Waxom

Contents

1. Can't import the demo content.

2. Are you sure you want to do this? Please try again.

3. The theme is missing the style.css stylesheet

4. How to Improve Page Loading Times

5. Google Maps not working

6. Theme Customization

7. How to update Waxom and it's plugins

8. Essential Grid & Ultimate VC Addons Plugins

9. How do I access the old Support Forums?

10. How do I update my theme and plugins?

11. WPBakery Visual Composer, Revolution Slider, Layer Slider and other plugins ask for activation key

12. Getting Map Coordinates (lat,lng)

13. Waxom Theme Hooks

14. WordPress 5.5.* Update & WPBakery issues

1. Can't import the demo content.

If you can't import the demo content (the loading process never ends and the icon keeps spinning) then it's probably your server configuration that has low upload limits.

The easiest way to fix this is to simply increase those limits and below are the recommended option values:

If you are not familiar with editing those values in your php.ini file then please contact your hosting/server provider. They should increase those values without in an instant without a problem.

wp-config.php Option:

You can also try to include the following value in your wp-config.php file:

define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '128M' );

Not all hostings allow this or are suitable for this (particularly if on a shared hosting). Ask your hosting for more info.

https://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Increasing_memory_allocated_to_PHP

2. Are you sure you want to do this? Please try again.

If you get the Are You Sure You Want To Do This? message after uploading the theme's zip file via Appearance / Themes menu in your WordPress, it means that your server has low upload limits.

You may go around this problem in two ways:

  1. Install the theme using an FTP client like FileZilla. The process is described in the Installing Theme article.
  2. Increase the upload limits on your server, described below.

Below are the recommended values for specific options in your server configuration:

If you are not familiar how to change those values in your php.ini file then please contact your host/server provider about it. They should change them in an instant.

3. The theme is missing the style.css stylesheet

If you get the The Package could not be installed. The theme is missing the style.css stylesheet error message then you are probably uploading the whole theme package zip file including the documentation, plugins and so on.

All you need to do is to upload the correct, small zip file. You can get it both ways:

  1. If you downloaded "All files & documentation" zip file from ThemeForest then you need to unzip that archive file first. Inside, you will find a proper, smaller zip file according to theme's name, i.e. crexis.zip, waxom.zip or north.zip. That is the file you need to upload.
  2. You may always download just the "Installable WordPress file" directly from ThemeForest. That archive is already ready to be uploaded to ThemeForest:

4. How to Improve Page Loading Times

Top Ways to Increase Website Performance and Decrease Page Loading Times

We’ve put together here a list of super easy ways to reduce your page loading times and improve the overall experience for your customers and clients.*

It is well known that if your page takes more than 4 seconds to load the customer will turn away before they have even had a chance to look at your wonderful website!

Google even indexes slow websites and ranks them at a lower position. If you want a better chance at good SEO and getting those customers and sales, you absolutely need to have a fast loading page.

How do I check the speed of my website?

There are lots of great websites that will test your website for free. And in some page testing websites they will even give you recommendations on what needs fixing. Here are our top favourite page testing sites:

https://gtmetrix.com

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed

https://tools.pingdom.com

As always, before doing any major edits on your website we recommend backing up your site, that way you will have peace of mind in case anything goes wrong.

We recommend ManageWP for backups (FREE or only $2 per month per website! And you can manage multiple websites with their awesome dashboard). 

You can also manage and upload/update new theme and plugin versions from here.

https://managewp.com

Here are some steps you can take to help improve your website’s loading times. We’ve broken the steps down into beginner, intermediate and advanced to help you get started.

We’ve split our guide into three parts:

BEGINNER:

INTERMEDIATE

ADVANCED



---------------- LEVEL: BEGINNER ----------------


Reduce the Size of Images:

This covers:

Image size: Make sure the image you upload is the correct size (know your dimensions).

File type: Provide the correct file type for the purpose. 

File size: Print and web images need very different sizes.

Image compression:

There are also a few good websites that can compress the images for you, just run a search on Google to find the best one for you.




---------- LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE ---------- 


Caching 

This covers:

Caching Plugins: Using a caching plugin is probably the second best thing you can do to improve page loading times (see Step Four: Hosting for the first and best thing you should do).

Our top three plugins for WordPress for caching is:

  1. W3 Total Cache
  2. WP SUPER CACHE
  3. Breeze (works even better on Cloudways servers!)

All of these work great, and it depends on your needs as well as server resources and hosting permissions.

You will need to research how to use these plugins and how they best work within your hosting, but they are very simple to get the hang of.

So sometimes you will have to do a bit of trial and error with this. Get it wrong and it can break the page, get it right and your page will now load 2-3 seconds quicker!

Minifying: Outputs all of the lines of a file onto one line making the file a lot smaller in size.

This works best for html, CSS, and most JS files. JS files are bit more tricky due to how they are loaded into page, and the location where they are loaded in. 

Enable gzip compression: Like image compressing and minifying, this can be done automatically on your server. Again you will need to check if your hosting allows this.

Enable Browser cache, Object Cache, Database Cache: These can be really useful if you have repeat customers, large amounts of pages views at time and more. (Check with your hosting on what they allow).

Content Delivery Networks (CDN): A CDN is a network of geographically dispersed servers that deliver cached content from the website to the user based on the geographic location of that user.

For example, the user is in France and your website is in North America. The CDN will display a cached version of your website in France, making the page load quicker as the CDN is nearer to the user.

There are lots of great CDNs to use, with free and premium accounts available.

One of the more popular free to use CDNs is Cloudflare.

https://www.cloudflare.com/

You can then link your CDN up to your caching plugin in your WordPress site.




---------- LEVEL: ADVANCED ----------

Hosting

This covers:

Shared Hosting

It used to be that for decent hosting you had to buy a dedicated server which would cost hundreds of dollars per month just to make your website load faster and perform better with each request.

The other main option was to share a server which was much, much more affordable, but the downside was that you often shared the server with hundreds(!) of other websites which would all be fighting for control of the server’s resources. This is called Shared Hosting.

But over the last five years there has been a revolution in the types of servers available with a whole range of pricing structures, control options and the ability to scale (upgrade or downgrade) the servers to your specific needs. These are called VPS servers.

For WordPress websites this was great! Software evolves at an extremely fast rate and the hardware sometimes struggles to keep up (you’ll often see with computer games). So the problem that many people face today is that they still have a slow website even after completing all the steps above to improve page loading times. The software isn’t the issue -the hardware is the issue.

WordPress is a massive hog on server resources. What do we mean by server resources?

etc

VPS Servers:

With a VPS server you can easily set up your very own server which has a large amount of resources and even upscale it if you need more! Their pricing is fantastic as well, starting from just $7 a month.

Not only that, you have the ability to control pretty much all of the settings on the server without any restrictions normally imposed by a Shared Hosting account.

You get the point… :) 

However, this does often mean that you will need to have quite an extensive specialist knowledge of the command line code to set all of this up (which is a big leap from being just a website designer or WordPress user).    

Eek!

This is where managed VPS servers come into the picture. These servers are managed by the specialist hosting company and they have set up a very easy to use control panels for you, instead of you having to learn all that command line code stuff!

In this day and age there is no reason not to be using a VPS server for your WordPress website. Here are our two favourite companies for VPS servers:

We wouldn’t recommend these two if we weren’t using them ourselves. They have fantastic support, software and services. (We’ve done a lot of trial and error with many different companies over the years so believe us when we say we recommend them).

Siteground - Prices start from $3.95 per month (with even less for Black Friday/Cyber Monday specials)

Cloudways - Prices start from $10 per month for VPS hosting


*Please note that we do not provide support for any of the plugins or software in this article. By following the information in this article you do so at your own risk and we accept no responsibility for any loss or error of content or database. Make sure you backup your website and work often.


5. Google Maps not working

Since few days, some of you may encounter an issue with their Google Map element:

Google provides the Google maps service for free, but — due to a change of the policy — this service now requires a valid key for the site displaying and using the maps. Sites that used the API without a key prior to June 22, 2016 have been grandfathered to allow them to continue to work.

There are currently two solutions out of this situation:

  1. Use the native Visual Composer Google Maps element where you can insert the map iframe element - doesn't require API at all.
  2. Create the API key and use the custom stylized Google Map element from the theme. Please continue reading to learn how.

Creating the API Key

You may either follow the official instructions:

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/get-api-key#get-an-api-key

or follow our tutorial:

If you don't have a key please follow the steps below to create one:

1. Go to https://console.developers.google.com/apis and create a new project (you must be logged in):

A small popup window will shop up where you can insert your project name. It can by anything, like your site name for example. When you're done, click "Create": 

2. After the project is created, a list of popular API services will appear. Click "View All" on the right to see a full library: 

Choose "Google maps JavaScript API":

Click the "Enable" button:

3. Now, you will need to create the API credentials: Visit Credentials tab (click on the menu item in right sidebar), click the "Create credentials" button and from the dropdown menu choose "API Key":

A popup window will appear with your new API key. Copy it and then click "Restrict Key" button:

After clicking the "Restrict Key" button, you will be presented with the following form:

Under Application restrictions check HTTP referrers (web sites) and then type your website address in a universal form, like *.mysite.com/* that allows access from all your subdomains and subpages. When you're done, just click the "Save" button.

Done!

5. Now, all you need to do is paste your API key in the Theme Options / Google Maps / Google Maps API Key field. The field location may different, depending on which theme you use:

EngageTheme Options / Contact Page / Google Maps Api Key:


North & Qaro: Theme Options / Google Maps / Google Maps Api Key:

Waxom & Crexis: Theme Options / Google Maps API / Google Maps Api Key:


Now save the Theme Options panel and you are again able to use the stylized Google Map element.

6. Theme Customization

Dear Customer,

If you are looking for a professional WordPress customization services then you don't need to look any further. We've just launched Veented Studio where you can hire us for any WP and Web related tasks:

Veented Studio

http://studio.veented.com


7. How to update Waxom and it's plugins

Here are the current theme and plugin versions:

Waxom: 3.4.9

Waxom Core plugin: 3.3.5

Contact Form 7: 5.1.3
Slider Revolution: 5.4.8.3
Templatera: 2.0.2
Veented Twitter: 1.1.0
WPBakery Visual Composer: 6.0.3

Please make sure that you have the latest theme and plugin version installed.

To see how to update the plugins, please scroll down.

How to update the theme?

You can update our theme by following these simple steps:

1. Go to the “Downloads” page on ThemeForest, find the Waxom theme, click the “Downloads” button and from the dropdown list select “Download latest All files & documentation file” or “Installable WordPress file only”.

2. If you downloaded “All files..”, extract the big .zip file and find waxom.zip inside. If you downloaded just the “Installable WordPress file” then the downloaded .zip is the one you are looking for (you can rename it to waxom.zip).

3a. Option A (faster & easier): log in to your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Appearance / Themes, activate another theme (so Waxom is deactivated). Once you do so and while still being on Themes page, click on Waxom and choose “Delete” in the bottom right corner. Delete the theme. Now upload the waxom.zip file as you would install a brand new theme on your website.

3b. Option B (slower): Unzip the waxom.zip file on your computer and then copy & replace the content of waxom folder to /wp-content/themes/waxom folder of your web site (using an FTP client like FileZilla).

Note: Following this method, none of existing content or settings will be lost (Option B).


For automatic updates please install the Envato Market plugin.


Plugins:
You can now download the latest versions of the plugins from here: https://plugins.veented.com/

Most plugins should be able to update via the WordPress dashboard via the above or normal method. When it says you cannot and you need to buy a licence (such as Visual Composer or Revolution Slider), you will need to update the plugin differently.

Just follow these steps:
1. Deactivate and delete the plugin
2. Go to Appearance > Install Plugins
3. Select the plugin from there and install and activate

That will now be the latest version of the plugin bundled with the theme.

Plugin Licences:
Please note that we do not include licences for the 3rd Party plugins bundled with the theme. They come ‘as is’ and we provide updates for them with the theme updates. You do not have to purchase licences for them.

8. Essential Grid & Ultimate VC Addons Plugins

Dear Customers,

On 20th of September 2016, we've added two awesome, very popular, premium plugins (total value of $44) for three of our themes: Crexis, Waxom and North. These plugins are now a part of theme which means you can use them for free in your personal projects:

1. Essential Grid - Essential Grid is a premium plugin for WordPress that allows you to display various content formats in a highly customizable grid. Possible applications range from portfolios, blogs, galleries, WooCommerce shops, price tables, services, product sliders, testimonials and anything else you can imagine.

2. Ultimate Addons for Visual Composer  - This plugin adds several premium elements in your Visual Composer on top of the built-in ones given by WPBakery. Every single element in the package is crafted with utmost attention to details and a simple objective to provide you an ultimate experience.

Licence Keys:

It may ask about plugin activation, you can dismiss it. Plugins that are bundled with themes do not come with additional license keys for them. It's the same case for all themes among ThemeForest market. 

You can of course activate those plugins by purchasing separate license codes for them but that will only add "premium features" like automatic updates. The "standard" functionality will remain the same.


Where do I find the new plugins?

New plugins are not included within the Appearance / Install Plugins menu as they are absolutely optional so we decided to not increase the theme's package size. You may find them in the /Plugins/ folder in the main theme package. If you're not sure how to get the "main theme package", please log in to your ThemeForest account, go to Downloads tab and next to the theme name click on the "Download" button and a dropdown menu will popup:

Click on the "All files & documentation" link and the download process of a big .zip file will begin. After you unzip it, you will find a "Plugins" folder inside containing two new plugins, including the installable .zip and documentation:

How to install new plugins?

As you can see on the screenshot above, each folder contains a .zip file (like essential-grid.zip), that's the plugin itself. Log in to your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins / Add New, click on the "Upload Plugin" button on the very top and then the "Choose file" button in the upload form. Select the plugin .zip file described above:

And then proceed with the installation process ending with the plugin activation. Good luck!

9. How do I access the old Support Forums?

Our old Support Forums is still available but no new threads can be created. 

You may use it to find answers to hundreds of questions in over 3000 threads:

http://veented.com/support/


10. How do I update my theme and plugins?

It's very quick and easy to update your theme and plugins. We written a guide for each of the main themes if you need help.

Please make sure your theme and plugins are up-to-date BEFORE you send a support ticket.


Engage:

https://veented.ticksy.com/article/12019/

Crexis:

https://veented.ticksy.com/article/7777/

Waxom:

https://veented.ticksy.com/article/7791/

Qaro:

https://veented.ticksy.com/article/7792/

North:

https://veented.ticksy.com/article/7794/

11. WPBakery Visual Composer, Revolution Slider, Layer Slider and other plugins ask for activation key

If you see a notice from the WPBakery Visual Composer, Revolution Slider, Essential Grid and Layer Slider plugin about plugin activation, you can dismiss it. Plugins that are bundled with themes do not come with additional license keys for them. It's the same case for all themes among ThemeForest market. 

You can of course activate those plugins by purchasing separate license codes for them but that will only add "premium features" like automatic updates. The "standard" functionality will remain the same.

So how can you update those plugins?

We provide the latest plugin versions in each theme update so just make sure that you have the latest theme version installed and you may be sure that it comes with the latest plugins version too.


Just follow these steps: 

1. Deactivate and delete the plugin 

2. Go to Appearance > Install Plugins 

3. Select the plugin from there and install and activate

That will now be the latest version of the plugin bundled with the theme.


You can always compare the version numbers from which you have installed to which version is available with your theme here: https://veented.ticksy.com/article/7962/


12. Getting Map Coordinates (lat,lng)

The easiest way to get lat and long (lng) coordinates from an address is to use the following website:

https://www.latlong.net/convert-address-to-lat-long.html

For "Paris, France" it would be: 48.856613,2.352222

13. Waxom Theme Hooks

Waxom comes with numerous theme hooks that you may use to easily add new site content without affecting the parent theme. 

Want to learn more? Please visit this article.

Actions:

waxom_before_navigation

Before the site navigation bar.

waxom_before_top_bar_left

Before the Top Bar content located on the left side of the Top Bar.

waxom_before_top_bar_right

Before the Top Bar content located on the right side of the Top Bar.

waxom_before_page_content

Before the page content area.

waxom_after_page_title

After the page title area.

waxom_before_footer_widgets

Before the Footer Widgets area.

waxom_before_footer

Before the Footer Bottom Bar (the one that holds the copyright text).

waxom_after_footer

After the entire Footer area.


Example usage (in the child theme's functions.php file):

function my_site_new_footer_content() {
    echo 'Hello there! I am in a footer!';
}
add_action( 'waxom_after_footer', 'my_site_new_footer_content' );


Filters

As for now, only one filter is available that allows you to change the portfolio post type slug (used in the URL). To change the portfolio post slug, please use the following code:

function my_site_portfolio_slug( $portfolio_slug ) {        
return 'works'; // New portfolio slug
}
add_filter( 'waxom_portfolio_slug', 'my_site_portfolio_slug' );

After doing so, please reset your Permalinks (go to Settings / Permalinks, change them back to default, save and then change back to pretty permalinks).




14. WordPress 5.5.* Update & WPBakery issues

Dear Customers,

WordPress 5.5.* brings a lot of changes, especially regarding jQuery so it affects hundreds of different themes and plugins. If you're not sure all your plugins fully support the latest WordPress version, we advise against the upgrade.

Regarding our themes, we've updated all of them shortly after the new WordPress version was released to address theme-related issues.

Theme Update

First, please make sure to update your theme to the last version and make sure to update an associated "Theme_Name Core" plugin as well (e.g. North Core, Waxom Core, etc). 

For update details, please check the following article:

https://veented.ticksy.com/article/7962/

We also strongly advise installing the Envato Market plugin for automatic updates:

https://envato.com/market-plugin/ (but you might need to temporarily disable the theme for this plugin to work properly before the crucial theme update that resolves some issues).

Core Plugin Updates

Once you update the theme to the latest, make sure to update an associated Core plugin (instructions can also be found in the link above or you can just go straight to the Appearance / Install Plugins menu once the theme is properly updated to the latest version):

Plugin Updates

Once you update the theme and the core plugin, make sure to update all bundled plugins, especially the WPBakery Page Builder plugin - it has to be at least 6.3.0 version installed on your website.

Clear Browser Cache

Many of our clients reported they were still experiencing issues after doing all of the above. After clearing the browser cache, the issue was gone:

https://clear-my-cache.com/en/windows.html

The issue remains

If you're still experiencing issues, we strongly advise that you install the jQuery Migrate Helper plugin:

https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/enable-jquery-migrate-helper/

If that doesn't help then it means it could be caused by some of your other plugins and we advise contacting the plugin author.

If none of the above helps, we advise that you temporarily downgrade to an older version of WordPress. However, all clients that contacted us about this have had their problem resolved by doing things listed above.