Page Builder Empty

Yep, there I was, just making the odd change to CSS code only. I never went near any Core stuff, PHP, HTML or the database. Just CSS in the Evo template folder. Then Boom! Page Builder is Empty!

I've tried (almost) everything to get it back, but no luck so far. Cleared all caches, tried going in via /administration, rebooted, isolated the template, done everything

The Page Source dump on Chrome says the page has been fully rendered.

Page Builder works fine with the backup and other scripts I'm playing with and the problem script is operating normally. All other Admin functions are accessible and work as designed.

First time ever.

7.3.5

Do you have a backup of the database just before this happened?

Yes, I have a backup taken three hours beforehand. It's also my test site. I plan to replace the database today because I haven't entered any new data and no major data would have changed.

Are the pages for the site loading?  I started to say check the tables that deal with the pages; sys_page_compose, sys_page_compose_pages and others but if the table was gone so would be the site.  My guess is that it is a connection issue; it isn't reading the data in from the tables.  Check the logs and if you are logging mySQL check that logs to see if any errors are presented.  Is everything else working OK in the backend?

Everything else was perfect. All pages including admin minus page builder ran fine.

I replaced the database and page builder still didn't work I finally replaced the EVO template I'd been modifying and all came good. Interesting that it broke page builder yet still ran the CSS and the site I had just modified.

@GG thanks for the input. My post, suggestions and solution was mainly there for anyone else who experiences the same problem.

I knew in the past that the admin section used UNI at least partly.  I made suggestions that it was not so smart having a site template control the backend.  I thought that the backend used the base template under administration; that Boonex had cleaned things up.  However, if it doesn't use the site templates it may still be loading the site template to the backend pages and thus your changes caused the issue.  That is a bug that needs to be addressed.

We need to put this on the list of things to address when we clone Dolphin.  Making changes to a site template should never break the backend.

It was a rare and totally unexpected crash.

I also find the structure of the CSS files a train-wreck. Programming is one thing, but design is another. Jumping from general, to default, to common in both Base.css and a template is crazy. Each template should have a css structure such as:

Menus
Sub Menus
Popups
Blocks
Headers
Text
etc.

 . . .  clearly annotated.

But if the idea is to have universal CSS for all the templates, so be it. Base.css  can still be structured in the same way.

To me, there is no logic in the way Dolphin CSS is assembled. It reminds me of someone standing on top of a building and emptying a bucket of jigsaw pieces into the street for people to reassemble.

It also has @import and modern code designs states to avoid @import in CSS development.  If you search the forums here, you will see where I initiated discussions on this bad practice.

I have found one issue that caused me 30 wasted minutes. It may not create problems during runtime, but it may cause problems for people trying to modify the template.

In tmpl_evo/css/default.css

.bx-def-font,

.bx-def-font-inputs {

    font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;

    color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.7);

}

The inverted commas shouldn't be there. The correct font will still be rendered from the default.css in base, but changing the colour in the EVO default.css has not affect.

It's in the 7.3.5. zip release. 

Hello,

Maybe this is not actually a bug or crash. I had a very similar problem with the menu builder. After using it and making some changes by creating new menu items, when i came back the following day and re-opened the menu builder, it was just empty. I was so desperate than I was about to do a system restore from a backup I made the previous day. But before that I thought about clearing my browser cache.

After clearing the browser cache, I accessed the menu builder again, everything was back to normal and the problem was fix. In my case, there was no need to restore the system or the database from a backup.

Hope this solution will also work for you if you face the same problem again.

Regards

Thanks @DigitZup. Clearing the cache is essential, but if you install a browser cache cleaner you'll find that having to do it via Dolphin is rare. Maybe once in 100 times. I clear the cache after every minor change, but usually the browser cache cleaner does the trick.

You're right. It's not a bug and I didn't report it as being a bug. I opened the thread just in case someone had a similar problem.

I've since found the problem, but I still don't know what's causing it. I'm making massive changes to the EVO template which makes multiple calls on the template/base/css files. Some of the CSS code is also used by the Admin pages, especially the dashboard.

Being in a rush, I annotated the Base/CSS changes with the view of moving them to the EVO template later. That was a huge mistake. One of those changes stopped Pages Builder and Languages from working, but there may have been other problems as well.

This is my third attempt, but this time I'm moving each change over to the EVO template when I make it. I recommend that anyone altering the EVO template does the same.

Best wishes and thanks for the input.

And it shouldn't be.  The Admin pages do have their own template but as you have noticed, evidently it is not completely isolated.