Hi again,

It’s working when I check locally – https://cl.ly/oZqQ – and I the code itself is also correct. Some hosting companies though disable random posts it’s possible that’s the issue you have. For example WPEngine – https://wpexplorer-themes.com/total/docs/random-order-wpengine/

If you are using managed WP hosting ask your host if they disable random order and if it’s possible to enable it.

If not, it’s possible a plugin is causing a conflict and you’ll want to disable 3rd party plugins to check.

- AJ

Gotcha, its the ‘Post Types Order’ plugin.

I seem to remember that I’ve had problems with this one before.

Are there any alternatives?

I believe the plugin has an option under the main settings to disable the auto sort, can you please check?

Any custom order plugin would have the same affect if it’s sorting automatically since it must target all queries (because it’s automatic it can’t magically know where you need sorting and where you don’t).

- AJ

Yes, its got a ‘disable auto sort’ checkbox – the only problem with unchecking is that the posts go back to their original order.

Its looking like a manual re-ordering of posts by date is the only thing that’ll work.

Which posts? If you are referring to a specific page builder module you can sort by menu order – https://cl.ly/obVW

And if you are referring to your archives like the main blog page, categories…etc. It’s very easy to add a little code by hooking into the pre_get_posts function to sort by menu_order as well as mentioned at the bottom of the docs here – https://wpexplorer-themes.com/total/docs/reorder-post-types/

- AJ

It was for my portfolio posts that were in a footer widget, but the problem was that these had already been sorted by the ‘Post Types Order’ plugin.

On hitting the ‘Random’ option in the footer widget, the posts appeared no problem – but always in the same order.

On disabling the Posts Types Order plugin, the posts fired up as intended.

I’d love to go back to using the footer widget, but I’ve now put a ‘totty box’ in it’s place

Of course if any suggestions can be made, it would be most welcome!

I understand the issue was with the footer widget. What I was asking was what were you using the sorting plugin for. Because you can disable the auto sort and then enable the custom sorting as needed so it only affects the areas you want it to affect and not all queries.

Make sense?

- AJ

Yes the posts that are being used for the widget are those in the portfolio, which are now sorted by Posts Type Order to place them alphabetically.

Disabling the Auto Sort allows the portfolio posts in the widget to appear randomly, but in turn shows the actual posts to appear in their date order.

Enabling the auto sort shows the posts in alphabetical order, but does the same in the widget, ie no randomness.

Therefore I reckon that the only way to get around this would be to re-timestamp all my posts, portfolio posts, and staff posts and get rid of the plugin entirely.

I also just searched for the same plugin on Envato and came up with “WPBakery Page Builder (formerly Visual Composer) – current version 5.4.5 available for download!”

Is this the same as what is furnished in the Total Theme that seems quite a bit older?

Thanks!!! Lee

Hi Lee,

Sorry for any confusion. The plugin developers are liking to a different plugin in the dashboard (they are actually redirecting people from an old site to a new one, which is agains Envato terms) thank you for letting me know! Their correct link should be going here – https://wpbakery.com/ – which is the plugin included with the Total theme (exactly the same). I’ve just contacted the plugin team to make sure they aren’t doing this redirect because it’s confusing to the end user.

The plugin included in Total is the one you can purchase here: https://codecanyon.net/item/visual-composer-page-builder-for-wordpress/242431 – but it’s free with Total.

Yes, it is an “older” plugin but in my opinion still much better and it still receives updates/fixes.

The newer plugin they made dumps HTML on the page (as opposed to shortcodes) which while faster, it’s a lot less flexible.

That said…You can use ANY page builder plugin you want with Total. So you don’t have to technically use the bundled WPBakery Page builder. I have a lot of customers using different builders such as Elementor, Beaver, Site Origin and some are using the new Visual Composer. Total is a powerful framework which is why people use it and most do use the included page builder but don’t feel like you have to. If you have a page builder you prefer to use, feel free to use that one!

Please let me know if you have any other questions or doubts. Happy New Year!

- AJ

Hi AJ, and thanks for the detailed explanation. I’ll stick with your recommendation for sure! Just a little more confused than usual.

Another thing I noticed is that I’m using Total Version: 3.6.0, so I must be a dufus for thinking it automatically updated itself. I think I confused that with GoDaddy automatically updating Wordpress.

That said, can you tell me the most straight forward method to do the update? I’m using a Child Theme.

Thanks!!! Lee

Hi Lee,

The plugin developers actually replied already to me! And they are fixing the link in their upcoming update, it was just a mistake.

Regarding updates, theme’s don’t auto update. There are many reasons for that. For example if you created a client site and you modified things you don’t really want the theme to auto update. Or if you have a very large important website you want to make sure to test updates on a stagging development before pushing them out live. Or if there is an error with an update and it auto update your site could be down without you even knowing.

I recently added a new function for the theme to provide updates via my own API but previously I was making use of the Envato Market plugin. All the docs for updating can be found here – http://wpexplorer-themes.com/total/docs-category/updates/

And the changelog can be found here – http://wpexplorer-themes.com/total/changelog/

If you have any issues during the update let me know.

- AJ

Hey AJ, I found the Envato Toolkit plugin, but when I click to Update to 4.5.3 Automatically, it gives me the warning that all customization will be wiped out.

I do have an Active Child theme. If I update Automatically, will my customization be retained?

Thanks!!! Lee

Hi Lee,

This is a general WordPress notice that always shows up when updating a theme. Basically it just means if you manually edited the theme that you would lose those changes. It’s a scary notice and I hate that WP adds it because it is confusing.

All your theme settings, pages, etc are safe in the database so no need to worry. The only thing to worry about is manual changes to the theme files like if you manually changed the style.css file. As long as you have done any advanced edits via a child theme you are good to go.

- AJ

The WordPress editor doesn’t keep any white space it will always get stripped. To do this you’ll basically need to create your own shortcode that adds a horizontal spacing that you can use on your site. Or (better) just target the paragraph to add a little left padding with CSS. Where are you trying to do this, can you share the live url

- AJ

Hi there,

By default all columns turn into a single column on tablets and smaller (this is how all responsive sites/themes work). This is because there usually isn’t enough room on mobile to have all the columns side by side and look good.

Are you wanting only a specific section of a page/pages to stay at the same columns? Or do you want to completely disable responsiveness so that your website works exactly the same on mobile as it does on desktop?

- AJ

I see! I’d really like to completely disable the responsiveness, so that the website is the same on both desktop and mobile.

Oh, please have a look here: https://wpexplorer-themes.com/total/docs/disable-responsiveness/

Sorry to bother yet again, but totally disabling responsiveness didn’t work. Is there a way to disable responsiveness only from one row/column?

You can’t really disable the responsiveness for 1 row but you can use the custom column widths to specify your column widths on mobile – https://wpbakery.com/video-academy/responsive-column-control-width-offset-param-usage-explained/

If the plugin guide here doesn’t make much sense, let me know I’ll make a new full better guide on the Total docs instead

- AJ

Thank you, I think I got the hang of it! One last question though. When I took the responsiveness off and then put it back on, my mobile page stopped working right. It only shows this grey background with blue banners and all the content is just code (when looking via phone – on editor it looks correct)... You have to separately click from an icon at the bottom to switch the display, then it shows the mobile page. I think I have the responsiveness back on correctly (Customize -> layout -> responsiveness + Page Builder settings -> Responsive content enabled) so I have no idea what do…

Hi Bjorn,

Which snippet are you using? You’ll want to make use of the dynamic template functionality for this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGYuBjqkj8Q

If you are using the Post Types UI plugin to add the post type you can define it in their settings without any extra code – https://wpexplorer-themes.com/total/docs/adding-custom-post-types/

If you are not than the snippet to use is this one (just added) – https://wpexplorer-themes.com/total/snippets/define-dynamic-post-template-via-code/

Using this function will replace ALL the content on the page so be sure to add the “Post Content” module to your template where you want it to show the post content.

- AJ

Hi AJ, I created the new post-type using some scripting in my child-theme. I was using this snippet: https://wpexplorer-themes.com/total/snippets/add-custom-content-multiple-pages-via-visual-composer/. But I was aware this wasn’t exactly what I needed… Your new snippet is exactly what I needed. I will take a look at the Post Types UI plugin as well. Thanks again!

Bjorn

Hi AJ, I switched to using the Post Types UI plugin for my custom post types. Now I created a template to use for displaying the content using the dynamic template functionality. I defined to use some images from the post (featured and gallery) and set the dimensions of the images. The images are not scaled (source) and stay at the full size. Is it a bug?

Regards, Bjorn

Hi Bjorn,

It’s not a know bug, I just tested myself and the image sizing is working correctly. Can you share a sample URL so I can take a look?

One thing to note though, is the slider for example is responsive and all images will appear at 100% width of the container they are in unless disabled – https://cl.ly/obXz

- AJ

Hi AJ,

Sorry for the delay. You can view the issue here: http://dev.careconcept.nl/wp/test-nieuwe-info-pagina/ For the images on the left I first configured a custum dimension of 480×480px now I switched to the preformatted portfolio_post (with same dimensions). But it is still using the original dimensions of the images. For the image on the right I use the pre-defined blog_post format. This one is working correctly.

Bjorn

Hi,

Did you disable image sizing by any chance? https://cl.ly/ogKY

I am re-creating what I believe you said you are doing locally and it’s working perfectly for me. Here is a video of my test: https://cl.ly/ogO0

- AJ

Hi Lisa,

Sorry but the website URL isn’t working for me, can you double check you posted the right link? Or do I have to edit my hosts file?

Basically what you want is to add a custom field that you can use on the post to add custom text which would then auto display in the sidebar. There might be some plugins out there for this but I don’t personally know of any and I don’t recommend anything I haven’t tried because I don’t know how good the code is. But…it wouldn’t be very hard at all to do in Total with a little code

First make sure you have a child theme active – http://wpexplorer-themes.com/total/docs/child-theme/

Then you can add this code (and modify it to best suit your needs) in your child theme’s functions.php file:

// Add new field
add_filter( 'wpex_metabox_array', function( $array ) {

    $array['yyjia_journal_reference'] = array(
        'title'     => __( 'Journal Reference', 'wpex' ),
        'post_type' => array( 'post' ),
        'settings'  => array(
            'my_new_field' => array(
                'title'         => __( 'Journal Referance', 'total' ),
                'description'   => __( 'Enter my description here.', 'total' ),
                'id'            => 'yyjia_journal_reference',
                'type'          => 'editor',
            ),
        ),
    );

    return $array;

}, 40 );

// Auto display my journal reference at the top of the sidebar
add_action( 'wpex_hook_sidebar_inner', function( $array ) {

    if ( $jref = get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'yyjia_journal_reference', true ) ) {
        echo '<div class="journal-referance clr">' . wp_kses_post( $jref ) .'</div>';
    }

}, 0 );

This will add a new post you can use to enter your text like this: https://cl.ly/oX1D

And it will auto show in the sidebar at the top (you could get fancier though and create a custom widget that shows the text so you can move it around but that’s quite a bit more work – a bit too much beyond the scope of support).

Have a look at these 2 articles if you are interested in how the code works:

• https://wpexplorer-themes.com/total/snippets/adding-fields-page-settings/
• http://wpexplorer-themes.com/total/docs/action-hooks/

- AJ

Hi AJ,

Thank you so much for the great help as always.

So I added the PHP code to the functions.php and I can see now where to input the Journal Reference Information and I do that. However when I go to view the page at “https://yjeya.com/body/giving-smoking-exercise-can-help” I cannot see it in my side-bar?

Thanks!

Lisa

Also for the related posts images at the bottom of https://yjeya.com/body/giving-smoking-exercise-can-help. Could you please tell me how to do the same as what you helped me do for the home-page – https://yjeya.com?

You basically helped me to input some custom text underneath the picture.

Thank you!

Lisa

One further question! Is there any way to keep top menu always visible on scrolldown on mobile for example how http://uk.businessinsider.com/ do? Many Thanks

Lisa

Hi Lisa,

• I am not able to access this page to see – https://yjeya.com/body/giving-smoking-exercise-can-help – it’s returning a 404 error.

I did fully test the code before sending it to you and it’s correct. You should see the added text at the very top of the sidebar. Can you double check the code? If needed you can submit a private ticket with logins so I can look – https://wpexplorer-themes.com/support/

• Adding extra text is gonna be a bit tricky for related items…Honestly for your site for the related articles I would recommend removing the overlay and showing them more like the original demo – http://totaltheme.wpengine.com/mason/fashion-shows-are-so-much-fun/

Or better add some CSS to float the images like this:

body.single-post .related-post {
    float: none;
    width: 100%;
    margin-bottom: 10px;
}

body.single-post .related-post-figure {
    float: left;
    width: 200px;
    margin-right: 20px;
}

body.single-post .related-post-content {
    overflow: hidden;
}

Result: https://cl.ly/oZ4h

Another alternative is to disable the related posts completely and use custom code to insert a full grid of related posts below the post something like my other theme – http://wpexplorer-demos.com/fashionista/gallery-slider-post-style/

• You can enable sticky on mobile via Appearance > Customize > Header > Sticky

The live demo has the sticky menu enabled so you can see – http://totaltheme.wpengine.com/mason/ – on the demo it’s disabled on mobile though but you can enable it on mobile if wanted.

- AJ