Theme Options vs. Customizer v2

I found this topic brought up already (originally posted by @cschell back in July - https://theme.co/apex/forum/t/theme-options-vs-customizer/1766) and it was stated that the next version would fix the issue, but here we are in October and I was wondering if there was an update (I cannot post a reply to the old post so I’m opening a new thread here).

Here’s what Chris wrote earlier, and I have the exact same question:

Hi there! I’ve been using X and Pro for a while now and I’m confused about the relationship between Theme Options and the Customizer. I prefer to use the Theme Options in Pro but unfortunately Customizer options will often override what I’m selecting in the Theme Options.

Is there a way to disable the X specific panels in the Customizer so they don’t interfere with the Theme Options in Pro?

Chris

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I am also confused about these 2 things. You are not the only one. :slight_smile:

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same here. i just asked the theme.co staff about this and other inconsistencies since v2 and pro. eg. at least 4 places to add site wide css are also very confusing i find…
also which forum to use. i only used the staff forum up to now. so will staff read this here and answer threads or only in the other forum???

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Hello @cobbman, @donnas, and @iTurtle,

Thanks for writing in and sorry to hear about any apparent confusion you have regarding the Theme Options section integrated into the builders vs. the Customizer, which is a native part of WordPress. As touched on in our changelog entry for Pro when it was released, we initially utilized the Customizer when it was released some time ago as a way to try and implement a more seamless global settings interface with our products. At the time, utilizing a system more native to WordPress was a great move, but as time went forward and more of our tools developed for theming, we ultimately found some issues with integrating it to the fullest that we wanted. Because of that, and also in order to greatly streamline the workflow of being able to work out of one interface rather than needing to jump back and forth between two, we integrated our Theme Options interface into the builders.

While we encourage all users to utilize the new Theme Options interface for multiple reasons, we still have to leave the Customizer in place for backwards compatibility and workflow reasons. Theme Options is encouraged because certain features, such as integration with our Font Manager are not possible in the Customizer. Additionally, as we move forward various new features will be integrated into Theme Options that further fuse together all of the capabilities of our products, which we can only do in Theme Options as it is our own interface, and are unable to do in the Customizer. So keep this in mind as you choose an options interface to work out of.

That all being said, since there are some differences between the two as mentioned above, it is imperative that you choose one to work with and do not alternate back and forth between the two worlds, as there can be some issues that arise from this (such as the font integrations mentioned previously). This is simply a reality of having a “legacy interface” that we must keep around for backwards compatibility, that is not a 100% 1:1 mirror of Theme Options due to capability limitations. This is similar to our old Visual Composer integration, which we still maintain for bugfixes and compatibility reasons, but no further feature development has happened with that integration in years due to the limitations of what we were able to achieve with it, which is where the content builder came from. All things being equal, we do highly encourage all users to switch to the Theme Options section fully, as the integration is tighter with the builders and certain features are expanded because of that.

Hopefully this helps to clear things up. Thanks!

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