Title: IE Problems with modified default theme
Last modified: August 19, 2016

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# IE Problems with modified default theme

 *  Resolved [Freshman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/freshman/)
 * (@freshman)
 * [17 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ie-problems-with-modified-default-theme/)
 * I’ve searched around the forums and several people have had several problems 
   with making their blogs play nice with internet explorer. (ie so that people 
   searching can find this)
 * In most cases the issues are mistakes made while modifying, and are applicable
   to their specific blog.
 * I’ve dug into the css a bit and can’t figure it out, so I’m going to resort to
   asking for your insight.
 * Problem: Sidebar is not fitting properly in IE. NextGen Gallery images don’t 
   display. (Look fine in Safari, Firefox, etc.)
 * My site is: [http://www.freshmanfarmer.com](http://www.freshmanfarmer.com)
 * you’d find the css at freshmanfarmer.com/wp-content/themes/farmer/farmer.css
 * I’m sure my amateur eyes just don’t see something.
 * I would really appreciate any feedback… thank you!

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

 *  [iridiax](https://wordpress.org/support/users/iridiax/)
 * (@iridiax)
 * [17 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ie-problems-with-modified-default-theme/#post-1039008)
 * The first step in fixing display issues is to correct any code errors. Different
   browsers react differently to them. You have [quite a few code errors](http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.freshmanfarmer.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&ss=1&group=0&user-agent=W3C_Validator%2F1.654),
   including a **body** tag in a text widget and misplaced Analytics code. Since
   many of your other errors are due to using HTML 4 code instead of XHTML, see:
   [http://codex.wordpress.org/HTML_to_XHTML](http://codex.wordpress.org/HTML_to_XHTML)
 * Which version of IE is causing trouble? IE 6 is notorious for layout spacing 
   problems.
 *  [stvwlf](https://wordpress.org/support/users/stvwlf/)
 * (@stvwlf)
 * [17 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ie-problems-with-modified-default-theme/#post-1039011)
 * Hi
 * Your widget(s) aren’t formatting correctly in IE. That is the problem. The question
   is “why”.
 * Unfortunately you have 173 errors on your homepage when I run your page through
   the page validator.
    [http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.freshmanfarmer.com/](http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.freshmanfarmer.com/)
 * Many of these are trivial but someare structural.
    For example, in Firefox your
   Peace Valley logo and the list under it are contained within the sidebar div,
   and thus are behaving as they are supposed to.
 * IE is seeing that same logo Div starting after the sidebar is already closed,
   so it is spacing it with the full width of the whole site, not the width of the
   sidebar. That is why you are having problems.
 * The usual reason this happens is mismatched closing tags. In other words, DIV’s
   closed out of order, or not closed, same with LI’s.
 * The most important errors you want to look at on the validator are the ones near
   the bottom, the XHTML mismatched tags.
 * If you can get those things cleaned up in your templates, more than likely your
   site will start to work as intended in IE. Firefox is just a lot better at interpreting
   misformed code than IE is.
 *  Thread Starter [Freshman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/freshman/)
 * (@freshman)
 * [17 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ie-problems-with-modified-default-theme/#post-1039045)
 * Yes, I humbly accept that I have created many errors. Tis true…
 * IE 5 is causing me problems, ie 6 on the pc I tested on this morning. I will 
   attack my widgets, we are using an amazing amount of text widgets and there is
   a good chance that the problem lies there.
 * I am just starting to the hang of css and php via wordpress, so I expect many
   errors… but I will work to fix them, and in doing so hopefully understand it 
   more.
 * One problem I have with simple points that stvwlf makes (thanks so much for your
   feedback and commentary!) is that in fixing my divs, I am kind of stupid and 
   don’t even know which actual file to edit, as in, do I open sidebar.php? do I
   open header.php? I know this sounds amazingly rudimentary but that’s how I currently
   roll.
 * Thanks iridiax and thanks stvwlf for your help, I think it gets me one step closer.
 *  [stvwlf](https://wordpress.org/support/users/stvwlf/)
 * (@stvwlf)
 * [17 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ie-problems-with-modified-default-theme/#post-1039052)
 * Hi
 * While writing this response I discovered you have MS Word formatting code in 
   some of your posts. That is one big NO NO NO – can’t paste directly from Word
   into the WP editor. That in itself breaks many page displays in IE. The first
   thing you can do is search through your posts for Word code – it leaves styles
   called ‘mso’ – that is one way to find it.
 * Here is an article about a way to get from Word to WP that doesn’t break page
   displays
    [http://www.getwordpressed.com/learning-wordpress/paste-easily-to-wordpress-from-ms-word/](http://www.getwordpressed.com/learning-wordpress/paste-easily-to-wordpress-from-ms-word/)
 * I find the most productive way to work with the page validator is to check the
   box that says Show Source, and refresh. Then the lines of code that the validator
   sees are displayed after the errors, with line numbers. That lets you correlate
   the line #’s in validator errors with the section of code that is causing the
   problem.
 * A very good idea is, at the top and bottom of your theme’s template file is to
   add comments like these.. If you are working with
    /wp-content/themes/{themename}/
   index.php, at the top you typically see something like
 *     ```
       <?php get_header(); ?>
       <div id="content">
       ```
   
 * add this
 *     ```
       <?php get_header(); ?>
       <!-- index.php -->
       <div id="content">
       ```
   
 * and do the same at the bottom – <!– end index.php –>
    That way when you View 
   Source to see your page, those comments appear in the code and you know what 
   template file WordPress is using to display that part of your page. You can do
   this on all the major template files header.php index.php page.php category.php
   archive.php sidebar.php footer.php
 * As you make corrections, refresh the validator to revalidate so you see if your
   changes fixed anything. Errors generally cascade – when you find the core errors,
   one fix and correct 25 errors at once.
 * Another real timesaver is using a programmer’s editor that highlights opening
   and closing HTML tags – when you point at an opening HTML tag, it becomes highlighted,
   and also the matching closing tag is highlighted with the same color. This makes
   it very easy to find mismatched tags. An open source editor that can do this 
   is Notepad++ (Windows only). Copy and paste your code from View Source into the
   editor, and save the file as an HTML file to activate the tag matching.
 *  Thread Starter [Freshman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/freshman/)
 * (@freshman)
 * [17 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ie-problems-with-modified-default-theme/#post-1039136)
 * [@stvwlf](https://wordpress.org/support/users/stvwlf/) = Thank You! I really 
   appreciate you taking the time to give me this really really useful wisdom.
 * I have applied some of this knowledge and begun to fix the problem. Your methods
   helped me uncover some simple coding issues in my sidebar text widgets that were
   indeed the culprit.
 * If you are having problems with ie, and you are a beginner like me who uses a
   lot of text widgets, that’s a good place to start.
 * I highly recommend using stvwlf’s advice for (beginners) labeling the major template
   files with comments, it helped me learn about what is happening with the page
   load.
 * Iridiax was right to assume it would be a more or less basic coding error: I 
   had my
    -  and
    -  tags mixed up and not closing properly, it made ie go berserk (and rightfully
      so)
 * Thanks, main problem solved, coding errors being worked on… go the smackdown 
   on that one 😉
 *  [jaffre](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jaffre/)
 * (@jaffre)
 * [16 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ie-problems-with-modified-default-theme/#post-1039330)
 * hi
    i have some problems but only in earlier versions of windows xp. Some of 
   my pages do not show up on the front into page Help! [http://www.jaffreworld.com](http://www.jaffreworld.com)
 *  [guppydas](https://wordpress.org/support/users/guppydas/)
 * (@guppydas)
 * [16 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ie-problems-with-modified-default-theme/#post-1039331)
 * Sort of similar issue.
 * My problem is [http://guppydas.com](http://guppydas.com) won’t show as nicely
   on Windows XP, any browser, as it shows up on Ubuntu, again any browser.
 * All the text content, looks awfully ugly on Windows XP. Too thin, font not right.
   On Ubuntu, it looks great, the way I want it.
 * Any idea? Suggestions. I have also posted it as separate thread under Themes.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

The topic ‘IE Problems with modified default theme’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [css](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/css/)
 * [default theme](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/default-theme/)
 * [display](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/display/)
 * [ie](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/ie/)
 * [Internet Explorer](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/internet-explorer/)
 * [li](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/li/)
 * [modified](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/modified/)
 * [sidebar](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/sidebar/)
 * [text widget](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/text-widget/)
 * [ul](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/ul/)
 * [widget](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/widget/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 7 replies
 * 5 participants
 * Last reply from: [guppydas](https://wordpress.org/support/users/guppydas/)
 * Last activity: [16 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/ie-problems-with-modified-default-theme/#post-1039331)
 * Status: resolved

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