Frontend styling has disappeared, and I can't get it back

Question

Disclaimer: I'm new to Magento 2 development as of Nov 2018, and new to development generally as of mid-2017. So I'm new to asking development-help questions too. Most of the time I can figure it out on my own. Please forgive me for anything I do that is something I should know not to do.

My problem: All styling is gone from my frontend (admin is fine).

When the problem started: When I was trying to add a custom font via an '_extend.less' file. (Creating this file and using it to make changes was the method that was being used in a tutorial I was following to make custom styling changes.)

(I have Magento set to Developer Mode.)

I have set everything back to the way it was before trying to add the custom font (as best I can tell), but the problem still remains. Around the time I was trying to add the custom font, I remember using the command cache:disable, and maybe this messed something up? I've since used cache:enable, but the CLI responds with There is nothing to change in cache status.

I have searched online over the course of 3 days for a total of around 10 hours for a solution. Just so you know I've really tried to figure this out on my own, the following are some things I have tried many (many!) times, and in many variations as to their order and combination (I'm pretty sure new developers do this a lot!):

• indexer:reindex
• cache:clean
• setup:upgrade
• setup:static-content:deploy -f

• deploy:mode:set production

  (The idea here was apparently setting it to Production Mode would clear things in a certain way, and then I was supposed to set it back to Developer Mode, and this would fix the problem. But I get an error part way through setting it to Production Mode when it tries to deploy static content, and it shows a message in bright red: Command returned non-zero exit code. Plus above that there's a line that reads: Something went wrong while deploying static content. See the error log for details. Is the error file it's talking about in 'var > log'? Because all the files in there have a 'Date modified' showing 8 days ago, which is way before this problem started. What log file is this referring to?)

• using the 'Flush Static Files Cache' button (In Admin: System > Cache Management)

• using the 'Flush JavaScript/CSS Cache' button (In Admin: System > Cache Management)
• using the bright orange 'Flush Magento Cache' button (In Admin: System > Cache Management)
• setting directory and file permissions (pretty much to 777 every time)
• rm -rf view_preprocessed/*
• rm -rf static/*
• rm -rf var/{cache,di,generation,page_cache,view_preprocessed}
• and I couldn't begin to tell you how many times I've hit 'Shift+F5' to refresh the storefront page

'No styling' seems like such a simple issue, but I can't figure this one out. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I'm on Apache, all served from Google Cloud Platform (static IP), Bitnami stack.

Edit: screenshots added

Answer 1

Please check in your frontend store language. If frontend store language is different then you need to setup:static-content:deploy -f {lanug_code}.

Like, If your frontend store in Germany then run below command.

setup:upgrade
setup:static-content:deploy -f de_DE en_US
cache:clean
Give full permission to var/ and pub/ folder

de_DE use for frontend store and en_US for backend side.

I hope so it's work for you.

Answer 2

Check followings (Suppose you are in developer mode),

• Make sure .htaccess file is present under pub/static folder with correct contents. https://github.com/magento/magento2/blob/2.3-develop/pub/static/.htaccess
• Make sure apache mod_rewrite is installed and enabled
• Make sure .htaccess can alter
• Delete caches. rm -rf var/cache var/page_cache generated var/generation var/view_processed
• Restart varnish if exists

To troubleshoot the static content deployment issue

• Try to compile blank theme. php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy -t Magento/blank

Answer 3

Well, I came up with a solution: start a new custom theme.

No, that's not the solution I was hoping for. But sometimes the best thing to do is abandon something if it's not working and start over. In my case, fortunately, I wasn't too far along with the first theme, and it didn't take long to get back to where I left off. So I can confirm everything behind the scenes is still working fine. There's just something with what I was doing before that broke, and I couldn't fix it. I don't like that, because if whatever caused the problem happens again, I'm right back at the same place again. I really don't want a recurring solution of 'start over' every time. But I feel I spent enough time trying to figure it out, so let's just move forward, and cross that [broken] bridge if we come to it again.

Thanks to everyone for taking your time to try to help.