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Control Panel is Unstyled

CSS is not being applied to the Control Panel

Troubleshooting Control Panel CSS

If the control panel appears without styling, first check to make sure that the themes folder exists, and contains /cp_themes/default/default.css and the accompanying images folder.

If all themes files are present and complete, the server that ExpressionEngine is installed may have PHP running with an open_basedir restriction. In these cases, that restriction prevents PHP script files from accessing anything that resides in directories above its path. The solution is to move the cp_themes folder into the system folder. Do not move the entire themes folder, just the cp_themes folder. ExpressionEngine will automatically discover it, and the Control Panel will then be styled properly

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