How to use the front-end editor

Enabling the front-end editor is pretty simple too: While you’re in the page you want to edit, just look for the “Edit with Visual Composer” link in your admin bar at the top of the window and click on it:

You can also enable the front-end editor from the page editor view:

Once the front-end editor is enabled, you’ll see something like this:

The interface is pretty self-explanatory, but you’ll have options to change the settings of your rows, columns and every other single component you may have there. After clicking the “edit” button (the one with the pencil icon on it), a small window will pop-in and show you the settings.

There you can change all you need, and after you click “Save changes” the page will be updated to reflect your modifications.

You can also create new rows and columns, and add new elements to them. Basically, you have the same functionality that was already available in the admin side, and you’re also able to preview your changes

Also, if you want your changes to be definitely saved and applied, you need to click the “Update” button at the top of the page. If you close the browser tab without updating, none of your changes will be saved.

If you’re new to Smart or Visual Composer, we recommend taking a look at our article about Using The Page Builder, which has more in-depth information about how Visual Composer works, and how we implemented it for Smart.

Possible Drawbacks

Though Visual Composer is a great plugin to build all different kinds of layouts, it’s very well known that it can be a little heavy on the front-end. Inside Smart we do all we can to improve the performance of Visual Composer and its components, but we are ultimately limited by the plugin’s core functionality.

There shouldn’t be noticeable performance issues for end users and visitors, and neither for you while you’re not using the front-end editor, but in case you’re using it, you should keep in mind that Visual Composer introduces a lot of JavaScript code to render the editor, which may end up causing conflicts with third-party JavaScript code (basically, code that is not under the control of NiceThemes or Visual Composer itself). These kind of conflicts may end up slowing down your browser after a while, and in that case it may be better for you to switch to the admin-side editor.

If you find any issue with the front-end editor, please let us know in Smart’s support forum.

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Visual Composer’s Front-End Editor

Since this version, we’re including in Smart this very much requested feature of Visual Composer, which will help you preview your pages while you’re creating them. We have written a helpful article explaining how to use this new feature, which you can find here.

Transparent header for mobile viewports

Something that web designers need often is to use a transparent background for their site’s header. The default behavior for Smart’s transparent header is to fallback to a solid background on mobile viewports, but some users expressed the need to show a transparent header for mobile sizes too. Before Smart 1.0.3, that was only possible by adding some custom CSS, but now we have made this feature available through the Theme Settings page, in “Header > Design > Transparent Header (Mobile)”.

Sticky header for mobile viewports

Sticky or fixed site headers are very popular, since you can make your site’s main navigation area “follow” your visitors while they scroll down a page. Sometimes that is not a recommended practice for the mobile version of a site, since the header can take a lot of space in small devices, and that’s why Smart doesn’t enable sticky headers in mobile by default. However, not all sites are built the same, so since version 1.0.3 you can also have a sticky header for mobile viewports by checking the option in “Theme Settings > Header > Animation > Fixed Position Header (Mobile)”.

WPML certification

The team behind WPML tested Smart recently and they just certified the theme as multilingual ready. Smart 1.0.3 includes some adjustments for our WPML integration, such as new styles for the language switchers, matching the general look and feel of the theme. Read more about this here.

Better PHP Performance

As you may know, one of our main goals for Smart is to make it fast and stable. We’ve been working hard on that since the theme’s first available version, and we just went a step further in Smart 1.0.3, where we implemented a new PHP file loading method and reorganized our folder structure to make loading times shorter. Please note this new file loading method is only available if you are using our framework’s version 2.0.6 or higher.

Wrapping Up

So those are the most important items for this version, but there’s also a lot of minor improvements and fixes. You can check the full list here.

Get Smart 1.0.3

If you’re already using Smart, we recommend to update both theme and framework to get all the latest features and improvements. Just register your copy on “Smart > Product Registration” inside your site’s admin panel, then go to “Smart > Support & Updates”, and get the newest versions there.

And if you still don’t have Smart (why?), or in case you need an additional license for a new site, you can get it from ThemeForest right here.

Where are the demo sites?

You can check a whole lot of things you can do with Smart on our demo site. In fact, you can even use our One-Click Importer, which is included in the theme, to replicate any of those sites into your own WordPress installation, so you don’t need to start everything from scratch.

What’s next for Smart?

We’re currently working on our next major release, Smart 1.1, which will include some great new customization features, by extending and improving our compatibility and integration with popular plugins, such as WooCommerce, Visual Composer and Slider Revolution.

And, as we’ve been saying, even tough Smart is the fastest multipurpose theme you can find, we’re always working on performance improvements, so your site gets even faster with every major update.

So just go update Smart to version 1.0.3 and get a lot of new features to build your website.

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Hi there, everyone! You may have already guessed what we’re about to tell you by just reading the title, but let us guide you through some fine details.

In the past few weeks, we’ve been working hard on a new release of Smart, our great multipurpose theme. Version 1.0.3 comes with a lot of improvements, fixes and new features (which we’ll cover in another article), but there’s one that stands out: Smart is now certified to be 100% compatible with WPML.

In case you don’t know it yet, WPML is the most complete multilingual plugin out there for WordPress, and it can translate your site into several languages. It’s the ideal choice if you plan to create a multilingual site.

The team behind the plugin tested Smart recently and they just certified the theme as multilingual ready. Smart 1.0.3 includes some adjustments that we think you’ll really appreciate if you’ve been using it with WPML, such as new styles for the language switchers, matching the general look and feel of the theme.

And now what?

If you can’t just take our word for granted, you can go and check the compatibility between Smart and WPML here in WPML’s site. Make sure you get a WPML version that fits your needs and start creating your multilingual site with Smart.

If you still don’t have Smart (but why wouldn’t you?), or in case you need an additional license for a new site, you can get it from ThemeForest right here.

Can you show me some demos?

Of course, we can! You can check a lot of demos on our demo site. And it gets better: You can even use our One-Click Importer, which is included in the theme, to replicate any of those sites into your own WordPress installation. Once it’s ready, you can work from there, without having to start everything from scratch.

If you want to know more about the One Click Importer, just check this article.

What’s in the near future?

We’ll keep working closely with the team behind WPML to make sure both our products are fully compatible with each other and make sure every issue that could come up is solved as soon as possible.

And even tough Smart is the fastest multipurpose theme you can find, we’re always ready to go the extra mile and keep working on performance improvements, so your site gets even faster with every major update.

We’re also working on some great new customization features, and extending and improving our compatibility and integration with popular plugins, such as WooCommerce, Visual Composer and Slider Revolution.

Now that you know all this, go update Smart to get full compatibility with WPML, and stay tuned for our upcoming releases

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Manual installation

If your theme does not support automatic demo installations, or if you want to import the demo content the old-fashioned way, you can find the instructions and files here.

How to import the demo content to your WordPress Site

1. On your WordPress Dashboard, go to Tools → Import → WordPress.
2. Install the WordPress Importer.
3. Browse for the XML file and import it.
4. All of the demo content should now be uploaded to your site and ready to use. Check it out!

After you are done with the import

You need to do a couple of things in order to get your site configured and looking like the demo site:

1. Set up the front page.
2. Set up the widgets for the different widgetized spaces.
3. Configure the navigation menu.
4. Save the theme options. In your site dashboard, go to NiceThemes → Theme Options and hit the Save button.
5. You’re now good to go!

XML Demo Files

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WordPress Requirements

The first thing you need to check is that your web host has the minimum requirements to install WordPress. You can check the full and updated list of WordPress requirements here, but these are the most important ones:

• PHP version 7 or greater. However, any PHP version from 5.3 will work fine. PHP 5.2.4 is the lowest supported version for WordPress, but the 5.2 branch is not longer supported by The PHP Group, and Smart doesn’t support it either. For performance and stability reasons, we recommend at least PHP 5.6 or greater.
• MySQL version 5.6 or greater, or MariaDB 10.0 or greater. WordPress supports MySQL down to 5.0, but MySQL versions prior to 5.6 are no longer supported by their developers.
• HTTPS support.

Smart Recommended Values

Smart has some additional recommendations to make sure the theme will work without issues. Most of these items are needed to correctly import contents from our demo sites without server interruptions.

Once you installed Smart, you can check all the current values for these items on the System Status page.

PHP Version

Use the higher PHP version available in your web host, or at least PHP 5.3. For performance and stability reasons, we recommend at least PHP 5.6 or greater. See “WordPress Requirements” above for more details.

WordPress Version

Use the most recent WordPress version available, or at least version 3.8. You can download the latest WordPress release here. Remember to keep your WordPress version up to date for both performance and security reasons.

PHP Memory Limit

This is the maximum amount of memory (RAM) that the site can use for one single page request, and we recommend having at least 256MB. In normal conditions, Smart should do fine with as low as 96MB, but some demo contents (especially those using WooCommerce or Slider Revolution) may need up to 1024MB to be imported correctly, so you should go for the higher amount of memory you can spare.

Keep in mind that your memory limit should not be higher than the total available memory for your server or hosting account, so if you don’t know how much memory you have, we suggest asking your hosting provider about this. If you need to know how to increase your memory limit, you can take a look at this link .

PHP Maximum Upload File Size

This is the size of the largest file that can be uploaded to your WordPress installation. We recommend at least 32MB, since some demo contents (especially those using WooCommerce or Slider Revolution) will download a large number of images to your site.

If you need to know how to increase it the maximum upload size, you can take a look a this article . However, keep in mind that this is a server setting that may require restarting your web server (for some Apache and Nginx setups), so in case you cannot do it manually or through a control panel (such as cPanel or Plesk), we suggest to ask your hosting provider for help.

PHP Maximum Input Variables

This is the maximum number of variables the server can use for a single PHP function to avoid overloads. We recommend having this value at 3000. Our functions often don’t contain a lot of variables, but we may need to use larger functions while importing contents from demo sites using Slider Revolution.

You can change this value through your php.ini file or through your .htaccess file (only for Apache). However, since some hosting providers often limit the level of customization for their PHP configurations, you may need to ask them for help with this item if the previous methods fail.

PHP POST Maximum Size

This is the largest file size that can be contained in one POST request. Our recommended value is 32MB.

You can change this value through your php.ini file or through your .htaccess file (only for Apache). However, since some hosting providers often limit the level of customization for their PHP configurations, you may need to ask them for help with this item if the previous methods fail.

PHP Time Limit

This is the amount of time (in seconds) that the site will spend on a single operation before timing out (to avoid server lockups). Our recommended value for this item is 300 seconds (5 minutes), so demo contents can be imported successfully.

You can change this value by using the set_time_limit() function inside your wp-config.php file, editing your .htaccess file, or using the WP Maximum Execution Time Exceeded plugin.

PHP Remote GET and POST methods

The POST and GET methods are used to communicate with different external APIs. Demo contents need these methods to be imported successfully.

These features are enabled by default on most web servers, but some plugins (such as Airplane Mode) can disable them. If you see any of these methods as disabled but don’t have any active plugin that can modify their behavior, we suggest asking your hosting provider for help.

Xdebug

Though Xdebug is a great debugging and profiling tool for PHP, it may increase the usage of server resources each time a page is loaded or a request is made. If you’re working local, we suggest disabling Xdebug temporarily if you want to import demo contents. Having Xdebug enabled in a live site is not recommended.

mod_security

mod_security is an Apache module that helps to protect your website from various attacks. However, some WordPress websites report having issues such as 403 and 404 errors when trying to upload media files and importing contents, so we recommend to disable this module. There are many ways to do this, but some hosting providers force the module to always be active, and you may have to ask yours for help with this setting.

About General PHP Limits

Most of the above requirements and recommendations are related to your PHP setup. You can check the most relevant ones in your System Status page, but you can get a lot more information about your setup by installing the WordPress phpinfo() plugin.

As we stated above, you may need to ask your hosting provider for help with some PHP settings, which they should be able to adjust for you. Some providers (especially if you’re on a shared hosting account) prefer to have a very restricted PHP configuration in order to save resources, but more often than not they are willing to perform this kind of modifications to their users’ accounts.

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The Performance section contains options to make your website load even faster. These performance tweaks work independently from cache plugins. However, if you’re using some CSS or JavaScript optimization plugin like Autoptimize (which we recommend), you should reset the plugin’s cache after changing any of these settings.

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That will give you a txt file. Open it with your favourite text editor (Notepad, TextEdit, Gedit, etc.), and find your purchase code there:

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1. Go to NiceThemes > Theme Options > Header. There you’re gonna see the following options:
   
2. Click the “Upload image” button right below “Custom Logo” and upload any image you want, or use an existing one.
3. Additionally, you can repeat step 2 for “Custom Logo (Retina)”, to upload an image that will be loaded instead of the first logo you selected when your site is viewed from a device with a retina display. Keep in mind that retina images are often the same as the originals, but double in size (for example, if the dimensions of your custom logo are 200×40 pixels, the ideal dimensions for your retina logo will be 400×80 pixels).
4. Click “Save Changes”. Now you should see your custom logo in the front-end area of your site.

In case you don’t want to use an image for your logo and prefer to just display the name of your site in plain text, you can do so by checking the “Text Title” option. You can set the typography, font style, size and color for your site title by tweaking the settings under “Site Title Typography”.

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Obtain the correct theme files

There are two ways to obtain the files of a theme you purchased in ThemeForest. Once you bought it, you need to locate the Download button that will appear inside your Downloads section.

To download your files, you need to click any of the first two options:

• All files & documentation
• Installable WordPress file only

All files & documentation

If you select the first option, you will get a zip file that doesn’t only contain the files of the theme, but also some other files with documentation and other information about your purchase. You’ll find the actual files of the theme inside alongside those ones, inside another zip file. You can upload that file to your WordPress installation through your WordPress Dashboard, or unzip its contents in your wp-content/themes folder.

Installable WordPress file only

The second option will give you a zip file that only contains the files of the theme. You can either upload the zip file directly through your WordPress Dashboard, or unzip its contents in your wp-content/themes folder.

Installing the theme

Once you have the files of your theme, either inside a zip file or a folder containing the files, you need to upload it to your WordPress installation. Check this article to know how to do it.

The post Troubleshooting your theme installation appeared first on NiceThemes.

Although we’re happy and we’ll do our best to help you with theme-specific issues, we can’t help with customizations that go beyond the options we offer inside our themes. That’s why we wrote this article, which intends to provide information about how you can tell and understand the differences between a support issue and a customization request.

Theme Support

Support issues are related to the functionality of your theme. If the theme does not work as expected from how we advertise it, that’s a support issue, and we will give you support for it.

So how can you recognize a support issue when you see it? The following tips can help you with that:

• Does your theme look broken? Do you see any PHP warning or error messages, but the theme still works somehow? If you’ve already deactivated all your plugins and keep seeing those messages, then feel free to create a new support ticket.
• Does your theme not look as expected? Have you followed all the steps we provided to you in order to set up the theme, including our install videos and help documents? If you did all of that, then you may have a support issue and should contact us.
• You can’t use the theme at all? Have you deactivated all of your plugins and it still doesn’t work? Please contact us right away.

Theme Customization

Theme customization doesn’t have to do with theme issues, since it’s not related to the the actual functionality of a theme. Instead, it’s about modifications you may want to perform on how the theme works or how it looks beyond the scope of the styles and functionality that it offers.

• If you need to change how an element looks or works outside of the settings in Theme Options, then you have a customization issue.
• If you need to add a new element or remove an existent one, and there’s not a setting to do it in Theme Options, that’s another customization issue.

Unfortunately, we can’t help with this kind of issues in our support forums, and neither we offer paid theme customization services.

Third Party Plugins

Sometimes we recommend some third party plugins to be installed to improve what you can get from the theme, and we guarantee that the theme will work and look as expected with those plugins. However, we can’t guarantee the same for all the plugins in the WordPress universe.

Themes and plugins that follow WordPress’ best-practices should work seamlessly with each other, but sometimes a poorly coded plugin ends up being installed and making a theme look broken. We work hard to make our themes compatible with all major plugins, but since they’re being updated constantly, we don’t have a way to guarantee a 100% compatibility for all of them all the time.

That’s why we don’t consider plugin compatibility problems to be support issues. However, we will really appreciate if you notify us about this kind of troubles in case you find any, so we can take them into account for improvements in future versions of our products.

General Questions About WordPress

We’ve all been there, being newbies at working with WordPress and websites in general. We struggled lots of times and for long hours trying to solve problems and looking for answers to our questions all over the internet.

Sadly, we can’t answer general questions about WordPress in our support forums, since they are meant for questions about our products only. There’s a lot of other websites, forums and resources dedicated to general issues where you can find a lot of answers to practically any question you have. Some great examples are the official WordPress Support Forums, StackOverflow and WordPress Developers.

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