Hi Ben,

Sorry I am a bit confused, when I test in all browsers the videos play and with sound. Are you saying you want it to play automatically but muted? Or you don’t want it to autoplay and you also want it muted to start?

Anyway, see here: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/snippets/add-custom-params-lightbox-videos/

Just change the 1 to a 0

- AJ

ps: Very smart of you to ask for a global solution!

Hello AJ, it’s weird, that the videos play in all your browsers with sound ON from the beginning. I see on desktop and mobile (Safari and Chrome) that they autoplay and are muted by the browsers. Are we talking about the same website? It is: bit.ly/44SA7tK

However, thank you for the snippet! Unfortunately it shows no result in the lightbox yet. It does work in fact, if I used a simple video module. But it does not if I post the Vimeo-URL via oEmbed in a postcard. Fancybox seems to add quite a bunch of parameters like for example here in the fancybox-iframe: src=”//player.vimeo.com/video/1033090772?autoplay=1&hd=1&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&fullscreen=1&share=copy” I also found all these parameters in the jquery.fancybox.min.js. Do you have any other hint?

And sorry for the confusion. Simply put, my goal is to deactivate autoplay, so the user needs to start the video, which prevents undesired browser induced muting.

Hi,

You hadn’t shared your website before, so I was testing on my own local dev and live test servers. I just tried your own site and I can see the videos are being played muted.

I personally was testing with YouTube, so it seems this issue is specific to Vimeo and it’s something they changed recently as the videos used to always autoplay with sound before.

I also didn’t realize you were working with the Post Cards element and I was testing with the Image element. It does seem like the Post Cards is not making use of the same filter. This is a theme bug and I’ve added the fix in the upcoming 6.4 update.

For a temp fix you will need to edit the file at Total/inc/lib/wpex-card.php and locate the get_lightbox_video() function and edit it to look like this: https://a.cl.ly/jkuknGn4

So you need to add the following code to the function:

if ( $video ) {
    $video = wpex_get_video_embed_url( $video );
}

This change ensures that the videos used for lightbox are parsed correctly and the filter mentioned in the snippet will work.

OR you could instead hook into “wpex_card_lightbox_video” and not have to mess with updating any files. This is a separate filter for cards only, example code:

add_filter( 'wpex_card_lightbox_video', function( $video_url ) {
    if ( $video_url && is_string( $video_url ) && str_contains( $video_url, 'vimeo.com' ) ) {
        $video_url = add_query_arg( 'autoplay', '0', $video_url );
    }
    return $video_url;
} );

2) Not sure if you did this but you would also need to edit the snippet to change “youtube” to “vimeo”.

So, if you make the change above, adding the following in your child theme’s functions.php will prevent Vimeo videos from loading:

add_filter( 'wpex_get_video_embed_url_params', function() {
    return [
        'vimeo' => [
            'autoplay' => 0
        ],
    ];
} );

This snippet will target non-cards, so if you used the last snippet to target cards only you can then add this snippet as well if you need to target page builder elements.

I will do some more testing though because if Vimeo is always muted when auto played now, then the theme should not auto play it by default as it’s a usability issue. So most likely I will be adding this code in the theme by default so that you don’t need a snippet.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention!

- AJ

Cool, thank you so much, this helped and works! And I’m glad I could help you too.



Now that it does, I realized on the fancybox-website, it IS in fact somehow possible, to have the video in a lightbox autoplayed AND unmuted at the same time – which was my initial goal. I assumed due to browser restrictions (missing user interaction) one could only have one or the other:

https://fancyapps.com/fancybox/#videos Under „videos“ the third one (paperplane) does it. Do you have any idea how to achieve this? Adding muted=0 to your snippet didn’t work. It was still overruled by the browser restrictions. And no worries, although I have no clue of coding, ChatGPT helped me with the syntax

It seems like on the fancybox-website the click on the thumbnail is read as user interaction, whereas in my case the click on the postcard-built portfolio is not.

Hi,

The theme uses Fancybox 3 which was the original free script – https://obu.edu/_resources/ldp/galleries/fancybox/

The new version of the script was originally very expensive (it’s still really expensive $470/year) and their license didn’t really support including the plugin in a theme for re-sale. But they have changed the licensing a bit so it would technically be possible to update to it. But it works completely different so updating would also take a very long time plus cause a lot of issues with customers updating that had made modifications on their site.

That’s why I’ve maintained my own custom version of the original FancyBox 3 script with manual fixes and enhancements.

Maybe in the future I will make the swap..but it’s a huge endeavor, expensive and it can break lot of site’s updating. I don’t know if the few small benefits are worth it.

From what I can tell the new version of FancyBox is not adding autplay=1 to the URL, instead they are sending a postMessage to the iFrame to tell it to auto play. I will try and see if I can do the same thing with the older script inside the theme in the next update. What makes things a bit challenging is that some customers may have disabled autoplay (like you did) so I need to detect the parameter first – remove it and then do my own thing.

- AJ

Ok, I did some tests…and it is technically possible for me to force autoplay (like the new fancyBox script does), however, it would be somewhat of a ‘hack’ and it would be going against browser and device policies. I don’t want any of my customers getting sued over accessibility issues.

And I’m honestly not sure about the logic Vimeo is using because on my test site if I unmute a video then the next time I load the video (even refreshing the page) it plays unmuted. Sample test: https://a.cl.ly/BluABGNn – so it seems to remember the preference, but for some reason it’s not doing that on your site.

I think the reason is because your site doesn’t have proper SSL protocols. When I test on my localhost it won’t work either.

Using SSL is extremely important though, so make sure you enable HTTPS on your server.

By the way, in the upcoming Total 6.4 update I’ve also added the ability to enable Gallery Lightbox like such: https://a.cl.ly/04uZKQPl – this way if a user opens the lightbox of the first post card it will show arrows to view the next/prev videos as well as the featured images at the bottom as thumbnails. So if someone just wants to browse the videos they can. Just letting you know in case you wanted to test that out after the next update is released.

- AJ

Hi,

This is Aj the theme author.

You are correct, this function exists for WooCommerce but not Easy Digital Downloads. The plugin isn’t as popular (I think you may be the only customer using it) so I haven’t had any requests to add this functionality, but I wouldn’t be against adding it.

According to the EDD docs it’s very simple to display the cart counter: https://easydigitaldownloads.com/docs/showing-the-cart-quantity-in-your-templates/

I could easily update the theme’s default cart icon for the header to support the EDD counter (I will put this on my todo list)

But, the cart widget in EDD, just like on your current site, is very simple and doesn’t appear to be easily customizable. Contrary to how the WooCommerce one that can be displayed in a sidebar like on this demo and includes the product images – https://totalwpthemedemo.com/bolt/product/138/

I could make the theme’s cart sidebar support EDD but it won’t look as nice, it would likely require coding a whole custom functionality.

However, your site is actually redirecting to the cart page – this is probably best for most sites anyway. My recommendation would be to add the cart icon to the header that shows the counter but have it simply go to the main cart page instead of it opening a dropdown or sidebar. This will keep your site a lot faster also because having the cart visible on every page (like you do now) requires running extra functions on page load to get and generate the inline cart.

If you want email me at wpexplorer [at] gmail dot com – and I can try and get you a theme beta version with the EDD cart counter if you want to try it out before an official theme update and since you seem to be the only user that is using EDD – perhaps you have some added feedback/suggestions.

WooCommerce has tons of free and premium add-ons you can use to add a cart icon and better cart widget but I couldn’t find any for EDD, just this one – https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-menu-cart/

- AJ

Hello AJ.

Thank you for your quick and detailed reply.

Displaying just an icon and the number of products can be perfectly sufficient with the shopping cart page in link.

As my site is in two languages with Polylang, there’s a shopping cart page for each language, so I’d need to be able to indicate a link for each language. The https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-menu-cart/ plugin doesn’t seem to allow this (PRO version).

For your information, there’s already an EDD integration with Wp Bakery, but unfortunately it doesn’t concern the display of a header icon: https://wpbakery.com/addons/easy-digital-downloads/

I’ll continue my tests and write to you on your Gmail @mail for further information (and suggestion).

Sincerely

Hi,

Linking to the cart page based on the language shouldn’t be a concern at all, the theme already has a function I use for other things that translate page URLs.

I setup a new local server with EDD and I thought I had added some integration for the plugin but it looks like I haven’t added any sort of integration. Now, while there doesn’t seem to be a huge demand for the plugin it would still be good for me to at least provide some basic options for EDD so you can modify the layouts a bit because the default EDD design is quite vanilla and will render like the “blog” by default.

So I’ve added it to my todo list, not for this update but hopefully the next one to add a whole Customizer panel for EDD with some basic options. At least so you can choose your layouts like No Sidebar and to disable elements on the single product page. And to provide an easy way to display a cart link in the header and if possible a pop-out sidebar cart.

Feel free to email me and I can let you know when a Beta version is ready for testing.

- AJ

Hello AJ.

Thank you for your reply. I’ll send you a direct e-mail and I’m obviously interested in being a beta tester for these developments.

FYI: I don’t think there’s any integration for EDD with WPBakery. The component cited https://wpbakery.com/addons/easy-digital-downloads/ has not been kept up to date since 2017 and is causing technical problems.

EDD provides blocks for Gutenberg: https://easydigitaldownloads.com/docs/reviews-shortcodes/

Best regards

Hi,

This is Aj the theme author.

When using ACF you need to specifically tell it what type of field you are retrieving, as you can see in your code you are setting the second parameter to ‘option’. When using the page builder and theme settings like the Background from a custom field it’s specifically checking for custom fields assigned to the page via the post meta (or term meta if it’s a taxonomy).

Now, testing locally I can see I have given you the ability to select Theme Options from the custom field dropdown. Example: https://a.cl.ly/yAuqoR47

So I can understand the frustration when choosing it and it not working!

I will have to add some extra checks inside the theme to get the setting from ACF to see what “type” of setting the field so that it can pull the correct value. Hopefully this is something that can be done in ACF without much bloat – since most of the time you wouldn’t be using options as custom fields, adding these extra checks will introduce some bloat for all custom field declarations. So I will need to implement something (if possible) and do some testing to ensure it’s not going to slow things down.

I’m planning to release Total 6.4 this week and hopefully I can introduce this change with the update – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/upcoming-update-changelog/

If you would like, email me privately at wpexplorer [at] gmail dot com and I can let you know when a Beta is ready if you want to try before the official update or I can help you patch your site with the changes temporarily.

All that said…

Can you explain why you are wanting to have the image defined in an options panel specifically?

Setting a row background to a theme option, doesn’t make much sense to me. It would make more sense to just set the image on the row itself. Why bother making a whole options panel for something you can control on the row itself. Or if you want it easier for the end user to update, you could assign the image as field on the page itself or as the featured image.

- AJ

Where things become complicated is ACF allows creating fields and assigning them not only for posts and terms but also option pages at the same time. This means you can have a field for example called “image” that is both an options field and a post field. This is no way for the theme to automatically detect if the user wants a post/term value or an option value.

So, what I think I will do is when choosing a custom field if you select an ACF field it uses JS to display a checkbox like this – https://a.cl.ly/04uZrDL9 – so you can check this box if you want to display an option field.

The way it will work though is saving the value like such “field_6886bf4f1b0a4|option” (in other words it will add |option at the end). This way I don’t need to introduce extra fields and bloat.

When retrieving the custom field value the theme then just needs to make a very simple check to see if the custom field name ends with |option.

This will allow for displaying option panel options while keeping everything still fast an optimized.

Let me know if you have any feedback and thank you for bringing this issue to my attention!

- AJ

Hi,

This is AJ the theme author.

You can’t actually register the license on the – https://my.totalwptheme.com/ – as that would require sending requests from my site to your site, which means your site would have to be constantly “listening” for pings from my site which is not efficient. So you must activate the license on your end.

If you had previously used the license, what you would do is log in here: https://my.totalwptheme.com/ – click on “License Manager” at the top, locate your license and click the trash can next to it, this will de-activate it from the currently active URL.

Then log into your new site go to Theme Panel > Theme License and enter your license there.

Now, when you say “when I put the purchase code, it doesnt work” – are you getting any sort of error message?

It’s also possible that your server is blocking outgoing connections which prevents the registration from taking place because it can’t “speak” to my server. Or it’s also possible that your server is being blocked on my end by my server’s firewall (this can happen if you are using shared hosting and some domain on your same shared host has been blacklisted – not common, but could happen).

Can you let me know if you are receiving any specific error message when trying to activate the license? There is also a “troubleshoot” ink at the bottom of the Theme License panel you can try clicking – https://a.cl.ly/7Kur2lLn – this will let you know if your server is having any issues trying to contact my server.

- AJ

We downloaded the Total theme via Envato and installed it properly on WordPress. We also installed the plugins. However, we’re encountering some issues that you can also see through the links we’ve provided. On the troubleshoot screen, there’s no indication of any server block or restriction. The “Activate License” button keeps spinning, even though we have entered the license code.

The theme is currently installed, but we are unable to activate the license. We had previously used this license on a different site, which we have since shut down. We also deactivated the license from your panel, in order to use it on the domain shown in the screenshots. When we check the license key via the “Search License” section, it appears as if it was purchased in 1970. You can also see the current layout issues and errors in the screenshots we’ve included.

We purchased Total because we liked it and trusted your sales reputation. However, we are facing an issue with this theme that we haven’t encountered with any of the other themes we’ve used. We cannot open a support ticket, so we’re reaching out here. We urgently request your assistance.

The theme and plugins have been installed correctly, there are no server restrictions, but as seen in the screenshots, there is distortion and malfunction. The license never activates — the license key upload button keeps spinning when we enter the key and click activate.

Here are the screenshots: https://hizliresim.com/19j1fri https://hizliresim.com/5ybwiri https://hizliresim.com/ooly2s3 https://hizliresim.com/74io7y9 https://hizliresim.com/2wrbp07

Hi,

Looking at the screenshots, it does appear that the theme’s CSS and Javascript files are not loading on the site. This can happen either if the theme was not fully installed or more likely an issue with server side file permissions (which can often happen if the theme was uploaded via FTP).

Sine the license activation functionality in the theme uses AJAX (javascript) if the scripts aren’t loaded, the form won’t work.

Please email me directly at wpexplorer [at] gmail dot com with the site logins so I can have a look for you. Opening the browser console while logged into the site should be able to tell me right away what’s going on. Of course it’s impossible to know exactly from the screenshots, but the most likely cause is that your server file permissions aren’t properly set so when the browser tries to load the CSS and Javascript from the theme it’s defined access.

- AJ

ps: I will double check the year on the purchase date on the support site, this is likely just a bug in my coding that converts the timestamp from the Envato API to a readable date – thank you for reporting that.

I sent the admin user information with the email you provided, can you check and help us to solve this problem

Hi,

The logins you sent didn’t work for me, I replied back a while ago. Please have a look. I live in the US so it’s very late here.

I’m pretty sure, based on the screenshots, that the issue is a server file permissions issue. You could try re-uploading the theme (you don’t have to delete it first, you can just re-upload and override the current version).

I tried to check what hosting your site is using and it appears to be guzel.net.tr – I did some research to see if this hosting company offers any built-in setting to reset your server file permissions (most WP hosting companies do) and it doesn’t look like it’s offered. So if there is a problem with your server’s file permissions this may be something you need to contact the hosting company about.

I will try and stay awake for a couple more hours though incase you reply back to my email with the proper logins.

- AJ

Thank you for the information. Yes, I contacted with the server, it is about the server file permissions and activated the license, you’re perfect. Thank you

Now I am having another problem which I cannot import demos, and demo page seems different: https://hizliresim.com/mv4nzpg

Hi,

This is intended behaviour as the CSS hides the product title from the table and then inserts it using CSS – https://a.cl.ly/YEuE8YpD – via the data-title attribute which is added to the td element.

This allows for “breaking” out of the table layout so the cart can be responsive.

So you should still see the title, if you don’t see the title it means either the data-title attribute is missing or empty or there is some other CSS on the site breaking the pseudo ::before element.

Can you share the URL in question so I can have a look?

- AJ

Hi AJ, the website is https://advanced-keys.co.uk/basket/. The prices are hidden with a login to view prices thing but you should still be able to add something to the cart.

Hi,

Ok, it looks like in the latest WooCommerce update they for some reason changed the product title cell from a th to a td so the theme’s CSS no longer works correct. My live demo was not updated yet which is why my code was not matching yours.

In fact, it’s broken in the core plugin as well – if I test WooCommerce without the theme they haven’t fixed their CSS either to adjust for these changes.

Anyway, I fixed the issue in the upcoming Total 6.4 update. I’m still not completely done with the 6.4 update though and I need to fully test it as well before releasing the update.

But if you want here is the patched CSS file: https://a.cl.ly/7Kurxm87

You can Download > Extract > Replace the file via FTP under Total/assets/css/frontend/woocommerce/

Now, there is one other “issue” with the change WooCommerce made is that your product titles are now “bold” and they were not before. The fix for this is in another file that I can’t send to you because it has other changes that require a full update. But having the text bold isn’t necessarily site breaking. But it can be fixed with this temp CSS if wanted:

.shop_table th:where(.product-name[scope=row]) {
    color: inherit;
    font-weight: inherit;
}

Then edit Total/functions.php and change the WPEX_THEME_VERSION constant at the top of the file from 6.3 to 6.3.1 (this will update the version number of the files to prevent caching issues). The next version will be 6.4 so using 6.3.1 won’t prevent you from updating normally later on.

Thank you for reporting this!

- AJ

Thanks AJ, i have replaced that CSS file to fix the issue before total 6.4. Thanks for your great support as always.

Adam

Sorry AJ i forgot to add one thing. Do you think it would be possible to add a ‘Login to view prices’ option built into the theme for woocommerce? for wholesale websites. At the moment the options out there are a bit clunky, this would be a great feature imo

Hi,

If you just wanted a simple “login to view prices: notice on product pages and prices hidden that’s very simple to do and I can give you a few lines of code. But if you want to have the same functionality like what’s on your site now where anywhere a price is shown is converted into a log-in link, this is much more complicated and involves quite a bit of code.

Because of this, it’s best done via a plugin rather then caked into a theme. This way, only the customers that need it (so far you have been the only request) will have all the extra code on their site. No pint in making the theme much larger for everyone, when very few people need the functionality. In fact, 99% of websites using this theme aren’t even using WooCommerce.

Now, looking at your site I see that something is turning the price into a link to login, but it’s still using the “price” classname (as opposed to a different class to prevent conflicts) so the text ends up quite large in some places.

You may want to add this CSS to your site to fix that:

.woocommerce .product .summary .price {
    font-size: inherit;
}

It also looks like this plugin inserts the actual price as soon as you choose a variation – https://a.cl.ly/yAuq4mGj – so it seems like it may have a bug :/

Let me know though, if you just want to hide prices and insert a notice under each product title or button and on the cart, I can give you the code for this – I’m not sure exactly what it would be off the top of my head, but I have an idea and it should be very easy.

- AJ

Hi,

This is AJ the theme author. Sorry, but I’m not quite sure what you are asking.

Do you want to display a different image if a featured image isn’t set?

If so, there isn’t a built-in option as it’s generally not recommended (for SEO, accessibility and site speed reasons) – however, there are theme functions that make it possible.

If you are working with entries (archives or showing posts on pages) you can create a custom card – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/custom-card-builder/ – when you add the Image element to your custom card you can define a fallback image when setting the “Source” to “Featured Image”. This will work as a placeholder.

The same thing can be done when creating dynamic templates for your post design – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/dynamic-templates/ – again, you can insert the Image element, set the source to featured image and then define a fallback image.

See this screenshot: https://a.cl.ly/Z4u4Pj1Z

- AJ

Yes, I want to put in temporary placeholder images for wireframe purposes.

Hi Paul,

Gradients are a bit complicated and I’ve wondered how to properly introduce these because gradients are actually background images so I can’t just easily change the theme’s color picker to allow you to define a gradient because for certain elements/contexts this could break actual image based backgrounds.

There are also some concerns when setting things up so that gradients can work with Dark mode – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/dark-mode/ – I do hope to introduce gradients in the future, but it’s a big endeavor (probably a month or so of work). And I really need to think hard about how to introduce it so it’s efficient, works with all theme features and it’s not hard to use.

It would also require introducing some sort of ‘gradient builder’ for creating the gradients. Which I would likely use the Gutenberg one already available in core – https://wordpress.github.io/gutenberg/?path=/docs/components-gradientpicker--docs – but getting this to work inside the context of WPBakery is a bit tricky (adding the theme’s “simple” color picker was quite complex).

My thought to keep things slim would be to have an option when defining your color palette – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/color-palette/ – to choose a type (standard or gradient). This way the theme can know if a defined color is a gradient or not by looking at the meta. Then I can have the color palette selector show the gradient choices only where it’s possible (like the row overlay background). Eventually it would be nice to be able to use your gradients on text as well, but this becomes more complex as that involves using the background-clip property – so allowing for example the heading element to have both a solid background color and a gradient color wouldn’t be possible without some big modifications..so I need to figure out how to handle those cases.

I welcome all suggestions/feedback if you have any! I’m a solo company over here, so the only people I have to bounce ideas off of are my customers (maybe a good thing?).

For the meantime you can use the Overlay option and just add a solid color, then you can target the overlay with some custom CSS. To do this, give your row a unique classname like “row-w-gradient-1-overlay” then target the overlay element:

.row-w-gradient-1-overlay .wpex-bg-overlay { your gradient css here }

- AJ

Hi Paul,

The “Full Width Columns on Tablets” Option simply uses this CSS:

@media (min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 959px) {
    .tablet-fullwidth-columns :is(.vc_vc_column,.wpb_column) {
        width: 100% !important;
        margin-left: 0 !important;
        margin-right: 0 !important;
        height: auto !important;
    }
}

I tested though anyway and couldn’t recreate any issues with the columns not showing at their correct widths. Do you have a sample page I can look at?

- AJ

Hi AJ,

See here – https://total.style960.com/contact-us

First row is 2 columns set to full width on tablet, no issue. Second row is the same but with the first column set to 1/3 and the second column 2/3. View the second column at 992px vs 991px – at 991px both columns become 1/2

Paul

Hi Paul,

When inspecting the page, the 2 rows appear to be using different approaches to the column widths. See this screenshot: https://a.cl.ly/P8uqdznZ

The way the second row is coded would imply that the column widths were set using the Responsive Options tab for each column so it’s only being applied from the md breakpoint and higher.

Can you double check?

The theme itself doesn’t modify the column width classes, when you enable the Full Width on Tablet setting the only thing that happens is that the theme adds the classname “tablet-fullwidth-columns” to the vc row.

- AJ

Hi AJ,

That’s correct, responsive options were used on the second column. So how could I have two columns that were for example 1/3rd / 2/3rd on desktop, but full width from tablet and below?

Paul.

Actually this issue has nothing to do with full width columns being enabled or not. If you use the responsive options to set different column widths, they always become 50/50 at 991px.

Hi,

The WPBakery responsive column options are “mobile first” and they use the default set column widths then change at the breakpoint defined in the per-column option.

So, lets say you start with a row that is 50-50 – https://a.cl.ly/eDuDvR57 – this will be used at the stacking breakpoint and higher.

If you were to then go into each column to adjust the width at different breakpoints (which you would only do if you want it different then the global defined setting for the row) you need to choose the correct breakpoint at which you want to change the widths – https://a.cl.ly/nOuOwvb9

It sounds like you were perhaps modifying the first responsive option on the column which would swap the width at the desktop breakpoint, thus it would swap to the default 1/2 width defined on the row.

Make sense?

WPBakery has a guide here – https://wpbakery.com/blog/guide-to-responsive-settings-in-wpbakery/ – it’s not terrible, but it seems AI generated. The whole top part is weird and not useful to someone that wants to learn just how to modify the column widths. I will go ahead and write something on the Total docs which hopefully better explains how to control WPBakery column widths at different breakpoints.

- AJ

ps: This is somewhat related, I just updated the article on adding space between columns if interested: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/add-space-columns/ – I will write the article on responsive widths after releasing the 6.4 update (I’m a bit behind because I got really sick last week).

Hi AJ,

I can set different column widths now and add custom column classes to add extra spacing, all fine. This is using the option ‘full width columns on tablet’. However when those columns stack at 958px the top margin applied as a test to the second column doesn’t work. At 957px it’s applied. Why would that be?

Also, on the same site, the logo jumps to 364px wide when the customizer widths from desktop, tablet, mobile are 280px, 270px, 210px. What causes that?

URL is https://total.style960.com/contact

Hope you’re feeling better now.

Thanks, Paul.

Update! I found that the ‘Posts by Author or Current Staff Member’ works fine is the author is a registered ‘user’.

However, to make it easier for my client, I am using the ‘Assign Staff as Author for Total’ plug-in to assign articles to staff members instead of having to set-up all the staff as registered users. The function doesn’t work in this case.

Is there a work-around?

Hi,

Thank you for your patience over the weekend, hope you had a good one.

Ok, so for starters you did create a dynamic template for your staff members right? This way the carousel is automatically displayed on all the staff member pages rather than added manually? https://totalwptheme.com/docs/dynamic-templates/

Everything is coded to work as you would expect, but I see a potential issue.

If you have assigned the user to the staff member via the user profile setting – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/link-wordpress-user-to-staff-member/ – the Post Cards element is going to try and locate posts that are assigned to that user. This means the user would need to be set as an author and assigned to the post via the standard WordPress post author function. No need for the “Assign as Author” plugin.

If you do NOT connect the staff member via the profile page, then the theme will locate posts based on theme’s Staff Author field. So you should not register the users, you should only be connecting them via the field added by the plugin.

Can you try deleting the user and just using the “Staff Author” field added by the theme? When I test this is working as expected. If it’s not working let me know. Since your support has expired you can’t open a new private ticket but I can go into Helpscout and find an old ticket and reply to it so we can start a new thread.

Also, if you are displaying standard posts make sure to enable the “Exclude Sticky Posts” option – WordPress will always display sticky posts regardless of the query when displaying standard posts.

- AJ