Setup on child pages not working... 5.6.3.5

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I have a few thousand pages of a certain type. Initially I was able to add a few blocks to page type defaults and they continue to populate on new pages as expected. Trying to add a new block to defaults now brings an issue of only the first 1200 or so pages getting the new block set up, while the remaining couple thousand do not get the block set up on the target pages. Upon immediately returning to the "Setup on child pages" dialogue for that page type shows the pages remaining after the initial rough 1200 are simply unchecked and will never save properly.

I can fairly easily split the page type into numerous different types and proceed, but still question the issue. Anyone experienced this or know how to aleviate it or where to start digging ??

enlil
 
JohntheFish replied on at Permalink Reply
JohntheFish
I suspect you are stuck without modifying/overriding the core code that does the setup or the server settings

It could be a php resources / maximum execution time limit.
Some ideas:
- Increase the maximum execution time.
- Change it so the starting point of the modify child pages offsets by +XXX records each time it is run. So after a run and fail, next time it skips forward +XXX and so catches pages not already setup.
- Create a queueable job that does the same, breaking it up into slices that won't fail.

It could also be an apache/php input variables limit. Often the number of variables in a post request is limited (typically 1000). So if you are setting checkboxes, after 1000, the rest of the post values simply get truncated.
Some ideas:
- Change the number of inputs allowed in the server settings
- Change the order of the form, so a different subset gets truncated
- Change the form (and controller) to use get (which typically isn't limited)
- Use javascript on the form to aggregate all the settings into one value. Then extract in the values in the controller.
enlil replied on at Permalink Reply
enlil
Thanks for that John. I figured it was going to be an issue along one of those lines.

In an effort to avoid the inevitable, I forged forward last night creating all the page types needed to ease my nerves. One for every make of vehicle, 1980 to date, sold in the United States. 40+ arthritic page types later we're in operation, with a much wider window of opportunity for dynamic functionality in the future.

The new page types will rarely need to be edited after being set up, as a few easily edited stacks will be used to display the same dynamic content across all said page types, rather than the defaults being set up on the single page type before.