Sometimes when you use the same components on the page Cornerstone sees them as the same element which means changing the text in heading component A also reflects the same change in heading component B. You also see both elements highlighted in the builder layer overview.
Has this already been reported? We have the issue on multiple sites and refreshing doesnt work right away. But after enough refreshes it fixes it.
I’ve included a screen recording in a hidden note
Hey @100leiden,
There are two main reasons this behavior happens in Cornerstone:
Component Instance Linking (Default Design)
By design, Cornerstone Components act as a single “master” template. If you place the same component in multiple locations on a page, any direct text or style change you make to one instance will modify the master component, immediately propagating that change to all other instances.
React Key / ID Collision (The “Refresh” Quirk)
Under the hood, the Cornerstone editor is built on React. When you duplicate or place multiple component instances, the builder’s engine generates unique internal IDs (React keys) to track each element.
Depending on how you want to use the elements, you can resolve this in a few ways:
If you want to keep the styling of the heading component identical across the site but want different text on each instance, you should use Parameters:
heading_text).If you want to edit the layout, styles, and text of the heading independently:
Since this issue occurs across multiple sites and behaves inconsistently, check for underlying state-saving bottlenecks:
wp-config.php:define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '512M' );
define( 'WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT', '512M' );
Hi Christian!
Thanks for the reply.
The problem occurs inside the drop-in zones inside the components. Since we already work with parameters and push Cornerstones component features to its limit sometimes, we spot these issues.
These little bugs have been occuring since the last couple of updates, like the isVar bug that has been updated in the last release (or beta release). So it’s not something we encountered when we first started setting this up, been using this set-up since 2 years now and these issues only appeared recently.
We first started out with what you have been suggesting with the parameters and populating the child elements through the parameters, but you know how it goes. Clients and colleagues always want a small alternative on what we build for them.
“Can we remove or add a button?” Sure! We can add a button for you that you can edit through the parameter options.
"But what if I want to add more buttons? Like a primary and secondary?" Oh well yeah now we need to alter the whole component or create a separate one.
This is not a viable option, because before we know it, we have multiple variants of the same component. So that’s why we use the drop-in zones to create that flexibility. We build all the individual elements and give the user the freedom to put them inside these drop-in zones. The reason we love and are committed to Cornerstone and Pro is because it lets us scale in complexity. Take full control over everything, forms, woocommerce, layouts and archives. Something your competitors lack. So when you suggest these things, it means we lose this advantage and it defeats the purpose.
Just my 2 cents 
Do you think you could export the page with this problem and send it to me? Or send the site with login credentials for me? I just want to make sure I see your page is in the flesh.
Hey Charlie,
I will give you access to multiple development sites so you can sandbox yourself. It’s hard to replicate this specific bug, because it happens at times when switching between the pages etc. You can also troubleshoot and see for yourself regarding the other post:
I advice you to add/remove components through the “Add element” option rather than “Add section etc” and to add the 100% Heading / text components inside the slot sections. Switch between tabs inside cornerstone and the error will appear. Also inside the dashboard you will see the debug output leading you to the pages where the bugs are present.
If you need anything else, let me know!
Hi Charlie,
Small update, on the lubbe (staging171) staging website I created the page ‘Bug replication’ where there a few components added. The third component ‘LL - Content block - 3R (slider)’ comes prefab with a chip, headline and text. After adding the fourth component ‘LL - Content block - 4L (kaart stapel’ the content in the drop-in zone from block 3 got replaced with one of the elements inside of the drop-in of the fourth block.
For this website one of the most encountered issue is content from one prefab component being overwritten by the content (all or part of, meaning sometimes only the headline changes and sometimes everything changes) of a newly added prefab component. But this issue is not limited to prefab components. Sometimes when for example manually adding a chip component to the drop-in of a component and editing the text inside the chip it also reflects that change in any other chip elemnt on the page.
Hope this gives a little more insight on the issue.
Hi Charlie, us again.
Little side note: We have studied the reply of Christian multiple times by now and we just can’t find the options for ‘Connect / Set as Parameter’ or ‘Detach/Make Independent’. This is not necessary something we are looking in to too use, but we just havent ever seen these options before so we were really curiuous what he was referring to.
We are starting to think that we are turning crazy and blind or we suspect that the responses are generated with AI. Ofcourse no hard feelings at all if thats the case, work smart, not hard. But we have been discussing this internally for a while and the question is just burning on our minds.
Anyways, we always appreciate the quick support from Themeco nontheless.
Hey @100leiden,
Apologies for the confusion. “Set as Parameter” is simply Parameters
About the Detach Component part. My apologies for the oversight. Cornerstone does not have a “Detach” or “Unlink” button to convert a component instance back into standard elements. Instead, you need to do one of the following:
By the way, we do use AI and most of the time it’s accurate. I have now improved my workflow to avoid this mistake.
Do you think this may be a good option to have in CS? If so, could you please put in a feature request for this?
Sorry I was not able to recreate the issue in the video. Is there a certain page on the staging28 site you could see the issue on?
It happens randomly and is gone when you refresh Cornerstone
Hi charlie,
Have you tried what we described above in this thread?:
Small update, on the lubbe (staging171) staging website I created the page ‘Bug replication’ where there a few components added. The third component ‘LL - Content block - 3R (slider)’ comes prefab with a chip, headline and text. After adding the fourth component ‘LL - Content block - 4L (kaart stapel’ the content in the drop-in zone from block 3 got replaced with one of the elements inside of the drop-in of the fourth block.
It sometimes happens and is gone when you refresh.
I put on a special build for you staging171 site. It tries a number of different things to fix your issue. Are you still having the issue on your site? I still haven’t been able to see your issue in the flesh.