[Resolved] Issue with page losing CSS / formatting after searching

[Author]

Posts

[matthewL-7]

Hi

For some reason I am not sure when this start happening but the Toolset view here:
hidden link

After entering a search query like "iPhone" for example, then hitting search the page loads but loses loads of CSS formatting.

I would think it was due to caching but I disable:
- WP Rocket
- Cloudflare
- Varnish cash

And it still persists. Any ideas why this is happening?

Thanks.

[matthewL-7]

To follow up on this, its an issue with compatibility with Relevanssi, disabling Relevanssi causes the issue to stop occurring.

I tried:
1) Rolling back to a previous version of Relevanssi in case it was a recent update, didn't fix the issue.
2) Rolling back Toolset Blocks to a previous version also did not fix the issue.

Any ideas how we can fix? Screenshots of the issue attached, page looks fine (wowtrk.com/offers) as soon as you search all the styling on the same page messes up.

[matthewL-7]

Just to follow up on this again I spoke to Relevanssi about this also and they said:

"There's indeed a difference. On the line 1233 there's a line that has the Toolset styles in a encoded format (it begins with <div class="tces-js-style-encoded"), and after the results have loaded, that's very short compared to the default page view.

I have no idea how that works or how Relevanssi could interact with that, so I would recommend you ask Toolset about this. Perhaps they have an idea how Relevanssi could affect these toolsetCommonEs styles. I don't know where these are coming from or how Relevanssi could possibly affect this."

[Waqar]

Hi,

Thank you for contacting us and I'd be happy to assist.

To troubleshoot this, I'll need to see how this view and the Relevanssi plugin, are set up in the admin area.

Can you please share temporary admin login details, in reply to this message? I'll also need your permission to download a clone/snapshot of the website, in case it needs to be investigated on a different server.

Note: Your next reply will be private and it is recommended to make a complete backup copy, before sharing the access details.

regards,
Waqar

[Waqar]

Thank you for sharing the admin access, but, I'm getting the message:
"LOGIN BLOCKED: 2FA is required to be active on your account. Please contact the site administrator."

Can you please activate 2-factor authentication on this admin account and let me know?

[matthewL-7]

I've gone ahead and disabled the 2fa requirement. 🙂

Cheers

[Waqar]

Thank you for waiting.

During troubleshooting on your website's clone, I noticed that the issue is fixed, if the theme is switched to the default "Twenty Twenty One" ( from GeneratePress ) or if the Relevanssi Premium plugin is deactivated.

I couldn't reproduce this issue on my clean test website or in a different view on your website's clone, so I've shared all these findings with the concerned team. I'll keep you updated on the progress, through this ticket.

[matthewL-7]

Hi Waqar,
I am guessing you missed my 2nd message on this ticket, as I mentioned disabling "Relevanssi" fixes it. There is no need to disable the GeneratePress theme as well, simply disabling Relevanssi fixes it. Its really odd because rolling Relevanssi back to a previous version where it was working does NOT fix the problem.

Cheers, really keen to get this resolved asap.

[Waqar]

Thanks for writing back and no I didn't miss your message about the Relevanssi plugin.

I just wanted to let you know that this issue gets fixed, either theme or the Relevanssi plugin is disabled.

In any case, I'll share the concerned team's findings with you, as soon as this investigation completes.

[Waqar]

Thank you for waiting and I've received an update.

It turns out that the view's query is complex and becomes resource-intensive because there are a lot of "Offers" posts involved and the view is also set to order by a custom field.

The addition of the Relevanssi plugin and the GeneratePress theme further adds to that complexities, due to which the view is not able to complete loading of its styles, successfully.

If the number of "Offer" posts in the database is reduced to about 15k and the view is set to order by post date, the same view works correctly, even with the Relevanssi plugin and the GeneratePress theme.

We suspect that you'll see some errors or warnings about the server resource exhaustion in the server error logs too.

You'll also note that this limitation can be avoided, by changing the "Full page refresh when clicking Submit" option to the "AJAX refresh when clicking submit" option in the view's search.
( screenshot: hidden link )

With this change in the search settings, you'll see the view's styles are loading correctly, on your testing website too.

[matthewL-7]

Thanks for the following up:

So changing to AJAX does solve it but I have a search box on the homepage and due to this then loading the page results this does not solve our issue.

I can't see anything in Error logs about the issue, where should I look? I also tried to quadruple the resources allocated and the issue still persisted, so it does not seem to be a lack of resource issue.

Any ideas how we can resolve and find out the exact issue?

[matthewL-7]

Just to follow up on this, I reduced the posts down from 22k to less than 15k and the issue did not resolve.

I also spoke to our account manager at our web host who investigated and stated its not a server resource exhaustion issue, we gave it a lot more resources and this made no difference we are also not hitting any limits.

[Waqar]

Thank you for sharing these details and I've passed them on for another review.

I'll keep you updated on this ticket.

[Waqar]

Just wanted to update you that we'll be doing some troubleshooting work directly on your staging website.

Please make sure that the staging website stays accessible and no changes are made to it.

[matthewL-7]

No problem will do.