On the site I’m creating, I’d really like to use both Timeline Express and Recent Posts Widget Extended — both of these can pull content from posts as “read more”-type excerpts. When I have this setting checked on either widget, though, the Hero widget goes wonky. Instead of increasing the size of the widget due to spacers (which is the only method I’m using, instead of setting a height — that’s a separate responsiveness issue), the hero is actually showing the spacer code.
Example: This page has the Timeline Express widget “show more” bit activated, and the SiteOrigin Hero is wonky: http://www.thecfr.com.php56-30.ord1-1.websitetestlink.com/about/history/
This page has the Recent Posts Widget Extended “show excerpt” option checked, and it does the same thing to the Hero: http://www.thecfr.com.php56-30.ord1-1.websitetestlink.com/raising-the-barr/
My home page also has the Recent Posts Extended widget, but I have the excerpt bit turned off at the moment, and the Hero is fine. The Timeline Express widget on the “history” page does the same when I turn that off.
Any way around this conflict? I’d really like to be able to use both of these widgets with their excerpt options, and have the Hero behave normally.
Thanks much!
PS – I’m using OnePress theme, if that makes a difference.
Hi ChristiCampbell,
Hm, are you able to use other shortcodes? I suspect those plugins don’t support shortcodes which would explain why the shortcodes are outputting as text.
Thank you for responding, Alex! I’m not quite sure that’s the issue, though. What’s outputting as text is just the spacer within the text editor, not a shortcode for another widget. (The spacer is coming out as just text, instead of filling up the header with space for the image, like it does on the other pages.) Does that still count as a type of shortcode in that case? And I’ve been able to use widget shortcodes throughout the site with no problem. (The timeline is published by shortcode, but the blog post excerpts, which are causing the same problem, are not.)
I think it’s got to be something to do with the excerpts, though, as everything works just fine when I uncheck the “show read more”-type option (for both the timeline and the post carousel). Does that make any sense?
Hi ChristiCampbell,
If the shortcode is outputting as text and not what it’s meant to be output as, the shortcode isn’t being run. This could be because the text isn’t able to have shortcodes run (which is what I suspect) or the shortcode isn’t being run correctly. Please try another shortcode in the exact same context so we can rule that out.
Thanks for the tip. I tried plugging in the shortcode for a contact form in place of the spacer, and this is what I got:
http://www.thecfr.com.php56-30.ord1-1.websitetestlink.com/about/history/
Again, not working. Does this mean that what I want to do is just incompatible?
Same thing on the blog page: http://www.thecfr.com.php56-30.ord1-1.websitetestlink.com/raising-the-barr/
Hi ChristiCampbell,
Okay so that confirms that shortcodes aren’t being run. Does this happen on a non-Page Builder powered page with the excerpt plugin enabled for that page?
I don’t have any pages that I’ve made without PageBuilder, so I created this quick test page without it — contact shortcode works fine here.
http://www.thecfr.com.php56-30.ord1-1.websitetestlink.com/test/
Hi ChristiCampbell,
Hm, have you tried a page builder powered page with a shortcode in a non-hero widget, for example the text widget and the excerpts enabled?
Yes, shortcodes for all sorts of things — my social media feeds, for instance — are working fine all over the site. And they’re all plugged in through Text widgets all across the site, so that isn’t the issue.
And the excerpts enabled does not run by shortcode, at least not from my PageBuilder view of it. I drop a posts widget into a row, (not into the hero) tell it what category of posts to show, tell it to show excerpts, and when published, the Hero goes wacky.
And I’ve tried at least 4 or 5 different widgets to show my posts. I’ve tried “Recent Posts” “Recent Posts Widget Extended” “Livemesh Post Carousel” and a couple of others that I activated and later deleted because I didn’t like their other functionalities anyway. Every one of them did the same thing. What made me think it was a excerpts issue is that the Timeline Express uses “announcements” (posts) as their “read more”, and only when the “read more” is enabled on that widget does it cause the problem as well.
The Timeline Express runs by shortcode, and the rest of that plugin is working fine.
I admit I’m stumped on this one.
And just for clarification, no other widgets or shortcodes are causing the Hero to do this on any of my other pages. It’s only on pages that are attempting to show post excerpts, regardless of what plugin/widget those post excerpts come from.
Hi ChristiCampbell,
Thank you for the clarification.
I’m also quite stumped but it’s quite obvious that this is an incompatibility issue. Would it be possible to contact the developers of the excerpt plugin you’re using to see if they have any ideas? Please forward them this thread so they can get an idea of what you’ve already tried.
I’m sorry I couldn’t provide you with a solution. Hopefully, in the future the other developer will be able to or they’ll be able to point us in the right direction to get to one.
Thank you for trying, Alex. At least it makes me feel better to know I wasn’t doing something obviously wrong!