Only switching part of my theme?

  • Resolved elfloftpigeons

    (@elfloftpigeons)


    3 years, 5 months ago

    Hey there – sorry in advance if my issue is obvious and this question is majorly stupid – I’m just getting started with WordPress and while I do my best to follow directions sometimes stuff just doesn’t click because I just don’t know about it yet.

    So right now I am setting up the themes for my group’s future site – I’ve only got two pages laid out for testing purposes. I’ve built it with a combination of Elementor (free)(also I’m paranoid that is the Elementor itself causing the problem – is that a possibility?) and Yellow Pencil pro. The only differences in the themes I am using, however (both child themes, one of Hello-Elementor and one of OceanWP) is that one is toned to be darker and to remove animations – basically to be an easier reading experience for those who would find it more appealing than brighter colors and intro animations. Fonts are supposed to be the same, layout is supposed to be the same – all that. At first theme-switcha definitely wasn’t working because of Yellow Pencil – turns out that sonofagun just applies CSS to the whole damn site willy-nilly! So I basically configured one theme, exported the CSS, reset, configured the second theme, exported the CSS, destroyed the customizations in the plug-in, then deactivated the plug-in. I copy-pasted the CSS into the style.css for both child themes. Live preview showed up correctly, besides animations not working – no idea why that isn’t triggering, but again, huge noob at this. (That is also my default activated theme, so not sure why it wouldn’t show at all?)

    However, when I use the theme switcher…. nothing immediately noticeable happens. EXCEPT on mobile! OceanWP’s default font seems to be smaller, for whatever reason, so while I took the time to properly configure the desktop font to the right sizes I didn’t bother with the mobile versions yet because I just wanted to know if what I was trying to do would work. So – the color shift – completely gone. It’s in the style-sheet, but doesn’t trigger unless I set the activated theme to that child. So theme-switcha is taking the font sizes, but not the color settings. (And god knows what’s going on with the animations. I don’t how on earth I’m going to figure out how to set that up so only one theme has them if copying in CSS doesn’t work ;-;)

    Any insight as to what might be going wrong here would be appreciated. I’ve tried full-on deactivating my cache, Yellow Pencil is still deactivated, the accessibility plugin was tried once – I don’t know what else in my kit would be interfering – they’re mostly widgets for Elementor. Anyway, thanks in advance! Sorry if this question is dumb!

    • This topic was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by elfloftpigeons. Reason: changed a "was" to "wasn't"
Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
  • Plugin Author Jeff Starr

    (@specialk)

    Hey thanks, give me some time to digest everything and take a closer look. In the meantime, you may want to ask your theme provider for help, it sounds like they may be able to share some insight.

    Plugin Author Jeff Starr

    (@specialk)

    One thing you might try is setting up a default WordPress install and try again. That way you can see how the plugin works normally. From there, you can recreate your current site one plugin/theme at a time, re-testing between each. Then when the issue re-appears, you will know exactly which theme or plugin is at issue.

    Thread Starter elfloftpigeons

    (@elfloftpigeons)

    Well it’s been about 4 re-installs later – still banging my head against this invisible wall. I keep getting close to solving it and then ‘something’ goes wrong. I’m starting to squint in Elementor’s direction, but it’s difficult to tell. At this point all I want to be able to do is turn off the css animations and adjust the color between themes – Elementor is making that EXCEEDINGLY difficult. Probably opening up a ticket with them and seeing if they’ll give me a tip as to being able to fiddle with their templates more.. Thanks for the suggestion

    Plugin Author Jeff Starr

    (@specialk)

    No problem. I’ll leave this thread open for awhile in case any further questions, etc. Let me know if I can provide any infos about the plugin. Glad to help anytime.

    Thread Starter elfloftpigeons

    (@elfloftpigeons)

    Actually, you MIGHT be able to answer this – I don’t know if it’s the problem, but it might be – but where would you suggest I be putting the CSS telling elementor’s animations to cut it out in one of my themes? I’ve tried the separate style sheet the the Child Theme Configurator hands out, but that doesn’t seem to take effect at all – only putting CSS in the Customizer itself seems to work – but not when switching themes. Should I just go directly into the files? I’m just squinting at this trying to figure out how to get elementor to do one thing on one theme and just NOT the other thing on the other theme, but so far theme-switcha doesn’t read it right or I’m plugging it in wrong.

    Plugin Author Jeff Starr

    (@specialk)

    I would try all of the above until something works. I don’t use Elementor or similar so can’t speak on its behalf, but can tell you that in general changes made via child themes will not be reflected unless the child theme is active. So for example if you add some styles to child theme, you would need to switch to the child theme (not the parent theme) in the theme switch plugin. In other words, switching to the parent theme does not load any of the child stuff (the same way it works with WordPress).

    Thread Starter elfloftpigeons

    (@elfloftpigeons)

    That’s the confusing thing – I have both parents on Status: admin-only. I have figured out that it’s not Elementor – I have successfully turned off the animations and altered the color scheme in one child theme and left it untouched in the other – but these changes only take effect when theme-switching is not enabled. As soon as it is enabled, one of the parent themes is activated as the default theme? So, for instance, I have “Vibrant” child off of Hello-Elementor and “Toned-Down” child off Page Builder Framework. I want Vibrant to be the default – so that is usually activated. When theme-switching is enabled, Vibrant becomes the “Admin” theme and the “Public” theme becomes Hello-Elementor. If Toned Down is activated, it becomes the “Admin” theme and Page Builder Framework becomes the “Public” theme. But attempting to switch between them on a different browser after cache-clearing doesn’t work. It seems to only be reading the one parent – even though I have my two child theme choices visible, changing off of the one that is activated doesn’t do anything. I do have “Everyone can switch” enabled, so it’s certainly not just that I’m forgetting that part. Scratching my head over it tbh

    Thread Starter elfloftpigeons

    (@elfloftpigeons)

    Huh… Sorry for the reply spam here – but I’ve also noticed that once theme-switcha is enabled and the parent theme of the child theme I want to use is activated, going to Appearance > Themes and trying to manually activate the child just defaults to the parent. Could this be an enqueueing problem??? I barely understand how enqueueing works, so it’s possible I made an error there?

    Plugin Author Jeff Starr

    (@specialk)

    @elfloftpigeons not sure, but can tell you that you should change the main theme (under WP menu > Appearance) only when Theme Switcha is not active (no active switched theme). That way what you describe never will happen.

    Thread Starter elfloftpigeons

    (@elfloftpigeons)

    Hm… I am only trying to do that because it is changing my public theme from the child to the parent as soon as theme-switching is active, but good to know nonetheless. I just tested going directly to the site, enabling theme-switching, and trying the front-end switching without touching anything else behind the scenes – I don’t think its reading the child theme I have available at all – I think it’s going straight to the parent theme too – edits I made to the child theme are not showing but upon looking at the mostly untouched parent theme that’s definitely what is displaying instead. I don’t know why it would completely ignore the child themes, especially since I have the “Status: publish” in the heading of both child themes and “Status: admin-only” in the heading of both parent themes? I’m especially confused as to why activating theme-switching when the child theme I want as the default is active makes its parent theme the public theme?

    Plugin Author Jeff Starr

    (@specialk)

    Yeah not sure about all of that, sounds like you may be over-thinking it. I can tell you that on default WordPress setup the plugin switches themes perfectly, whether child theme or parent theme, and regardless of which theme (child or parent) is active under the Appearance menu.

    Thread Starter elfloftpigeons

    (@elfloftpigeons)

    Sorry, I know I’m presenting a weird problem and all – I’m trying to figure out what’s going wrong here but inexperience isn’t make it any easier
    https://postimg.cc/k2LgD0rK – Showing theme that I activated before enabling switching
    https://postimg.cc/QFFM8Xzj – Showing what theme-switcha says
    I just don’t have any knowledge or examples as to whether what’s happening here is right? Sorry again for being such a bother – I switched to the Twenty-Twenty theme and then went to go check out the site in Firefox (the browser I use for editing and all is Chrome) and now it seems like I can’t switch to anything besides Hello-Elementor at all with that active. Are my settings displayed in the theme-switcha correct or have I bungled something?

    Plugin Author Jeff Starr

    (@specialk)

    It looks okay to me, maybe this will help you diagnose any issue(s):

    How to Troubleshoot WordPress, Easy Step-by-Step Guide

    It explains a more consistent way to troubleshoot plugins and themes. Hopefully it can be of some use to you.

    Plugin Author Jeff Starr

    (@specialk)

    Hey @elfloftpigeons, I hope you got this sorted. It’s been awhile with no reply so gonna go ahead and mark this thread as resolved to help keep the forum organized. Feel free to post again with any further questions or feedback, Thank you.

Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
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