are you using both are css and js cache, plus the cdn?  after turning those off, did you flush the cdn?  can you directly load the theme css file in the browser?

hopefully, Doc will stop on by…

Mr Papa said
are you using both are css and js cache, plus the cdn? 

At this point neither, I have Cloudflare paused, and the forum layout is still whacked after purging all cache via browser, SP and CF.

can you directly load the theme css file in the browser?

Yes, and I read how Cloudflare likes validation, so I confirmed that all the CSS files falidate.

What doesn’t make sense to me is that the issue started as soon as I turned on the Clouflare firewall feature, yet it remains even though I have paused all Cloudflare features so it is only handling DNS.

Just not sure what next troubleshooting steps to try…already did the usual plugin/theme conflict testing.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Mr Papa said
can you directly load the theme css file in the browser?

I thought so…upon further investigation, I discovered the following file is not loading:

/wp-content/sp-resources/forum-themes/reboot/styles/reboot.php

That would explain things. But I can’t figure out why. The file loads the rendered css stylesheet on our live site just fine. Cloudflare is still turned off. And I found the following error in the server logs:

[Wed Feb 21 20:15:30.853683 2018] [access_compat:error] [pid 1389] [client 174.237.136.165:11268] AH01797: client denied by server configuration: /home/triblogs/public_html/wp-content/sp-resources/forum-themes/reboot/styles/reboot.php, referer: tripawds.net/forums/

Trying to figure that one out now… <scratches: head>

Thanks for the nudg in the right direction as usual!

could be a permission issue… one of the parent folders?

Mr Papa said
could be a permission issue…

Thanks again, I checked all related directories and no permissions issues there.

Trying to wade through the mod_security config to shed some light on the vague “denied by server config” warning, but not finding anything there either.

Another possibility of course, is that it just doesn’t want to allow you to run a .php file as a .css file which is what is being asked of it. But I do not know cloudflare so not sure how you would find that out or adjust for it. But maybe looking to see if you can find any reference to this might help track something down.

Yellow Swordfish said
Another possibility of course, is that it just doesn’t want to allow you to run a .php file as a .css file… 

Brilliant minds think alike. I considered this too and found this doc detailing what file types Cloudflare will cache for static ontent. And no, they do not cache .php files, which seems odd since @fidosysop-2 never reported such an issue like this.

Anyway, this issue didn’t stop there for me. I pointed our DNS back to our previous nameservers to completely rule out Cloudflare. The reboot stylesheet is still throwing a 404 with “denied by server config” errors. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why. The file is there, and it is not a permissions issue. Still working with my server guy to determine if/how mod_sec may be at play here. Any other suggestions for troubleshooting are always appreciated.

try switching to a css only simple press theme…  sounding more and more like @yellow-swordfish hypothesis of server not allowing php file as the css… if you switch to css only and it works, even more data to support that…

Mr Papa said
if you switch to css only and it works, even more data to support that…

Indeed – the CSS Only Theme displays the forum as expected. Reverting to Reboot Child Theme breaks the layout again.

Now, to determine how everything was working fine with the Reboot Child Theme then went wonky with timing that coincided precisely with the Cloudflare activation (now disabled)…that is my new challenge.

Would be worth checking your .htaccess file as well in case anything was changed in there…

Well, as usual, y’all have helped steer me in the right direction.

While I had checked the root .htaccess file, I later discovered a rogue .htaccess file inside /wp-content that was causing the problem. It was created and left behind by a security plugin I tested (and deactivated) a while back that, wait for it…prohibited execution of .php files where they aren’t expected – like the SP CSS.

So technically, this was never an issue of CloudFlare not playing nice after all, at least not yet. Still testing that theory. Now that I have the stylesheet issue resolved, I can get back to testing.

Thanks again for the excellent support!

? Sometimes you just have to laugh a little!