No widgets working on Front Page

Sounds like a lot of problems that you listed, so there must be something going wrong somewhere. One quick side note….I do not provide support for third party plugins, but I’m here to help so let’s tackle this with one item at a time, starting with the display widgets issue. I should also mention that for the next couple of days, I will be going through setup tutorials and making changes to bring them up to date and to add anything that is missing…such as the Front Page setup tutorial not mentioning about static front page settings. Thank you for making note of that.

Page Setup
Are you wanting to create a static front page like the demo and have your blog inside your site? If so, what page template did you assign to the page and also, I’m assuming you have the pages set from the Reading settings in your WordPress?

Jetpack and Display Widgets
If you are using Jetpack, it’s important to make sure you do not have any other plugin active that does this kind of function. With the Widget Visibility enabled, you want to make sure that when you are doing the settings on a widget, to make sure you are setting the widget to “Show” when you are selecting pages or other types of areas. Same goes for the “Hide” when selecting pages. This is often missed. So after doing this, you widgets are not showing on the pages you select to show them on?

Similar settings are for the Display Widgets plugin as well. So let’s start fresh here. I have a test site open on my computer with Longevity loaded. I will duplicate what you are doing.

What sidebar positions are you wanting to show a widget on and for what page?

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Shaped Pixels.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Shaped Pixels.

Hi,

I have tried on 4 occasions to get back to you, but the universe of computer ish prevented me. Ok. To answer your questions:

“Are you wanting to create a static front page like the demo and have your blog inside your site? If so, what page template did you assign to the page and also, I’m assuming you have the pages set from the Reading settings in your WordPress?”

Yes, I want a static front page like the demo, and my blog inside the site. I’ve had this theme for a while on my old site, but never had the static front page. I want that on this new site.

The template I assigned to my front page is Template sidebars only.

Yes, I changed the setting in the Reading setting because it would not work the way it was supposed to under the customization settings. In that area, the setting is blog posts, and in the Reading setting, the setting is Static page.

“Jetpack and Display Widgets
If you are using Jetpack, it’s important to make sure you do not have any other plugin active that does this kind of function. With the Widget Visibility enabled, you want to make sure that when you are doing the settings on a widget, to make sure you are setting the widget to “Show” when you are selecting pages or other types of areas. Same goes for the “Hide” when selecting pages. This is often missed. So after doing this, you widgets are not showing on the pages you select to show them on?”

Your statement here is confusing. I shut off the Jetpack functionality for the widgets, because I initially had both on; yet still, the Display widget plugin is not giving me the desired affect your instructions indicated.

Your statement is confusing because you mention how “Show” and “Hide” are supposed to be used when selecting pages or other types of areas, but you don’t tell me which one is supposed to be used in this case, nor what pages or types of areas each apply to to make this work.

I didn’t miss that point when you first pointed it out. I went back and disabled that function in Jetpack, but the Display widget did not work, whether I selected “Show” and indicated the front page or if I selected “Hide” and indicated all other pages. It didn’t work either way.

Additionally, there were similar other options. There was “front”, as well as “front page” and “home”. This is why I had to change the labels for my home page, which is the blog roll, and the front page title, because I didn’t want it to say “Front page” on the actual front page.

I had to go into the customization side to change the “Front page” label so that the actual “front page” still existed. If I changed it in the page label itself, it would not work, and then I could not find it in the Display widget plugin list.

Similarly, I had to direct the home link to my page labelled “Spirit” because that is the home page. My site is divided into Spirit, Mind, and Body, the later two will be subdomains, with their own home/blogroll, so that distinction had to be made. But that point really had no affect on the situation, other than my need for the home-blogroll page to be linked to my menu bar under the word Spirit.

So the menu bar is working just fine with those name changes. However, I still cannot get the call to action to show up, nor the front page widgets that would be directing viewers to the sections of my site. That is the remaining problem. Even with the default page setting at Template sidebars only, none of those functions are working.

“What sidebar positions are you wanting to show a widget on and for what page?”

I don’t think the issue is regular sidebar widgets. The issue is that the Top 1-4 and the Call to Action are not even visible on my customization side, so despite my placing the text widgets in them per the instructions, none of them are visible.

I don’t know if they are supposed to be visible on the customization side, but it simply makes sense that they should, because how can I customize something that is not there. The only widgets that show up on that side of things are the “Blog Right Sidebar, Bottom 1-4, Banner, Breadcrumbs, Footer & Header Sidebar.”

I can add widgets to those, but no where else. If I’m supposed to be setting up that front page, shouldn’t the correct widgets be available in the customization side as well as the back office under widgets?

I put the text in just like the instructions said. I changed exactly what the instructions said to change. I put the ! in front of the text name to hide the text box name, and I checked and rechecked it. So do you want to see the code that I have with my changes? Thanks for the help.

Thank you for getting back to this. So, let’s find out what we can accomplish here…

For the front page setup, it sounds like you did that part correctly which is based on the tutorial by WordPress on making a static front page. You make a page for your front page and another page for the blog. Then you go to Settings >> Reading >> and set both dropdowns to those pages.

NOTE: I am going to work on the theme’s setup tutorials and update them right after I post this reply, but one thing I know I did not mention in the front page setup tutorial is what sidebars are available; definitely my fault for not letting people know. Currently, that Template Sidebars Only includes the following:

• Call to Action
• Breadcrumbs
• Top 1, 2, 3 and 4
• Content Bottom 1, 2, 3, and 4
• Banner
• bottom
• Footer

For assigning widgets to show on the front page, let’s use Display Widgets for this. When you put a widget into any of the sidebars noted above, your settings would be this:

• Show on Checked Pages
• Under Miscellaneous, select “Front“

This will be the same for any widgets you want to publish to the front page; providing the sidebars are available for that template you are using.

As for whether widgets should show in the customizer, they should actually. But to be honest, I would avoid using the customizer to create and manage widgets because in my opinion, the customizer is horrible at widget management. I would recommend managing your widgets from the actual widgets section of your admin….especially because you have more space to work in.

Regarding the ! (exclamation mark) in front of the widget title, this will only work, providing that you have the Hide Widget Titles plugin installed and active; I’m assuming you have done that.

Is your site available to view while we do this?

My site is currently in maintenance mode, but I can deactivate it temporarily.
I did notice that you added the info on the sidebars. I checked off “front” under Miscellaneous, and removed the other checkmarks, but it is still not working. Also I noticed something else with the instructions.

“The button is a Shortcode, so you will want to replace the URL to where you want the button to link to, followed by changing the label of the button from “Download This Theme” to your own.”

This actually confused me a moment ago when I was reviewing the instructions again, because suddenly, I thought it was telling me to go to the actual button to download the theme. It didn’t make sense, so I checked what the actual text on the sample showed. On the instructions, the code I think you are referring to actually says,

“<p>Download Longevity<p>”

So am I correct in thinking that when the instructions refer to changing Download this theme to your own, it is referring to this part of the code that says Download Longevity? Just making sure. I am going to remove maintenance mode on my site temporarily.

Ok. My site is https://crossofpain.com. Also, you should know that the text, “My Front Page” is showing up on the site.

I’m only going to be here for a short time, so I will be putting the site back under maintenance mode if I don’t see your response before I have to leave today.

Thanks for the link….I just looked at your source code and there is something very odd showing and happening. You have content (your social icons plugin) and there is a right sidebar column showing even though there is no widget in it, despite that your source code shows you are using the Template Sidebars Only for the front page. The really odd part is that this template does not have a right sidebar position in it, nor does it have a content area. Plus, you also have two menu links, Welcome and Home of Spirit, both of which are pointing to the front page of your site.

I think what we need to do (and I hate to say this), is to start brand new, although that is going to be your decision. Basically you delete all your pages, make sure they are also deleted from the “Trash” as well for pages because this can cause problems.

Then, create a fresh new page for your front page and use the Template Sidebars Only as your template, call it whatever you want. Then, make another page for the blog (if you plan to have a blog). Then, go to the Settings >> Reading >> then set the front page and posts pages to point to the pages you just made.

Then, try publishing a widget to the front page using the instructions I posted earlier.

**I’m at my computer for the rest of the afternoon, so I will await your reply. Also, having a “disable right click” function really doesn’t do anything, because I can easily access your source code amoung other things in the front-end of your site.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Shaped Pixels.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Shaped Pixels.

I’m having problems with the front page again, now with the correct page loading with the banner. In experimenting with this, I created a page I titled as Any page I like with the same Template Sidebar only. While the static page was selected, under Front page, I selected My Front Page, and under Posts page, Home of Spirit was selected.

When I clicked the primary menu link for My Front Page, called Welcome, I got the front page listing Any page I like, Home of Spirit and My Front page.

Clicking the Home of Spirit link in the primary menu bar got me to the same page, which technically is the “My Front Page/Welcome” page.

I then changed the Front Page selection under the static page setting to Any page I like, and the pages switched places. Home of Spirit was still selected as the posts page, but when I clicked on the Welcome link in the primary menu bar, it brought me to the main blogroll page with the banner at the top. When I clicked Home of Spirit in the primary menu bar, then Any page I like appeared correctly as the front page should be appearing.

When I checked the links under this new setting, Any page I like has crossofpain.com; the “Welcome/My Front Page” page has https://crossofpain.com/my-front-page/; and the Home of Spirit has crossofpain.com.

I don’t understand why the links keep switching around. I deactivated quite a few plugins to try to see if I could figure out what was affecting this, but I may have to deactivate more. It was fine until I checked the reading settings earlier after communicating with you, and found them again on posts. Once I changed it back to My Front page, then these problems came up again, and I’m right back to where I started with this not working right at all.

I am putting the site back under maintenance mode again. This is ridiculous.

It seems to only work when the reading settings are to posts and the customized settings are to static page, then the links work correctly, otherwise they do not. And, no matter which of these is set which way, the call to action and the 4 box widgets never show up.

Ok, I just saw your response above, which I was waiting for. I will try your suggestions tomorrow, and let you know how it goes. Thanks.

As mentioned, I think it might be best to simply start fresh. My philosophy is that if things are just not behaving and requiring a lot of troublshooting to no avail, I like to start fresh. Because your site does not appear to be completely setup yet, best to consider it.

Regarding the customizer, try not to use that except for the theme options/settings. For all other settings, it’s better to use the main admin areas for everything else.

You also did a good thing by troublshooting with turning off some plugins. But I think you should disable all plugins….and yes, even your maintenance plugin because I know there are some of these plugins that does play crazy things with linking and other problems. I experienced this myself with my own site and had to change the maintenance plugin.

By the way, what is your permalinks settings set to?

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Shaped Pixels.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Shaped Pixels.

Wow! It worked! I had forgotten that I had the widgets already setup, so when I created the front page with the Template sidebar only selected, the entire page popped up. The only thing I need to change is the link for the download button and the text for each widget.

The only problem is that the Text title !My Front Page Banner is showing up. I did what you said and not only eliminated all the pages before I started again, but I also deactivated every plugin. I began to add them back in one by one.

So let me tell you which ones I activated so that perhaps you can ascertain why there is a conflict with the one that popped up.

I have my security from CleanTalk, which comes with my hosting account, along with Spam Protection from CleanTalk as well. I realized that I also had Askismet for spam protection, so I deleted it.

I also activated my Maintenance Mode Under Construction Page and that caused no conflicts. Btw, I click the refresh button for each plugin as I add them to see if it makes any changes on the front page.

Then I added in my Breadcrumb NavXT – no problems.
I added Zedity – no problems.

The minute I activated Display Widgets, I lost the front page banner, and the call to action. The four widgets were still there, but with that selected, it caused conflicts so I deactivated it. Mind you, I have not yet activated Jetpack, so this is just that plugin causing the conflict. I’m going to keep going here down my plugin list. I will let you know if I have any more plugin ish. Also, since the issue is coming from the Display Widgets plugin, is there another way for me to get rid of that widget banner title appearing on my front page? Thanks.

I found the Remove Widget Titles plugin, so I activated that one next. It tripled my page loading time, but the front page banner title is gone.

Jetpack activated with no problems.

Custom Newsletter Template caused the banner and call to action to disappear, so that was deactivated and deleted. I tested all the other plugins except 5 which remain deactivated because I am still not sure if I want to or need to utilize them. They are more for decor or personal ease, so not sure if I want them. Everything else is working just fine with the front page, so thank you so much for your help! Finally, I have the front page! Woo-hoo!

Sounds like we’re making progress! That is good news. To answer your question about the banner widget title, yes. A plugin that I use all the time and talk about in many tutorials is the “Remove Widget Titles”. This one lets you type an exlamation mark right in front of the widget title. This hides it from the front but not from the admin side (so you know what the widget it without opening it. But it sounds like you found that already. As for tripling your page loading time, that doesn’t sound right. If you are encountering a page load time of triple, you may want to inform the support for that plugin. There is a way of hiding the title without that plugin by using some custom CSS like this example:

.widget-2 .widget-title {
    display: none;
}

You will have to look at the source code to get the class of that particular widget to know what it is. On a test site of mine, I saw one widget had the class “widget-2” so I used that in my test and example.

As for Display Widgets, if that is causing problems for you, then disable it and try the jetpack’s Widget Visibility module instead. I would also let the developer support for the Display Widgets know of your problem you encountered. I still say the Display Widgets plugin is better than the jetpack one, but each website is different, so what counts is whatever works is what you use.

Cheers!
Andre