Hi,

In one of the most recent updates I added some code to prevent animations when the user has set “Reduced Animation” on their computer. This is an accessibility fix so that the theme respects the user’s preferences. I wonder if perhaps this is the issue you are having, since animations work for me in all browsers when I check your site.

Can you check your computer so see if you have reduced animations enabled?

Instructions for PC:

• Open Settings (Windows + I)
• Go to Accessibility > Visual effects
• Toggle “Animation effects” to On

Instructions for MAC:

• Click the Apple menu  > System Settings (or System Preferences on older macOS)
• Go to Accessibility > Display
• Turn off “Reduce motion”

- AJ

Indeed, the absence of animation depends on Windows settings. Congratulations to such high level of accessibility of the theme! Thanks a lot for all you replies and explanations!

Glad it was an easy fix

Hi,

So it looks like this plugin may have changed how it works more recently – I wasn’t aware.

If you are using the Free version you can’t filter the Post Cards element if it’s on a standard page as the filter only redirects to archives. So it would be used on a sidebar displayed on categories/tags and the post cards element would be added in the category/tag dynamic template – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/category-taxonomy-template/

If you want to use that plugin to filter a custom grid you would need the pro version, here are their docs – https://searchandfilter.com/documentation/custom-query-integration/

So all you need to do is use the Advanced Query Type in the Post Cards to define the search_filter_query_id={ID} parameter, where ID is the custom filter ID. I don’t currently have access to the premium version, but my guess is that the ID would be displayed somewhere in the admin for easy reference.

The pro version used to be much cheaper and was a single fee (not yearly renewals). So I will likely not recommend it anymore, although it should work and it’s likely still a great solution. But I will see if there are any other free or cheaper alternatives out there. Of course FacetWP is another awesome filtering plugin, but it’s very pricey.

Of course depending what you want, coding a custom filter using the theme’s built-in script is quite simple – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/snippets/advanced-ajax-filter-example/

- AJ

ps: I’ve added the new Meta Query settings for the upcoming 6.3 update, this is what it will look like in WPBakery if interested (also supported in Elementor – just looks different): https://a.cl.ly/8LuE7E1D

Thanks so much AJ, stellar support as always. I managed to sort this out through a lot of trial and error. Just wanted to give you a heads-up if anyone else has a similar issue, the query formatting has changed. The query that worked in the Post Card element was search_filter_query_id=1. The query format you mentioned above is probably from the old version of the software. There’s no proper documentation for the new version yet so it was only through trial & error that I finally got it to work. Thank you again!

Glad you figured that out. Thank you for sharing!

- AJ

This is Aj the theme author.

There isn’t a built-in way to convert a section (like icon boxes) into a carousel and it would not be recommended at all. Carousels require extra scripts (CSS and JS) which slow down the page, and the most important thing for mobile devices is to keep your site fast. So converting a non carousel section into a carousel is very inefficient and not recommended for speed or SEO.

Now, if you really need to do this it’s only possible by using the Post Cards element. You would need to add a post type for your icon boxes – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/adding-custom-post-types/ – see the section this article – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/total-theme-cards/ – named “Using Theme Cards for Icon Boxes/Features/Services”

Then when you insert your Post Cards element you can select a carousel. If you only are showing a single row of icon boxes it will hide the carousel arrows on desktop. Example: https://a.cl.ly/E0uB89kW

In general carousels are not good for websites, I wrote an article about this if you are interested: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/why-you-shouldnt-be-using-carousels-on-your-website/

- AJ

Hi,

This is AJ the theme author.

To translate the theme and plugins you have 2 options:

1) You can manually translate the .POT files in the theme and plugins and add them to your server. This is more advanced and requires knowledge on how to do this. It will require using a translation plugin like POEDIT and adding files to your server.

2) Using a translation plugin. I recommend loco translate: https://wordpress.org/plugins/loco-translate/ – this is one of the most popular plugins, but there are many other you can use.

For the shopping cart “item” specifically, this is a word added by the theme. By default when you use the default theme header with the cart added inside the menu, it will add this to the mobile menu. You could also change how your site works so that the cart is not added inside the mobile menu like that. Instead you could display the cart in the header. For example this demo: https://totalwpthemedemo.com/bolt/ – this is done by using one of the newer “Flex Header” styles – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/header-styles/ – disabling the cart from the menu and inserting it manually in the aside area like such: https://a.cl.ly/o0ulj6pN

I mention this, in case you do prefer to switch the design and have the icon added in the header on mobile (it generally will work better).

You could also switch to using the Header Builder which will allow this as well and much more control over the header design in general – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/header-builder/

- AJ

I can use Flex but the only option is left side, no center and more… How to customise this flex header please ?

Hi,

There are various styles for the Flex header (left, right, center, etc) you can choose from: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/wp-content/uploads/sites/51/2015/02/total-flex-header-styles.png

If you want complete control over your header though, you will want to use the Header Builder as I mentioned previously: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/header-builder/ – this will allow you to design your own header exactly how you want it.

- AJ

Hi James,

I had copied that description from the WordPress register_post_type function documentation which is outdated. Underscores are allowed. I will update the plugin as it should read “Must not exceed 20 characters and may only contain lowercase alphanumeric characters, dashes, and underscores”.

Thanks for the heads up!

- AJ

Hi Alice,

Sorry I’m not quite understanding what you mean by “This also happens with just a simple shortcode for the current day” – are you saying that WordPress is not returning the correct time zone?

In the Post Cards Query specifically the “today” dynamic variable is converted to a date using:

date( 'Ymd' )

Which is just a standard PHP function so if it’s not returning the correct date based on your time zone this would imply that it’s not set correctly in the PHP on the server.

How did you set the time zone on the server?

Can you try perhaps using this snippet in your child theme functions.php file or code snippet plugin:

add_action( 'init',  function() {
    date_default_timezone_set( wp_timezone_string() );
} );

Or is that what you did?

If you recently made the changes it’s possible, the query is cached on your server. For example if you are using WPEngine you would need to clear the object cache after changing the time zone.

- AJ

thats fixed it and i can see the code in the script now on view page source – and realtime analytics picking up my pages now

interesting it stopped or reduced from about 70+ to 6 on 2nd april …... i’m sure i would have added the code into the theme panel in the past Anyway – see what happens now

Hi,

For Google analytics you can also use the field in the Theme Panel – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/google-analytics-tracking/

Server issues should not effect Google Analytics.

Site Kit adds analytics to your WP dashboard so it’s going to run extra code on your server. I would recommend not using a plugin like this and just adding your tracking code to the site then logging into the official Google analytics site to view the statistics.

Remember though, that Google Analytics requires cookie consent now for most countries – so if you do plan on adding Google analytics to your site you really should implement a proper cookie notice banner on the site and only track users that consent.

From my experience most users were not consenting to tracking on my sites so I decided to just remove all tracking and cookie notices, because it’s fairly useless to track a tiny portion of visitors. A lot of websites simply insert the tracking code and don’t care about consent, but I think it’s important.

Depending on your site, I may recommend you just don’t track your users completely – are you actually using the tracking data to make improvements and manage your marketing? Or are you just looking for curiosity?

I find that using Google Search console is more important, this way I’m tracking what pages rank on Google and the visitors I’m getting from search results – for me, this is more important and doesn’t require any tracking or user consent because it’s just data from Google.

- AJ

Thanks for the continued support

more just curiosity and a little marketing , to see where people come from – so if we post instagram and facebook posts – does that impact volume – what landing pages people use , I did have a lot of domains forwarded and pages for the domains – so i could see the number of users from those pages. – but did not renew most of those last year again based on some of the google landing pages off the analytics page reports

Where people come from geography mainly country – sources like facebook, instagram, search, direct etc

would like to see ranking of pages – but dont know how

I use the https://analytics.google.com website and run reports on timescales and also download csv to view and manipulate in excel

Not interested in the customer journey on the website , so dont need to track specific users , just use the stats off google webpage – so as you say cookies should not be

But i did plan to look into the cookie consent a bit further, as i only saw the need for consent last week, which would make it pointless as people now are more aware of cookies and often do not consent – thats anecdotal, speaking to various people , as i still do a little training for silver surfers , so you have confirmed that

I did remove site kit and use the theme panel as you linked – i’m sure i did that in the past as well

I opened up google counsel and i have seen this before and its working for my website – so I will look further into that information

Thanks again for the continued support and advice

Hi James,

The space you are seeing is because your image is simply not large enough to fill the whole column. You should be seeing the after image in the space on the right like these examples: https://totalwptheme.com/elements/before-after/

The best fix would be to make your images larger so they fill up the column or make the column smaller. The Before/After image element renders at 100% of the width of the parent. Or you can define a custom width for it if needed: https://a.cl.ly/9ZuOPxNm

Of course you can remove the overlay via the Overlay tab and turn off the “Overlay on Hover” option. This way you only see the images without the hover effect.

- AJ

Great – thanks!

Update: AJ, I have done some testing and I think I can get the result my client wants by using checkboxes, so I can manage without radio buttons. Thanks anyway, C.

Hi Charlie,

The AJAX script doesn’t currently have support for radio buttons. But if you really need them, what you can do is add a hidden input below the radio buttons and a little javascript so when the radio buttons are clicked it changes the value of the hidden input. I can provide an example if needed, let me know!

- AJ

Where are you adding the shortcode?

If you add it to your post it should work just fine, but you could have issues if you are trying to add it inside the Gutenberg query loop, because Gutenberg doesn’t use a standard loop the theme’s element cant properly locate the current ID (known Gutenberg issue).

Let me test it out inside a Gutenberg loop and see if I can update it to work inside a Gutenberg loop or custom card and if so, I can send you the updated Total Theme Core plugin with the fix.

- AJ

I tested the shortcode inside the Query Loop and I can see it’s displaying the category for the current page/post and not for the post in the loop.

There is indeed a known issue with WordPress and the function to retrieve the current ID, the problem is that WordPress parses shortcodes before blocks. Unfortunately there is no way around this or fix. The only way to make it work would be fore me to convert the Post Terms element into a block so it can be used as a block instead of a shortcode.

I do have plans to make more of the theme’s elements available as blocks (as I mentioned previously). I will look into making this element a block so that you can use it in the Query Loop. Are there any other theme elements that you think would be good to have in Gutenberg – https://totalwptheme.com/elements/

Very few customers use Gutenberg for their main pages, dynamic templates and custom cards. Most customers use WPBakery or Elementor, which are better for creating advanced pages and they use Gutenberg only for their posts which don’t require advanced building functions.

- AJ

Ok, I’ve understand. I hope you can insert an alternative solution in the next theme update

Also, when setting a password for a post, the word “Protected:” will appear. I want to ask if it is possible to hide the word “Protected:” in the post title?

Hi,

This is AJ the theme author.

Unfortunately there is no built-in way to display the pagination when there is only one page. Total uses the core WordPress function for the pagination – https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/paginate_links/ – which will exit early if there aren’t any paginated pages (aka more than one). This means the only way to do what you want would be to add custom code to your site that checks if the pagination returns nothing and if so output your own custom code to display a number 1. And the code will highly depend on how your site is setup (using default archives or dynamic templates).

I wouldn’t recommend displaying pagination when there isn’t any pagination though because it’s very confusing for the person visiting your website (what does the number 1 even mean) and it can cause issues with accessibility.

For the password protection title, this is inserted by WordPress automatically so you would need to add some custom code to your child theme or via a code snippet plugin.

Example code:

add_filter( 'the_title', function( $title ) {
    if ( str_contains( $title, 'Protected: ' ) ) {
        $title = str_replace( 'Protected: ', '', $title );
    }
    return $title;
} );

- AJ

Hi,

The best way to manage padding for small devices is by using responsive units like vw (viewport width). Typically, padding is added to the left and right sides (since top/bottom padding is often kept consistent across devices, or you can use an inner row with a spacing element to adjust the space at different breakpoints).

For example, if you’re currently using 100px of left and right padding, it might be too large on smaller screens. Instead, you could switch to a responsive value like 7vw, which will adjust based on the screen size, or use a percentage like 10%, which will also scale accordingly.

You should generally never show/hide different rows for different screen sizes as this makes the website less optimal (for speed and SEO). There is always a way to do things responsively, if you aren’t sure how share the URL and I can suggest and alternative.

- AJ

ps: Total is also fully compatible with Elementor – a lot of my customers have been using Elementor instead of WPBakery as of late. In Elementor you can define the padding, margin, colors, etc at each breakpoint. I”m not suggesting you switch your whole site over to Elementor, but it’s a possibility if you do like that builder and it won’t take too long for you to swap it all over. Or maybe something to consider for new websites if you are a freelancer/developer.

Replacing the padding that used PX with VW settings works perfect. Thanks again!

Awesome

Hi,

Sorry, I’m not sure what you mean my “custom CSS or Row layout popups” – are you referring to working in the builder and when you click to edit a row you can’t access the row settings?

If the only thing you changed was hosting, then it sounds like there is an issue with the new host. Generally issues with the builder not working are due to limited server resources. You may have to increase your PHP memory limit. Your webhost should be able to check your server error logs to figure out what’s going on and fix it up.

It’s also possible your new host has some sort of optimization function built-in and it’s messing things up.

Where is your new site hosted?

- AJ

Thanks for the info. I re-uploaded the js_composer plugin. Problem solved.

Great!

Hi,

You can set it up to use AJAX using some custom code, here is a sample snippet: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/snippets/advanced-ajax-filter-example/

But I wouldn’t recommend using AJAX and Total already has a built-in method for displaying search results via URL parameters with a page refresh or sending users to a new page.

I just published a new doc article on how to do this and the benefits over using AJAX – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/custom-search-for-post-cards/

- AJ

Hi AJ, could you eplain why having a sitemap page can hurt seo? I am looking to do one because i saw that my compeititors (ranked 1,2,3 in serp) have a ‘sitemap’ link on their home page.

An HTML sitemap could be considered to be low quality content as it may not really provide any added value to the end user. If you have a massive website, it may be helpful, but your site should already have proper internal linking so that your users can navigate your site and an XML sitemap for bots.

On page SEO is such a small ranking factor. You can micro-tweak your site all day without any affect at all.

Most likely your competitors have more and higher quality backlinks.

If you do want to focus on on-page SEO the most important things are going to be content quality, page speed and mobile friendliness.

- AJ

thumbs up!

I want to mention also…That if you haven’t done it, it’s also best to define your custom colors via the Color Palette – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/color-palette/ – then you can select from these in the Customizer by clicking the globe icon for the color picker.

This way if you want to set the same color in different settings you can still modify it globally if you ever want to change it.

Also, it will allow you to create a dark mode version of your site if wanted – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/dark-mode/

Hello AJ,

Perfect thank you for your help.

I had done the color palette with my colours but did not check the Accent colors.

This now displays my colour, thanks again.

Great!

Hi,

Oh, this is the single post pagination created by adding page breaks to your post. This works differently then the archive pagination and by default WordPress doesn’t add arrows to the single post pagination. I will look to see if it’s possible to modify how it works so that the arrows can be inserted.

I would highly recommend not paginating your posts though, this is very bad for SEO.

- AJ

Unfortunately WordPress only supports displaying numbers only or arrows only – https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/wp_link_pages/ – the only way I can modify the pagination would be to override the core WordPress function which can break 3rd party plugins and bloat up the theme :/

Ok, it’s all clear. Many thanks

Hi,

This is AJ the theme author.

It sounds like you enabled WPBakery Slim Mode on your site – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/wpbakery-slim-mode/ – which disables some of the older elements which aren’t needed. For example with the Post Cards element available now, there is no need for the Staff Grid element.

Settings are “tied” to the active theme, so when you switch themes different settings are used. This means you’ve enabled WPBakery Slim Mode while having the child theme active, but not while the parent was active – thus things appear to be “fixed” when swapping themes.

- AJ

Turning off that setting fixed the issue. It must have enabled automatically during a theme update, as I don’t believe we turned it on.

Thanks!

Hi Tonny,

1. The issue is you have some custom CSS making your site header have a fixed position, which is overriding the header styles. Since you are using the Transparent header the theme adds CSS that makes the header have an absolute position and that is overriding your custom CSS – however, when you use the Full-Height header the theme actually remove the absolute position so that the site background is visible while the mobile menu is open (which looks better in most cases) – but then your CSS overrides causing issues. Here is a video: https://a.cl.ly/GGubOZpE

I recorded a video of a demo with a transparent header and enabling the full-height mobile menu so you can see why the theme resets the header position (makes the header white again) – https://a.cl.ly/xQukGd7m – otherwise you would see a weird background color at the top which doesn’t look good. Like this demo – https://totalwpthemedemo.com/pottery/ (this demo is using an older style mobile menu so it works differently, which I will edit to use the new dropdown full-height option so it looks better). It looks a lot better when the theme removes the transparent header absolute position and the whole page is white when the mobile menu is open.

For your site, since you have a transparent header on all pages. I would recommend making your header background color black and the mobile menu black, I think that would look best.

And to fix the issue, you will need to either remove that fixed position on the header in your custom CSS or switch mobile menu style to the full-screen or sidebar style, because it won’t be possible to properly display a dropdown style mobile menu that is inside a fixed header – unless you manually set a custom width in pixels for the mobile menu.

And, since you are using the theme’s sticky header there is no need to set a fixed position for your header anyway…if you are going to use CSS to set a fixed position for your header then you should disable the theme’s sticky header function because right now it’s running extra unnecessary javascript.

2. The reading time strings are localized so you should be able to find them in the strings translation settings in WPML. You may have to go to WPML > Theme & Plugins Localization and check the box next to Total than click on the “Scan selected themes for strings” button so that WPML can locate all the strings. I had to do this, because it wasn’t automatically reading the .POT file (I don’t know if WPML even does that – you may have to always click the button). Then you should find the strings under WPML > String Translation like this: https://a.cl.ly/GGubOZwz

- AJ

Thx for the swift reply! I found the string eventually in total-core.

Mobile menu is fixed. Thanks for pointing me to the self created issue. Can’t remember why I used position:fixed on the element. I looks great now.

Hi Paul,

There is no specific reason, I will add them. Thank you for the heads up.

For the meantime you can always just use the theme’s utility classes in the extra classname field:

• https://totalwptheme.com/css-framework/font-weight/
• https://totalwptheme.com/css-framework/text-transform/

This way you can apply the styles without using custom CSS.

The theme used to use the same CSS you use to modify the root font size but I removed this in Total 6.0 because it’s actually a big accessibility issue to modify the root font size and it can also cause issues with 3rd party plugins. I would encourage you to consider not doing this anymore.

Setting 1.6 for the body font on mobile would be 16px which would just be 1rem at the default root font size, so it’s not really “easier”.

One thing I wanted to mention, I know you’ve been using the theme for a while now. On new installations (aka Deprecated > Classic Styles are disabled in the Theme Panel) the theme now uses fluid font sizes for it’s preset font sizes – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/preset-font-sizes/ – so if you were to use the theme’s font preset sizes in your design they will get smaller as the screen get’s smaller. For example if you set your body to “lg” the font size will be between 16px – 20px

Here are the defined theme font sizes:

 --wpex-text-xs: .75rem;
--wpex-text-sm: .875rem;
--wpex-text-base: 1rem;
--wpex-text-lg: clamp(1.125rem, 0.9688rem + 0.5vw, 1.25rem);
--wpex-text-xl: clamp(1.25rem, 0.9375rem + 1vw, 1.5rem);
--wpex-text-2xl: clamp(1.5rem, 1.1875rem + 1vw, 1.75rem);
--wpex-text-3xl: clamp(1.75rem, 1.2813rem + 1.5vw, 2.125rem);
 --wpex-text-4xl: clamp(2.125rem, 0.8125rem + 3vw, 2.5rem);
 --wpex-text-5xl: clamp(2.5rem, 1.0313rem + 3.5vw, 3rem);
--wpex-text-6xl: clamp(3rem, 1.0938rem + 4.5vw, 3.625rem);
--wpex-text-7xl: clamp(3.625rem, 2.6875rem + 3vw, 4.375rem);

And you can of course modify these in the Customizer.

I would generally recommend using modern fluid font sizes instead of setting your fonts at different breakpoints and using the preset font sizes wherever you declare a custom font size to ensure you can always modify your font sizes globally.

You can of course add your own code to modify the TinyMCE editor styles by hooking into the appropriate hook – you can see how the theme does it in the Total/inc/admin/mce-editor.php file. But I would recommend just going to the Theme Panel and disabling the “Editor Styles” option so that the theme doesn’t add your custom font sizes in the backend or make any modifications to the editor based on your customizer settings. This will slim/speed things up a little. I keep the code in the theme because some customers like the editor to match the live site, but in my opinion it’s completely unnecessary.

- AJ

Hi AJ,

Thank you for the detailed response as always. I’ve taken your advice and removed the CSS that was setting the root font size. I’ve updated the body font size and used this tool to update the preset font sizes:

Though I would add that for anyone else who finds it useful.

All looks good again now.

Great!