OK, thanks Vlad. Just confirming, on desktop Big Grid 6 posts will be displayed in the sort order specified in the settings, but when viewed on mobile, the posts in Big Grid 6 are arranged randomly, meaning in a different way each time the page is loaded, or the same random way every time?

Hi. Vlad. As you can see from the screenshots I linked to, I am NOT using the mobile theme.

Please see images:

https://cdn.starnewsgroup.com/make-inline.png
https://cdn.starnewsgroup.com/row-padding.png

The row padding was already set to 0, and the menu was set to inline but the height of the menu cannot be adjusted. I even tried creating a custom class for the menu in the TD composer and then adding CSS to set the height, but that did not work either.

Also:

1. I can’t set my submenus to use “background” as the hover style, I only have Default and Underline. Not sure why background appears for the main menu but not for the submenus.

2. The logo and header ad elements I have in the Header Builder appear to be positioned correctly, but when I preview them the header ad (728×90) shrinks way down and the logo moves far to the left.

3. I have the live search in the main header menu below the logo, but I had to create a 3/4 + 1/4 column and put the menu in the 3/4 and the live search in the 1/4, and now there is way too much space between where the menu ends and the search starts. Not sure how I can close that up. You can’t seem to click and drag to adjust sizes or spacing in the builder.

I have created three images to show what I am describing above. One is the view of the new header in the header builder, one is the way it previews, and the third is the header I have on our live site, which is using Newspaper 8.8.2. Thanks for any guidance you can provide.

https://cdn.starnewsgroup.com/viewed-in-header-builder.png
https://cdn.starnewsgroup.com/preview-in-header-builder.png
https://cdn.starnewsgroup.com/header-on-live-site.png

OK, I have made some progress with creating a header but still have some issues, basically I am trying to recreate what we have in Newspaper 8.8.2 using Newspaper 9.7.3 and the Header Builder. My issues are:

1. I can’t set my submenus to use “background” as the hover style, I only have Default and Underline. Not sure why background appears for the main menu but not for the submenus.
2. I cannot see a way to set the height of a menu. My top menu is twice as high vertically as it needs to be but I see no way to adjust that. I even tried creating a custom class for the menu in the TD composer and then adding CSS to set the height but that did not work either.
3. The logo and header ad elements I have in the Header Builder appear to be positioned correctly, but when I preview them the header ad (728×90) shrinks way down and the logo moves far to the left.
4. I have the live search in the header menu, but I had to create a 3/4 + 1/4 column and put the menu in the 3/4 and the live search in the 1/4, but now there is way too much space between where the menu ends and the search starts. Not sure how I can close that up. You can’t seem to click and drag to adjust sizes or spacing in the builder.

I have created three images to show what I am describing above. One is the view of the new header in the header builder, one is the wya it previews, and the third is the header I have on our live site, which is using Newspaper 8.8.2. Thanks for any guidance you can provide.

https://cdn.starnewsgroup.com/viewed-in-header-builder.png
https://cdn.starnewsgroup.com/preview-in-header-builder.png
https://cdn.starnewsgroup.com/header-on-live-site.png

Well, now I can’t open any header templates, I am getting an “Errors at columns: 1(models) : 3(dom). The model does not match the content” error or similar. So if you could log in and take a look that would be very helpful.

I had already disabled plugins as a test, except for the TagDiv plugins and WPBakery Visual Composer. So I disabled that one and the columns appear as they should within a row when multiple columns are selected. My understanding was that TagDiv VC and WPBakery VC can both be used, as long as they are not used on the same page. We have over a hundred pages created with WPBakery Visual Composer that I was hoping to not have to recreate, and one of the reasons we decided to go with Newspaper almost three years ago now is because it used a commercially available page builder plugin, so that if we switched themes we would not have to recreate all our pages. In any case, it looks like the only way we can move forward is to disable the WPBakery VC and then go back and clean up/rebuild all our pages? The other thing I don’t understand is, I imported a blank header template from the Cloud Library, but each time I open it, it warns me: “NOTICE!The current content hasn’t been created by TagDiv Composer!” But there’s no content on the page, it’s a blank header with a couple of rows ;-( I don’t know if your taking a look at the back end would help but in case it would, I have created an admin user for you and sent it via email to contact@ as per your instructions. Thanks for any further assistance you can provide.

Thank you for the info, Calin. That is the problem, though, as when I try to create a row with three columns, the columns all go to the full width of the site and stack on top of each other. See http://media.altimac.com/column-prob-1.png for what happens when I do that.

Update, I was able to get this working by globally resetting the site permissions. But now I have another question, I am building a header from a blank template and I cannot get any kind of column structure to appear. When I add a row and then select any one of the column options, like 1/2 + 1/2 or 1/3 + 2/3 it just adds another row beneath the current row, so I am unable to place any elements side by side. I am not sure if I am not understanding how the builder works or if this is a bug, but hopefully you can provide some clarification. Thanks for your help.

Hey, thanks for this and I have a somewhat easier way of implementing an alternate sort, in my case sort posts by last MODIFIED date, not last PUBLISHED date. With my method you have to “sacrifice” one of the existing sorts and in my case I decided to replace the “Oldest posts” since I know I would not ever use that one.

It’s only two files you need to change, make sure you back them up and also understand that when you do a theme update these will be overwritten so you will want to keep copies. These apply to v. 8 of the theme.

First make the below changes to includes/td_config.php, starting at line 7351:

array(
“param_name” => “sort”,
“type” => “dropdown”,
“value” => array (
‘- Latest -‘ => ”,
// Sacrificing the ‘oldest posts’ sort, we’ll never use it
‘Modified date’ => ‘oldest_posts’,

Then make this change to includes/wp-booster/td_data_source.php, starting at line 116:

$wp_query_args[‘cat’] = get_cat_ID(TD_FEATURED_CAT); //add the featured cat
break;
case ‘oldest_posts’:
// Replaced by me w/sort by modified date, newest first
$wp_query_args[‘orderby’] = ‘modified’;
$wp_query_args[‘order’] = ‘DESC’;
break;
case ‘popular’:

That’s it. Now when you are doing a grid sort you will see Modified date instead of Oldest posts. This is sorting most recently modified first (‘DESC’) but if for some reason you wanted the oldest by modified date you could change it to ‘ASC’.

Also, in case anyone is not aware of this, there is a free plugin called “Last Modified Timestamp” that will add a Last Modified Date column to your Posts and Pages admin screens. For what we do as a newspaper, in most cases the last time o post was modified is much more important than the published date of a post as far as which posts to display in the grid(s).

Hope this helps somebody and thanks to everyone who posts solutions like these as many of them have helped me in the past.

Thank you, Catalin. I have sent credentials to the above email address.

Hi, Catalin. Unfortunately that’s NOT how it works, I deleted the entire theme as a test, then downloaded v. 8 and installed. Before I even looked at my home page, I immediately disabled the TagDiv Composer plugin, and then went to my home page, which was gone. So in spite of what you are insisting, I cannot use Visual Composer for my site and must use the new TagDiv composer, which is why I was voicing my complaints before, so I will ask this as a question: How do I continue to use Visual Composer for my site and NOT use TagDiv Composer at all?

Thank you, Catalin. Maybe I am not understanding the documentation fully, but NOWHERE does it say that I can immediately disable the TagDiv Composer and just use VC, it seems to imply that we no choice but to start with a broken home page, fix that, fix the other VC-based pages, then disable VC and start using the new composer. I wish you had made that clearer, like maybe this:

IF YOU WANT TO STILL USE VISUAL COMPOSER
Note that Newspaper 8 does NOT require the new TagDiv Composer to work. If you want to continue to use Visual Composer as before, simply disable the new TagDiv Composer as soon as you activate the new theme, and leave Visual Composer enabled. Your home page will no longer be broken, and you will not need to rebuild that or any other of your pages.

Is that a fair description of the process? Again, my apologies for misunderstanding but I could not find the above procedure documented anywhere on the site.

Thank you for the response, Bogdan and that is why I am asking for clarification. When I upgraded to v. 8 as a test, it broke my home page and all the other pages I had created using VC. So I rebuilt the home page, then I disabled the new TD composer and my home page was blank at the top again. It does not appear that I can use v. 8 w/o the TD composer being loaded, and that is not mentioned anywhere in the guide to upgrading. Are you saying that if I upgrade the theme to 8, and then immediately disable the TagDiv composer, my pages will no longer need to be rebuilt and I can still use VC as I did before? If that is the case, there is no issue but I wish this was explained somewhere on the site. If it is and I missed it, could you please direct me there so that I can apologize for my previous comments?

OK, got it. I still don’t understand why you replaced an established builder with over 2 million users with something you apparently spent a lot of time creating yourself, which meant you could not spend as much time adding features to the theme itself, like enabling the controlling of ads by category or any of the other things paid users have been asking for. No one really needed or wanted a new builder and there are plenty of other builders out there besides VC that are far more capable than the builder you guys have created. One of the things about this theme that I always liked was the fact that it DID integrate with VC quite well, which also allows us access to the hundreds of free and paid VC add-ons available out there. I feel that you have not taken into account that even though we users are a newspaper or magazine, and many pages of our sites are used to present groups of articles, article loops, individual posts, etc. there are many other aspects of a publication that have nothing to do with “news” content (about us, customer service info, submitting news/ads, historical info, etc. etc.) Now we are stuck with a limited builder that does not have the power of VC and cannot be extended, and that breaks the theme upon upgrading. I had been hoping that at least some of the features users had been asking for would be part of the 8 upgrade but it turns out there are no new features ;-( It seems like you guys have taken what, at least according to my research, was by far the BEST newspaper/magazine theme out there and you’ve actually limited its capabilities and functionality for the sake of implementing a more customized builder. Having the builder work on the front end is nice, but there was nothing WRONG with the combination of v. 7 and VC at all. You have removed a great deal of functionality in terms of the builder component of this theme, and given back almost nothing to the users. I wish you would reconsider this, and allow the theme to work as before with VC OR with your new builder and give us the option to choose one or the other, or forget about the new composer and instead work on adding truly useful new features to the next version.

Thank you for the info, Bogdan. It is helpful that you allow spots for the ads, but there is no ad management, auto-expiration, grouping, click/impression tracking etc. available in your theme unless you are using Google Ads, so if anyone is not using GA then they do have to use some type of ad manager plug-in. Obviously we can’t expect every theme to be compatible with every plug-in but a lot of us DO need to use an ad manager on our site(s). In any case, I think we are all hoping for a way to show a different ad based on the post category, so hopefully that option will be available in a future version of Newspaper so we don’t have to use hacks to hide the ads on our obituary pages 😉 I think your theme is awesome and I am not trying to be critical, just want you to understand the needs of your users. Thanks!

Just updating this, I am using the AdRotate plugin and therefore using the shortcodes in some of the ad spots in the Theme settings. I have been using the shortcodes successfully to date, but when I use this conditional code, the shortcode does not work. If I enter the ad code directly into the YOUR AD CODE box, it works OK, but if I enter the shortcode [adrotate group=6] it does not work. I guess I can’t use a shortcode when I am doing this conditional thing, or is there a way around this? It is working using the actual code for the ad, so this is not a real problem, just curious if there is a way around this, like do I have to use [adrotate group=6] or something like that?

That does help a lot, Bogdan, and please accept my sincerest apologies, I was referencing the wrong image on my cloud ;-( Hopefully this will make sense now, what I am trying to do is to go from this, which is how the page currently looks on mobile:

http://media.altimac.com.s3.amazonaws.com/images/obits-mobile-A.png

to this:

http://media.altimac.com.s3.amazonaws.com/images/obits-mobile-B.png

so that we can see more than the top of the deceased’s head. It looks like you have given me some clues, though, that I could try either

@media (max-width:767px) {
.category-obituaries .td_module_mob_2 .td-module-thumb {
height: 116px;
}}

Or I could use the API as you noted and do something like

td_api_thumb::update(‘td_???????’,
array(
‘name’ => ‘td_????????’,
‘width’ => 100,
‘height’ => 75,
‘crop’ => array(‘center’, ‘middle’),? ‘none’?
‘post_format_icon_size’ => ‘small’,
‘used_on’ => array(
‘Module 6, 7’, ‘Block 1, 2, 7, 8’
)
)
);

where “td_???????” are the thumbnails that are used in the mobile posts loop page for both the “grid” of the first three listings and then the list of the remainder. I am thinking they are td_324x160 for the grid and td_80x60 for the list of posts following but that is my best guess based on how they look on the mobile theme.

OK, i’ll try one more time on this. What I really want to achieve is this:

http://media.altimac.com.s3.amazonaws.com/images/obits-mobile3.png

So that the people’s heads are not cut off. I was hoping there was a simple way to go this via CSS but no matter where I look, I cannot find a rule that sets the height of the images in the mobile theme. IF you can just tell me what the selector is that determines that, or where the rule is in the styles.css file, I can change it. I already created a rule to disable the images completely, but I would rather be able to show them as long as they are “normal” size and don’t just show the tops of people’s heads. Again, I don’t mean to be a pest about this but in our newspaper, and in every newspaper all over the world, there are dozens of “head shots’ of individuals that are all getting chopped off because of the default styling of the mobile theme. All I want to do is adjust that so that the images are acceptable to us and to our readers. Thanks!

Thank you, Bogdan and I do have some CSS in that field already, but my problem is I can’t seem to figure out what template is used to render that post loop page when using the mobile theme. I’ve had no problem determining which template does what for desktop, but there seem to be a lot of things in the mobile theme that refer back to grids and templates and CSS rules in the primary theme directory, as well as the mobile theme directory. That’s why I am confused, unless I am totally mistaken about how the mobile theme works. And again, I am not asking you to write the modifications for me, I just need a pointer to in which section of the CSS are the rules that would need to be altered so that only the mobile post loop is affected. When I use Firebug to determine the CSS selectors, they seem to be in numerous places.

In case it is not clear, and I think I have done a bad job of explaining this, this is what I had hoped to be able to do:

http://media.altimac.com.s3.amazonaws.com/images/sample-mob.png

but if that is not do-able, I am fine with having the narrow gradient for the first three, and then some kind of image placeholder for the rest below so there is not just empty white space. Is there any way this can be done just using CSS? As always, thanks for indulging me.

Thank= you, Catalin. I changed all the /no-thumb images to be a dark blue color but they are still not appearing on the mobile version of the site using the mobile theme. See this pic:

http://media.altimac.com.s3.amazonaws.com/images/obits-mobile3.png

I think I am confused because since I am using this CSS:

@media(max-width:767px){
.category-obituaries .entry-thumb{
display:none;
}}

that should hide the thumbs or their placeholders no matter what, correct? I am not understanding why the first three posts are showing with the narrow gradient (which I do want to have there), but the rest of them below that are not the “top three” have no placeholder at all. Logically, wouldn’t each of them have a tiny gradient there also? Is the gradient generated by CSS, so that it it not actually an image? Sorry to be a pain, I am just trying to make this view optimal for obituaries. For the other categories and the featured page, it really doesn’t matter so much, but we can’t show pictures of dead people with their faces cut off ;-(

Thank you. Bogdan. that did the trick. It does make me concerned though that since this is a newspaper theme, and newspapers often contain hundreds of pictures of faces in every edition, are there any plans to allow for a more standard 4:3 aspect for these images? I understand that you are trying to make everything lighter in terms of data transmitted and load time, but if we have to completely disable the images because they are only showing the tops of people’s heads, that kind of defeats the purpose of why the theme is rendering the images that way in the first place. In any case, replacing the images with the gray gradient shown in

http://media.altimac.com.s3.amazonaws.com/images/obits-mobile2.png

is working. Is there any way to insert the same kind of gradient placeholder for the remainder of list of posts? I have inserted one in that screen grab as a model. Again, thank you and I realize this is beyond the scope of your support, so I trulyy appreciate your assistance.

And sorry, it’s

https://starnewsgroup.com/category/obituaries/

Forgot the /category/ in there.

Hi Bogdan. Thanks for the reply and I apologize if my question was not clear. Here is a link to my site:

https://starnewsgroup.com/obituaries

and also a screen shot that shows my concern:

http://media.altimac.com.s3.amazonaws.com/images/obits-mobile.png

The narrow images in the mobile theme work very well for the main page and for most of the categories but for our obituaries it causes only the tops of their heads to be shown. What I am trying to do is either a) hide the images on the category page for Obituaries, or b) have the images appear in a standard 4:3 aspect so the deceased’ faces can be seen. Please let me know if you require any further explanation. Again I am not asking that you perform these mods for me, but only to point me to where in the mobile theme pages the adjustment needs to be made. Thanks!

Thank you, Catalin. I do fully understand how the mobile theme works, and it works great. My question was only related to whether I could preserve any changes I make to the mobile theme’s functions.php file following a theme update. Because there is a function I have created that needs to appear in posts displayed using both the “normal: and the mobile theme, I need to add that function to the mobile theme’s functions.php file. I was hoping to be able to use my child theme’s functions.php for that so my changes would not be overwritten after an update but given your response, I will just make sure to keep a backup of /mobile/functions.php so I can restore my mods after a theme update. Thanks!