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Yikes! The Categories Disappeared off the Side of the Page!

I was working on changing themes today and I've always had our categories appear on the right-hand side of the page. I change the theme to something l liked and the categories were fine - they were still there. And in fact they have to appear there in order for people to be able to post discussions in their proper category. If they don't appear there people can't see them and don't know they exist.

Then, I went into the Dashboard/Appearance/Homepage and the first line there, that says, "Choose the page people should see when they visit" - nothing was checked. But everything was working fine so I should have left it alone. But I didn't. I checked one of the two - I don't remember which one I checked first. But it doesn't matter because I went back and checked the other one and it still didn't work. What happened when I checked these was that the categories no longer appear on the side of the page at all!

If I could just uncheck both of those - I think it would be fine. But of course there's no way to uncheck them once one of them has been checked.

Could anyone help give me an idea about that?

Thanks so much!
Sheena

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Comments

  • Oh and I looked in the database trying to find somewhere where maybe I could set it back there, but I couldn't find anything at all in the database that looked like it might remotely have anything to do with this!

  • hgtonighthgtonight ∞ · New Moderator

    Welcome to the community!

    Could you provide a link and/or screenshot of the issue you are experiencing?

    Search first

    Check out the Documentation! We are always looking for new content and pull requests.

    Click on insightful, awesome, and funny reactions to thank community volunteers for their valuable posts.

  • Sure... and thank you! http://uberdriverdiaries.com/diaries/

    On the left a whole list of cities used to appear, but now they're gone.

  • vrijvlindervrijvlinder Papillon-Sauvage MVP

    You can check what you checked inside the configurations file called config.php

    $Configuration['Vanilla']['Categories']['Use')=FALSE;

    depending on that setting either 1 for on or 0 for off or also TRUE or FALSE. Check anything that may point to it being off.

    like this

    $Configuration['Vanilla']['Categories']['HideModule']=TRUE;

  • Hey! That worked! Thank you SO much!!!

    And for future reference in case anyone else has this happen, here's the line I changed:

    $Configuration['Vanilla']['Categories']['HideModule'] = '0';

    It was set to 1 - I changed it to 0.

    Thanks so much!

  • jcncncjcncnc New
    edited October 2014

    By the way, I wonder if there's somewhere in the dashboard interface that affects this setting? Because now I'm looking at the Dashboard/Appearance/Homepage and the first "Choose the page people should see when they visit" line and one of them is checked now. I thought originally nothing was checked there. So maybe it was something other than what I thought.

  • peregrineperegrine MVP
    edited October 2014


    in settings/managecategories

    x Do not display the categories in the side panel.

    I may not provide the completed solution you might desire, but I do try to provide honest suggestions to help you solve your issue.

  • One may you could avoid - mishaps or surprises.

    Take screen shots of settings pages in dashboard before you start changing things. then you can always compare the default configuration, prior to you changing things.

    Another thing you can do is make a local copy of your config.php before you change things, so you always have a reference point to compare to, and to learn (if you want).

    I may not provide the completed solution you might desire, but I do try to provide honest suggestions to help you solve your issue.

  • vrijvlindervrijvlinder Papillon-Sauvage MVP

    @jcncnc said:
    By the way, I wonder if there's somewhere in the dashboard interface that affects this setting?

    the config.php is where all the settings are stored so you can check it to see if what you checked or entered via the user interface/dashboard has been saved or what has been saved.

    Because now I'm looking at the Dashboard/Appearance/Homepage and the first "Choose the page people should see when they visit" line and one of them is checked now. I thought originally nothing was checked there. So maybe it was something other than what I thought.

    You may have checked it by accident. This determines what page is the landing page.

  • peregrineperegrine MVP
    edited October 2014

    the config.php is where all the settings are stored so you can check it to see if what you checked or entered via the user interface/dashboard has been saved or what has been saved.

    except when it is stored in the database :wink: (e.g. permissions, etc, etc.)

    I may not provide the completed solution you might desire, but I do try to provide honest suggestions to help you solve your issue.

  • peregrine, thanks for that screenshot - that answers my question!

  • By the way, I just noticed something else seems to have changed.

    We used to have it set so the default homepage was the Display Categories page. And it looked really neat. It would have the name of the City and beneath that would be all the recent discussions in that city.

    Now, the Categories page just displays the city names and how many discussions are in each one (much like the Categories sidebar), but it doesn't show a preview of any of the discussions.

    Would any of you have any idea how to get that back like it was? It worked so perfectly for our site, and this isn't going to work well at all.

    Thanks!!

    Sheena

  • hgtonighthgtonight ∞ · New Moderator

    You need to select "Categories and Discussions" in the dashboard home page settings.

    Search first

    Check out the Documentation! We are always looking for new content and pull requests.

    Click on insightful, awesome, and funny reactions to thank community volunteers for their valuable posts.

  • it would be worth it to you to experiment with different settings in dashboard. it is just a click.

    and you can do this prior to:

    http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/comment/217570/#Comment_217570

    I may not provide the completed solution you might desire, but I do try to provide honest suggestions to help you solve your issue.

  • I don't see a "Categories and Discussions" selection in dashboard/homepage anymore. I see something called "Mixed Layout" under "Categories Layout" which I've selected and that does bring me what I wanted to see.

    But in the old version of Vanilla, it seems there was a choice there to tell it what you wanted to be the default homepage and you could choose between recent discussions or categories or activity and things like that. But that seems to be gone now. And now the site is defaulting to Recent Activity. I'd prefer for it to default to Categories. Would any of you know how to make it do that now?

    Thanks so much for all your help!!

    Sheena

  • Oh and one other thing that is annoying me to no end. When you click on a discussion, instead of being taken to the beginning of the discussion - or even being taken to the last few comments - it takes you all the way to the bottom of the last page where the text input box is! This is so confusing for new visitors. They won't even know there's a discussion taking place unless they think to scroll the page up. Why would Vanilla do that? Very strange. You click on a discussion and the only thing you see is a text input box!

  • Vanilla is way smarter than that :)

    It always takes you to the latest post you haven't read. Visitors will be taken to the first post of the thread.

    But if you only see the TextBox and nothing else, there might be a problem with your theme.

  • Well, is there any way to make it not take you to the last post you read? Maybe if I can turn that off or change it it won't take people to the text box.

    The thing is - it's not really taking us to the last page we read. I click on conversations I haven't read at all and it takes me to the text box - just below the last post in the conversation. Very annoying.

    Thanks!
    Sheena

  • That should not happen and I'd rather look into fixing the underlying problem.
    But yes, you can turn that off:

    $Configuration['Vanilla']['Comments']['AutoOffset'] = false;
    
  • whu606whu606 I'm not a SuperHero; I just like wearing tights... MVP

    As @Bleistivt says, if it is not going to the last read post there is an issue that should be resolved rather than worked around.

    I would think users would find it way more frustrating to have to manually go to the last post they read on every thread they visit, instead of being taken there automatically.

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