Oh, sorry I made 2 mistakes in my reply!

1. The [span] shortcode doesn’t accept a ‘color’ parameter, instead you would use a classname. Ideally your colors would be in the color palette – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/color-palette/ – then you can use the classname like such:

[span class="has-palette-ID-color"]

If you just want to use blackscale colors, the theme has some options though built-in: https://totalwptheme.com/css-framework/text-color/ – so you could use wpex-text-gray-600 which is similar to 808080.

2. The text needs to be defined in a param. So this is the proper usage:

Eye level is the best [span class="wpex-text-gray-600" text="level"]

Of course the theme’s Custom Title field will allow HTML though if you really prefer that’s totally fine

- AJ

Awesome! Thank you AJ! I noticed my support has expired – I need to purchase a new license – 33 purchased so far!!

No worries about the support, I’m always here to help

Thank you for all the purchases, customers like you have allowed me to keep the theme supported and updated for so many years!

- AJ

ps: It’s also a good idea to compare your current theme version with the changelog here: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/changelog/. If the theme license isn’t properly registered or if there are server-related issues you may not see the update notifications in the dashboard, which can make it seem like everything is already updated even when it’s not.

Hi AJ, deleting the WPBakery Plugin and than reinstall it does the trick. Thanks for your support!

Glad it was an easy fix!

Hi,

As you mentioned the shortcode uses the core pll_the_languages function, which is the Polylang function recommended for displaying their language switcher anywhere. So if there is an issue with their function you’ll want to report it to them so they can fix it.

Now, I was testing locally and I notice that if the category doesn’t have any translated posts it will redirect to the homepage, but as soon as you add a post it does work correctly.

I recorded a quick video: https://a.cl.ly/X6uyPEov

This issue is also reported here: https://github.com/polylang/polylang/issues/174 – which unfortunately was tagged “wontfix”.

I think this is perhaps the same issue you are having. In which case the code provided by cfaria on Gihub seems to work well:

// Allow polylang redirection to existing terms even if there are empty
add_filter( 'pll_hide_archive_translation_url', '__return_false' );

But it’s not something I would add to the theme as it’s un-intended plugin behaviour.

If this is not the issue you are having, you may need to reach out to Polylang for further troubleshooting.

- AJ

BTW, this is a sample of a product page that I’m having trouble with: https://dogsofcourse.com/events/virtual-nose-work-camp-winter-2026/

Hi,

This is Aj the theme author. I hope you had a nice weekend!

By default it should remain open like on my demos – https://totalwpthemedemo.com/bolt/product/black-shoe/

When inspecting your site, I don’t see the theme’s Off Canvas cart enabled, so I’m assuming you’ve temporarily disabled it.

In terms of the cart auto closing, my only guess is that a 3rd party plugin is creating a conflict.

I can see that you’re using a custom setup for your product variations, including a custom AJAX add-to-cart button and a custom popup when items are added to the cart. This setup may be causing the conflict.

The theme’s Off-Canvas Cart is configured to automatically open when an item is added to the cart or when the cart button is clicked, and it only closes when the user clicks outside of the off-canvas area. It’s possible that another script is triggering a focus change or an external click event, which could cause the cart to close automatically. That’s likely what’s happening here.

- AJ

ps: I noticed in your custom CSS you have some code that looks like this:

button {
    margin-bottom: 20px !important;
}

This adds a bottom margin to all buttons, so it’s going to break certain layouts, such as buttons on the cart/checkout pages. I’m not sure where you wanted that bottom margin specifically, but it would be a good idea to target only that button and not all site buttons. This code can also break buttons used for elements like sliders, carousels, close buttons (like on popups, mobile menus), etc. If you would like I can assist with tweaking this code, I just need to know which button you want to target.

Thanks AJ, I’m going to bring in my dev to look at it, but if he can’t pin it down, I may be back! Thanks as always for being so thorough on your response.

Hi,

It sounds like you may be experiencing an issue with max string length on your server. Can you try the fix suggested here: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/fix-backend-issues-on-godaddy/

I’ve personally only experienced the issue with shared (not the managed WP) Godaddy servers (hence the doc article name) but it can definitely happen on any server.

- AJ

Hi AJ,

This fix worked, thank you!!

Josh

Glad it was an easy fix Josh, I hope you had a nice weekend!

Let me know if there is anything else I can assist with.

- AJ

I entered 2 support tickets and have not heard back from you

Sorry for the delayed reply.

I’ll respond both here and on the latest ticket.

I can see that you’ve already added some custom CSS to address the issue. I made a small tweak to it to also include a background color, since it wasn’t very clear which option was currently selected.

The root of the issue is that, by default, WooCommerce applies a blue background with white text to select fields on hover. In Total, that blue background is replaced with the site’s accent color to better match the design. In your case, the accent color is set to white, which results in both the background and text being white.

I’ll be adding a fix for this in the next theme update (thanks for bringing it to my attention). The text color should be pulled from the “On Accent” color instead, which will prevent this type of issue.

That said, there is another configuration issue on your site, which is that both your Accent and On-Accent colors are currently set to white (see here: https://a.cl.ly/Kou2XygQ)https://a.cl.ly/Kou2XygQ). The On-Accent color is used for text displayed on top of accent-colored backgrounds, so this setup can lead to white text on a white background in other areas as well. If you’d like to keep white as your accent color, I recommend changing the On-Accent color to a contrasting option such as black or dark gray.

Based on your site though, I would say your Accent color would be better set to orange though (#FF7F00) which you are using as an accent color in various places.

– AJ

Hi Aj, Thank you so much for getting back to me! I followed your instructions, and it looks like most of the issues are resolved. I believe the main culprits were the “Featured Image” and “Image Banner” elements, although both are still causing some trouble. For example, when I change the image size to thumbnail in the element settings, the entire page either doesn’t load or shows a 503 error. Another issue is that the logo in the header doesn’t load fully. I’ve created an admin account for you — please check your email. Thank you!!

Hi,

I tried using the password reset but I’m not getting the email (checked SPAM).

Now, based on what you’ve said, it sounds like there is an issue processing images, more specifically cropped images – if selecting a size is causing issues.

When inspecting your site it appears that images are being “optimized” through a 3rd party plugin as they are using javascript to lazy load and they are linking to a CDN (sp-ao.shortpixel.ai). My guess is that whenever you switch image sizes it’s trying to re-generate and save that image on the CDN (shortpixel) and timing out or it’s crashing as it tries to load it.

Can you try disabling any image optimizing plugins to see if you still have issues?

Which, by the way, using JavaScript to lazy load images is old-fashioned. Modern browsers can do this on their own, so adding JavaScript actually slows things down instead of speeding them up.

In regards to the logo being cropped off, this is an issue with the image itself being cropped by that shortpixel plugin. See here: https://a.cl.ly/z8u2jZer – it seems like shortpixel is cropping the original images. My guess is this is some sort of “optimization” for images that are larger than their “rendered” size, but it’s simply cutting the image in half, not actually resizing it properly.

My personal recommendation would be to disable the Shortpixel plugin completely. If you want to optimize your site images you can temporarily install a plugin that will optimize and convert them to webP format then remove the plugin after it runs. For future images you upload to your site you can optimize them prior to upload using a free service such as this – https://tinypng.com/

Then, if you need a CDN, because the server is slow or you want to limit server usage, you can use a free CDN such CloudFlare.

That’s just my personal preference. I would rather have my images optimized once and not constantly running and/or paying for a service – which in most cases is simply unnecessary.

From what I can tell, your site is currently on HostGator, which depending on the plan could be a budget solution. I don’t personally recommend that hosting, although if you are going to use it, you should at least make sure you are on the WordPress specific plan. The WordPress hosting plan also supports CloudFlare built-in according to their docs – https://www.hostgator.com/help/article/cloudflare-cdn-overview

If you are currently paying for shortpixel, it may be worth instead switching to a better hosting solution that doesn’t require any extra image optimization services. These are the hosting services I’ve used and recommend: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/recommended-services-plugins/#toc-hosting

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns!

-AJ

Thank you so much for your help and advice AJ! It’s very helpful!!

Hi James,

Yes, that’s expected behavior with YouTube videos.

Because it’s a YouTube embed, those UI elements are controlled by YouTube and can’t be fully disabled. WPBakery loads the video inside an iframe, so we don’t have control over what YouTube chooses to show.

YouTube sometimes shows those overlays only on initial load or before the video is fully cached, then fades them out. From what I understand there is no way to reliably hide them :/

The only way to guarantee a completely clean video background is to use a self-hosted video.

That’s generally recommended anyway, since YouTube can throttle playback, change behavior, or force new UI at any time. With a self-hosted video, the behavior is fully under your control and only impacted if the site itself has issues.

AJ

HI,

This is AJ the theme author.

If you log into the site here – https://my.totalwptheme.com/ and click on the License Manager at the top of the site you can then un-register your license from the site it’s registered to.

I had a look and because you have logged into the site before I was able to locate your license and unregister it for you so you don’t have to. You should be able to properly use it on the live site now.

The license manager won’t automatically un-register a license as that would require constantly pinging your site to see if it’s currently live or not – this puts strain on both of our servers and can also cause issues on sites that are in the process of migrating servers or performing server updates. Licenses need to be managed manually.

Additionally, the reason you may not have seen a duplicate license error in the past is because the theme didn’t make these checks in the past and they were recently added in the last update as I discovered there were quite a few sites illegally distributing the theme with a license manually coded into the theme which in the past would have worked. I added additional checks so the theme will validate the license every so often to ensure it’s properly registered to the current site.

Let me know if you have any issues now or if there is anything else I can assist with!

- AJ

Hi AJ, thank you very much for the fast response and helping out. The problem is now solved. Regards Hermann

Hi,

The Dynamic Templates are translatable by default via the included wpml-config.xml file, which Polylang uses as well. If you check your Polylang settings you should see it’s enabled for translation: https://a.cl.ly/X6uyLg05

I just tested and it’s working correctly: https://a.cl.ly/NQuGm2wx

- AJ

.

Hi again,

You’re right. I just noticed that we hadn’t properly assigned the GR to EN translation.

Thank you, and sorry for the inconvenience.

HI,

This is AJ the theme author.

These errors would suggest that your server is not allowing outgoing connections – you will need to reach out to your webhost so they can fix the issue.

Regarding the Base demo – this is a fairly large demo and often errors are caused by server limitations as well. Please double check the server recommendations in the main Theme Panel under “System Status” on the bottom right – https://my.totalwptheme.com/

If you would like any extra help with setup or installation you can also submit a private ticket here – https://my.totalwptheme.com/ – and I can log into the site and help you get everything up and running.

I do want to mention that the Base demo is the basic theme without ANY customization so it’s not really useful to import that specific demo as the only thing that is imported that might be useful would be specific page layouts that you may like which you could just use the demo inspector to copy/paste into your site without having to deal with importing all the sample data and then having to delete stuff you don’t want (pages, images, menus, widgets, etc). See here: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/demo-page-inspector/

The demo importer is more useful for highly customized demos that make use of Customizer settings and dynamic templates to create unique layouts and designs different from the “base” (default) theme design. For example: https://totalwpthemedemo.com/biz/ or https://totalwpthemedemo.com/consultative/

The Base demo also includes a WooCommerce shop which will import a lot of images and products which you would have to delete after importing. So depending on the site you are creating this may also just add extra work for you.

The base demo is provided mostly just to show all the different default parts of the theme and standard design before making any changes via the customizer, theme settings, templates, etc.

Let me know if you have any questions and how I can be of further assistance!

- AJ

Hi Alice,

That sounds like a WooCommerce bug.

I’ve seen that notice before with other plugins that have nothing to do with WooCommerce. Basically, WooCommerce has a system built-in to detect if a plugin is a WooCommerce add-on and if so, it checks the version to see if it’s defined as compatible with the current version of WooCommerce. It sounds like WooCommerce thinks the plugin is add Woo-addon (which it’s not) – maybe there is another plugin with a similar name that is.

You should be able to dismiss and ignore that notice.

That said, collecting testimonials on your own site is generally not recommended, as there’s no way to independently verify them. Instead, it’s usually better to link to reviews on third-party platforms such as TrustPilot, Yelp, Google Reviews, or Facebook.

- AJ

Thanks AJ. I’ll look into TrustPilot since I’m looking for reviews from users who have actually used our online spreadsheet. Best, Alice

Hi,

This is AJ the theme author.

Total includes code to hide those notices from WPBakery that ask for a license, if you are seeing those notices then your theme is very outdated or you have disabled WPBakery Theme Mode in the Theme Panel which allows you to add your custom WPBakery license: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/activate-wp-bakery-page-builder/

If WPBakery Theme Mode is disabled in your Theme Panel you probably just have to enable it to suppress the WPBakery notices.

Otherwise, if Theme Mode is enabled and you see the notices, likely your theme is outdated. What you will want to do is temporarily de-activate WPBakery and update your Total theme, then you can proceed with updating the bundled plugin.

Here are the related docs:

• https://totalwptheme.com/docs/changelog/
• https://totalwptheme.com/docs/update-theme/ (if your theme is very outdated it’s important to read the extra precautions on this guide)
• https://totalwptheme.com/docs/update-plugins/
• https://totalwptheme.com/docs/bundled-product-license/

The reason you temporarily disable WPBakery, is because the plugin may cache those notices to activate a license and it can prevent the plugin to be updated through the theme’s system. This is only required when your theme is significantly outdated and so the relevant code doesn’t exist in the theme or if for some reason the theme was temporarily de-activated while WPBakery was enabled, allowing that notice to come through.

If you have any questions, issues or you want some help updating your site, let me know so I can further assist!

- AJ

Hi,

Sorry for the delayed reply, I don’t know why ThemeForest didn’t alert me of this new reply! Glad I saw it though as I was looking for a reply from someone else.

What you would do is edit your previous Image Grid element and choose to display items from the post gallery using the on/off switch – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/using-post-gallery-image-galleries/#h-display-your-image-gallery

Of course I would recommend you have a backup just incase. One good idea would be to duplicate the Image Grid where you currently have them all manually selected and then remove the images and then enable the Post Gallery toggle. Then save the page and compare both grids and make sure they look the same, then delete the old Image Grid.

The reason I suggest this is that WPBakery handles gallery images differently than the Metabox. In WPBakery, when you add or remove images from the Image Grid, it sends a request to WordPress that includes all currently selected images. This triggers a separate response for each image (those are the admin-ajax requests you see), which can be very slow to process. It’s fine for a few images, but not for a large number.

The Post Gallery, on the other hand, is coded differently and doesn’t send these extra requests. The initial gallery load uses PHP to loop through the images and display the thumbnails (not ajax) and when you click to add/remove images it doesn’t have to send extra requests to WordPress. You will notice the difference, since clicking the “Add/Edit Images” button in the theme’s Post Gallery metabox only opens the media library, it doesn’t not pre-load and select the images assigned to the gallery – which is what WPBakery does. As a result, it handles large image sets much more efficiently and performs significantly faster.

- AJ

Amazing, thanks AJ! That worked

Awesome!

Hi,

The demo importer is located under Theme Panel > Demo Import. If you don’t see it, then you’ve probably disabled it in the main Theme Panel or you have not enabled the included Total Theme Core Plugins (Appearance > Install Plugins).

Here is the link to the docs as well for the demo importer as it may have some extra useful information: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/importing-sample-data/

Let me know if you still have issues or if I can help with anything else,

- AJ

update: I added the following code in you custom functions plugin:

// Force enqueue carousel CSS
add_action( 'wpex_hook_outer_wrap_after', function() {
    wp_print_styles('wpex-owl-carousel');
}, 9999 );

This will force the file to load always so your carousels work, the downside is that the css file is loaded on every page and not dynamically only when a carousel exists (default behaviour). Now, the file is very small though so it’s not really a concern. If you wish you can comment out this code and try disabling plugins to truly test why it’s not working as expected or simply leave this code.

- AJ

Thanks!!! Let’s leave the fix as-is, life’s too short Also I just left a review, I thought I had done it in the past.

I saw that, thank you so much for the review!

Let me know if there is anything else I can assist with

- Aj

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