From time to time, you may notice a problem with the appearance of your blog. For example, a sidebar is appearing under the blog post column or all of the text on the blog appears to be bolded or linked. The most common causes of problems like these are open or incorrect tags or copying and pasting from other applications. This article includes tips to help you find the cause of the problem and resolve it.
Finding Issues with Blog Posts
A good way to troubleshoot this issue is to navigate between entries. Try clicking on the first Permalink on your blog's main page and then navigate from one entry to the next.
If the Permalink page appears correctly in your browser, this means the problem is not in this post. Continue to navigate through posts until the page displays incorrectly again. Then take a closer look at the content of the post for possible problems.
In some cases, there may be more than one post causing a problem. Try taking a look at which posts are listed on your blog's main page. Then try navigating between entries again, making sure to go through each entry listed on your main index page.
If you find a post that might be causing a display issue on your blog, you can edit it from inside the application to correct the issue. Go to the list Posts page and click through to the Edit Post page. There, you can click on "Edit HTML" to see if there's an open or missing HTML tag. After re-saving the post, view your blog to ensure that it's displaying correctly in your browser.
Missing Blog Design or Formatting
If your blog is loading as text only on a white background - missing all the formatting and style you set for your layout and design, this is often the result of Domain Mapping that has been incorrectly set. You can find specific information on this at No Design Appearing After Domain Setup.
Finding Issues with Blog Sidebars
Sometimes the cause of the problem is in a TypeList or Widget and not in a post. A good way to determine which sidebar item is causing the problem is to temporarily disable all items from Design > Content. At this point, you should be able to view your blog correctly.
To determine which item contains the error, try displaying each sidebar module one by one. When the issue reappears, this suggests the problem is in the item you most recently added to your blog.
Page Not Loading Completely or Slowly
When your blog pages are loading slowly or missing content, it often is an indication of a code issue or an error with an outside web service. Widgets and ads displayed on your blog require contact without an outside service. If that service does not respond immediately, it can cause your blog to load slowly or be incomplete.
We have additional information on this type of issue in our article on Improving Your Blog's Load Time.
Other Resources
For users familiar with HTML, you can try using a validation tool. A validation report will look at all of the source code in your blog and check for possible errors. These errors can help you find the source of a problem. You can find validation tools here:
For users not familiar with HTML, you may wish to learn how to correctly format HTML tags. These resources are a good starting point: