Visual Composer or Cornerstone – Visual Editing no Longer Working

Support
#1

I have had x-theme for a number of years now. Somehow, since building the site my pages have turned from being visually composed to now just code. I am not a coder and cannot edit the pages correctly now. If I remember correctly, there have been a few theme changes since I have owned this theme. I am wondering if some of your updates or changes are what have created this issue.

Please look over my site and let me know if there is a way to revert to current site back to a visually composed site so I can do future changes without issue. I wish to avoid needing to write in CSS or HTML to further update the site.

#2

Hello @SonicSystems,

Thanks for asking. :slight_smile:

I took a fairly detailed view of your website and I couldn’t see much of custom CS codes. Having said that sometimes, to resolve customer problem we have to provide custom CSS as at times the nature of customization request is such that it becomes a bit difficult to make changes using builder and that’s where custom codes comes into the picture.

Having said that, I see that you are using quire old version of X Theme 5.2.5 and Cornerstone 2.1.7. I suggest you to please update X and Cornerstone to latest version. At the same time please update WordPress also. I am sharing our theme and plugin update guide, changelog and version compatibility guide that you can take a look.

https://theme.co/changelog/


Please let us know how it goes.

Thanks.

#3

Hi There. Thank you for the response.

I have done the updates, thanks. I know that those were not the problem because this issue has been here for more than a year and I have continuously updated these plugins and themes since.

What I mean is that I do not want to have to create or modify my current pages through any type of coding - within the page editors I can only use “Backend Editor.” I cannot use Visual Composer or Cornerstone, any type of visual editing. I would like to be able to use visual composer tools – drop and drag style – the same as when I created the pages, rather than mess around with any code, anywhere.

Please let me know if my current pages can revert back to this so I can begin dragging and dropping to edit rather than doing line editing.

I hope my needs are more clear with this. Thank you.

#4

Hi There,

The latest supported version of Visual Composer is 5.4.7, yours is still 4.1.3. Since you’ve updated the X and WP to the latest version, please update the Visual Composer as well. You can do this easily by deactivating and deleting the current version of Visual Composer. Then navigate to X > Validation > Extension and re-install the visual composer.

Remember to clear all caches (plugin, server-side, CDN, and browser’s cache) after updating so that the code from the latest release is always in use. This will help you to avoid any potential errors.

I see that your pages were built in Visual Composer, did you created that using the Visual Composer’s Frontend Editor?, Though VC Frontend Editor works with X, it does not really fully supported by X (that is why we hide that feature by default).

If you can’t see the Frontend Editor button, please navigate to WPBakery > X Integration and disable the X Integration option.

If your schedule allows you, I strongly advise that you rebuild your pages in Cornerstone (it is much easier to use, and 100% supported by X, obviously.)

Hope it helps,
Cheers!

#5

There is a problem. I have two plugins for WP Bakery Visual composer, one that seems like the extension to X, the other the standalone. It seems my page was made with the standalone active and the extension disabled. Now, if I swap which one is enabled half my pages break and shift.

Can you understand any reason why this would occur? Is the extension modified?

I understand that “X” doesn’t fully support this but Cornerstone was not on the original version of X, if I remember correctly. So, I went through and built the site with what was provided then the theme changed. Now, you are recommending swapping the site over to cornerstone which is an extreme hassle. If I can somehow get the Visual COmposer extension working properly (not the current active plugin) that would better solve my problem.

Let me know if you can determine why one would be working different than the other.

Thank you

#6

Hi there,

You have two plugins, one is too old and one is the latest. It appears to be two since the latest has a different naming. The old one is compatible only with X Shortcodes. And X Shortcodes is now part of the cornerstone, hence, it should still work with older versions. But that’s for classic features, any new features from cornerstone are not applicable to the visual composer.

Visual Editing or live editing (if I understand it correctly) is never active in the old version of X (which uses X Shortcodes). And live editing is only made available when cornerstone became available so visual composer could function alone. Plus, you can disable X/Cornerstone integration within your visual composer and it will give you full control with the visual composer.

Updates do cause issues especially if it contains some features that are deprecated or new that your old setup can’t handle. And it’s equivalent to a redesign and maintenance since you’re coming from the old versions. Hence, we recommend doing it in a staging site and fix the issues, or stay with your current version (but if you already updated your WP core then you’ll have to update the rest, it’s a chain effect, which is why jumping to updates is a bit risky)

I checked your site’s issue and it’s not because of X theme and cornerstone, I deactivated them and the issue is still there. It’s because your active visual composer is very old and may be incompatible with other existing plugins and WP Core.

The latest one will, of course, will work since it contains the updates and fixes for incompatibilities versus WP Core. But of course, since it’s the latest, it’s no longer compatible with old shortcode format (visual composer shortcodes, not cornerstone). This is not ornerstone issue, but it’s about visual composer’s standard and it’s changed in the recent updates and your content format should comply.

If you wish to go back to older setup, I recommend restoring your site to make sure WP Core and other plugins are downgraded too.

Thanks!

#7

Thanks, Rad. I appreciate it.

That clarifies my problem but makes me realize the only ways to fix this are to downgrade WP and extensions or rebuild the site – both are not optimal decisions.

I know what you are saying with updating WP or plugins, themes, and such. I really try to avoid updating them but as soon as you need support or inquire about issues, supports’ first comments are “update your WP and plugins! They’re too old!!!” lol. So, we go ahead and do that then we have problems. Same story every time.

I guess, what I will need to do is change over the site at some point. Definitely not looking forward to that because I spent hundreds of hours on this site. There are some difficult task on here to carry over to Cornerstone.

Is there some sort of way to migrate to the new Visual Composer shortcodes and just go through to replace those rather than re-doing the site or reverting to old themes/plugins? I will do my own research too, but if you have any quick suggestions let me know.

THanks again. Your help is much appreciated.

#8

Hi there,

I totally understand the situation you are in and unfortunately, that is not a good position, to be honest. Visual Composer did a big overhaul of its system and underlying code and there is no auto migration tool for that. For the pages you added using the old codebase unfortunately, it is not possible to automatically transfer to the new one.

You need to recreate those pages either with the new version of the Visual Composer or the Cornerstone.

Having said that, it is inevitable that you NEED to update the WordPress and plugin during the course of time as if you do not, the website will be vulnerable to different viruses and attacks and security breaches.

Bottom line I have no good news for you and you at least need to recreate the pages which are not compatible with the new version of the Visual Composer. Also, please consider that you can have some pages using the Cornerstone and some pages using the Visual Composer, but you can not have some pages with old and some pages with the new version of the Visual Composer.

So I suggest that you use the new version of the Visual Composer, and do not touch the pages that already work with the new version and consider recreating the pages that are not compatible. For those pages, you have a choice to use the Visual Composer or the Cornerstone.

Thank you for your understanding.

#9

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