Theme x problems after updating to version 9.01 with screenshots

Support
#1

After updating both cornerstone and theme x to the latest versions I noticed several issues with theme x and 1 issue with cornerstone. I will provide screenshots in a secure note. In brief, footer menu center position is lost, I chose to disable FA fonts from cornerstone completely and they got turned on again, I am unable to access the new theme options (/cornerstone/theme-options), its stuck on loading so I cant disable it again. With ubermenu, 2 menus are displayed, one sitcky and one not sticky.

I reverted back to the theme x version 8, I left cornerstone on version 9. I will soon add the screenshots in a secure note.

#2

Added screenshots in secure note.

#4

Hi @Bark201,

Thanks for reaching out about this. Would you mind updating your secure note to include login credentials so we can take a closer look at the site? Also, if you’re using X 8 and Cornerstone 6 there will be issues since they are not compatible versions. You’ll need to use the latest versions of both, or revert both to the previous release.

#5

Im not sure I can do this as I have sensitive info. I will try and see if I can do something with permissions but it wont be admin access. I did figure why the new theme options is not working. I will add it in a secure note.

#6

added new secure note.

#7

I am unable to provide credentials, im sorry. I did however provide screenshots and showed what is causing the issue with the theme options menu.

I am adding that the api that returned 504, that was with php 7.4. When using php 8, the error is 500. This is regarding the theme options being stuck on loading.

Unable to revert back to cornerstone older version after updating to version 6, E_COMPILE_ERROR` was caused in line `8`
#8

@Bark201,

Without being able to login as an admin to troubleshoot, we’re limited in how we can assist here but we’ll see what we can do. Are you using CloudFlare or a CDN? I’ve seen on another site that the X 9 stylesheets might be getting truncated by a CDN optimization layer that tries to automatically minify CSS - the
problem is that it omits about 20KB of the stylesheet which includes some of the header and footer styling.

Regarding the 504 error, this sounds like it might be related to a upstream proxy which could be the CDN as well.

However, a 500 error could mean a fatal PHP error which we can isolate more information on. Something you can try is turning on WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG in wp-config.php. Then WordPress will start producing a debug.log file which is in the wp-content folder by default. Let us know if you see any logs generated there when attempting to access theme options.

Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this soon.

#9

I am using a CDN, yes, but as admin nothing is cached. The CDN I have does not minify anything. I will try bypassing the CDN first and see what error I am receiving. I am aware that 504 is the error from the CDN, from the server I will get something else. Files are served via the CDN by proxying the requests from the server, there is no cache for admin.

The above does not occur with the older versions, only the newer versions.

#10

Ok, thanks for confirming. At this point I can’t really check further unfortunately unless you update the site to X version 9.0.1 so I can see the actual problem live on the server, or if you could provide admin access.

#11

It will take me time, there are few things I need to double check with the CDN provider. In the meantime, is it possible to disable all FA from cornerstone without using theme options as it’s currently inaccessible to me? It was in the settings but updating to the new version re-enabled it again.

I managed to get the api fetch to work, it took it 50 seconds to load. However, there is no menu, its blank (theme options).

There is a warning in console, TypeError: (intermediate value)(intermediate value)(intermediate value).map is not a function

In cornerstone/assets/js/map

#12

There’s not a way to easily disable FA without customizing theme files or using Theme Options. We’ll just need to wait until we get Theme Options working again. That TypeError might be related but regretfully isn’t much to go on without being able to work on the site directly. We’re still fielding other inquiries so hopefully we’ll discover some common ground to why these issues are happening as we’re able to look at other installs.

#13

Im back on the old version of x and cornerstone. One thing I don’t think you paying attention to are the web vitals. The performance of version 8 with version 5 of cornerstone is much better than the current latest versions.

The developers should bear in mind the core web vitals , not just fixing or adding new features. The latest versions have poorer performance in all metrics. Please bear it in mind as no one wishes to sacrifice performance for new features/fixes.

Just to give one example, the LCP for homepage mobile is about 1.5 seconds. With the latest versions it jumps to 2.2 seconds. Why?

There are more examples, I just gave one.

1 Like
#14

I agree with @bark201, the focus right now for x theme should be web vitals first, design implementation second. Our website is only as good as it ranks for our keywords. A drop in LCP could destroy the web aspect of our business. I hope this is at the forefront of what the developers of x theme are working on. If it’s causing a .7 sec drop, I think the developers need to go back to the drawing board before releasing version 9.

#15

@Bark201, thanks for confirming about rolling back.

There is a sequence to the updates we’ve been putting out. X (and Pro) are mature products with large codebases that have evolved over the years to satisfy customer feedback in terms of features. Now that responsive styling is released, we’re beginning the Theme Options reboot which will help reduce the amount of resources needed for a given page. That being said, you’ll still always need to take care in not using too many elements, images, etc.

#16

You are going to release new versions of theme x and cornerstone anyways due to reported issues. I am certain there is something you can do regarding the web vitals. I think cornerstone is the biggest issue with this.

Updating cornerstone and seeing an increase of +700ms in LCP is very bad.

#17

Fixing reported issues and overhauling performance are very different things in scope and scale.

#18

Thank you for your reply. I updated to 9.0.4 (including latest cornerstone), all past issues were resolved. Everything appears to be working smoothly and I am able to access the theme options.

One separate issue, I noticed that code coverage for cornerstone, more than 50% is not used. It would be great to have the ability to use only the js the website uses. The same applies for icon.css (about 30% not used).

Regarding font awesome, a different known theme provided the ability to use only the font-awesome that the website uses instead of loading everything. That will also improve performance.

It’s not relevant for now but for future consideration.

#19

Hello @Bark201,

Thanks for the feedback. It has been noted and forwarded to Alex.

Cheers.

#20

Thank you. If you can also please test the code to text ratio and see what can be done with it. I think cornerstone is the biggest contributor to it.

#21

Hi @Bark201,

This is pretty normal for plugins and themes with many different features. If you add certain elements in Cornerstone, more code will be utilized. We’ve split some of the larger things out like the isotope functionality for the blog, but most element code is combined in a single javascript file. The alternative would creating more smaller files, but then you’re adding HTTP requests.

You’ll get better performance if you hand code everything in HTML/CSS/JS (without a theme) but you’ll always be left with some inefficiencies if you want to leverage a theme like X and page builder like Cornerstone.