can’t use plugins

  • Resolved martin177

    (@martin177)


    6 years, 1 month ago

    hi,

    I started working on my wp website last year. I knew nothing about coding, css, themes or plugins. I have come very far and I am very proud of myself.
    However: since I had zero idea how to turn a free theme (aka white sheet) into a nice functioning website I found a 3 hour video on youtube. I chose to (copy what the guy did and) put an overlay image at the top of every page on my site and give every page a different background colour. I think it looks really great! this video displayed very nicely how to do that. It was also done with elementor and I have stuck with free elementor, because I can use it really well.

    the problem:
    I want to install plugins like lifterlms or memberpress or woocommerce and when I do, my overlay image and the background colour for that site is completely gone. The plugin appears, but does so in the original theme design. Once I deactivate the plugin (like lifterlms or postgrid or any of them) the image and background colour are back.

    so basically, I have had to take the long way round by copying what the plugin looks like and adding text, headings, images with elementor and desperately trying to find shortcodes for what I want to do. I gather that a plugin is plug and play, right?

    I have 2 questions:
    1) does that problem sound familiar to any of you? can anyone help me fix it?
    2) how do I lock a specific (membership)page with a login, do you know of a shortcode that locks a specific page within a website? I don’t want to have the entire site locked, just one page.

    thanks a lot,
    Martin

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • There are two approaches to web sites: static and dynamic. In the old days, all web pages were hand coded in HTML (static). Then someone invented PHP (and other scripting languages), and started to dynamically generate the HTML for the web pages (dynamic).

    WordPress is software for dynamic web pages. Elementor is a plugin that helps you do static pages in a dynamic setting. The theme should be controlling what the web pages look like (CSS for the HTML), but using something like Elementor means that the theme is not involved in the page output.
    So, you can and are running plugins: Elementor. Most plugins are made to work with whatever theme is active. They play nice, so there are no conflicts. Elementor or the approach you chose to take is not like that.

    As for locking a page, you can password protect it, with no plugin.

    Thread Starter martin177

    (@martin177)

    Joy,

    thank you for taking the time to reply.

    I have 2 questions:
    1) does that problem sound familiar to you? can you help me fix it?
    2) how do I password protect a specific (membership)page with a login, do you know of a shortcode that locks a specific page within a website?

    thank you very much,
    Martin

    Thread Starter martin177

    (@martin177)

    Sorry Joy,

    I didn’t understand at all what you were saying, probably because I am focused on solving my problem rather than understanding the exact inner and outer workings of webdesign, codings etc. Wherever you look online, everybody tells you that it’s so easy to create a website. I have found it to be difficult, since I can either use elementor or use a plugin like any LMS ones or more importantly woocommerce. All I want to do is create a little image at the top, add a plugin to my page and rock and roll. It just doesn’t work. I have no idea why. The information you gave above simply adds on to my confusion. Can you see that?

    Thank you for your time.

    If you have a problem with a plugin (like Elementor), you need to ask at the plugin’s support forum. Same with a theme, and putting an image in a particular place is usually a theme issue, but you are using a plugin that overrides what the theme does, so you should ask the plugin.
    For protecting a page, there is the built-in Password Protected page, but it is the same password for all users, and can be shared. If you want something other than that, you will need a plugin.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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