WordPress 2.8.5 and the Jillij theme
I adore WordPress. One of my favorite WordPress themes is Jillij. The horizontal navigation system is fabulous. The dramatic header photo is visually appealing. I love everything about it.
I love it so much that I’ve used it as the basis for about half a dozen customer sites. I can easily turn this already-fabulous theme into a custom theme. That’s what I was doing last Thursday when I discovered a problem with Jillij and WordPress 2.8.5.
I wanted to use the text widget to add some information to the sidebar of my customer’s site. But instead of this:
I saw a text widget with no entry fields. There was a message that said, “There are no options for this widget”. I was too stunned to take a screen shot. A text widget that won’t accept text is utterly useless.
To verify that the problem was an incompatibility with the theme, I changed to another theme. The text widget worked fine. I entered text, saved it and switched back to Jillij. While the text in the widget was visible when I viewed the site, I couldn’t edit it. The text widget was back to the “there are no options” business.
After playing around with things, I was able to make the text widget operable by editing a file in the theme.
What This Means for My Customers
I recommend that I do the next WordPress upgrade for you. I’ll simultaneously put in the Jillij text widget fix. The system will be backed up and you’ll have editable text widgets. It will be lovely and it will only take half an hour to do.
The Work Around
For those of you dealing with this issue, I did find a fix. However it’s one that only people used to working with PHP should attempt. I edited the functions.php file that came with the Jillij theme. I removed all the code relating to “function widget_text_jillij”.
A word of caution, remember to keep a backup of the original functions.php file. I’m not sure that this will work for every installation. You should be able to revert back in case there are unintended consequences because of this fix.
I’ve also written the theme author and asked for assistance. I’ll do another post if I hear anything.
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November 12th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Thank you for this post, which I found by googling. Would a temporary fix then be to change themes briefly, edit the text widget, then switch back to the Jillj theme? Anyway, I’ll try that. I don’t like messing with the functions.php file. I’ve gone down that road before …
November 12th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Matt – That method should work. The only caveat is that it blows the settings on the multi-page widget. However as long as you can easily reset it again, no problem. I did it successfully on one installation. I’ve also seen this method talked about on WordPress.org.
I’ve edited the functions.php on two installations. That also worked. It’s a little extreme, but my post at Jillij.com has gone unanswered for almost two weeks.
November 17th, 2009 at 7:15 am
Actually, I finally braved the functions.php file and that worked. I really hope someone does an update of this theme. Even if it were shareware I’d certainly be willing to pay $10 or so to continue to use the theme …
I’ll continue to check back here at your blog (a nice discovery!) to see if you get any updates. Best wishes and thanks again!
January 18th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Thanks for this. Your solution to remove the text in functions.php fixed a major frustration for me with the jillij-double theme.