Hi there,

This is AJ, the theme author.

I’ve replied to all your support tickets,

Here are screenshots of all my replies:

• https://a.cl.ly/Blu6vXgE
• https://a.cl.ly/Z4u8NbPO
• https://a.cl.ly/p9um2RxE

Could you take a quick look and make sure my replies aren’t ending up in your spam folder?

I’m usually pretty good at replying promptly, if you ever don’t see a response within 48 hours, please leave me a comment here so we can get the matter resolved ASAP.

Thanks so much!

AJ

Hi,

This is Aj the theme author.

By default the core WordPress next/previous functions don’t loop and it actually requires some complex code to make this possible. So, the default prev/next links that show up in the portfolio single post design can’t allow for this.

However, if you create a dynamic template – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/dynamic-templates/ – for your portfolio items and use the theme’s Next Previous element instead of the default links inserted at the bottom of the page which does include the ability to enable looping.

Here is a video from this demo – https://totalwpthemedemo.com/nick-miller/ – showing how I created the dynamic template and added the next/prev links: https://a.cl.ly/mXuOvy76 (notice in the video how I’ve disabled the default next/prev at the bottom as this is always inserted regardless if a dynamic template is used or not).

If you want to quickly create a dynamic template you can also use the theme’s demo inspector took on any theme demo that is using a custom portfolio template (Biz, Nick Miller, Nouveau, Victor Bros) to copy/paste the template onto your site and then tweak it to your liking: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/demo-page-inspector/

Creating a dynamic template will allow you to also control your portfolio item design globally so you can make other tweaks in the future if wanted. Plus, it will allow you to not have to use any page builder on the actual portfolio items (you can use Gutenberg/Classic editor only) keeping everything slimmer, faster and easier to add/manage your portfolio items.

- AJ

Hi Philippe,

The best solution is to update your theme to the latest version: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/update-theme/ – which uses the new X icon by default.

Otherwise you can use custom CSS to replace the icon targeting the element and using an inline SVG as a background-image on the element. This would be a customization outside the scope of support.

If you need any help updating your theme or have any issues updating let me know! For security reasons it’s also important to keep your site always up to date.

- AJ

I change back to the header builder and I can’t make it full width? https://theminingrecorddev12292025.hosting.pinbn.net/

Also when you scroll the background changes, where is that coming from?

AJ?

Hi,

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

Elementor changed how their builder worked a while back and removed the ability for Full-Width rows using javascript. In order to support this without breaking sites that were updating to the latest version of Total is that I added a new option at Theme Panel > Elementor Container Compatibility that’s enabled for new installations but for anyone updating the theme it would need to be enabled manually.

Your site appears to have this option disabled. Enabling this option will allow Elementor’s new container system to work correctly with the theme and your header will display full-screen by default with it’s content centered.

Please enable the option, then check other parts or your site to ensure they still display correctly.

Enabling this option, will also ensure that your theme’s Site Widths: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/customize-your-layout-widths/ – work correctly with the latest version of Elementor.

Alternatively you can just add this custom CSS to your site:

body:not(.wpex-e-con-compat) .header-builder-inner:has(.e-con-full) { width: 100%; max-width: none; }

Under Theme Panel > Custom CSS for a quick fix without enabling the new Elementor Container Compatibility option.

I do see that your site is making use of the theme builder for pretty much each section of the site and if you enable the option, you may need to also go into the Customizer to adjust the site widths as your site layout will change a bit when enabling that option. So perhaps adding the CSS is the best fix here.

I will be adding this CSS in the next theme update as well, so thank you for bringing that to my attention!

I think you figured out the background changing as I see your site has been updated. This would be from the Transparent Header functionality which you had enabled, which by default swaps the header styles so you can have an effect like this: https://totalwpthemedemo.com/biz/

- AJ

Hi,

The button element adds an inline style tag for it’s custom styles. The reason you are seeing the code is because something is stripping out the style tag – this generally happens when code is passed through the WordPress wp_kses_post function.

I see your buttons are inside a custom plugin named “post-grid”, my guess is that plugin is doing some sort of sanitization of the entries which strips out the style tags causing the inner CSS to just render as text. Can you try reaching out to the plugin developer so they can fix this?

If you copy the buttons to a blank page and you don’t have the issue, that can help test to ensure it is a conflict with that grid plugin.

2 alternatives if the issue is with the plugin and they won’t fix the issue:

1) You don’t need a 3rd party plugin to create custom grids. You can create custom “Cards” in Total and use the Post Cards element to display them – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/custom-card-builder/

2) You can edit the buttons and remove any of the custom styling from the button (font size, font weight, capitalize) and instead use utility classes – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/css-framework-utility-classes/ – specifically: wpex-text-sm, wpex-font-semibold and wpex-capitalize

- AJ

Hi,

The Paris demo doesn’t have a slider, but it does have a fixed background image on the row itself. This can be edited in WPBakery via the Row settings. I made a little video to show you: https://a.cl.ly/mXuO2kQW

- AJ

Hi,

You can always add your license under Theme Panel > Theme License as mentioned on the docs: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/activate-theme-license/

If your license is currently active on another site or was registered on a different domain and you need to switch it, you can log in and manage your licenses here: https://my.totalwptheme.com/ – once logged in you can click on “License Manager” at the top to view your license and de-register any license to make it available again.

- AJ

Thank you, I hope you do too!!

I was able to recreate this bug in the latest version of WPBakery, but it seems to be a visual bug only because the value is still saved in the HTML it just doesn’t show up in the field. Very strange! Looking into this right now so I can patch it.

I was hoping to release an update today, but I introduced new fluid spacing options and unfortunately during my testing I noticed it’s not working in Firefox so I’m having to revise this. So hopefully the update will be ready tomorrow if not asap.

Thank you for reporting this bug!

- AJ

Looks like if you edit the element and save it will remove your custom field name, darn. I did manage to fix the bug though and so it will be patched in the next update. If you need a manual patch right now, you can download and extract this file: https://a.cl.ly/04uwEnLl – and replace via FTP under plugins/total-theme-core/assets/js/admin/wpbakery/ – then clear your browser cache.

Thank you again for reporting the bug! It’s actually been around for a long time now and I’m surprised no one else had noticed.

Which by the way, if you are adding the custom field names manually I suspect you may be adding your custom fields manually as well. If you are using the theme’s meta class – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/how-to-add-custom-fields/#php-class – if you add ‘public’ => true, to a field it will make it show up in the select field above so you don’t have to type it in manually

- AJ

Hi Charles,

Sorry for the delayed reply and thank you for reporting the issue.

There is an error in the staging site check so its actually looking for staging-2.* (with an extra dash before the number). I have patched this for the upcoming update. So currently if you swap your domain to staging-2.* it will properly display the staging checkbox and I will leave this for backwards compatibility in the update.

Now, just so you know the only thing activating the license does is enable updates via the WP admin. So if you need to run “tests” that don’t involve updating the theme there is no need to activate the license at all.

- AJ

Hi,

You can easily display the last modified date but doing it depends on how your site is set up. I wrote a new doc article to show you how you can display it: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/how-to-display-the-last-modified-date/

Let me know if you have any questions or issues!

- AJ

Okay, thanks. Let me explain: I’d like to add the word “updated” next to the update date. I’ll try uploading this image to better understand: https://ibb.co/qYB4wCWH

Oh ok!

From what I remember you don’t use WPBakery or Elementor and you only use Gutenberg, so creating a custom template for your design isn’t really possible but you can use a little code snippet to do what you want.

Here is a sample code:

function studiotecnicopagliai_edit_modified_date( $date ) {
    if ( $date ) {
        $date = "Updated {$date}";
    }
    return $date;
}

add_action( 'wpex_hook_content_top', function() {
    add_filter( 'get_the_modified_date', 'studiotecnicopagliai_edit_modified_date' );
} );

add_action( 'wpex_hook_content_after', function() {
    remove_filter( 'get_the_modified_date', 'studiotecnicopagliai_edit_modified_date', 10 );
} );

You can add this to a child theme functions.php file or via a “Code Snippets” plugin.

- AJ

Hi,

This is AJ the theme author. Most likely if you see this notice it’s because the domain has changed. For example it was updated from http to https or from a non www to a www url or vice versa.

You can simply log in here – https://my.totalwptheme.com/ – go to the License Manager and from here you can view the registered domain and you can easily de-activate the license from wherever it’s registered. Then you can log back into your site and re-add the license to ensure it’s registered to the correct domain.

Let me know if you have any questions or issues with that!

- AJ

Thanks so much AJ! That did the trick.

Hi,

I’m doing well thanks, hope you are as well.

To start, when you use page builders like WPBakery with Total it really doesn’t add much at all in terms of “bloat” especially when you enable WPBakery Slim mode in the Theme Panel. Have a look here: https://a.cl.ly/z8u2kJ0K – 6.8kb for a css file is literally nothing.

Even if you added up all the CSS in the theme and WPBakery it’s going to be less kb then simply adding a single image to your site. And CSS is cached by the browser so it’s really just loading those the very first time a user visits a site and once they start browsing it’s just loading from cache so it’s not adding any extra loading time.

I often see people get really bogged up on micro-optimizing sites for no reason.

If you are truly worried about the little bit of css/js then you really should be creating a website with nothing but text and also probably not even using WordPress and just creating a static HTML site.

You can technically use dynamic templates without any page builder and manually insert HTML into the WordPress editor but that seems strange. If you wanted to create “dynamic templates” without a page builder then you would really disable the whole Dynamic Templates via the theme builder to remove the admin side and in your child theme create custom template files to override template output or hook into the totaltheme/theme_builder/do_{$location} hook to modify the output of any section of the site (toggle bar, top bar, header, post, callout, footer, etc).

Personally for this site specifically, if you are using WordPress, you may just want to go with a Gutenbeg block theme. To be honest Gutenberg is fairly quick and un-bloated (just like using WPBakery with Total). Undescores is not a block theme, so I wouldn’t recommend it. With a block theme, you have access to the theme editor so you can create custom templates if wanted right in WordPress without additional bloat as it’s already part of WordPress core.

I actually have plans next year to create some new Gutenberg block themes based on new Total demos. This way, if a customer only wants a specific demo design but they don’t want any 3rd party page builders (Elementor/WPBakery) they can instead purchase the block theme for that specific demo only and at a more affordable price.

Now, I started offering a new service for custom theme builds that starts a $4,500. I have a couple customers currently in the queue. Basically, I send you a Google form with a bunch of questions and you can select what you want or don’t want inside the theme, your branding, etc. Then you have a customized theme (similar to Total) that you can do whatever you want with (even re-sell it if you wish).

This will be your custom theme, so it won’t receive any updates or changes in the future and will work exactly how you want it to. But you can hire me in the future at an hourly rate if you wish to make changes or fixes to the custom theme. If that is something you would be interested in you can email me at wpexplorer [at] gmail dot com.

- AJ

Hi,

It looks like your license is currently registered to a different domain – je*b.sg-host.com – you can simply log in to the license manager to remove the license – https://my.totalwptheme.com/license-manager/- this way you can add it on the proper domain.

Since the staging site that your license was registered to isn’t live, I went ahead and de-activated it so you don’t have to. Now you can add it to your site

- AJ

nevermind – using dev tools the AI came through:
.vc_separator.yellow-text > h4 { color: #f2c200 !important; }<br /> putting this here in case anyone else wants to do this! Now to figure out how to change the Load More button.

This is a core WPBakery element.

For more control, I would recommend using instead the theme’s Heading element and set the Style to “Side Border” and center the text to get the same look as the Separator with Text element.

Sample video: https://a.cl.ly/E0uQKWKR

Using the theme’s elements instead of the WPBakery will generally give you much more flexibility.

Plus, for SEO it’s best to use the theme’s Heading element because then you can control the HTML tag and not forced to use an h4 which is what the Separator with Text element uses.

- AJ

The load more button (if talking about the theme’s Post Cards element) uses your global button styles which you can control in the customizer: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/button-colors/ – for usability and accessibility it’s generally best for all buttons on your site to have the same look.

But if you wanted to target it separately, you could with some custom css, which I can help with. But I would need to know which load more button exactly as there are several – default archives if selected in the customizer, archives created with post types unlimited, the Post Cards element, the older Post Types Grid element or WPBakery’s Post Grid (this last element isn’t recommended).

- AJ

Hi,

This is Aj the theme author.

You can definitely view the changelog in the theme details. Here is a sample video: https://a.cl.ly/mXuOPRx6 – I am linking to the whole changelog though, because if a user is updating from a very old version it’s best that they see a list of all updates if they want to view changes for each version they’ve missed out on.

I used to link to only the latest version, but many customers requested that I instead link to the main changelog page.

If this isn’t working for you, perhaps there is a bug in your WordPress installation. I can help troubleshoot that if you wish.

Some theme’s put the changelog inside their theme’s which makes it very difficult to find. I like having it on a live site so users can easily find it via Google (if you Google search “Total Theme Changelog” it’s the first result. and/or bookmark it for quick access. Also it allows me to display it in a much easier to read way.

Of course if you have some suggestions on how to make things easier, please let me know! I’m constantly improving not only my theme but also my docs.

- AJ

Based on your feedback. I’ve gone ahead and added 2 fixed links in the theme description that will show up always whether there is an update or not: https://a.cl.ly/llupkQjv – I think others will find it useful.

Hello AJ, thank you for your response. Our website is https://www.das-art.nl/ The image slider is set in a row format of 1/4 + 1/2 + 1/4 (under ‘works’) and when you click on it you will be linked to an image slider in a portfolio item in a row format of 1/2 + 1/2. The images are now 960×1280 px created in Canva and compressed with compressor.io to a size of about 500kb. Thank you, Astrid

Hi Astrid,

In terms of the size, this is a good size because they still look sharp to me on a 5K retina iMac.

And I tested a couple images and they seem pretty well optimized in their current format, however if you were to convert them to webP format it could save up to 80% so a 500kb image may end up being closer to 100kb.

Re-uploading the images could be a pain though, so you could try using a plugin instead to convert them. I personally haven’t tested any personally, but doing a quick search this plugin seems to offer conversion to webP in the free version – https://wordpress.org/plugins/webp-converter-for-media/ – and it has good ratings. So you could try installing a plugin to convert existing images and then delete the plugin and in the future just upload webP optimized images to start.

- Aj

Hello AJ thank you for your reply! This is of great help. Thank you and the best wishes for 2026. Astrid

Done! Thank you for the heads up!

- AJ

added to the Icon Box as well – update planned for tomorrow or the next day as there is a WP 6.9 debug notice that needs fixing.

Hi Paul,

You can use this CSS for a temp fix to prevent the sidebar from being sticky when the columns stack:

@media (max-width: 959px) {
     .wpex-vc_row-has-sidebar > .wpex-sticky { position: static; }
}

It’s a bit tricky to add a “fix” directly in the theme as you can control the sidebar and content widths via the customizer so the theme doesn’t really “know” when the 2 of them stack.

Other alternatives:

• Add the sticky class to the menu instead the column so the heading isn’t sticky (most common).

• Use an inner row and add the sticky class to that row instead of the column.

• Use the left sidebar layout, enable sticky in the Customizer, then create a separate dynamic template “part” for the sidebar content and display that via a widget. You can create custom widget areas for different parts of your site – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/custom-sidebars-advanced/

- AJ

Sorry I’m missing which of these places the sidebar below the content? The CSS if fine for me but the stack order is wrong.

You can use the “float columns right” option as you mentioned, but you need to then make sure to change the row setting “Use Content/Sidebar Layout” so that it’s set to “Right Column is Sidebar” – which may seem a bit counterintuitive but technically even though the sidebar is displayed on the left technically you are using the “right” column for the sidebar as the columns will be shown in the opposite order.

So, the way to correctly do that is:

• Insert 2 column row
• Add your widget stuff in the right sidebar.
• Add your content stuff in the left sidebar,
• Enable the “Float Columns Right” option which will swap the order.
• Choose “Right Column is Sidebar” for the “Use Content/Sidebar Layout”.

Note: If you are using the WPBakery page builder to create the sidebar in the template and the sidebar is below the content when it stacks, you shouldn’t need the extra CSS because the sidebar will be shown after the content when stacked so there is no room left for it to become sticky within it’s parent content.

Additionally, if you use the 3rd alternative method I provided previously, which is to use the actual sidebar layout for the page instead of creating the sidebar with WPBakery, you can control the sidebar placement on mobile via the Customizer: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/sidebar-mobile-placement/

- AJ

Hi Wade,

Your license is registered to https://gen.........ng.co.nz but your actual site is https://www.gen.... (has www) so it doesn’t match what is on record. I’ve manually updated the domain so you don’t have to. If you see a dashboard notice though (it gets cached to prevent constant requests) visiting Theme Panel > Theme License will clear that up!

- AJ

Thanks AJ – All sorted. Very much appreciated.