 so that the sidebar shows up below the posts. https://wordpress.com/support/settings/reading-settings/#blog-pages-show-at-most (I did see the sidebar below your first post when I clicked through to read it.) Another option is to not show your full post on your homepage, but only an excerpt. Let me know if that interests you.

    If you are getting a lot of blank pages while working on your site, please try logging out of WordPress.com and clearing your browser cache and cookies. That seems to cure a number of issues.

    I hope that helped answer your question, but if not, please let us know.

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