Overview #

Evaluate and identify the cause of a broken editor (or some other feature in the WordPress Admin) following the publication of a popup, or version update of Popup Maker. 

Publishing a Popup Breaks the Editor (or Some Other Feature in the WP Admin) #

Problem Description #

Plugin users report that one or more feature on their site breaks after they publish a popup. When Popup Maker is disabled, the problem resolves. Users conclude that the source of the problem lies with the plugin.

However, the source of the problem usually lies with the content added into the popup. When the Popup Maker plugin is deactivated, so is the popup content associated with the reported problem.

We recommend that you investigate the issue further as described in the next section.

Recommended Problem Solving Strategy #

1. In the WP Admin Plugin directory, activate the Popup Maker plugin.

2.  From the WP Admin, go to ‘Popup Maker’ >> ‘All Popups’ >> ‘Quick Edit’ >> ‘Status’. Change the status of each popup from ‘Published’ to ‘Draft’.

3. From ‘Popup Maker’ >> ‘All Popups’, select ‘Add Popup’ to create a new popup. 

a. In the Popup Editor, enter a term in the ‘Popup Name’ field (this is a required step). 

b. Leave the ‘Popup Settings’ box alone.  By default, the new popup will activate to display on every page and post of the site. No trigger will be set to display the popup. It can viewed on the front-end with the Popup Maker Admin Toolbar (step #5 below).

c. In the ‘Publishing’ box, select the ‘Publish’ button. Leave the content editor empty.

4. From the Admin toolbar, select ‘Visit Site’ to view the front end. The link is located below the site title in the toolbar. 

5. From the WP Admin Toolbar, go to the Popup Maker Admin Toolbar icon. From the icon, follow the menu structure and select the newly published popup from the ‘Open Popup’ menu. This option will display all published popups on the site. 

6. If the newly added popup opens in the browser ( the popup container will be empty ), then the likely source of the problem is the content added to one or more of the remaining popups set to ‘Draft’ mode .

7. Test each of the remaining ‘draft’ popups one-by-one in the front-end.

a. From the WP Admin, go to ‘Popup Maker’ >> ‘All Popups’.

b. Select a popup for front-end testing. Go to ‘Quick Edit’ >> ‘Status’ and change the popup from ‘Draft’ to ‘Published’. Select the ‘Update’ button for the popup to save the change.

c. Visit the front-end of the site. Navigate to a page or post where you know the popup targeting conditions are set to activate the popup for display. 

d. Use the Popup Admin Toolbar to open the newly published popup. If the popup displays properly in the browser, then it confirms that the content of this popup is not interfering with the popup display.

e. Repeat steps a. through d. above with each remaining popup until the popup with the problem content is identified.

8. At this point, you’ve narrowed the source of the problem to a specific popup. Open the editor of that popup and evaluate what type of content could be causing the problem.

Test further, by removing different types of content one piece at a time from the popup editor. This may include: 

• an image, 
• video embed, 
• shortcode, 
• button, 
• script, or 
• some other page element. 

Work step-by-step with removing content to identify the one element that interferes with the popup performance.

After Popup Maker Version Update, Refresh Browser Cache #

A disruption to one or more Admin features following the update to Popup Maker version 1.7 was reported after the plugin’s initial release. Those issues have since been resolved with Popup Maker. Follow the guidance below if any feature within Popup Maker fails to properly update. 

Press the CTRL/CMD+SHIFT+F5 buttons at the same time to hard refresh the browser cache. This bypasses any saved file settings and content in the browser, and refreshes a web page with updated settings and content.

CTRL/CMD+SHIFT+F5 will break the browser cache, and serve updated jQuery/JavaScript and CSS files from our plugin available on version update.  This will refresh the Admin editor, or update missing Admin settings after a plugin update.

If you are using a content delivery network (CDN) (for example, Cloudflare) to serve your site files and database, please flush that cache as well to ensure that the latest plugin assets are served to yourself and your visitors.