Can't update WPBakery Visual Composer without paying!

Hello,

I thought this plugin was included with the price of the theme? I am mistaken in thinking that the updates should be too? If they’re not included, that’s something that should really be communicated on the sales page of your theme.

Please advise how to proceed… I’d like to keep the Visual Composer plugin up to date without an additional fee.

Thanks for your help,

Fred

You might want to read the documentation. The plugin is a “bundled version” which is included with the theme. It is updated when the theme is updated, to ensure the theme is compatible with new version. Generally speaking there are no new features in the latest dot revision not showcased in the theme demo on themeforest, so you’re not “losing anything” by waiting for a fully tested update that won’t break your website.

You may wish to peruse the theme docs, note link top right of this forum “documentation” and this page specifically:
https://forum.tagdiv.com/update-the-visual-composer-plugin-wpbakery/

Hope that helps 🙂

Yeah it bugs me too, especially when VC updates and there’s no new update on the theme yet. The phantom update notice and all.

But licensing prohibits tagDiv from giving out a license to VC, which would allow you to update the plugin directly, and the VC plugin has been well customized by tagDiv for seamless integration with Newspaper. If you were to get the plugin update outside of a Newspaper release, things on your site would break because features missing, added, and altered from the core release of VC.

Have a good one.

That’s VERY helpful! Thanks for the clarification and the speedy reply! So, if I understand you correctly, there’s no need to update any of the bundled plugins because they will automatically be updated when the theme itself gets updated. Is that right?

If so, it sounds like an excellent safeguard against “breaking my site.”

Exactly! A lot of theme developers work this way by including a “bundled” version vs making you go buy a copy, but the the new version adds some wonky thing which might break the theme. So, this is a good way to do it, but kind of annoying at times, if you’re easily annoyed by the “updates available” notice in the WP login screen 🙂

At least WP stopped the stupid email thing they had for a few versions … “email: you have updates available; I tried updating, but it didn’t work …” …. automatic updates not a great thing, in my book. (I turn them off in my wp-config.php file, actually.)

I think there have actually been more problems with YOAST SEO than any other plugin in recent memory. Three updates in one day sometimes … x1, x2 (OOPS DON”T USE IT), then x3 to fix the messup in x1 they didn’t fix right in x2, all in one day. Upshot: never install the new version of YOAST unless it’s to fix long standing bugs, as they often have a panic fix later on.

Sorry … didn’t mean to editorialize so much … 🙂

That’s about it. Of course there are situations when an upgraded plugin requires some changes to the theme that may delay the upgrade of that plugin even there are theme updates available. For example, VC recently updated from v2.x to v3.x and we got three or four theme updates before they upgraded the VC plugin, because of the changes in the theme required.

So yes, as far as bundled plugins, go with tagDiv’s updates and rest assured they’ll keep all features within Newspaper copacetic.

Nice thread actually ! 🙂