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Troubleshooting Disappearing Content and Links in Twenty Twelve

14 threads Sep 9, 2025 Theme → Twenty twelve

Content

Users of the Twenty Twelve theme sometimes encounter a perplexing issue where crucial elements like the "Leave a Reply" form, post content, or hyperlinks vanish from their site. This problem can be frustrating, but it's often caused by a few common, fixable issues. Based on community reports, here are the most frequent causes and their solutions.

Why Does Content Disappear?

There are several reasons why parts of your website might not be displaying as expected:

  • Theme Settings: The 'Twenty Twelve' theme has an option that controls how much content is shown on archive and search pages.
  • Plugin Conflicts: A plugin might be interfering with the normal operation of your theme.
  • Direct File Edits: Modifying the parent theme's files directly can lead to problems, especially after a theme update.
  • Embedded Content: Certain types of content, like YouTube embeds, are stripped out when a post is displayed as an excerpt.

Common Solutions

1. Check the 'Theme Options' Setting

If your post content or embedded videos are missing on search or archive pages, this is the first place to look.

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize → Theme Options.
  2. Find the setting labeled "On archive pages, posts show:".
  3. If it is set to "Summary", change it to "Full text".
  4. Publish the changes and check your site.

Note: This will display the entire post content on these pages, which may not be the desired layout for all sites.

2. Perform a Plugin Conflict Test

If comments are stuck "Submitting" or other features are broken, a plugin is a likely culprit. The Jetpack plugin, in particular, has been known to cause comment submission issues.

  1. Go to Plugins → Installed Plugins.
  2. Deactivate all your plugins.
  3. Check if the problem is resolved on your site.
  4. If it is, reactivate your plugins one-by-one, checking the site after each activation, to identify which one is causing the conflict.
  5. Once identified, you can leave the problematic plugin deactivated or look for an alternative. Some plugins, like Jetpack, allow you to deactivate specific modules instead of the entire plugin.

3. Use a Child Theme for Customizations

If you have modified theme files like content.php or comments.php to change text or functionality, those changes will be lost when the theme is updated. The recommended way to make changes is by using a child theme.

  • A child theme inherits all the functionality of the main (parent) theme but allows you to make changes safely.
  • For example, to change the "Leave a Reply" text without a plugin, you would create a child theme, copy the parent's comments.php file into it, and then edit the comment_form() function within that copied file.
  • Detailed instructions on creating a child theme can be found on the WordPress Developer Resources site.

4. Ensure You're Using the Correct Editor

If you are pasting HTML code for an embedded map or a hyperlink and it is not working, ensure you are using the Text tab in the classic editor (or the HTML block in the block editor) and not the Visual tab. The Visual tab may strip out or incorrectly render HTML code like <iframe> tags for maps.

When to Look Elsewhere

Some issues described by users, such as three titled content blocks on a homepage, are not part of the default Twenty Twelve theme. These are almost always added by a page builder plugin or a custom fields plugin like Advanced Custom Fields (ACF). For these problems, you will need to refer to the documentation or support forums for that specific plugin.

By methodically working through these common causes, you can usually identify and resolve the issue of disappearing content on your site.

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