My css tweaks get lost on every update

Thanks for posting

Can you just help me in defining the exact issue.

1. Are these the settings in
Dashboard>settings>bbp style pack>custom css or are they tweaks elsewhere, and if so where

2. if in style pack, do they disappear from that tab
Dashboard>settings>bbp style pack>custom css
or are they just not taking effect? but still present in that tab?

Greetings Robin,

Think I found the problem for me.
When I move my theme’s custom css tweaks inside bbp style pack custom css:
options-general.php?page=bbp-style-pack&tab=css
Then my tweaks are reflected and working.

Will have to check and see if on the next upgrade these are kept?
Now they should I guess ??

You added a whole bunch of new options since a while to bbp style pack. This is a real awesome plugin.

Keep up the great work ??

Sincerly,

Great – glad you are fixed, and thanks for letting me know what is happening.

More options to come !

Hello!

I’m not sure this is the same issue, but my users reports loss of some styles after every BBP Style Pack update. Here are examples:

Usual topic list view: https://monosnap.com/file/W0SqTjAeRG9v4LNbCXO5KTtoFSxuoV
Topic list view after BBP Style Pack update: https://monosnap.com/file/l7ZO26PGPzCZE44o8bWm2FD3KqbrEO

Usual topic view: https://monosnap.com/file/7X6NLRODMQLBtoEhizPqvuC39KQUji
Topic view after BBP Style Pack update: https://monosnap.com/file/MySzBIhdekLHL7u954eFTgxovdqSIl

I have found, that it is enough to click ‘Save’ button in the updated BBP Style Pack to fix the issue, so now, I’m clicking ‘Save’ after each BBP Style Pack update. Is this info useful?

Valery – thanks – I’ve been investigating

Can you tell me who does the updates(eg you, the users), and what are their wordpress and bbpress levels?

Just as a side note:
I again encountered the same issue afer upgrading from version 3.2.4 to 3.2.5
I solved the issue on my side by returning to:
wp-admin/options-general.php?page=bbp-style-pack&tab=css
and re-save my custom css tweaks ??

Hope this may help others…

Robin, I’m doing the updates, and I’m pretty comfortable with WP/BBP.
Just encountered the issue while updating to 3.2.7. Clicking ‘Save’ button in the BBP Style Pack Settings solved the issue.

Pretty sure this topic should be marked as _NOT_ resolved… ??

• This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by Valery Kondakoff.

@valery-kondakoff If on the new support system we had the ability to ‘unresolve’ then I’d happily do this! I am considering it unresolved !

Whenever you go into settings and save, my plugin creates a css file called bspstyle.css and puts it in the css folder within the plugin, so that the styling works.

On updates, wordpress overwrites all the files in the plugin including the css file, so it becimes blank. So within my plugin, I test if the version has been updated, and if so re-generate the style file. Since wordpress reactivates the plugin on updates, this should kick in and ensure you don’t have an issue.

Given that only a very few have encountered an issue, I am currently presuming this is not an issue for all, but that in some set-ups this part is not happening.

In the last version I changed it so that this kicked in whenever anyone updated, in case it was an issue with mods vs. admin.

Obviously if you go into the settings and save, the file is re-generated, so this is the workaround, but I should be able to get it working in all cases if only I knew what the issue is that appears to not be universal, and which I cannot replicate on my site.

Couple of questions :

1. are your plugin updates automatic?
2. If not, do you updated by clicking within the plugins page – then one that has the spinner and then updated, or within the wordpress updates page?
3. what exactly is not being saved, it is all the settings in the plugin, just the settings in the custom css tab, or custom settings elsewhere?

Hi,

I too am experiencing the same issue – the automated update of the plugins via WordPress renames the old plugin directory, extracts the new one, then deletes the old (renamed) directory, thus resetting the contents of the plugin directory to that of the .zip stored on WordPress’ servers.

I have noticed this both using the WordPress Updates bulk-update page, as well as by pressing Update on the Plugins page. You will not notice this if you upload the plugin directly to the server’s filesystem via FTP/SSH (as you will not be deleting the directory, as the automated updates do).

By navigating to the plugin’s settings page (which, by the way, why is it a sub-menu item in Settings and not Appearance?) and then pressing Save on any of the pages, will re-create the .css file.

One way around this is to store the version of the plugin as an Option in the database, and then compare this value to a constant within the code. When the plugin is loaded, it will compare these two values, and if there is a mismatch, you can re-save the .css file, as well as update the version value within the database.

This will then resolve this issue, without requiring the manual step to press Save – which will be forgotten 3 months down the line!!

Here is a page which explains why this process is necessary, including links to the WordPress blog for further information. This page talks about adding database options for plugins, but due to the way that this plugin works by requiring to create the .css file following an update. I hope you’re not hooking into the plugin activation hook for this – as it doesn’t fire any more on any updates – only on initial installations! ??

Another way around this will be to store the .css file in another folder – maybe wp-content/uploads/ – for people who have tweaked WordPress for performance purposes, this folder is often located on a separate server/sub-domain designed to serve static files (using NGINX rather than Apache), or on a CDN, which also often employs automatic minifying of static files such as CSS. The plugins folder is often not stored on a “faster” server, so requiring the .css file (which is also full of whitespace) to be loaded from the “slower” plugins directory can cause performance bottlenecks within the website – I’m sure that’s not something you want attributed to your otherwise awesome plugin!

Garry

@confusedta – thanks for this really helpful and useful reply.

I already do use a part in my plugin that does a compare to a stored version in options and tries to re-save the css. This seems to work on manual updates as far as I can test ie when you click update on the plugins page , but your useful reply has let me know that auto updates is an issue.

I’ll go back to my code and do some more testing to work out where the issue lies. Unfortunately testing auto-updates is a bit of an issue in itself!

Saving elsewhere may be a solution, and I take your point about using uploads directory. My only reservation would be that if I suddenly found a css file in uploads I might worry a bit, but maybe that’s just me.

Again thanks for posting, hopefully I can get this robust, and if I need your expertise further, hopefully I can pick your brains again if needbe?

I kicked around various code, but eventually settled on a simple if (!file exists) to generate it if not there.

I’ll add this fix to the next release.

Thanks for all you patience and your helpful input, and do come back if that doesn’t fix it !

Hi Robin,

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best!

Would it be possible to add an option to allow saving to a specific location (or just a checkbox for saving to uploads), so that those of us who do wish to tweak in that way can do so, whilst leaving the default mode of operation as it is?

Thanks for your quick responses!

yes I’ll look to add a storage location

Hello,

I still have this problem with the latest versions of WP and BBP Style Pack. Each time I update the plugin, I have to save the settings again to have them reapplied.
Any idea how to fix that?

I still haven’t worked out why this happens for a few.

But I have added the ability to change the css location which should fix it for you.

go to

dashboard>settings>bbp style pack>css location

and if you activate and put in

wp-content/uploads/

then the css should be saved to your uploads directory and no longer be a problem.

let me know if this doesn’t work