private browser window did the trick, thanks!

Hi,

I hope you are having a nice weekend. I just wanted to touch base to make sure you were able to sort out the licensing issue as well.

- AJ

yes, I did get it taken care of, thank you!

Hi Frank,

In terms of how the Chatbot works, this is going to depend entirely on the service you use.

Personally, I think a chatbot will just add extra bloat to your site and slow down loading times. If people need to find answers they know how to use Google/AI – I don’t see any benefit having the extra scripts and services loaded on your site. But of course, you could always add one and track it to see how many users are using it.

Traffic has dropped a ton for everyone :/

SEO isn’t as important as it used to be since users are shifting away from the traditional way of visiting/browsing the internet (largely by Google prioritizing AI). Having a strong brand presence on social media (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, etc) is going to be the number one way to generate leads.

- AJ

Thank you AJ for your thoughts and insight. Always, very much appreciated! I guess I’ll start uploading Shorts to my YouTube channel of recently photographed properties. Can never have too much online marketing. Cheers!

Hi,

In the license manager you can click the “disconnect” button on the far right of the table to free up the license so you can register it on another site.

- AJ

Thank you!

HI,

I am working on updating older demos first because the older demos are too old looking. I’ve recently updated this one – https://totalwpthemedemo.com/corporate/ and I’m currently working on updating this one – https://totalwpthemedemo.com/law-firm/

But I’m still focusing on WPBakery based demos because almost every customer uses WPBakery. But if there is any demo a user wants the Elementor version of they can request it and I”ll make it.

Of the few users that are using Elementor, they seem to be using Elementor Pro – which has it’s own demos.

I’ve noticed you’ve been requesting new demos for quite a while, which made me curious. Looking at our records, it appears you’ve only purchased one license back in 2020, and it’s currently registered to a site that won’t load.

Are you primarily using the theme for client projects and having your clients purchase their own licenses? I’d love to better understand how you’re using the product and what you’re hoping to get from the new demos.

-AJ

Hi AJ, I haven’t switched to the Total theme yet due to some limitations I encountered earlier. Now that Kadence has been acquired by Liquid Web, I’m considering migrating to a more stable theme that meets my feature requirements. A few years ago, I tried using the Total theme but faced challenges designing the single post template. However, I’m glad to see that it’s now compatible with Elementor, which will allow me to create some great layouts for my blog.

I can recommend some demos but I would rather not post the links here, I can send it to you via direct message.

Hi,

I’m actually using AI for updating current and making new demos, if you want to suggest topics you can do that, but I’m not going to be replicating other existing sites. I’m using various tools, but mostly these two:

• https://replit.com/
• https://redesignr.ai/

Both fantastic tools if you want to try them out.

If you prefer using Elementor, my recommendation would be to just purchase Elementor Pro and just use their own builder tools. You may even want to just use their free Hello theme. This way you are locked into Elementor but not any specific theme or Elementor add-ons.

Regardless of how you setup your site though, make sure you are only using a page builder like Elementor for the main pages and custom templates. Do NOT use a page builder (Elementor, WPBakery, Divi…etc) for your blog posts. If you do, you will be locked into that page builder and it could require a lot of work to fix your site if you ever decide to switch builder or the builder plugin is sold/deprecated.

When using a page builder for main pages (home, about, services, contact) and for your dynamic templates (single post design, archives, etc) – even if you switch themes or builder it shouldn’t be a lot of work to re-do those things. But if you use a builder for every blog post and you have tons of blog posts, things get very time consuming if you ever have or want to switch. This is where a lot of people go wrong and create a lot more work for themselves in the future.

Of course, with AI tools it’s much easier these days to swap themes/builders but you still don’t want to ever create a lock in effect on your site. So basically, use complex page builders like Elementor/WPbakery for primary pages that require complex designs and custom templates, but use Gutenberg for standard posts or custom post types that have many items.

All that said, if your site is mostly a blog – it may be best to just use or create a custom block theme for your site with the exact design you want and not rely on any 3rd party builder or theme. I do create custom block themes and I could make you one, but I’m not sure if that’s in your budget (pricing starts at $1,500). You send me the design you want and I make you a custom block/Gutenberg theme with that design.

- AJ

ps: I noticed on your site that you have both a link on your logo and a “Home” link in your menu – that’s actually an accessibility issue. I would recommend removing the home link from the menu or the link on the logo.

Hi,

I hope you had a nice weekend. I got your message I will email you right now.

- AJ

I sent you an email through the ticket system!

ps: Sorry for all the comments, but just as a heads up. Because I sent the email directly it may have triggered the direct email auto-response. Please ignore that.

Hi,

The vulnerability is only in Version 7.0+ which I don’t include with the theme – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/changelog/ – I’m still only bundling the 6.7 version because of all the bugs and issues in version 7+. Once the version is more stable I can include that updated version with the theme. So, the vulnerability doesn’t exist in the version included with the theme and isn’t a concern if you haven’t updated to version 7.0+ via a different method.

Additionally, I will stop bundling Slider Revolution starting the next theme update. I will still provide updates to customers that previously had the plugin installed but it won’t be available to download by default.

The Slider Revolution plugin has made various changes in version 7+ that makes the bundled license almost useless, such as limiting the number of sliders to 3 and putting a lot of functionality behind add-ons only available to registered sites. Additionally the plugin seems to always have security concerns, it’s becoming very bloated and in general most sites never need a complex slider plugin. Actually it’s generally recommend to never use sliders – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/why-not-use-sliders/

Ideally, if you can update your sites to replace sliders with static content and delete the plugin that would be the best. Not only will you speed up your site, improve your SEO and accessibility but you’ll also have one less plugin to worry about updating.

- AJ

Hey there!

Ok, I was actually confused.

The new Slider Revolution version 7.0 is treated as a separate plugin so version 6+ actually did have a new security patch.

I’ve updated the version included with the theme. To update simply log into your site and delete slider revolution, then go to Appearance > Install Plugins and re-install it, that will download version 6.7.55.

Sorry for the troubles!

- AJ

Hey AJ, I figured out that the Annual Report single page is being routed through Total’s generic singular template (wp-content/themes/Total/singular.php). So my question is, inside Total’s singular.php rendering path, why is the associated WPBakery template no longer being injected after updates?

Hi Charlotta,

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

Sorry, but I’m really not understanding the issue. Can you submit a private ticket with site logins so I can see what you are referring to? – https://my.totalwptheme.com/

I”ll try and answer some of your questions though:

• Yes you can still use WPBakery templates assigned as your dynamic template. Technically the theme will render a template from any post type, it just checks for the defined ID. You don’t have to switch your template to a Dynamic Template, the main reason to do that would be so you can delete the Templatera plugin and have 1 less plugin active on the site.

• The Post Types Unlimited plugin is for registering custom post types and taxonomies, it has nothing to do with Dynamic Templates. That said, using my plugin instead of other post types plugin or registering post types using code makes it much easier to manage your post type because of all the added settings – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/adding-custom-post-types/#section-total-settings

• I assume “Annual Report” is a post type added by a plugin and that you have added some custom code to define your template as per the snippet you linked. Is that correct? If so, some plugins hook into WordPress functions to modify the singular display and if it runs before the theme checks for the assigned template it can cause things to break. If this is just a post type you added yourself, it should work as nothing has changed recently that would change this behaviour. If you look at singular.php you can see the following check on line 34:

<?php
// Display singular content unless there is a custom template defined.
if ( ! wpex_theme_do_location( 'single' ) ) :

This check renders your custom defined template if set, if not, it renders the default singular.php layout (image, title, content, comments, etc). So if it’s not rendering the template you defined, it means it’s not technically set for some reason.

Anyway, if you open a private ticket so I can see how the site is setup I will be able to help you get this fixed up asap.

- AJ

Hi,

I am aware of this and the updated WPBakery will be included in the upcoming theme update which will be released ASAP – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/upcoming-update-changelog/

- AJ

Hi Jana,

Did you perhaps enable WPBakery Slim Mode? https://totalwptheme.com/docs/wpbakery-slim-mode/ – when enabled older elements like the Blog Grid aren’t registered to slim things down as there are newer alternatives such as the Post Cards element, which is the preferred way to display posts as it gives you full control over your design via Custom Cards – https://totalwptheme.com/docs/custom-card-builder/

- AJ

Hi AJ, yes, thank you, that’s exactly the kind of simple thing I was looking for, but couldn’t find

Let me know if you have any other issues or questions!

- AJ

we are having 4 license but we couldn’t download the theme, can you guide us?

Hi,

This is Aj the theme author. This sounds like a security error on ThemeForest, can you try in a new browser? If that doesn’t work I highly recommend you contact Envato to let them know of the issue, in the meantime send me an email directly to wpexplorer [at] gmail dot com and I can email you the zip file!

- AJ

Hi,

Yes, you can use [site_name] and for the year you can use [current_year]. This is the default copyright text used by the theme (unless you imported a demo).

Copyright <a href="[site_url]">[site_name]</a> [current_year] - All Rights Reserved

- AJ

ps: I snapped a tendon in my right elbow so I’ve been working with one arm and it’s been quite difficult, I see you still have an open ticket which I will get to ASAP. Thank you for your patience.

What error are you getting?

- AJ

Hi,

This is Aj the theme author.

The troubleshoot button was removed several versions ago. It sounds like you are trying to activate the license on a very very old version of the theme. 2-3 years ago the license manager used to be a on a different domain and if your theme is very outdated it will try and make the request to activate to the old domain and crash.

You’ll want to manually update the theme first by downloading the Total.zip from ThemeForest and re-installing it. Then you should be able to activate the license. I have some extra tips for updating old sites on the docs: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/update-theme/

I see your username is missing the purchased badge, if you can log into the account used to buy the theme you can submit a private ticket with the site’s WP and FTP logins and I can update the theme and bundled plugins for you – https://my.totalwptheme.com/submit-help-request/ – just be sure you have a server backup just incase anything goes wrong.

- AJ

Hi,

This is AJ the theme author, I apologize for the delayed reply.

You can always manage your licenses here: https://my.totalwptheme.com/license-manager/

I think you may have already figured that out as I see you registered for the site on April 30 and your license appears to be properly registered to a live site. If not, please let me know!

- AJ

Hi,

I apologize for the delayed reply.

Unfortunately your code was stripped by the Envato comments so I’m not sure what you are trying to do. Can you share your code via an online code editor such as PasteBin – https://pastebin.com/ or Gist – https://gist.github.com/ (I prefer Gitst, but you need an account).

Now, if you are adding a shortcode in the Customizer for the header aside area, keep in mind that if you use a custom field it’s only going to work if that specific page/post has the custom field. Do you want the button to show up only if that post/page has the field? Or are you trying to get the value of the field targeting a specific post or page? Or are you trying to use an ACF theme options panel field?

Either way, it definitely sounds like you need to register your own custom shortcode for use as you need to grab a URL and also format it into a button. I can help you with the code for this, but I need to know exactly what you want to do. Thanks!

- AJ

Hi,

For security reasons the theme uses what’s called as a nonce in WordPress – https://developer.wordpress.org/apis/security/nonces/ – this nonce is generated based on the Post Card settings (shortcode attributes) and added to the grid like this – https://a.cl.ly/P8uoDvKb

When sending the AJAX, which is done with javascript, the theme uses this nonce to validate that the request is coming from your site and that there aren’t any extra or different parameters sent with the request. For example if your grid is set to display portfolio items, someone can’t just make an arbitrary request for posts from a different post type.

This helps prevent potential abuse and/or malicious requests.

Now, in WordPress these nonces last 12-24hrs. This means, if your page HTML is being cached for longer than the nonce will no longer validate. Any page where you are using the theme’s Post Card’s AJAX (filter, load more, ajax search) will need to have their cache set to clear every 12hrs so the nonce is properly refreshed on the frontend.

If you are referring to the option “Render with AJAX” – this is intended to help with some caching issues if your site uses longer caching times, but they still need to be under 12hrs.

I personally use WPEngine for my hosting, which has built-in full page cache and it refreshes every 10 minutes other popular hosting solutions like Pressable clear every 5 minutes. As long as you have a good server, there isn’t much need to cache your pages for very long because they should be able to re-build very quickly.

Looking at the plugin you mentioned – https://wordpress.org/plugins/cache-enabler/#description – it appears their very first option is so you can set an Expiration. You can try using 12, but it may be best to use 11 to be extra safe.

- AJ

Hi,

This is AJ the theme author.

Total Theme Core 1.7.1 is very old and you would only get this error if your theme is also very very outdated and it’s trying to download a version of the plugin that no longer exists.

You’ll want to first update your theme, then you can update the Total Theme Core plugin and bundled plugins like WPBakery and Slider Revolution to the latest version included in the theme: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/changelog

Since your site is very outdated I recommend you follow the extra precaution steps when updating the theme as noted on the docs: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/update-theme/#h-extra-precautions-for-cautious-users-or-extremely-outdated-installations

If you run into any issues or need help updating your theme let me know. Once it’s updated, I highly recommend updating your site whenever a new version is released so you site doesn’t get so outdated.

Revslider Note: There is a newer version of RevSlider that’s not yet included in their theme because their last massive update had many bugs so I was waiting to ship it once it’s more stable. But also, I am considering no longer bundling the plugin with the theme for new installations for various reasons including: the plugin is no longer sold on CodeCanyon and they have changed their licensing drastically, the plugin keeps getting more and more bloated and can really slow down sites, generally sliders are not recommended for most sites, and you can create sliders with the theme if you really needed them using the new Carousel Container added in the latest version of the theme.

- AJ

Hi,

This is Aj the theme author.

I don’ have any examples, I will be releasing some new demos soon which will include Just Events! If you have a specific niche you would be interested in, let me know!

I had some demos using The Events Calendar, the problem is that plugin kept updating and introducing new bugs and it became a real hassle to keep those demos up to date and working correctly. This is actually why I created my own Just Events plugin.

That said, I do have an article for my Just Events plugin explaining how to set everything up with some screenshots: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/just-events/ – the plugin is intended for sites that just need simple events and you can use the theme’s built-in functions like Custom Cards & Dynamic Templates so you can display the entries and single posts how you want.

Now, depending on your needs it may be worth using a 3rd party service instead for hosting the events. For example if you need to sell tickets, using a 3rd party service outside of WordPress is generally better for many reasons.

- AJ

Thanks AJ. I agree, The Events Calendar has caused me several headaches. That is why my clients is looking to move away from them. I am scheduled to rebuild the site on May 18, and I would like to show them what your plugin looks like on a website. I will keep an eye on your demos for examples. Can I import events created with TEC?

Hi,

No, there is no function to import TEC events. But it wouldn’t be hard to code up a little function you can run on your site which I can provide for you if needed.

My plugin is very minimal, so it’s really only intended to display lists of events or to be used with custom builds were you can extend the plugin to add the custom functionality you want. So there isn’t any advanced functionality such as a calendar view (yet, I do plan on adding that in the future) or locations. I created the plugin using SquareSpace as an example. Here are 2 sample SQ templates: https://ocotillo-fluid-demo.squarespace.com/ or https://roseti-fluid-demo.squarespace.com/events

Since you can create dynamic templates and custom cards with Total, you can really make the events look however you want so having specific examples may not be so useful. It would make more sense to figure out what the customer wants and then re-create it.

If you’d like to share a link to the current domain, perhaps I can share some better feedback on how I would recommend proceeding.

- AJ

Hi,

This is AJ the theme author.

I’m not quite sure what you are asking, can you share the URL in question for context?

If what you want is a transparent header so that you can have an image behind the header like this demo – https://totalwpthemedemo.com/biz/ – here are the docs for that: https://totalwptheme.com/docs/overlay-header/

Now, in terms of setting an elements background to “transparent” the way it’s done in the theme is using the Global color selector. Here is a video example showing how to set the default page header title background to transparent: https://a.cl.ly/QwuZjy1b (note, the color selector was recently updated so if your’s looks different, your theme is outdated).

- AJ

Hi,

I tested this and it’s working as expected for me. Here is a video of my test: https://a.cl.ly/6qulGG49

These are the only reasons I can think of for it not working:

• Your custom field isn’t an actual “date” field type, but rather a text field and you are adding dates using a format that isn’t compatible with WP_Query. I suspect this is most likely the cause because if the date is not properly formatted it will show all posts when using the < comparison due to how WordPress works internally.

• Your theme is outdated, there was a bug a few versions ago where the dynamic values such as “today” were not being parsed correctly in the Meta Query field.

• You are testing with a future date that is tomorrow and because of your installation’s timezone, it’s already tomorrow so it’s actually returning the correct results. Try with some dates farther in the future.

- AJ

ps: By the way, if you are wanting posts to stop showing once their day has passed, you will need to either exclude the page from caching or enable the “Render with AJAX” option in the Post Cards element (General Tab). Otherwise your server’s caching or caching plugin (all WordPress sites should be using some form of caching) will conflict.

Thanks AJ, actually you are right. It works: )

Sorry, for the confusion. I just built a plugin that creates an UI for your “WPEX_Meta_Factory” class. It seems there was an error in the date registration. Now I use plain php code for the date custom fields and it works