Patrick Jackson

Yes, that’s confusing! Thanks for posting the work-around.
We’ve addressed this issue in the next version, which will be released soon.

Ah yes, another plugin conflict raises its ugly head. Those can be really tedious to troubleshoot.

Well, I’m glad to hear you got that sorted out, anyway, and thank you for posting your solution!

Hi Val,

I’m sorry to hear you’re experiencing these issues!

The symptoms you’re describing sound more like a plugin conflict than a connectivity or server issue, so if you’ve added or updated any plugins recently, I’d start my search with one of those as the culprit.

Let me take what you described and make some guesses as to what’s going on….

When I look at the HTML for your home page with the testimonials on it, it looks like the JavaScript for the testimonials plugin isn’t being loaded. Initially, the first testimonial loads with the page (it doesn’t need JavaScript to do that), then the JavaScript takes over to load different testimonials.

There are two causes I’ve frequently seen for scripts failing to load. First, another plugin has a bug that fouls up the script loading process for the rest of the plugins. Second, the theme template doesn’t include the wp_footer() function that inserts the script tags in the footer.

The fatal error you describe above would happen when the same php file — one with a class defined, like we have here — is called more than once on the same page load. My guess — and this is just a guess — is that there is a bug (probably introduced by a plugin) that caused the plugin page to fail to recognize that the testimonials plugin was activated.

If the testimonials plugin was deactivated, then that first testimonial would never show, so we can be fairly certain the plugin was active even though it showed as deactivated. If all of that were the case, I can see where running the Activation process on an already active plugin would throw that error.

The first solution I would try would be to search for plugin conflicts on a test (or local) instance of the site. If you’ve updated any plugins lately, try to deactivate them and see if the testimonials start working again. You should see the ivycat-testimonials-scripts.js file being loaded near the bottom of the HTML using a <script> tag.

If the activate/deactivate function isn’t working, you can try moving the plugin folder to another directory outside your WordPress installation. WordPress will probably complain and give you the option to deactivate the plugin, but it shouldn’t hurt your installation, and you can be certain the code isn’t being run.

I hope some of this helps! Let me know what you find, and we can take it from there.

Ah the dreaded plugin conflict!

Are you talking about the Google Maps Ready! plugin? (note: v1.0.5)

Well, if that’s it I can definitely confirm there is a plugin conflict. I installed it on a test instance and found that — as soon as it’s activated — it interferes with the ability of other plugins to load their JavaScript. When I turned on debugging, there were some errors thrown complaining about the way it’s loading scripts.

I don’t see any way we can edit or configure our plugin to get around that, so the only options I see are to fix the offending plugin (hopefully the author will do that soon!), or replace it.

Not what you want to hear, I know. :/

Hi Valarcher,

If your site was being hosted on a server experiencing intermittent connection issues (like it may in the case of a DDoS attack), I can see where the testimonials may not load reliably using AJAX.

I’ll post a suggestion to review how the plugin handles server connectivity issues.

If you’re still experiencing the issue, can you post a new support topic, and we’ll take a closer look?

Hi ZenaNici,

I’m glad to hear you’re happy with the plugin, thanks! It looks like your testimonials widget is working now?

Do you know what the issue was and how you fixed it?

Hi Athen,

I’m glad you like the plugin, thank you for using it!
I’m sorry to hear you’re getting this error.

It looks like your page is loading two versions of jQuery: 1.9.1 in the header, and 1.11.1 in the footer…

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js">

<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.0/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

I haven’t tested configurations like this to be sure this is the cause, but calling multiple versions of jQuery can often cause unusual behaviors and errors.

Can you try removing the call for jQuery 1.9.1 and see if that works?

I hope this helps!

Hi pbedford83,

If you want to remove the summary excerpt altogether, you’ll want to change the output template.

Here’s a related post that describes how to add a featured image. In your case, instead of adding the featured image code, you would delete the code for the summary (excerpt).

First, copy the template as discussed in the FAQ:

How do I change the output template

Simply copy the posts_loop_template.php to your theme directory and make changes as necessary.

You can even rename it – but make sure to indicate that in the shortcode using the template=’template_name.php’.

You can even use different templates for each shortcode if you like.

Make sure to add the template=’posts_loop_template.php’ attribute to your shortcode even if you don’t change the name.

Next, find the following code and delete it.

<!-- This is the output of the EXCERPT -->
<div class="entry-summary">
	<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
</div>

If you want to keep the summary, but make it shorter, you can add some custom code to the functions.php file in your theme to filter the excerpt length. Here’s information about that in the WordPress Codex.

I hope this helps! ??

My appologies, @mercime! It looks like you’re right!

I was confused because the Gravatar profile with this email address didn’t have social links set up before today. However, the Gravatar set up under my PERSONAL email DID have the social links set. It didn’t occur to me to go back and check that profile, since I didn’t think it had a connection with this account anymore.

So, I think I set up this account under my personal email address originally, and the gravatar profile with my personal social links was applied. Then I’m guessing when I edited the email on this account, and changed it to my business address, my photo was updated, but since I didn’t have any social links set, they were left unchanged.

When I went in earlier today and set up the social links for the first time on the business email’s gravatar profile, those changes must have triggered the links to update on my WordPress profile, finally replacing the original personal social links… or something like that.

As you say, when I was testing earlier, I must not have updated my browser. Now when I navigate to the profile, as you said, the social links perfectly reflect what I have set up for this account’s Gravatar.

Awesome! Thanks again for your help and your patience! ??

Hi @mercime,

Thank you for taking the time to post an answer, and for the good advice! It was a great reminder to update the Verified Services on my Gravatar profile! ??

Unfortunately, this does not solve my issue. The social links on my www.ads-software.com profile are not controlled by Gravatar, and do not change when I edit my Gravatar profile.

Any other suggestions?

Hi MeMills,

I’m sorry you’re having trouble with this.

First, let’s double-check a few simple things that can cause issues like this.

1. Check the slug name for typos
This is one of the most common sources of issues in cases like this. Go to the Testimonial Groups submenu item, and make sure what you’re entering in the group attribute is exactly what’s listed under that group’s slug column.

2. Check the shortcode for typos
Go through and double-check that all the attribute names are spelled right, especially the “group” attribute name. If there’s a typo in the attribute name, like “groups” instead of “group”, then the plugin will ignore it and use the default: all groups.

3. Use Text View to look for “hidden” html code
If the shortcode is in a page’s content, this one can sneak up on you. Sometimes, if you’re editing a page in the Visual editor extra <span> tags or other html code can be accidentally inserted in your shortcodes without your noticing. To check for this, switch to the Text view using the Text tab on your page editor, and check the shortcode to make sure it still looks the same.

4. Check the Display Testimonial Group option in the widget
If you’re using the plugin’s widget, double-check that you selected the group in the Display Testimonial Group option, and that it’s not still set to the default All Groups setting.

If you’ve checked all of these, and they look fine, then we’ll need to get more information:
How are you using the plugin, exactly: Widget, shortcode, customizing a template, etc.?
Can you copy the exact shortcode (or other code) you used? Some of the surrounding code may be useful for context.
Have you tried turning off all of the other plugins to rule out a plugin conflict?
What theme are you using? Have you tried switching to a different theme to rule out a conflict there?

Hi Diego_circo,

This isn’t part of the plugin’s API, so I can’t guarantee that this will still be available in future versions of the plugin, but the WP_Query object is available in the template as $ic_posts.

So $ic_posts->post_count will give you the total number of posts being listed.

If you want the current post number, use $ic_posts->current_post. Note that it starts counting at zero, so you may want to add 1 to it.

If you added the following to the top of your custom post_loop_template.php file (right under <div class=”post hentry ivycat-post”>)…

<!-- This will output the post number and total posts  -->
<div class="post-count">
    <p><?php  echo $ic_posts->current_post + 1; ?> of <?php  echo $ic_posts->post_count; ?> posts</p>
</div>

… and you were listing, say, 3 posts; you would get something that looked like…

1 of 3 posts
… (post 1 content) …

2 of 3 posts
… (post 2 content) …

3 of 3 posts
… (post 3 content) …

You can check out more Methods and Properties of the $ic_posts (WP_Query) object in the codex:

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Class_Reference/WP_Query#Properties

Note that it’s called $the_query in their examples.

Hi cjackson111,

I ran through the process of adding the thumbnail and hit a couple of snags that might be confusing. So, hopefully these suggestions will help.

1. Add the template attribute

I found that I HAD to add the template attribute. If I didn’t, then the plugin always used its default template in its own directory.

So, for example, if you’re listing all of the posts and you copied the original posts_loop_template.php file to the root of your theme’s directory, your shortcode would look like the following:

[ic_add_posts template=’posts_loop_template.php’]

2. If you’re using a child theme, add your custom template to the parent theme folder (root)

I happened to be testing on an instance with a child theme (twenty fourteen was the parent). Ideally, you would put your custom copy of the template in the child theme folder and never touch the parent theme.

I found that I had to put it in the parent theme folder, and only that one was used. If I put a copy in the child theme folder, it was always ignored. I’ll see about getting this fixed in the next update. ??

Hi kezzykezyqgc,,

One way you can get pages to be listed is to set the post_type attribute to “page” in the shortcode.

For example a shortcode that reads…

[ic_add_posts post_type=’page’ ]

… would list all of the content for all pages on the site.

Now, this would include the page with the Posts in Page shortcode, so you may want to limit your list.

One way to do this would be to include the Page (or Post) ids of the pages you want to list. To get the page id, go to edit the page you want to add, and look at the URL, which may look something like…

https://www.example.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=2&action=edit

Where it says post=2 tells you that this page’s post id is 2.

If I create a shortcode that says…

[ic_add_posts post_type=’page’ ids=’2′]

… then the posts in page list will include the page with id=2. You can list multiple pages by separating the ids with commas:

[ic_add_posts post_type=’page’ ids=’2,4,23′]

The above would only show pages. Now suppose you want to list both pages and posts in your list. In the above example, if 23 were a Post instead of a Page, it would not show in the resulting list because we specified only the Page post_type.

Now, you can also add a comma to your post_type attribute. The following would list all pages and posts.

[ic_add_posts post_type=’page, post’]

The following would list the items with the given ids whether they’re posts or pages:

[ic_add_posts post_type=’page,post’ ids=’2,4,24,53,101′]

Hi Discman,

The link to the options page for the current version (v2.14.1) of the plugin should show as a submenu item under the Settings Administrator menu called Page Sidebar Settings.

Finding the Home Page ID can be tricky. If you look at the HTML for that page, it can usually be found in a class parameter in the Body tag. There should be a class called page-id-xxx where xxx is the ID of the home page.

If you can’t find it, can you provide a link to your home page? I’ll see if I can spot it.