tags without warning anyone. Has anyone else run into old themes that screw up your whole site after a PHP update?
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Warning: That free WordPress theme from 2018 broke my forum layout completely
Spent 3 hours yesterday tracking down why my sidebar was overlapping the footer and turns out the theme author hardcoded a max-width for all
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parker_bell3d ago
Hard disagree here. Old themes breaking after PHP updates is usually user error, not the theme's fault. You're running a site that's 6+ years old and expecting it to work perfectly with modern PHP 8.x? That's on you for not testing updates in a staging environment first. @nancy275 mentioned checking for deprecated PHP functions, but that's basic maintenance stuff any site owner should be doing before hitting update. I've got a 2015 theme on a client site that still works fine because I actually read the changelogs and test before deploying. The hardcoded max-width thing isn't great design, sure, but a simple CSS override takes 30 seconds.
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nancy2753d ago
The 2018 theme from WPBlossom did the same thing to me last year. It had a hardcoded pixel width on the container class that just ignored any responsive settings I tried to add. What worked was using a browser inspector to find the exact CSS rule, then adding a custom style override in my child theme for that specific class. You might also want to check if the theme uses any deprecated PHP functions that break with the new updates. Did you try deactivating plugins one by one to rule out a conflict first?
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