- NewsmagHow to update a plugin
- NewsmagHow to update the theme
- NewsmagHow to update the WPBakery plugin
- NewsmagCategory templates
- NewsmagWhat’s included in Newsmag theme package
- NewsmagAjax view count
- NewsmagSmart Lists
- NewsmagFeatured images
- NewsmagFeatured image or video
- NewsmagModal window
- NewsmagtagDiv slider gallery
- NewsmagVideo playlist
Absolutely true. Everything “weird” started with 4.4 and when they started adding a bunch of new things for WooCommerce and adding some things which I think were designed to roll-in things others were selling as extensions/add-ons to VC.
So, for low traffic site, VC 4.42 and Newsmag 1.71 work fine. High traffic site and VC 4.5x .. not so much.
With VC 4.3.5 we never had *any* problems. Newsmag 1.71 good to update to for the WP security fixes, and then try to either use shim, or older version of VC.
AGAIN TO ANY AND ALL: issue *not* with the theme — it’s nothing TagDiv ‘needs to fix’ with new theme version. It’s an issue with Visual Composer from WP Bakery, bundled with theme to provide dashboard and additional widgets for custom layouts. Issue doesn’t impact ALL sites/servers. Oddly it seems worse with those of use with dedicated servers, but really weird things happen. Only real solution — I think — is for VC to fully re-write their code from ground up based on current version of WP, optimize it, and possibly break some things into extensions that most people don’t use. Why have all the code bloat for WooCommerce if not using that on a magazine site?
Anyway…. just my input on this topic since I was one affected. I don’t speak for TagDiv in any way… just my opinions.
Okay thank you. How do I go about using it on multiple test sites? Do I just not activate the code? Meaning I just wouldn’t get updates?
I planned on taking it off my test site. I just wanted to become familiar with it.
– Mark
Hi Lucinan!
Thanks for reply! And I have to do this job every time when I update theme?
Thanks in advance
Hi,
@ShowbizCool I suggest you try version 4.3.5 as all this issues with Visual Composer plugin started since plugin’s version 4.4 in which was a major update of the plugin and which included many new features, improvements, fixes and other: http://screencast.com/t/4LrbmLfyfT and since then the plugin doubled in size and started using more resources.
If you don’t have the 4.3.5 version just let us know via email and make a request for it and we will send it to you as soon as possible. Address your message at contact@tagdiv.com
@daimpa As Chris also stated here we are currently also focused on other directions but we will try to have a stable version of the shim ready as soon as possible. Until then you can update the theme to the latest version and use an older version of the plugin, you can use version 4.3.5 for which we didn’t had any reports regarding this even if you have many posts/pages (around 40-50 thousand) which, we’re not certain but seems to cause site’s crash when using recent versions of VC.
Thanks
Hi,
Please check this only with Visual Composer active, disable all other plugins and clear cache. Also do you use the latest theme version(1.7.1) and Visual Composer provided with the theme(4.4.4)? Please install the theme using FTP method – https://forum.tagdiv.com/how-to-update-theme/ Let us know!
Thanks!
Hi,
Thanks Chris!
@rjohansen As Chris also said here the theme settings are stored in your database and I’m not sure how those are affected there if you haven;t done anything to alter them, we didn’t have any other reports of this happening so please update the theme to the latest version as I’ve noticed you use theme’s version 4.5 while the latest is 4.6.3 so download the theme from themeforest: http://themeforest.net/downloads then use this update guide to and the FTP method to update the theme, make sure that you also empty caches, disable plugins then update the theme then update the theme’s plugins from the /plugins folder provided within theme’s files.
Make sure that you also create backup of your database and current theme/wordpress install: https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups
Let us know if this happens again afterwards.
Thanks
Hi Alin,
I believe that I’ve used the correct code. As I said… the Instagram embed shows up fine in my WP editor.
However, before I can attempt this, I need another issue resolved. I’ve sent in a request to you guys via email… with the URL and Themeforest license as requested.
It’s a “foreach()” error that I’m seeing in the admin menus of the WP dashboard. I cannot publish new posts or pages. And I can’t update existing ones.
Could you please check it out?
Thanks, Yuri.
Hi,
You have to add login widget to the top menu(Top Right Socials) or you can add it to your sidebar – http://screencast.com/t/lZGwb0BNg
Unfortunately the theme doesn’t have other option to be used especially for forums, but we will improve this in future updates.
Thanks!
Actually I just found out it has nothing to do with updates… There is an updating waiting. For some reasons the theme settings have gone all by themself. Common problem? This is the second site this has happened to.
When you update a theme it over-writes the original theme files; if you made changes to those files you will lose them, obviously.
For the theme panel, it’s common for some things to reset due to the oddities of WordPress where sometimes the sidebars reset and you have to drag stuff back into place.
Normal transient options and theme panel options should not be lost — and fyi, guess what you can export those before updating which is why auto-updates are bad — normal updating is still best done via FTP as you have no idea if the updater plugin might die/timeout while doing the updates and then you have a half-baked install.
However, theme panel “settings” should never be lost with proper update; and you can always juat re-import them, which you should already know how to do and be ready for from your back up files. Backups are always a good practice!
btw … one trick you can do to clear space to update your home page “quickly….”
aa) turn off caching!
a) restart Apache (kills connections!)
b) turn on VC 442
c) quickly edit your home page
d) turn off VC442
In theory you’ll have short window where the things that were pinging you too much like a scraping bot, etc., will have to restart their queue, and free up a whole bunch of resources.
This is super funky…. but one possible annoying stopgap solution perhaps.
Well, they kind of already have … on various threads.
Right now the *only* solution with Newsmag if you have this CPU spiral of doom is to use the shim plugin, and use VC as little as possible beyond the development portion of your home page. Make sure you have a lot of memory allocated to WordPress (at least 256MB from the wp-config.php file in addition to php.ini setting; you must do both!).
We started to see minor spikes once 4.4.2 came out. Prior to that zero issues. Right now we can use it, but anything later not so good. I can’t imagine if WP Bakery haven’t addressed this ins the 4.5x versions, that they still don’t “get it” and are not solving it — seems to be a “if 90% of people can use, the other 10% oh well …” which isn’t great.
Right now TagDiv is focused on (based on posts I’ve seen):
a) Newspaper 5 w/ features of Newsmag + better grid + new version of API.
b) Next Shim beta for use with Newsmag *and* Newspaper.
c) Newsmag 1.8 with bug fixes and minor updates/tweaks.
d) Dev work on possible alternative to using Visual Composer.
So — at the moment if your site dies with VC 4.42 immediately, then it’s clear you might need to go back one more iteration, and/or stick with 1.6 of Newsmag vs 1.71.
I have 2 sites still working with 1.6 and 4.42 without shim, and doing okay, but they are fairly low traffic sites. I have 3 sites on 1.71 with VC442 and the shim, and 2 of these are our larger main traffic sites which were killing MySQL in batches of every 10 minutes or so going from green to yellow to red, and back. Then CPU death.
Not sure any of that helps … not much TagDiv can do beyond the shim, and possibly providing earlier versions of VC to try for your system. Since they don’t develop VC, it’s not something they can “fix” for anybody beyond the reports they have provided to the Bakery folks as a developer/licensor in hopes of solution (and yet to see one).
Some theme devs are already leaving VC in favor of in house solutions or simpler things like Siteorigin builder (free/open source), etc. (( We’re using Page Builder by SiteOrigin with a lean WP home brew Bootstrap 3 theme for a client reporting system along with Advanced Custom Fields, and works well so far for that … )).
Anyway…. I’m sure TagDiv folk will have some reply, but likely not far different from the above rantings 🙂
Of course, it’s possible that the next version of Visual Composer will be better “optimized” …. frankly, I’m amazed they are not working with an example “DOA” server setup, reading the error logs, and trying to find what bit of code is causing the death spiral, and then FIXING it. But I’m behind on stuff for my own business, so can’t really point fingers on that 😉
Hi,
I can’t provide an accurate answer on this as we have to decide, I’ll add this on our request list though and consider it for future updates.
Thanks
Hi,
I have checked your site and you still using version 1.5, so please make sure that you update the theme properly using FTP method. I have also tried to check your site using google testing tool and I get the following error – http://screencast.com/t/gS9TJ6OW So please solve these issues and then check and see if you still have those errors.
Thanks!
Hi,
1. The CPT’s are on our list, we plan to modify the core and check for full functionality. I cannot provide an exact date for this implementation but i talked with the team and we hope to solve this in the near future(1-3 months). The theme was not built with Custom Post Types in mind, we have to make some tests and make the required modifications.
2. With pixels you get the same result/look on all devices. The grid is custom made and some elements have to be carefully controlled. We’ll try to see if it’s possible to transform the grid into a flexible (percentage) one but it will take some time and i don’t know if it’s possible(on some devices it may deliver different results and we don’t want that).
3. We plan to improve on this too in the future updates.
4. We know the limitations on the child-theme, the new API will add more flexibility to the theme customization and we plan to improve this area in the future updates.
Thanks for your suggestions, they are well founded and we’re certainly not offended. 🙂
Have followed your instructions on setting up the Facebook page widget. Works great on the posts but not on my front page. Have posted exact same code in both the widget for posts and the text box for front page.
It even shows on the visual composer until I push “update” and then just the text is there. Have a look. http://brandinginasia.com/
On the front page its on the side under “Ads of the Day” big block.
Thanks 🙂
Bobby
Hi,
Please make sure that you are using the latest theme version 1.7.1 and if you don’t please update it using FTP method – https://forum.tagdiv.com/how-to-update-theme/ also check this without any plugins active, leave just Visual Composer active, clear cache and check again if you still have this issue.
Thanks!
Hi,
Yes, doing you’ve mentioned above is the right way:
1. Rename or delete current newsmag (main theme) folder
2. Upload new version
3. Update social counter and composer
4. Don’t touch child theme
The child theme should only be updated if there are changes mentioned in theme’s changelog. We have added this to our child theme documentation: http://screencast.com/t/2oOPsulTGHPN and modifications made to files that have also changed within update will have to be made again and yes you can upload directly the latest version of the theme.
Thanks
Hi,
Unfortunately we haven’t managed to find the reason for this issue and a solution for this so far but we will try to fix this until theme’s next update then regenerating thumbnails should bring the right one: https://forum.tagdiv.com/how-to-fix-strange-thumbnails/
We’ll keep you updated on this as soon as we have a fix available. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Thanks
Hi,
The “no-thumb” images cases are defined in the module file here: http://screencast.com/t/fyc9zhgkp which unfortunately isn’t editable using the child theme: https://forum.tagdiv.com/child-theme-documentation/ so you would have to change it into main theme’s files instead.
You could try a different approach for this by copying the get image function from the module files and place it into the module file you need to change it for then update that file and the function using the child theme. If you don’t know to do it we recommend you hire a freelancer from site’s like: http://studio.envato.com/ to do it for you as you need custom work for this and we cannot offer any type of custom work at this moment.
Thanks
Hi,
Not sure what you mean by “home page to update post a subdomain” for a subdomain like the fashion stack you would need another setup. Each category page can only be customized from theme panel > categories using the available options there other changes would need to be done at the code level.
Thanks
Hi,
Please deactivate all plugins leave just Visual Composer active, empty cache and check if you still have this issue with mobile menu. Also if the issue disappeared please activate your plugins one by one and see which one caused that issue. If you use child theme please also switch to the main theme and check this.
Also please make sure that you use the latest theme version 4.6.3 and update using this guide(FTP method) – https://forum.tagdiv.com/how-to-update-the-theme/ and also update the plugins that come with the theme files from the /plugins folder.
Thanks!
Hi,
You don’t have to activate or buy Visual Composer plugin, please check this – https://forum.tagdiv.com/topic/how-to-update-visual-composer-2/#post-34794
Thanks!
Hi,
The megamenu was not designed to work on top menu and you will need custom work for this and it is not an easy task, unfortunately we cannot provide any type of custom work at this time as we work hard on development, updates, fixes and support, but you can hire a freelancer to do this for you from sites like – http://studio.envato.com/
If you want you can change the header style and use only the main menu to the top – http://screencast.com/t/T1AWMrOP – http://screencast.com/t/9hwZ56Fmn
Thanks!
Hi. What is going on when updating the theme (auto update in this case I guess) suddenly removes every customization that has been done. Including logo and such? It has happened before and once again I see that the page is “blank”
