Serious Website Problem Solved - At Last!

byProfexp

206 followers

Updated 8 years ago

I am preparing this entry in order to save someone else from the trials and tribulations that I just went through. It all started back when my website was about a month old.

I began getting some reader feedback that there was a usability issue with my website. I am sure that you will agree that this is something that you do not want to hear after you have put a lot of work into developing your site.

However, not knowing if this was a user issue or not, I just kept on developing content for my site http://careersat55plus.com/ Which only served to compound the issue of having a large investment in my problematic site.

To make a very long story short, I began to backtrack on the feedback and contacted one of the people having an issue. I found that their issue was an inability to scroll down on any given page of content - functionally making my site unusable. That is a big problem!

Further investigation revealed that the users with the problem had one thing in common; they were all using a microsoft browser (e.g., Internet Explorer or Edge). I then searched our extensive WA libraries for a clue as to what was going on, but to no avail. Next, I reached out to Microsoft who had no clue on what the issue was; but they tried to fix it anyway by adding my site to the compatibility view on IE. This turned out to be a total waste of time as the problem persisted.

So, I reached out to Kyle who was always responsive and helpful. We concluded that the issue must be a theme compatibility issue. This is another thing that a new website owner does not want to hear!

However, off to Wordpress.org I went in search of a resolution from the theme support blog. My particular theme had almost no support (note to everyone, do not use the SKT Bizness theme and check out the ratings on any theme before you select it) and so, back to Kyle I went.

Thank God and Kyle, who had a very helpful, step-by-step training video on how to select and change your theme and then clean up the resulting text type conversion issues. So, after a few days I was once again confident that my website was presentable. What's next?

I went back to the user with the scrolling issue and "holding my breath," I asked him to check and see if he was still having the issue. BUMMER, the issue persisted even with the new theme!

The good news was that my new theme had better support or at least I got an answer to my queries. But even so, I still managed to stump two theme tech support guys who concluded it may be a theme compatibility issue with IE. But, having had the same issue with two different themes, that did not compute.

I thought that the problem had to be some gremlin buried somewhere within my site's code. Well, now what could I do? I had to find a solution as even though Microsoft browser users only amount to about 20% of the total, that is still a lot of readers lost!

Back to Wordpress.org I went with my tale of woe. This time I got the attention of a russian sounding guy who determined that I may be having an issue with a plugin that was installed on my site, but which plug it? He recommended that I deactivate my plugins, one at a time and then check to see if that one was the issue. Screams followed and hair was pulled out!

Now for the good news! The russian hacked into my site plugin code and identified that a plugin was in fact the issue. NOTE TO ALL: DO NOT USE SURVEY MONKEY!!

He discovered this bit of code within Survey Monkey: -ms-scroll-limit-y-max ... Thus, I simply went in and deactivated the Survey Monkey plugin and TADAAA the issue was fixed! I doubled back to the user with the issue and he was happy, as he now could access my total site and use it effectively. Happy Dance!!!

The bottom line is this. After almost two months of chasing a resolution to my problem,I now have a new and better theme, and my site works on every type of internet browser!

Thanks Kyle for your help along the way!!