GDPR compliant check boxes for comments not showing on my site after WordPress 4.9.6 update

Support
#1

Hello, WordPress released a new GDPR-compliant update 4.9.6 yesterday and I noticed that the new check boxes for people who want to leave a comment are not there on my site.

This is how it looks on another site - see screenshot below (and it should now be the case on al WordPress sites), but some people are reporting on Facebook that they also don’t have these tick boxes. Somebody suggested it is probably related to the theme we use. So I was wondering if you guys have any ideas what could be blocking these new fields from showing up?

Thanks a lot.
Jurga

#2

Hi @JurgaR,

Thanks for writing in.

I haven’t seen or heard any similar issues as of yet. But the theme doesn’t use custom comment form, it still uses the comment form provided by Wordpress.

Or maybe those are really removed because those are something that collects information?

And those checkboxes seem to be custom, they aren’t familiar to me. Maybe it’s added by custom code or plugins, or host specific feature? As they are more related to subscription, and I checked on my existing installation and there is no such configuration for a subscription. Maybe I missed something, would you mind providing more information how it was setup?

Thanks!

#3

Hi, this seems to be a new standard for all WordPress sites after their last update. Most sites seem to have it now after the update, while a few report issues of not seeing these check boxes. And indeed my site is not showing them while many other bloggers that I know have the check boxes automatically after the update…

Here’s how it looks on someone else’s site (see below). It seems that there are several customisable options, but in any case people have check boxes…

Nobody seems to know what’s going on and why some sites have them and some not… I was hoping you guys would have an idea…

#4

I was looking around in WP forums and there they were also talking about possible conflicts with a theme. Anyway, there was some CSS code in one of the forums and I wanted to give it a try. And now I see that I can’t even open ‘Customize’ section - a white screen with X is spinning and spinning and nothing happens. I tried on Safari and Google Chrome and it doesn’t work… Wonder if there is some serious conflict between WP’s new update and X…

I now also noticed that after this update my site’s menu doesn’t work on the mobile anymore… I think I’ll have to go and restore the site to how it was before and see if the CSS works again and the menu. But this isn’t the best way as WP updates are kind of essential.

I posted in the WP forums too and here where they pointed me to: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/05/17/changes-that-affect-theme-authors-in-wordpress-4-9-6/ They all seem to say there is a conflict between a theme overriding WP settings.

Really hope you can help me out here as going back to the previous WP version isn’t really a long-term solution.
Thanks a lot!

#5

Hi @JurgaR,

Looks like we need to look at this more closely. Though, I still can’t reproduce this issue as I don’t know or not sure how those checkboxes are added. I’ll add this to our issue tracker.

Thanks for sharing :slight_smile:

#6

Hi Rad, what about the CSS customizer not working or mobile menu not functioning? Especially the latter is something that really cannot wait. Over 50% of our readers use mobile devices and the menu is pretty much the only way to get around. Hope you guys can solve this quickly!

As for those checkboxes people on WordPress seem to think it’s an easy fix that has to be done by theme developers. Here’s what WP says: “By default, WordPress automatically displays the new checkbox field discussed above. However, if a theme is passing the fields argument to the comment_form() function, the field will not display and needs to be added to the list of fields.”

#7

Hi @JurgaR,

About the checkboxes, I already added it to our issue tracker. Our developer should look into it.

I also checked and your cornerstone is very old, please delete it and let your theme install the compatible version by going to Admin > X > Validation. All of those issues are due to the outdated cornerstone.

And you should apply your CSS in Theme Options > CSS.

Thanks!

#8

Hi Rad, I can’t update Cornerstone for months already because it breaks my site completely :frowning: How do I delete it? Just delete the plugin? What happens with all the pages made with Cornerstone if I do that?
All those functions worked till the last WP update…
I’ll try to make a backup and see if I can get a new Cornerstone to work, but I’m afraid it’s going to be the same as always - all pages built with Cornerstone completely broken…

#9

Hey, I believe the devs are aware of this and a fix will most likely be in the upcoming update. Hopefully before the 25th.

#10

Hey @JurgaR,

It’s recommended that you update Cornerstone because eventually it will cause issues in the future due to version incompatibility. But, I just want to clear that the checkbox is not related to Cornerstone as it is included in the theme.

I’ve tested WP 4.9.6 and the default WordPress themes and the only checkbox that WordPress adds out of the box is this: Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment..

The rest of the checkboxes in your screenshot are probably added by a third party plugin because if it’s added by WordPress, it will be consistent.

The checkbox that WordPress adds is also available in X and Pro out of the box because they don’t filter the form or are using the standard comment form like the default WordPress themes.

It looks like you have a custom comment form or are filtering the comment form in your child theme. Please switch to the parent theme to quickly know if child theme customization is causing the issue.

To your question on deleting Cornerstone, deactivate and delete it then go to X in your WP Admin menu and the latest version of Cornerstone will be installed automatically for you. Don’t worry about the pages you built with Cornerstone, they will not be affected as the data is stored in the database and Cornerstone does not have a command to delete data upon deletion.

Thanks.

#11

Thanks Christian, I now have even more issues since trying to update Cornerstone this morning as your colleague suggested. This is how my home page and menu looks like if I do that:

So I decided to go back to my backup, but that screwed things up completely and now I can’t even login into a WP panel of my site. My hosting support at SiteGround is looking to fix it, but they still haven’t found how that’s possible. So we either have an older website version and can’t login or we remove all the plugins and then we can login and the home page looks like in the picture above. So clearly Cornerstone is causing some serious issues on my site. :frowning:
I see that your support has logged in on my site about an hour ago - I guess it was you. Could you get WP dashboard to open???

As for the comments, I never installed or used anything else than a standard form, and deactivating a child theme isn’t really a solution I guess as it has many customisations. I’ll see if I can try that if and when I can finally log in on my site using WP panel.

I need to get Cornerstone up to date and stop it breaking my site like this every time before I can go back to looking into other issues I’m afraid.

Do you guys have some premium custom support available? I don’t mind paying for someone to finally get X and Cornerstone working on my site as it should.

Thanks a lot

#12

Hi @JurgaR,

If that’s the case, then you shouldn’t update your theme, and don’t update the Wordpress either for now. In terms of compatibility, it’s a chain, you’ll have to update the next incompatible theme, then incompatible plugins, then other 3rd party plugins, and so on.

And you shouldn’t just update them on your live site if you think it’s causing some issues. All site’s maintenance, redesign, or major updates like this (since you’re coming from very OLD versions) should be done in a staging site ( a clone of your live site). It’s standard practice on any site/software development, it will cost you time and money if you accidentally break your live site since you can only update it partially.

Moving forward, I can’t check it since you said you’ve restored it from backup so please clone your site and let’s do the troubleshooting there. I’m afraid it will cause more issues if I change something to your live site :slight_smile:

Thanks!

#13

Hi!!

I’ve got exactly same problem as JurgaR. (In my case, I’ve got theme and all plugins updated).

I’ve downloaded my site to my localhost to see if 4.9.6 has all improves that are necessary. When I visit my posts, checkbox is not there. These is an improve of this WP version and it will be working before 25th.

I’ll wait these days hoping new version of X-Theme.

#14

@genuinesp,

The checkbox issue is added to our issue tracker. And we’ll be checking it oo, there is no available workaround for now as we’re not sure how it’s affected.

Thanks!

#15

Hi Rad. I got some awesome developers to help me and they managed to get my site completely up to date and not broken. Yay! So now I’m only missing check boxes. However, I heard from a friend who has X-theme today and her site seems to have it. So is this an issue that is only affecting some websites?
Do we just wait till your team solves it in general or do you think that we need to change some code at the site-level?
Thanks

#16

Hey @JurgaR,

I’ve said this in my previous reply

Please review my previous reply for more details.

The only thing that breaks is the checkbox label which can be solved with this CSS.

#wp-comment-cookies-consent {
    display: inline-block;
    margin-right: 10px
}

.comment-form-cookies-consent label {
    display: inline;
}

I got an update in our issue tracker and an official fix for that layout issue might be included in the succeeding releases.

Thanks.

#17

What stack are you using?

#18

Hi @JvP

Just wanted to let you know that it has nothing related to the stack used (it’s Ethos in @JurgaR case), it’s not a bug or something specific to X/Pro, please refer to @christian_y reply here.

Thanks.

1 Like
#19

Hi there. I have the same problem. On our site https://www.wohnraum8.de/wohntraum-badezimmer-rustikal-luftiges-wohnkonzept/ there would no checkbox be displayed. I have installed the plugin WP Comment Policy Checkbox in behalf of the GDPR. On all other sites (with other themes) the checkbox would be displayed. WordPress, X and Cornerstone are in the newest versions. What can I do?

Edit:
I have found a solution. I have made the following changes in the X comments.php

<?php /*x_get_view( x_get_stack(), 'wp', 'comments' );*/ comment_form(); ?>
#20

Glad you’ve sorted it out @k_pem :slight_smile: