Pro Shortcodes not working in new update

[ahallmark]

Hello!

We use a batch process to create hundreds of pages using Pro Shortcodes but since the recent 4.0 update, it appears the shortcodes are breaking. In the screenshot below you can see all the Pro Shortcodes we are using on a specific page but it’s not loading any of the Pro elements. Any site we revert back to 3.2.3 works just fine and the content loads.

Is there a way to fix this at scale in a patch to ensure Pro Shortcodes from previous versions continue to work in 4.0? We have thousands of pages like this that are all not loading now in 4.0.

[marc_a]

Hi @ahallmark,

Thanks for reaching out.

Pro shortcodes always work with the latest version of the Pro theme. I recommend the following troubleshooting procedures before we investigate the settings.

1. TESTING FOR THEME RELATED ISSUE
2. TESTING FOR PLUGIN CONFLICT
3. THEME UPDATE
4. CHILD THEME
5. CSS/JS CUSTOMIZATION
6. VERSION COMPATIBILITY

Only if none of that helps, please give us the following information in a Secure Note.

• WordPress Login URL
• Admin level username and password

You can find the Secure Note button at the bottom of your posts.

Thank you.

[ahallmark]

Secure note added - thanks.

[EventConnect]

I am having the same issue on my site right now. Any fix would be greatly appreciated.

[tristup]

Hi @ahallmark,

It has been found that most of the pages are loaded properly in the builder except the page you mention. After going through your content, it seems that the existing Cornerstone content has been edited in the Block editor and that may be the cause of the issue.
Regretfully, the content added through the Cornerstone editor is not editable in the Block or Gutenberg editor, and vice-versa. That’s why the edited content is not showing in the Cornerstone.
If you don’t have any backup, I would suggest you create it from scratch. If it is not possible to create it from scratch, I would suggest you restore your backup into the stagging site, and export the pages from it and import it to your live site, which may help you to recover the page.

Hi @EventConnect,

If the above solution does not work for you, please create a separate thread and share the login credentials of your site for further support.

Thanks

[ahallmark]

Hello!

I don’t think we are talking about the same website. There are nearly 1,000 pages not loading due to this error on this website alone. Across all of our websites, we’re talking over 10,000 pages of lost content. Looking at the test site I shared:
add the following URLs to the test domain:
/service-history-2/
/service-history-3/
/where-we-service/appliance-repair-prosperity-sc/

You have to manually review each page to see the shortcodes. Again, all this worked in 3.2.3 and it breaks when you go to 4.0. Is ThemeCo willing to fix this issue? Or are you suggesting I shop around as shortcodes is not something Pro will be supporting in the future? Cuz it currently doesn’t work with 4.0

These are just a few examples. Again, we’re talking 10,000+ pages across all my websites due to the recent update.

What is the actual fix to get one of these pages to load? You didn’t actually share that… we really need support. I do see that you logged into the website, but it doesn’t appear you actually reviewed the issue… What’s the point of paying for Pro Unlimited if we are going to get discarded so quickly by support when a real issue occurs?

[christian]

Hey @ahallmark,

First off, we are not discarding you. Nothing in my colleague’s response says that. He just posted his findings which is really usually the case that the content is edited outside of the builder.

Regarding the issue, I’m not sure why how this works in the previous version Pro builder generated shortcodes (highlighted in the screenshot below) are not intended to be used manually as they will get the builder’s data which is available per page. Your page’s don’t have the builder’s data because they’re not created using the Content Builder so the cs_content will have nothing to display so it terminates.

Please remove the generated shortcodes and leave your custom shortcodes and X shortcodes only in the content. You can see it working on a test page I’ve created (see secure note)

To remove the codes from thousands of pages, you need to use a Search and Replace plugin. Please check the WordPress repository in case you’re not aware of this.

I believe you’ve used the generated shortcodes to provide structure to your content. The correct way to achieve that is to use the Layout Builder. You can learn how to use that from the video below:

Hope that helps.

[ahallmark]

Appreciate the detailed response! This is what we were looking for when we originally reached out.

We can’t use the layout builder at scale though, it requires one at a time page creation, that’s just not going to work when other themes are able to work with batch input and can allow us to build at scale as it looks like Themeco is no longer designed to work at scale and is not interested in fixing these issues. We’ll explore the replacement plugin, but it is a real shame you folks can’t just push our a hotfix to this issue. Instead, I have to now redesign thousands of pages only to have the risk of it all breaking in your next major update if you folks change the structure of your shortcodes yet again. It’s really concerning, we’ve never had such major issues with an update with Themeco in the last 5 years.

We still appreciate the response though.

[tristup]

Hi @ahallmark,

We understand your situation. You can use the Layout Builder to create a common layout and assign any number of pages you want with a similar structure, which may help you to avoid redesign the many layouts for the same structures.

Thanks