You don’t need a visual composer license key — again!

Please see the theme docs, right side of page.
https://forum.tagdiv.com/update-the-visual-composer-plugin-wpbakery/

You have a “bundled” version of the plugin, not a paid individual license version.

You can ignore “nag screen” in WordPress panel saying there is an update. You cannot automatically update the bundled version from WordPress; only with a new THEME update.

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docs
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How to Update Visual Composer plugin (WPBakery)

•The theme includes a license for this plugin so you don’t have to buy it.
•You don’t have to activate the plugin license, it’s already activated.
•You can’t update the plugin directly from the it’s producer.
•You don’t have to worry about the plugin update warnings.

I think we messed with this on one of our sites with CSS awhile back, but might not be what you need; originally this issue came up due to changing the font size would change container size/line height, and sometimes different fonts have different line heights, etc. Try playing with something like this:

.block-title {line-height: 28px}

If I’m mistaken, I apologize. But we actually ended up doing something cool and making the entire block solid to get rid of the whole (stupid) underline look and instead having solid bars:

.block-title {line-height: 28px;background-color:#666}

this is not the latest-latest version of Newspaper, and I think I need to update from WP4 to 4.1 (doh); but example:
https://www.send2press.com/guru/press-release-seo-tips-and-guidelines-for-best-placement-in-search-results/

Hope that helps!

WordPress issue, not theme issue. The theme does not send email.

You can search the issue online, but often the SMTP email plugin has helped a lot of people.

Basically your hosting setup isn’t allowing email to be sent via php form in WordPress.

Not having this issue on any of our sites, maybe a screen shot would be useful?

Yes, WordPress “reports” and update is *available* but you don’t need to have it. You can just ignore it. Nothing earth shattering is going to happen if that notice is there, and your site isn’t going to stop working if you don’t have that.

Actually, the theme folks *do* put in code to stop the “nag screen” from showing up, but the people at VC keep changing their product, and so that keeps coming back when it really shouldn’t.

You can’t change the name of the product/as it’s a licensed version, so that is why it must be installed and activated as a normal plugin. Blame the VC folks for how they license this to theme developers, and not the theme folks. With the hundred different theme houses bundling VC with their themes, it’s a great product, but this is one of those annoyances.

Yes, you *do* need to manually update it if/when a new version is provided with theme update. You don’t need to update the plugin unless you plan to keep changing your layouts again and again.

So, again, see the theme documentation regarding how this works.

TIP: when you see an update available – do NOT just go and update it – go check and see if it has problems, breaks something else, etc. — for instance, one Disqus update added a cross scripting vulnerability, one version of Yoast SEO broke a whole bunch of things and took 5 fixes in a week to sort that out; AddThis plugin added a blank 10px space at bottom of every page on websites; took 6 weeks to fix. Etc.

Just because a new update is shown in the update panel does NOT MEAN YOU NEED TO INSTALL IT. This is part of learning the WordPress ecosystem.

Sorry if this neither helps or educates, but thought I’d share for anybody else freaking out about the topic. It’s really a non-issue.

That border is shown because your images don’t “fill” the spaces of the layout.

You need to regenerate thumbnails to the sizes used by those boxes.

If those boxes are larger than your original sizes, you need to use something like “Thumbnail Upscale” which over-rides WordPress turning off builtin upscaling “feature.”

You can’t manually update the plugin; it’s a free “bundled” version, which is tested and contains compatible custom modules for the theme.

The version included with the theme is updated when major theme updates are released.

You cannot update the commercial paid version to work with the theme, as they may not have all the same functions and because the version included with theme is optimized for the theme.

Not rally a PITA as you have no need to update every dot revision of the plugin to add features not included with the theme or tested to even work properly.

Just because an update is available doesn’t mean you need to have it!

See the theme docs for more info
https://forum.tagdiv.com/how-to-update-visual-composer-plugin-wpbakery/

Hope that helps !

This fix has worked for the dozen or so folks who reported the problem last month, and tested on couple of dozen different browsers around the world.

ref:https://forum.tagdiv.com/topic/icons-missing/page/2/#post-29906

however, there is a *known* issue with AdBlock Plus and “icon fonts” where it can sometimes think that a commercial icon (e.g., “facebook”) is an ad, and block the font.

Only way to solve that if you’re using AdBlock plus is turn it off.

For all other cases, the re-do of the fonts DOES fix it for all previously reported instances, so you might revisit that and make sure you fully clear web site cache if using one.

If using a CDN, you will need to setup CORS rule with your provider.

Note that the font set is basically the widely used Font Awesome (“FA”), and simply was “simplified” by TagDiv to remove un-used icons, not needed by theme.

Presumably once could simply fix the functions to just load the full Font Awesome fonts.

• This reply was modified 11 years by simchris.

Should work. Mine does. Basically you have a license code from the downloads for the theme, for the theme license. This is entered in the NEWSMAG theme panel, with theme panel active. If you have Newspaper license that won’t work with Newsmag or vice versa.

If you don’t have theme installed, it’s impossible for the theme to ask you to activate theme.

You don’t enter theme activation in Envato plugin, but in the theme panel when theme is properly installed and selected/active as current theme for site.

Theme activation also has nothing to do with Visual Composer plugin, which is bundled with theme and needs no activation key.

Hope that helps. Maybe not. 🙂

4.3.5 is the latest version bundled with theme and tested compatible; which is version fixed for WP 4.1.

I imagine the free bundled version with custom modules will be updated with next theme update, as per usual practice.

This is mentioned in the theme docs, although perhaps more obtusely.

Basic WordPress usage….
go to wp settings > reading > show number of posts per page

http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Reading_Screen

It’s kind of a funky product, frankly.

I ended up trying about three different things until I got the hang of its quirks…. so, I found it easer to start with blank slate vs using templates, then try things, then start over if I don’t like that or run into one of those oddities.

I also found using Chrome worked better than IE11, if using Windows.

At this point in time the only way to do that would be
1) hack the theme; which you would need to do on your own entirely (create new module yourself)
2) use the newsmag theme
3) wait for Newspaper 5.0 which will have some of the new modules they have come up with for VC but changed to fit the different layout and responsive format of Newspaper.

I could be wrong, but that has been my experience so far on this topic.

Try testing your page with gtmetrix.com
as it will tell you explicitly what you need to fix; with examples.

Start first with the “server” items, then the image optimization issues, then minimize loading external stuff (like 6 ad networks on some sites give really bad score).

They usually update the VC plugin as needed, not just because the VC folks release a new dot upgrade every 2 weeks. So, typically when they need to do so, and they can test the modules work with the VC upgrade — and sometimes the VC update has bugs, then there is ANOTHER VC update to fix the update — so rushing to update at every dot version serves no purpose with VC.

Based on the past year with Newspaper, they have been really good about included updated version on regular basis, just not every single tiny update that the VC plugin offers.

If you’re updating your home page every week, that might be useful, but most folks develop their layout, then concentrate on CONTENT and not constantly changing the layouts.

Anyway – short answer was “yes!” 😉

Basically you should optimize your setup to run WordPress, and once that is functional, then worry about the theme, as it is just an overlay on WordPress functionality (which is how themes work). So, if your server is optimized for WordPress, then it’s optimized for the theme.

You can *then* do further optimizations for WP, like making sure image magick is working, making sure you have gzip/deflate working, using memcache/APC/opcache or similar, and possibly setting up mod_pagespeed. All that can be done separate from the theme.

However, there are some suggestions for speeding up the theme in the theme docs, and I’ve posted various things I’ve done in the pagespeed sticky topic (some of which is now in the docs, obviously, also).

And of course the official WordPress docs (codex), always great place to start!
http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Optimization/Server_Optimization

http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Optimization

4.3.5 is the latest version bundled with theme and tested compatible; which is version fixed for WP 4.1.

I imagine the free bundled version with custom modules will be updated with next theme update, as per usual practice.

This is mentioned in the theme docs, although perhaps more obtusely.

oh….
stupid me….

go to your wp settings > general

and in the time/date settings be sure to put in the time/date stamps you want in the format you want;

eg. for custom date format
M j, Y H:i:s O T

http://screencast.com/t/wgFVrkihMo

result:
http://ga-ga.com/2549/book-review-tons-of-corruption-in-america-venality-has-been-in-bloodstream-of-politicians-since-founding/

Jan 16, 2015 20:15:35 -0500 EST

ref:
https://forum.tagdiv.com/topic/time-stamp/

• This reply was modified 11 years by simchris.
• This reply was modified 11 years by simchris.

I think you can edit the module to add the additional WordPress time settings like hour / minute / second 00:00:00 — somebody else asked about this I recall, so might be findable in the forum while waiting for more specific reply.

not sure though, might be another place that is done.

We actually need to do that for the post pages, too.

in loop-single-1 for instance I see
<?php echo $td_mod_single->get_date(false);?>

so, ref:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_the_date

normal usage
<span class="entry-date"><?php echo get_the_date(); ?></span>

with time format
http://codex.wordpress.org/Formatting_Date_and_Time

<span class="entry-date"><?php the_time('l, F jS, Y') ?></span>

or

<?php the_time(get_option('date_format')); ?> – <?php the_time(); ?>

Something like that. If you get working solution, please post an example of when/where, and I will try to do the same 🙂

• This reply was modified 11 years by simchris.

Lucian
I am going to suggest you might just include those updated fonts in future versions, perhaps just in a folder /alternatefont/ or similar …

so many folks are having issue with the custom font, that it seems it really is an issue with some browsers, and the “fix” solves it for both those seeing the issue while not hurting those who don’t see the issue.

Just a thought.

Also check your server has image magick setup and configured; it’s what WP now uses as “default” image processing module.

Yeah. You would have to manually modify the blocks to use the same sizes in all the blocks, which seems to be a bit of a pain as you’d need to redo that with each theme upgrade.

But if you just used ONE module/block with square thumbs and used only that it might work, but not very exciting. I think with all square images you’d also end up with some blank space in blocks, etc.

Likely doing a mockup image to post here might help the tech support folk get a better idea of what you’re hoping to do and whether it’s possible or not.

Obviously with the wide blocks if you made the wide image square it would either be more narrow, or taller to be square, and with vertical it would break the box layout since it would be too wide, so it would be half as tall to keep same width.

My head hurts on that 😉

Best way to do that easily is only use ONE module/block size on your home page and sidebar.

And also set the three small/medium/large sizes on the wp > settings > media page to not create additional un-needed sizes.

Obviously if you use a block/module with different size, it needs to build and load different size thumbs; but you *can* edit blocks if you want, just not simple.

Thumbnail upscale plugin:
we use this with BOTH Newsmag and Newspaper to make the larger thumbs for home page sliders, and category featured pix, etc., since many of our old images were 500×375.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/thumbnail-upscale/

Admin may want to finally add this to the “suggested” plugins page for use with theme in addition to “regenerate thumbnails” …

I think temporarily you can edit the module that does that; do a quick search in forum as this has actually been mentioned several times now, and you are 100% correct. I had expected that to be a fix in v1.4 of the theme, actually.

We don’t use it, but I have a client who asked about using theme and that was also a concern. (Trying to woo several clients away from WooCanvas). 🙂