Enfold Theme Options Not Showing: The Solution in WordPress
Enfold is a fantastic theme for WordPress that we are using here at Hurricane Web Design for a number of our clients. You can make beautiful and mobile responsive websites right within the WordPress dashboard without having to get your hands dirty in CSS that much.
The case of the missing Enfold Theme Options (click to enlarge)
Recently, we had a client who had their contact form disappear on the home page of their website. The form being used was built-in to Enfold. We didn’t change anything on the site and wondered why it would just disappear. When we logged into the dashboard and attempted to edit the home page, the page would begin to load but the box where you would edit the content displayed a spinning wheel. Obviously, we couldn’t the page so we went into the Enfold options within the Dashboard. Unfortunately, when we went there, the Enfold theme options weren’t showing. We were left without the left-hand menu that would display “general styling”, “advanced styling”, “header layout”, etc. We began scratching our heads as to what happened.
Why Weren’t the Enfold Theme Options Not Working?
Once we went back to the WordPress dashboard we realized that WordPress had automatically updated to version 4.1 and the version of the Enfold theme we had installed (version 2.8) would break in WordPress 4.1. We quickly realized we needed to upgrade Enfold. But, we are paranoid WordPress web designers and chose to make a backup of the theme before upgrading. So, we renamed the theme on the server via FTP and uploaded the new version and re-enabled it. That didn’t work!
Finally the Solution
The next step kind of scared us, but we thought we should try deleting the theme and upload the new version of the theme. Before we did that, we used BackupBuddy to make a complete backup of the site just in case it broke the site. Once that was done, we deleted the current theme, uploaded the new version and enabled it and it worked fine.
Our Recommended Steps to Upgrade Enfold
- Backup your theme by downloading the theme folder to your computer or some other safe place or run BackupBuddy to make a complete backup of your WordPress website.
- Delete the Enfold theme on your web server.
- Enable one of the default WordPress themes.
- Upload the new Enfold version.
- Enable it in the WordPress dashboard
This worked great for us and hopefully, it will work for you. If you’d like to purchase Enfold (and we highly recommend you do), you can buy Enfold here on ThemeForest.
Here are a few sites we’ve built with Enfold:
Hurricane Web Design Vancouver
#1002 – 1831 Robson Street
Vancouver, BC V6G 1E4
(604) 256-7081
hurricaneweb.net
