Common issues

The widget area is empty. A sidebar layout with nothing in it falls back to a single column rather than showing an empty gap.

Logged in with permission to manage widgets, you will see the column with a note: “This sidebar is empty. Only you can see this note.” That note is the theme telling you which step is missing.

Also check you set the layout on the right template — the blog’s setting does not reach single posts — and that the entry does not have a Layout override in its options box. See Enable the sidebar.

No menu is assigned to the Primary menu location. There is no fallback list of pages, deliberately. Appearance → Menus → Menu Settings → Primary menu. See Primary menu.

The header covers the top of my content

That should not happen — the page is padded to clear the fixed bar automatically, including the extra row of the Nav below layout. If you are seeing it, a plugin or custom CSS is likely overriding the header height or its position.

Anchor links landing under the bar is a different, expected thing, and is a consequence of any sticky header. Turning Sticky header off resolves it.

My Customizer changes did not take effect

Three usual causes, in order of likelihood:

You did not press Publish. The Customizer previews without saving. This is a feature, and it catches everyone once.
Caching. Purge your caching plugin and your CDN, then hard-reload (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + R). The theme’s CSS is cached against the theme version, so a stale copy can survive an ordinary reload.
An optimisation plugin is stripping inline CSS. Your Customizer settings are emitted as a small inline stylesheet. A plugin set to remove or defer inline styles removes your settings with them.

Uppercase headings I did not ask for

Your site was created before version 1.3.1, when uppercase headings were the default. On update, that value was written into Design → Typography → Heading → Case so your site would not restyle itself.

Set it to None — as typed to take the current default. Same story for the small-caps menu and, from 1.5, the small-caps meta line. See Update the theme.

The grid cards are different heights

Set a thumbnail ratio. With Default (per display mode) the grid crops to 16/10; with Original (uncropped) each image keeps its own shape, which is what produces ragged rows.

If the images are uniform and the text is ragged, it is the titles and excerpt lengths varying — cap them with Excerpt length.

Featured images look blurry

Upload larger originals — around 1400px wide. The theme tells the browser exactly how wide each thumbnail will be drawn, so it will pick a small file if a small file is all that exists.

If you changed image sizes or switched from a theme with different ones, run a regenerate-thumbnails plugin once.

A post shows the whole content instead of an excerpt

Customize → Blog → Post text is set to Full content, or the post has a hand-written excerpt that is simply long. See Excerpt or full content.

The excerpt is cut off mid-sentence

That is what automatic trimming does. Write an excerpt by hand in the Excerpt box in the editor sidebar — hand-written excerpts are never trimmed. See Excerpt length.

My page title is missing

Page options → Hide page title? is ticked for that page. See Page title alignment.

Centring is not working on my phone

By design. Centre and right alignment apply from the tablet breakpoint up; narrow screens always read left, because a centred title on a 375px screen becomes a ragged block. This applies to post headers and page titles.

The favicon has not changed

Browsers cache favicons harder than anything else. Hard-reload, try a private window, and purge any CDN. See Site icon.

Custom CSS is being ignored

Add one more element to the selector rather than reaching for !important, and if you are enqueueing from a child theme, check the priority — the parent emits its Customizer CSS at priority 20, so yours needs to be later. See Custom CSS.

Something else

Support — and please include your WordPress version, theme version, and a link.