[Resolved] Can’t connect existing posts in post relationships

[Author]

Posts

[kevinJ-2]

I am trying to: connect existing post type in a many-to-many relationship (using Types beta)

Link to a page where the issue can be seen: (admin area)

I expected to see: the post type dropdown populate

Instead, I got: no response from the dropdown field

When I click "connect existing" in either of the post types, the popup appears, and the dropdown box to make a selection is active. However, when I click the dropdown, it does not open or populate, and when I try to type in it to search, no characters are entered. I've tested in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. I've also tested with my theme and with the WordPress default.

The site was created with the stable versions of Types & Views (and Layouts), and I upgraded to the betas for the relationships functionality. I waited to create the relationship, however, after activating many-to-many relationships in the settings.

Also, on a separate issue... my default page setup is with no sidebar. Yet, when I create a layout for a custom post type, it displays with a left sidebar (which isn't even in use). Any idea why it's not respecting theme defaults?

[Nigel]

Hi Becky

Can you check in the browser console, are there any errors showing on that page?

That seems more likely than any PHP errors, but could you also check your debug logs for those?

If you haven't already, turn on the debug log by editing your wp-config.php file and change the line with WP_DEBUG like so:

define('WP_DEBUG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);

That will create a debug.log file in your wp-content directory which you can examine in any text editor. Try visiting the same page where you observe the problem and then inspect the log. If you don't find the debug.log file it means it didn't generate any warnings or errors.

Regarding the theme and the sidebar, it looks like your theme is not one of those that is part of the Beyond Pages programme whereby you are able to set theme options from a Layout or Content Template.

In which case if you create a template for single custom posts it will most likely be using the same single.php theme template as your blog posts, and whether a sidebar or not is shown would be determined by that file (which may or may not check theme options before outputting the sidebar). You could duplicate that file and rename it single-fitness-class.php and it would be used to display single fitness class posts, and so you could edit it to remove the part where the sidebar is added.

[kevinJ-2]

Hi Nigel,

Thank you for your assistance. I checked the console and there are no errors (only 2 warnings about deprecated code in another plugin, but I deactivated the plugin and it didn't have an effect). No debug logs were generated either. The site is running on PHP 7.0.

Thanks for the tips on the template. I thought perhaps I'd have to go that route. This theme overcomplicates it, but I can override.

Becky

[Nigel]

Hi Becky

Thanks for the update.

I think I'll need to check your site myself and probably take a backup that we can test locally, if that's okay.

I will mark your next reply as private so that I can get log-in credentials from you—you may want to create a temporary admin user for me to use that you can later delete. And be sure to have a current backup of your site, even though I don't intend to make any changes other than to temporarily add a backup plugin.

The post types you are connecting are Staff Member and...?

[Nigel]

Hi Becky

I tried adding a relationship to an existing post and found that the issue is that the dropdown list of post to choose from has a lower z-index than the main dialog and so appears behind it.

In the screenshot I have used the browser dev tools to increase the z-index of the list of posts to bring it to the front.

The issue occurs because of a problem with the revolution slider plugin's CSS added to the same page.

It is not that the z-index of our dropdown content is too low, it is that the revolution slider adds the following style rule that affects the z-index of the main dialog:

.ui-dialog {
  z-index: 1000102 !important;
}

The ui-dialog style originally comes from the jQueryUI CSS:

.ui-dialog {
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  z-index: 100102;
  background-color: #fff;
  box-shadow: 0 3px 6px rgba( 0, 0, 0, 0.3 );
}

Note that Revolution slider adds an extra digit—it is an order of magnitude bigger—and also adds !important, imposing its style on any other plugin or theme which uses jQueryUI.

I have had another user experience the same and I asked them to pass this feedback to the authors of Revolution slider, and perhaps you could do the same. If they need to change the style for .ui-dialog they should namespace it to avoid conflicts.

[kevinJ-2]

Thank you so much! I would never have found that. Bummer I can't easily override, but during development it's not too big of a hassle to deactivate/reactivate Rev Slider when I need to make connections. I've already submitted a ticket to them with the information, so hopefully they'll be responsive.

Thanks again!