Can't disable pages in results

[petersParticipant]

Hi there,

please forgive me for not just sending you login credentials. WordPress has been a pure nightmare for me and I am getting to the point where I am about to scrap the whole project. Every step of the development has been pure pain. I understand WordPress must be a valued tool to a lot of people – to me it is nothing but a broken toy that pretends to be a tool and desperately needs to grow up. Get it to run and pray you never have to touch anything again for fear of breaking something again. Except you can’t – unless you disable updates.

I’ve done all the deactivating of other plugins, switching to standard theme, deleting caches over and over again.

I like the versatility of Related Post Pro. Bought it specifically because I am running a multisite WP install.
Now I can’t activate Related Posts Pro for main site separately. Plugin directory on mainsite always redirects me to the first available subsite’s plugin directory when I try. Only way to activate Related Posts Pro for mainsite is to network activate. Don’t know if that is supposed to be like this.

Next thing I am struggling with: The output options are not behaving in any predictable way what so ever.

I am trying to get Related Posts Pro to display only Posts to viewed bbpress items. Preferably in the sidebar – so using shorthcode. And the plugin’s behaviour just doesn’t make any sense. Neither when I am using shortcode nor when I am displaying related content above or below content.
I would expect to get only Posts returned when I leave “Return Posts?” active and disable “Return pages?” in “Content Options”. Which matches the instructions in the plugin’s manual. But for the life of it – I cannot disable Pages in the results.

Before we dig any further into this: Can I get the plugin to perform that task in the first place? Show related Posts from Blog on Subsite to bbpress forum items on mainsite? And if possible using the shortcode in a sidebar widget?

Cheers,
Peter

[petersParticipant]

Forgot to mention: I have also had no luck with the Theme Chooser. None of the plugin’s themes have had any effect on the plugin. This I haven’t tried with a standard theme. Just performed a fruitless plugin conclict test.

[petersParticipant]

Enabling “Override content” in general options might have solve the problem. If that is intentional behaviour it is as counter intuitive as it can get I’m afraid.

Next problem: I need to get access from subsite where the blog is to mainsite bbpress custom posts. I have enabled multisite options but I can’t get custom post types from mainsite to show up in the options for Related Posts instance on subsite.

[petersParticipant]

Looks like a bug report by now:

I was able to solve the problem by network activating bbpress instead of only enabling it on mainsite. Adding mainsite in multisite options seems to do the job in accessing the data on mainsite from subsite. Seems like the problem is with showing the custom post types. They don’t seem to be affected by the multiste settings.

[Ernest MarcinkoKeymaster]

Hi,

My first guess would be that this might be a case where the page cache still displays the old ‘results’. In case you have any kind of cache plugin installed, try to clear the cache on all layers (page, assets, CDN, cloudflare etc..). The fact that the theme is not changing is very likely pointing to a possible cache problem.

There is a built in plugin cache, which is enabled by default. I suggest turning that off for a while, so it does not mix up anything until you are testing: https://i.imgur.com/rseVi9w.png

Multisite installations can be very tricky, because WordPress usually does not allow accessing post types from cross network, where the post type is not available only on certain subsites. So if bbPress is enabled on site A, but not on site B, and you want to display bbPress related content on site B, then it is most likely not going to work, as bbPress is not available there. Most plugins support sitewide activation, that usually solves these issues. As you noted, this probably explains why the content was not displayed on a site where the bbPress plugin was not activated via the network.

Best,
Ernest Marcinko
If you like my products, don't forget to rate them on codecanyon :)

[petersParticipant]

Hi Ernest,

thanks for your feedback. I’ll definitely try playing with the caching option in the plugin and see how that affects things. Regarding any other caching: everything is disabled. The site is still in development stage. No WordPress cache, no browser caching, no CDN, no server cache. Also been deleting browser cache like a maniac. So the plugin’s cache could be the last suspect when it comes to that.

Enabling “Override content” makes the plugin behave in a predictable manner currently. If that is intended or not I don’t now.

Multisite: I realize there are structural problems related to WP architecture. To me it feels that Multisite just got propped on as an extra feature once WordPress got bigger and nobody really bothered writing down what kind of user cases this could bring and then really think about why it should be really neccessary to keep the sites 100% separate. I find it simply mind boggling that there is no switch to access data cross site.
There’s two main scenarios: you set up mulitisite for individual subsite users/admins like on wordpress.com and then security should be an interesting issue and keeping sites separate is a paramount goal. But then there’s the other scenario: you use multisite for whatever reason and you are the only admin. Then there is absolutely no reason what so ever to deny cross site data access. But nobody seems to care and that’s when things get messy.

My reason for going multisite with this install: inconsolable plugin conflicts – which seems to be the norm and not the exception with WordPress. And now I have to find a way back to cross connect data so it behaves more or less like a single site install again.

As much as I understand your explanation – the whole point why I went multisite was to avoid plugin conflicts. Which already is a serious flaw in WordPress core. So now you’re solution requires me to activate plugins on subsites (that don’t need the plugin) just so that your plugin knows what custom post types it needs to look for across the network. And all I can do is keep my fingers crossed that I can find a configuration of active plugins that doesn’t break everything again and make me none the wiser as if I had stuck with single site install to begin with.

Don’t know if there’s a way around that. Like creating an index of all custom post types across the network that determines what post types Related Post Pro can find. Just a thought.

Cheers,
Peter

PS: I’m honestly sorry that I am not very relaxed when it comes to WordPress. Currently I have a really hard time telling what’s worse: dealing with yet another WordPress issue or somebody ripping my nails out.

[Author]

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