Discussion on Total - Responsive Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme

Discussion on Total - Responsive Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme

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Trinal9

Trinal9 Purchased

Hi AJ,

I’m having the same issue as Damien00100. I can’t get the mobile menu to work but to add to that I can’t get the home page hero image to be responsive BUT it’s responsive on every other page.

https://www.staging2.theaspiregroup.org/

So, unfortunately there is no such thing as a responsive background image in web design. When you use an image as background it has to fill up the row, in order for there to not be any cropping the image would essentially need to have the exact same proportions as the row itself – which is going to be impossible for most cases.

Now, your image actually has all the text on it. Which means you don’t need to use a background. You can simply insert the image into a row and stretch the row. Like this: https://a.cl.ly/nOur7R62

The only time to use the image as a background would be if it’s just a background and any text is added as actual text on top of the background.

Now, because the text is on the image though, it could get a bit small for smaller screens, in which case you could consider making a mobile version of the image and inserting 2 images and have one display at “Hidden on Phones” and the other at “Visible on Phones” for smaller screens.

The alternative is to not use an image with text (that’s a bit outdated) and rather add the text directly on the site (you would need access to the font used for the image though so you can upload it to your site for use). The tricky thing would be if you want to have the picture of the guy in the exact position as you have it now as created by the whole image. This is nearly impossible, which is why designs generally move away from this sort of thing and rather you would position the photo of the man in it’s own column to the side, or as a full background where it doesn’t matter if it crops a bit, or on the bottom right in a way where wouldn’t matter if text goes over him.

While you can always add multiple rows and show/hide things, generally it’s best to try and focus on making your design “responsive” so you aren’t doing that – most modern designs allow for fluid layouts.

I’m currently working on making many new Total demos so I don’t have any good examples of using a person as a background image, but here is a good one on SquareSpace showing how you could use a person in the background but it looks good across all devices: https://bloom-fluid-demo.squarespace.com/ (it really comes down to the image itself)

- AJ

Trinal9

Trinal9 Purchased

-AJ thank you so much for not only showing me how to fix the problem but educating me on it. Can I buy you a coffee, drink, or something?

You are welcome ;)

If you ever come to Vegas you can buy me a drink for sure!

I would be very appreciative if you went to your downloads – https://themeforest.net/downloads – and give the theme a positive rating, that helps me the most out of anything. Even if you rated it before, leaving a new rating bumps it up to the top which is nice. Thank you!

And of course let me know if you need help with anything else,

- AJ

HI AJ,

Got a little problem with the Image Carousel element.

In this case, it is pulling the images in from an ACF Gallery field.

I have the Carousel set to “show arrows” (bottom centre) but they are not showing up. I also have it set to “infinte loop” however when swiping it’s not looping, it has empty spaces before and after the 4 images I have used.

The site is in dev but I have recorded a video. https://share.zight.com/2Nue8r4X

Have I missed something?

Thanks

James

Hi James,

Can you share the URL? It’s hard to know what’s going on without inspecting the code. Perhaps you can share it privately? https://my.totalwptheme.com/

From what I can tell, it looks like you may not have enough items for the carousel to create a loop. For example, if you’re showing 3 items at a time and want it to loop, you typically need at least double that amount. This is because the carousel script needs enough content to ‘wrap around’ and create the illusion of an infinite loop.

Now, you are also using the “auto width” setting, which makes it so each item can take up as much space as it needs. This could cause some issues as well depending on the images and if they are lazy loading.

Personally though, I would recommend against carousels – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/why-you-shouldnt-be-using-carousels-on-your-website/

For your site a horizontal scrollbar may be best – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/horizontal-image-gallery-with-scrollbar/

- AJ

Hi AJ

You were right – when I added more images the arrows showed up and there was an infinite loop.

I will perhaps use the horizontal scrollbar, or just add more images.

Thanks

James

Hello, I’m having an issue with a purchased license no longer activating on the site, even though it’s correctly registered in Envato. The site address is still correct, but the site asks me to verify the license… when I enter my number, it tells me “This license is already in use. Click the “manage licenses” link below to log in with your Envato ID and manage your licenses.” Please take the necessary steps. best regards

Hi,

This is AJ the theme author.

Usually when this happens it’s because the site has switched from http to https which is technically a different domain. You can simply log into here – https://my.totalwptheme.com/ – click on “License Manager” and click the trash can next to any license to de-register it.

If that doesn’t work please let me know!

- AJ

Hi AJ, What plugin do you use for side cart of woocomerce? Thanks, M

Hi,

Are you referring to the WooCommerce user account page? If so, there isn’t any theme options to modify this because if the theme changes the way the WooCommerce account page works it can break 3d party plugins so it’s best for themes to not change that.

What were you looking to modify?

- AJ

Im looking to customize login page as well as register. I will have 2 different register pages for different types of users. One type of users sets up events via eventon which you recommended and the other is regular buyer.

Can you share a link so I can see the pages?

Also when you say “customize” this is a pretty broad word – are you looking to change the design (colors), the layout, add extra fields, add extra text, etc. What do you want to change exactly?

Depending on what you want to change, like if it’s just the design of the forms (colors) you may be able to do that via the Customizer – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/styling-forms/ – but if you are looking to make changes to the actual forms, such as adding extra fields this would require custom code (assuming the Eventon plugin allows for this).

- AJ

Hey anyone had any problem with total theme not being able to display a menu on a mobile (small screen device) though the menu might have got to big so tried a small menu of just a few pages and the same thing happens

https://www.stpatricksbrockworth.org.uk/

thanks for any pointers

Hi,

This is AJ the theme author.

I hope you had a nice weekend, thank you for your patience.

I had a look and your site is showing the default mobile menu on small screens like this: https://a.cl.ly/xQumQGro

Did you fix the issue, or is it not working like this for you?

- AJ

Hi AJ

Re PTU

Is there any way to enable the taxonomy filter, which appears to be missing from the list of posts.

See: https://ibb.co/prRXXpHV

I can click a taxonomy from the column, which has the same effect, but it’s not as easy as it being part of the filter at the top.

Thanks

James

I’ve put it on my todo list for the next plugin update ;) I’m trying to figure out if it should be automatically added always or something you need to enable on a per-taxonomy basis via a new setting.

Great thanks – it would be really helpful. I can’t see a reason for it to be optional, it’s not optional on standard Posts after all. Thank you!

The reason for making it optional would be because if you have a lot of taxonomies it can get overwhelming. For example if you have a custom shop and add taxonomies for color, brand, gender, size, condition, age group, dimensions, availability…etc And these are all automatically added to the admin dashboard, it could break the layout and significantly slow down the admin page.

I know most people will likely be working with 1-2 custom taxonomies, but I need to think about every case scenario.

- AJ

Hi AJ

I’m using a custom card with a three column carousel layout. Works fine, but when there are fewer than three items it doesn’t look great as it leaves a gap where columns 2 and 3 would be.

See screenshot: https://ibb.co/nqWJwPjn

Is there a solution whereby fewer than 3 items could be centered in the row?

THanks

James

Hi James,

In web design when you have columns in a grid there is no way to ‘center’ them because technically the empty columns still exist and they take up that empty space.

To do what you want is only possible using a flex container, which you can do with the Post Cards element: https://a.cl.ly/GGu9ywJB

But flex containers, because of how they work they will stay at the same columns for all screen-sizes. If you want them to stack you will need to target your grid with custom CSS, example:

@media (max-width: 600px) {
  .your-custom-grid-class .wpex-post-cards-entry {
    flex-basis: 100%;
  }
}

Where ‘your-custom-grid-class’ is a custom class added to the Post Cards.

I will put on my todo list to add an option where you can select a breakpoint for the items to stack (or ability to select columns at different breakpoints) but it’s much more complex than you can imagine.

- AJ

Hi AJ,

Thanks as ever for Total. It’s such a great theme to work with.

I’ve come across a peculiarity with the Flexible Container element.

I put an Image element and an Icon Box element inside a Flexible Container, then set the Element Width (Flex Basis) in the container with a comma-separated string to target each inner element.

It worked fine until I adjusted some of the settings on the inner elements (e.g. applying a border radius to the image). That created inline style tags preceding both the figure element and the icon box div.

The Flex Basis values are targeted to nth-child(1) and nth-child(2), but unfortunately nth-child(1) is now a style tag! The figure element received the nth-child(2) setting and the remaining tags got nothing.

Once I spotted this, I removed all the settings from the inner elements and applied them with custom CSS; the inline styles disappeared and all was well. In fact, I then set the flex-basis with custom CSS too, using custom classes, just to be safe.

Have you come across this issue? I imagine people will be changing the settings of inner elements of the Flexible Container quite regularly, which would render the flex-basis setting almost redundant.

Thanks,

Charles

I’ve updated the flex container so it can grab all the inline style tags and move the code outside of the flex container so it’s all in one place like this – https://a.cl.ly/yAuRn4qL – this will keep the inner HTML cleaner and prevent issues with the :nth-child selectors.

If you want here is the updated file – https://a.cl.ly/Kou5NQpl

You can unzip and replace via FTP under plugins/total-theme-core/inc/vcex/templates

If you try it out and have any issues let me know and thank you again for reporting the bug!

- AJ

Thanks, AJ. That’s a really elegant solution. And so quick! C

No, thank YOU for reporting the bug!

Cri-85 Purchased

Hi! I recently updated the theme to the last version (I update my live website every 6 months), and the menu disappeared. I fixed that live disabling W3 Total Cache CSS minify.

Just for info, maybe some peoples had the same issue. I tried different method but is still not working.

If you know a fix to enable CSS minify, let me know.

Hi,

This is AJ the theme author.

This is a bug in their plugin that I reported over 5 years ago, I guess they never bothered fixing it. Please see here: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/w3-total-cache-css-minify-issues/

By the way, all of the theme’s CSS and Javascript as well as that of most plugins are already minified by default. I can’t think of any modern WordPress theme or plugin that doesn’t offer their scripts already minified. By using a 3rd party plugin to minify already minified scripts, just creates duplicate copies of your files, uses up server resources and can introduce issues (if the plugin is incorrectly coded as is this case). So for the most part you should never have to enable minify functions.

Also some plugins include options to “combine” scripts and I want to mention this incase you are using those functions…combining scripts is an outdated practice which actually slows down your site. So if you are combining your CSS/JS you should disable that as well.

- AJ

ps: Actually the theme has code that’s supposed to automatically exclude the files mentioned in the article above, from being minified. So either W3 Total Cache changed how their plugin works (I will double check to see if I need to update the code in the theme) or there is a different bug in their plugin. I”m looking at it now. Either way, minifying the already minified theme scripts is completely useless as mentioned previously. So you should actually exclude the entire theme’s CSS and JS from w3 Total cache’s minify functions.

I had a look and I do need to update the code used to automatically exclude the theme files from the W3 Total Cache minify function and I’ve patched the file for the upcoming 6.4 update – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/upcoming-update-changelog/

Thank you for bringing this to my attention!

Hi AJ

I’m having trouble with the “hide if empty” setting on Rows.

An empty repeater field element appears to be causing the problem.

Here’s a screenshot of the code:

https://ibb.co/gFbDnZ8B

It seems to fulfil the criteria for a row to be considered empty:

“The row will not display on the page if the inner contents are empty. To determine if a row is empty all HTML tags are removed except images and plain text, if the end result is an empty string the row is considered empty.”

I wonder if the inline CSS is considered “plain text”?

If I remove the ACF repeater element then the row is hidden, so it’s definitely that empty element causing this.

Any ideas? Maybe shifting the CSS to the Customizer would fix it?

Thanks

James

Hi James,

I was able to recreate the issue and I’ll patch it for the next update.

For the meantime you can set your bottom padding using utility classes – https://totalwptheme.com/css-framework/padding/ – so you can add the classname “wpex-pb-20” for a bottom 20px padding instead of using the custom CSS tab.

Thank you for reporting this!

- AJ

Here is the patched file: https://a.cl.ly/xQumER97 – if you want you can extract and replace via FTP under plugins/total-theme-core/inc/vcex/templates – this prevents the ACF element from outputting any code if there aren’t any fields or a fallback. The issue was that it was previously spitting out the inline CSS and main div even if there was nothing to show.

Thanks AJ !

Hi AJ, Over the past 3 weeks I’ve had the entire custom CSS file vanish from 2 different websites. This happened also about a year ago on a site. Then I thought my client simply screwed up. But now it happened on 2 more websites (one of which is my own company site. Did you ever come across this issue before? What could it be?

HI,

There is no “custom CSS file” – are you referring to the Custom CSS panel at Theme Panel > Custom CSS?

If so, this is actually part of WordPress core, which can be found at Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS. I just have a separate panel added inside the theme which makes it easier to use since it’s a much larger field and you don’t have to load up the whole customizer to add a little CSS.

The WordPress custom CSS function works as a custom post type and it’s “attached” to the active theme.

So if for example you rename your child theme or switch from the parent theme to a child theme it would seem like this is ‘lost’ but really it’s just not being pulled from the database, switching back to the previously active child theme or theme name would “bring it back”.

This is the only reason I can think of for “losing” the CSS.

Do you remember perhaps renaming the theme, changing to a child theme or renaming your child theme?

If you didn’t, I have no idea how it could get deleted (there is no theme function that would delete it). But if you have backups of your site (which you should), you should be able to locate the old CSS inside one of your database backups as WordPress stores this inside the wp_posts table as a custom_css post type.

Now, I haven’t had any other customers report this issue before. But if it’s something that’s happened to you and you are worried, for your peace of mind it may be best to place your custom CSS inside a child theme’s style.css file instead and disable the Custom CSS panel. This can also keep your site a little slimmer and working with a style.css file also means you can open it with your favorite editor via FTP (I use Visual Studio Code) so there are some added benefits.

- AJ

Cri-85 Purchased

Hi! I already said that the italian translation of the backend and visualcomposer is really bad :(

Hi,

Unfortunately the translations for WPBakery are files located inside the WPBakery plugin itself, so this isn’t something I can modify from inside the theme. Unless you are specifically referring to translation of settings for theme elements which would exist inside the Total Theme Core file.

You didn’t ask any question, did you want to provide an updated better translation?

If you speak English and find the Italian translations aren’t up to your standards, you can always log into WordPress and go to your profile edit page and from here you can change the language for the WP admin.

Or, if you prefer you can create your own Italian translation for your site using a plugin like Loco Translate – https://wordpress.org/plugins/loco-translate/ – this way you use your own translations and not the ones provided for you by WordPress, plugins or the Theme.

- AJ

Obese

Obese Purchased

Hi AJ
How are you? I hope you had a good holiday weekend!

I am having an error with the preview showing up properly on the homepage of the site. I’ve been trying to debug without success. Whenever I try to load elements (like editing a text block), save it, or otherwise, it will often lose connection. When I try to preview the page, the preview is entirely wrong and broken. I check out the page in the browser using developer tools and see this:
https://interrainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/devconsole_2.jpg
https://interrainternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/devconsole_1.jpg
As far as I can tell, this is only happening on this page which uses that image-before-after in wp bakery. Should I not be using that?

Thanks! J

Typically when the WPBakery element just spins indefinitely it means there is a PHP or server error. These should be recorded in the logs. If they aren’t being recodded in the logs, then it isn’t a PHP error and it’s going to be a server issue.

Is your site hosted on Godaddy by any chance?

You may need to add this fix to your site if so: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/fix-backend-issues-on-godaddy/

I see your support license is expired so you can’t submit a private ticket, but I can send you a direct email if you want me to log in and have a look. I had a look in Helpscout (which we use for tickets) and found several old tickets from your username are you still using the email formatted like such: jxxase@xxxxxxnsterxxxia.com ? I’ll send you email there if so otherwise if you want to provide me a different email address I will contact you that way.

- AJ

Obese

Obese Purchased

Hi AJ – thanks so much. Yes that is my email. I checked my .htaccess file and it already has:

# BEGIN Line too long fix
<IfModule mod_substitute.c>
SubstituteMaxLineLength 10M
</IfModule>
# END Line too long fix


It’s only happening on that one area with the ‘Tour’ element. Super strange.

I will check the logs again later to see if I can find anything.

Thank you!

I’m sending you an email right now if you want to share logins so I can look.

- AJ

Hi AJ

I’ve loaded a menu into one of the sections on the homepage – it’s just below the 3 audio options here: uantumleapgolf.com

I tried various of the Total menu elements that we have avaiolable. But i’ve not really been able to find what im looking for and the menu looks a bit basic/poor.

If you look here, you’ll see a contact button that i copied from one of your Total section templates: https://quantumleapgolf.com/contact/ – looks great

Question: 1. is it possible to create a menu made of buttons the same as the one on my contact page? 2. if not can you recommend another option that will look better? And behave well in mobile format.

Thanks for you help again. I trust all is welll with you and look forward to your reply.

Thanks Tony

Hi Tony,

The horizontal menu element (which you are using) is intended primarily for header style menus where you wouldn’t have items that all look like buttons. If you want all the links to look like buttons you have a couple options:

1. You can use the Navigation Bar element which allows you to select the button style like such: https://a.cl.ly/xQumEEPZ

2. If you rather have multiple single buttons you can use the flex container and insert your buttons, but then you will need to style each one separately. With this setup you will have a little more control over the layout though: https://a.cl.ly/o0ulJJbr (although in the upcoming Total 6.4 I have some new options coming to the Navigation Bar element for stacking buttons on mobile)

- AJ

Thank you AJ. Option 2 = perfect!

Hi Aj,

i think we’ve found a bug in the following file: Path: wordpress/wp-content/themes/Total/inc/deprecated.php Line: 1439

The function wpex_excerpt() causes layout issues on blog posts unless we wrap it with a condition to check if totaltheme_post_excerpt() exists. Here is our adjusted version: function wpex_excerpt( $args ) { if (function_exists(‘totaltheme_post_excerpt’)) { echo totaltheme_post_excerpt($args); } }

Without this conditional check, the blog post layout breaks and displays incorrectly. Could you please confirm if this is a known issue?

Thanks and BR

Thanks Aj, i’ll check that out. :-)

Hi Aj,

could it be that code?

wordpress/wp-content/themes/Total-child/partials/blog/blog-single-related-entry.php

Line: 78

<?php // Display post excerpt if ( wpex_validate_boolean( get_theme_mod( 'blog_related_excerpt', true ) ) ) : ?> <div class="related-post-content wpex-clr"> <div class="related-post-title entry-title wpex-mb-5"> <a href="<?php wpex_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a> </div> <div class="related-post-excerpt wpex-text-sm wpex-leading-normal wpex-last-mb-0 wpex-clr"><?php wpex_excerpt( array( 'length' => get_theme_mod( 'blog_related_excerpt_length', '15' ), ) ); ?></div> </div> <?php endif; ?> <?php endif; ?>

We dont want to show the excerpt on related-entry. Thanks

Hi,

If you just don’t want to know excerpts on the related items you can simply go to Appearance > Customize > Blog > Related Posts and scroll to the last setting “Excerpt Length” and enter “0”.

So, if the reason you were copying that file to the child theme was just to hide the excerpt, you can use the customizer setting instead then you can delete the file. I recommend renaming it to something like blog-single-related-entry-BACKUP.php – just incase there were other mods you forgot about and you need to put it back to do more checking.

- AJ

seo608

seo608 Purchased

Hi AJ,

I have the following issue with editing pages in WPBakery Page Builder on one of my sites.

When editing in the backend, the window only shows a portion of the existing content. If I switch to the frontend mode, the entire content is displayed.

How can I fix this error? It is important for me to edit pages in the backend.

If you have a pricing element on the page, this is a known bug caused by the last WPBakery update.

Even though it’s a bug caused by WPBakery I was able to patch my Total Theme Core plugin. The fix is in the upcoming Total 6.4 update, but you can actually just log into WordPress and go to Plugins and delete the Total Theme Core, then go to Appearance > Install Plugins and re-install/activate the Total Theme Core Plugin. I’ve patched the live version so you can easily get the fix and not have to wait for the official update.

If you have any issues with that please let me know.

Sorry for the troubles!

- AJ

Where can I find the Change Log? Most themes have it at the bottom of the Details page.

Hi,

This is Aj the theme author.

The changelog is on the doc site here: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/changelog/

I don’t like having the changelog on the ThemeForest page because it’s too limiting. I can format the changelog much better on the doc site. It would also make the themforest page very very.

Plus, having it on my own site if you just do a Google search for “Total theme changelog” it will show up, making it much easier for people to locate it ;)

Let me know if you have any other questions or issues that I can help with!

- AJ

Hi! I think there is a bug present in the theme.

I have enabled published and modified dates, but only calendar icons appear below the title. I want the actual dates (e.g., ‘May 1, 2025’) to appear next to the icons, like the author and category text do.

e.g. https://iosvsand.com/how-to-improve-mobile-signal-easily/

Please fix this issue. Thanks in advance Bye, take care.

Hey, it was not a bug. I figured out how to fix it.

Thank you for letting me know ;)

For anyone else that may be having this issue, if the dates aren’t showing up, it’s most likely because your data format isn’t properly setup in WordPress under Settings > General > Date Format. Most likely it’s set to “Custom” with an empty or incorrect value.

Hi AJ, what happened to the option of being able to “show or hide” a row on desktop computer or mobile? I want to have an option only viewed on mobile devices and other option on desktop computer.

Thanks!

Hi,

The option should still be there as it was never removed or changed: https://a.cl.ly/E0uBZr8G

Generally it isn’t recommended to hide full rows to create mobile alternatives as this isn’t good for site speed or SEO. It’s aways best to design your site in a responsive way.

If you can let me know (share the url) what you are trying to do I can suggest a better way.

- AJ

Hi all

I found a little issue in TotalThemeCore\WPBakery\Params\Custom_Field and ACF integration

In the get_choices there is the following code

foreach ( $acf_groups as $group ) {
    $group_title = $group['title'] ?? '';
    $group_id = $group['ID'] ?? $group['id'];
    $fields = (array) \acf_get_fields( $group_id );
    if ( $fields ) {
        $group_options = self::process_acf_fields( $fields );
        if ( $group_options ) {
            $group_title = $group['title'] ?? $group_id;
            $choices[ "acf_{$group_id}" ] = [
                'label'   => "ACF - {$group_title}",
                'options' => $group_options,
            ];
        }
    }
}

It means that for each group you get its fields by group ID.

It doesn’t work with many local group, defined by PHP, which have id always equal to 0… in this case the line

$fields = (array) \acf_get_fields( $group_id );

returns always the fields in first defined local group

I suggest something like the following solution, using acf_get_fields by group key

foreach ( $acf_groups as $group ) {
    $group_title = $group['title'] ?? '';
    $group_id = $group['ID'] ?? $group['id'];
    $fields = (array) \acf_get_fields( $group_id ?:  $group['key'] );
    if ( $fields ) {
        $group_options = self::process_acf_fields( $fields );
        if ( $group_options ) {
            $group_title = $group['title'] ?? $group_id;
            $choices[ "acf_{$group_id}" ] = [
                'label'   => "ACF - {$group_title}",
                'options' => $group_options,
            ];
        }
    }
}

Thanks

Hi,

Thank you for reporting this. I will fix it in the upcoming 6.4 version. So if you manually tweak the code for now, that’s fine as it will override in the next version and have the fix.

By the way, if you don’t need very complex fields, Total has a built-in class you can use instead of ACF: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/how-to-add-custom-fields/

- AJ

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