Total Theme v 6.0

Release Date: November 20, 2024

Root Font Size: Total previously used a CSS reset that set the HTML element's font size to 10px, an outdated practice intended to simplify the use of rem units. However, this approach can lead to issues on modern websites. To align with current standards, enhance accessibility, and avoid conflicts with third-party plugins or scripts that rely on rem units, the theme will no longer modify the root font size. If you have been using rem units on your site, please review your settings. Alternatively, you can add the following custom CSS to your site: html { font-size: 62.5%; }
SVG Icons: The biggest change in this update is switching from font icons to SVG icons to speed up your site, make it easier to update the icons and allow for custom icon selections. If you were previously targeting icons with CSS or inserting icons using the font icon classes/CSS you will need to revise your customizations.
Partial File Edits: Various partial theme files has been updated. Most notably the searchform.php file. As usual, if you modified any partial files via your child theme you will need to compare them to the theme's version and update them accordingly. To prevent having to do this after each update we recommend never editing partial files. Most edits can be done using hooks/filters, if you aren't sure please reach out for help.
Dark Mode: This functionality has been introduced but it's disabled by default because it requires loading extra scripts and adding new settings which not every site will want (keeps things slim by default). You can enable Dark Mode via the Theme Panel but if you do this on a previously set up website it will require revising your Customizer settings, pages and templates to ensure colors assigned to various elements are using either theme colors or color palette colors that have dark color variations.
New Default Font Size & Layout: The theme's new default font size will be 16px and default site width will be 1280px to bring the theme to modern standards. Along with some small design changes to inputs & button paddings, preset font sizes, line heights...etc. When updating your site, you will not be forced into these changes. Instead a new "Classic Styles" option will be enabled in the Theme Panel (tagged under the new "Deprecated" feature type). This way you can update without concerns, but if you choose, you can easily opt-out and use the new standards.
Updated Logo: The header logo has been updated to use modern flex classes instead of tables (finally). If you had added CSS to modify the vertical-align property of the logo this would need to be changed to use the align-items property.
Blockquote Design: The blockquote uses new modern CSS for the quote icon - if you had customized the default blockquote design you may need to revise your tweaks.
Optimized Sticky: If you were previously using the "wpex-js-sticky" class you may want to test with the CSS only "wpex-sticky" class instead. New sticky enhancement's allow for the class to automatically offset the sticky topbar, header and menu elements.
Input Styles: CSS targeting inputs has been updated to use the :where() pseudo-class function so they can be overwritten with utility classes. Thus, various inputs such as the header search and mobile menu search have been updated to use utility classes where possible to slim down the style.css. If you were targeting any inputs using custom CSS you may need to revise your edits. And if you were doing this, in the future, make sure you are creating/targeting unique classnames for smoother/easier updates.
Z-indexes: New z-index utility classes have been introduced to create consistency and prevent z-index issues. Any theme element that previously had a z-index has been updated to use these new classes.
Missing Sidebar? A new and highly requested setting has been added to the Customizer so you can choose your sidebar placement on mobile (top, bottom or auto). Because of the required changes to make the setting work if you were using this snippet to move your sidebar it will cause the sidebar to be removed completely. So, if your sidebar is missing on your site after updating you likely have added that code to your site and it will need to be removed.
RTL: The theme has been enhanced with direction-aware CSS, eliminating the need for a custom style-rtl.css file. Text alignments and left/right icons are now bidirectional by default, simplifying the development of multi-language sites. If you were manually setting alignments or direction based icons on a multi-language site, you can use this snippet to to revert back.

Added 🔥 New Horizontal & Off Canvas Menu Elements (with these new elements it’s recommended to use the Header Builder for new sites to keep the site as slim and fast as possible – both are available in WPBakery & Elementor).
Added 🌑 New “Dark Mode” functionality.
Added Ability to set “Dark Mode” color variations for your color palette colors.
Added New Header & Footer Patterns for WPBakery.
Added ACF Repeater Dynamic Template type and ACF Repeater element (for ACF Pro users) – this will allow you to display a repeater field as a list, grid, flex container, carousel or ul/ol list. Similar to the Post Cards and Card Builder but for ACF repeater fields.
Added New “Modal (Live Search)” header menu search type.
Added Menu Item Mega Menu Columns & Icon fields to the Appearance > Menus dashboard.
Added Option to the Header Builder to select an alternative header template for use with Transparent headers.
Added Option to choose between JavaScript or CSS for the Header Builder sticky header.
Added Image Position option to the Image Sizes panel that can be used with the Aspect Ratio setting.
Added A 200ms delay dropdowns to prevent “flickering” when quickly hovering over menu items.
Added Background & Border color theme color pickers to the WPBakery section, row, column and text block elements so it’s easier to use your color palette.
Added Hover Title & Add to Cart Hover Image Overlay styles.
Added Theme Panel option so you can disable the “Post Media” custom fields.
Added New visibility settings: “Visible on Small Phones” and “Hidden on Small Phones” (640px breakpoint).
Added Classname “megamenu-col-full” which can be added to a mega menu item to display it full-width (for example if you want some columns at the top and a full-width column below them).
Added Heading tab to the Post Cards element for inserting a heading before the cards that will not display if there aren’t any items found.
Added Carousel arrow styles: rounded white, rounded black and rounded accent.
Added Top right carousel arrow position.
Added “Flex Justification” field to the Post Cards element for use with the flex container and horizontal scroll display types. This way you can horizontally align your cards. For example, if you select 4 columns as your flex basis and you have only 3 posts you can display them centered, spaced out, etc.
Added URL Search Parameter field to the Post Cards element which allows you to enter a URL parameter name to perform searches on the post cards element based on the current page URL. This allows you to create on page search functions like the theme filters page.
Added Reload on Clear on/off switch for the search bar element, which can be used when creating a custom search function that’s hooked into the Post Cards element on the same page so when the user hits the clear button it will also refresh the page to revert the query back to all posts.
Added Bleed option for the Post Cards carousel display type, which will allow items to overflow to the side(s).
Added Ability to use FadeOut animation for the Post Cards element when set to the Carousel type and displaying a single item.
Added Icon Dimensions, Icon Background and Icon Border Radius options to the Toggle element.
Added Animate, FAQ Markup, Icon Type and Icon Position options to the Toggle Group making it easier to control the display of all child Toggles.
Added “Homepage” as a link option type for various elements (Image, Button, Heading) which is useful with the header builder.
Added More theme styles to the WPBakery Tabs element.
Added Bottom Margin to the WPBakery textfield element.
Added “Auto” layout option to the Callout element.
Added Icon size options to the Button element.
Added Direction option to the Social Links element (horizontal/vertical).
Added More Cart icon options added to the Customizer.
Added Dynamic variable for displaying theme icons icon_{name} or icon_id_{attachment_id}.
Added Dynamic variable primary_term for displaying the primary term name (alias for category).
Added Basic styling for block based WooCommerce cart and check out pages.
Added Off Canvas Sidebar option added for the WooCommerce cart (this is the new default cart style).
Added “Dynamic” option to the Customizer Sidebar > Mobile Placement setting. When selected the sidebar will automatically be placed at the top when using a left sidebar.
Added Customizer option to enable a logo for the sidebar mobile menu (text or image).
Added Customizer option for entering a custom “gap” for items added to the Header Aside area in a flex header.
Added Customizer option to control the custom logo icon size.
Added Customizer option to select the main menu “Dropdown Arrow Size”.
Added Customizer options to modify the Header Search Replace background color, text color, text transform and font size.
Added Customizer options for sticky WooCommerce product summary and sticky gallery.
Added Customizer option to enable a sticky sidebar.
Added Customizer option for header menu dropdown “Max Width”.
Added Customizer options for WooCommerce cart thumbnail max width and cart responsive breakpoint.
Added Customizer option for WooCommerce to enable a sticky summary which allows you to create the affect where it looks like the product gallery images scroll vertically.
Added Customizer option for WooCommerce to enable a sticky gallery so that the gallery images remain sticky if your product details are very long (like Amazon.com).
Added Customizer option where you can enter the position for your Header 5 centered logo. This is a numeric field, so if you enter 3 your logo will be added after the second item.
Added Customizer option to disable the WooCommerce “Added to Cart” notice that displays on the single product pages – when disabled, if you are using the new Off-Canvas cart function it will open when the page refreshes to let the user know the item was added to the cart.
Added Health Check so if your license is not active or you don’t have a default WP theme installed it will let you know that updates won’t display for the theme.
Added Aria label options in the Accessibility panel for the Toggle Bar button, open cart button and open search buttons.
Added Utility classes for color palette borders: has-{color_slug}-border-color.
Added Option to the Post Types Unlimited “Theme Settings – General” tab to disable WPBakery. This way you can quickly disable it completely for any post type without messing with User Roles.
Added New text_color and opacity attributes for the highlight shortcode.
Added Inner background, border width, border style, border color and padding options to the Image element.
Added Image Overlay option to the Image Swap element.
Added Integration for the free LifterLMS plugin.
Added Notice to the bundled plugin installation page to alert users that they can disable plugins via the Theme Panel.
Added Help tab to the Appearance > Menus page explaining how to create mega menus with some useful classes.
Added Image Aspect Ratio option to the Posts Thumbnails Grid & Posts With Thumbnails widgets.
Added Image Container Width field to the Posts With Thumbnails widget so you can define a width without having to crop the image.
Updated 🌶️ SVG Theme Icons – The theme will no longer load a theme icons font family. Instead all theme icons will render using SVG html code. Previously a fairly large theme icon font was loaded which contained all icons and CSS to render them which created unnecessary bloat. Now only the code needed for the icons used on a given page will be added to the site keeping your site as fast as possible. This was a crucial update in modernizing and optimizing the theme. If you were previously customizing any icons via CSS or inserting icons using HTML (you should have used the theme functions or shortcodes) you may need to revise your edits.
Updated The WPBakery Page Builder and added fixes/enhancements for their latest version.
Updated The Header Style 5 (centered logo inside menu) now uses PHP instead of Javascript so it will display instantly.
Updated Sticky topbar, header and menu javascript has been moved into their own files and loaded only if needed.
Updated Header search javascript has been moved to their own files (dropdown, overlay, header replace) so only the code for the selected style is added to the site.
Updated Theme Panel icons.
Updated Theme icons have been updated to use newer/modern designs (based on the latest FontAwesome v6) and more icon options have been added.
Updated Optimized how theme SVG icons are used so instead of having hundreds of SVG’s inside the theme the theme now uses a single JSON file with all icon definitions.
Updated Mobile menus are now rendered only when the user first opens them to optimize page loading. A new event wpex:mobileMenuRendered is fired if you need to inject content with JS.
Updated The Image Sizes panel now has a “Crop?” setting added for each image size to hide the crop settings by default.
Updated The theme now uses modern logical properties and values for left/right margins, paddings and borders to provide automatic RTL support.
Updated The default font size and layout width has changed to 1rem and 1280px respectfully to bring the theme into modern standards. If you are updating these changes won’t affect the site. A new “Classic Styles” theme panel setting will be automatically enabled for anyone updating so you don’t have to make any manual adjustments to existing sites.
Updated The Blockquote design has been updated to use an SVG icon via modern CSS instead of an image. This way the icon will automatically change color based on the text color.
Updated The Mobile Menu Style choices now includes “Dropdown, Dropdown (Inline) and Dropdown (Full Height).
Updated The mega menu heading default font size now uses the “Large” preset font size so it stands out (was too small before).
Updated The Header menu dropdowns now inherit their font size instead of being slightly smaller. The menu dropdown font size was previously set to 0.923em, so while most won’t tell the difference of this change, it will keep things consistent and prevents issues when using em values for your custom font sizes.
Updated The searchform.php file has been updated to include new checks for easily modifying the style, placeholder, input_id, input_class, submit_class, submit_icon and submit_text via the core ‘search_form_args’ filter.
Updated BBPress styles to clean a few things up and remove forum title icons.
Updated The theme button “Active Toggle Text” field now allows for shortcodes and dynamic variables.
Updated If you want to link to a section on your site using an element ID instead of the theme’s local scroll ID you can now do so using the format site.com/#_section-id – by using an underscore after the hashtag it prevents the browser’s initial jump to the section so that the theme can scroll to it smoothly and properly offset sticky elements. If your site doesn’t have any sticky elements you don’t need to worry and you should disable the option under Customize > General > Local Scroll Links > Scroll to URL hash.
Updated The default block quote design uses the new CSS image-mask property for the quote icon for retina-ready icons that support custom coloring.
Updated The Image Grid element now supports Custom Links when used in Elementor.
Updated WooCommerce product tabs default design.
Updated The WooCommerce notices to use the newer block based notices by default (disabled when updating – can be enabled via Customize > WooCommerce (Total) > General > Block Notices).
Updated The options to enable the search & cart icons in the header menu now work with the Flex Header styles (when updating those settings will be automatically disabled if you are using a flex header so you don’t have to manually update your site).
Updated The WooCommerce Template part element now displays only the specific part name in the WPBakery backend editor so it’s easier to see the various parts on the page.
Updated The WooCommerce cart page will now display vertically on small screens so it’s easier to use and so it can display product thumbnails.
Updated The Customize > WooCommerce > Shop & Archives > Category Description Position setting now allows you to select “Hidden” as an option.
Updated The WooCommerce plus/minus quantity buttons are now added with PHP instead of javascript so they render instantly. If you are using a plugin that also inserts plus and minus buttons this change could cause a conflict and you may need to go to Appearance > Customize > WooCommerce (Total) > General and change the “Quantity Buttons Style” to “Browser Default”.
Updated The WooCommerce “Menu Cart: Display” setting in the Customizer now has a new option “Icon with Dot” which will display the icon and if any items are in the cart it will show a small dot on the top right over the icon.
Updated When using visibility settings in the WPBakery page builder items will no longer be hidden but rather display with an opacity making it easier to work without having to switch to smaller screen sizes to view them.
Updated The comments pagination older/newer comments links have been updated to include arrows and to look like links so they are more accessible. We’ve also added a fix for a WP bug when changing the comment order so it displays the correct text.
Updated The Overlay Search style magnifying glass icon is now a button which provides better accessibility.
Updated The Image Banner and Teaser elements now have the same link options as other elements.
Updated The checklist format has been updated to use an SVG icon.
Updated Icons added to the categories, archive, recent comments an recent post widgets now use SVG’s instead of theme icons.
Updated Some Card styles where using “Text 3” instead of “Text 2” for the excerpt text color making it too light.
Updated The theme icon shortcode margin attributes so they support any unit (not just pixels) and the color attribute supports the accent color as well as css variables. A new attribute has also been added named “bidirectional” which when set to true will flip the icon horizontally in RTL mode.
Updated The Recent Posts with Icons widget icons to match the icons added over images when the “Thumbnail Post Format Icons” option is enabled in the Theme Panel.
Updated Optimized the CSS for the thumbnail post format icons so they display instantly instead of waiting for the page to load.
Updated Gutenberg editor CSS has been updated so form styles are only applied to theme elements to prevent conflicts with 3rd party plugins and editor inputs.
Updated When “Editor Styles” is disabled in the Theme Panel the theme will still load the needed styles for theme blocks and cards.
Updated When “Editor Styles” is disabled in the Theme Panel the theme will still add a little inline CSS to the Gutenberg editor to increase the default fault size because it’s very small (it’s recommended to leave Editor Styles enabled though so the Editor better matches your live site).
Updated The List Item and Icon Box elements now add the new “wpex-icon–w” classname to the icon to ensure all icons are the same width when adding multiple list items with different icons one after another.
Updated The “Quote” post format now uses a blockquote element for the design for design consistency.
Updated All close icons (mobile menu, header search replace, search overlay and cart overlay) so they now use an SVG icon to slim down the CSS used to target the elements, allow easier modification and consistency.
Updated The next and previous links that display by default at the bottom of posts now use a single arrow icon.
Updated The overlay search will now close when clicking anywhere outside of the search form.
Updated When using the staff user relationship if the user description is empty the theme will automatically display the staff member “excerpt” for the author bio description.
Updated The WPBakery Tab and Accordion elements will no longer animate by default. A new setting was added under Customize > WPBakery so you can re-enable the animation if you want, but it’s recommended to keep them disabled.
Updated The Image Carousel element will now display the video icon for images with videos when lightbox is enabled to be consistent with the Image Grid element.
Updated The Social Links element horizontal and vertical padding options now accept custom values.
Updated Better keyboard support and instructions for the carousel element for improved accessibility.
Updated When using the dropdown mobile menu style with the “Inline With Content” setting enabled; clicking on a local scroll link inside the mobile menu will instantly scroll to section rather then closing the mobile menu first and waiting.
Updated The theme now enables support for the newer WooCommerce block notices design.
Updated The main header menu dropdowns now have a max-width of 320px to prevent very long dropdowns (does not apply to mega menus).
Updated Closing the mobile menu will no longer close sub menu items that were opened.
Updated The Lightbox gallery thumbnails now display on the bottom instead of the right side.
Updated The Raw HTML WPBakery element is now available for use inside custom cards.
Updated The WPBakery tab, tour and accordion animations will be disabled by default in new installs.
Updated The Favicons panel is now disabled by default on new installations. It’s best to use the “new” core function at “Settings > General > Site Icon”.
Updated When the “Classic Styles” setting is disabled in the Theme Panel (aka new installations) the WPBakery Row “Inner Column Gap” and “Remove Bottom Margin” options will only apply to that specific row and not it’s inner rows. This edit was done in this way to prevent issues with customers updating their theme.
Updated The WPBakery backend view for the Custom Field element so it’s easier to see the selected field.
Updated When using the Image Swap element and the source set to “Featured & Secondary Images” if only one of the images is set, the element will still display the one image.
Updated The related posts heading for singular custom post types now uses the format “Related {Post Type Name Label}” instead of “Related Items”.
Updated The text in the TGMPA activation script used for bundled plugins to use the word “optional” for SliderRevolution, WPBakery and Templatera.
Updated The List (bullets) element to add the role=”list” attribute to the UL tag for better accessibility.
Updated Optimized WPBakery patterns to work with the new dark mode functionality, use only theme icons, use global font sizes, avoid custom hex colors where possible, use slimmer code and have higher quality screenshots.
Fixed Customizer icons in the latest version of WordPress.
Fixed The Recent News date element was using fixed pixel font sizes so it wouldn’t get bigger/smaller based on your site’s font size. It’s been updated to use preset font sizes instead for better responsiveness and full control.
Fixed The theme will now automatically flip menu drop-downs if they don’t fit in the viewport.
Fixed The Header Two Aside search form was not using the Customizer input font sizes and styles or adjusting to your body font size.
Fixed Issue where the Post Excerpt element was not correctly returning a trimmed excerpt.
Fixed Missing structured data on single WooCommerce products when using a dynamic template.
Fixed Missing required attribute on header 2 search form and dropdown mobile menu searchform.
Fixed You could not select or enter a custom field for the Icon element when choosing a custom field link type.
Fixed The Sticky topbar when enabled on mobile, was not using the mobile menu breakpoint value so it was inconsistent with other sticky elements.
Fixed The “wpex-sticky” utility class was not working with WPBakery sections and rows.
Fixed The browser would potentially scroll down a bit when opening the toggle style mobile menu.
Fixed The toggle bar element had an aria-hidden attribute and was missing screen reader text.
Fixed The WooCommerce Entry Title typography setting in the Customizer was not targeting product entries added with the Post Cards element.
Fixed The Customizer was still showing the “Mega Menu” and “Menu Dropdown” tabs in the Customizer when using a custom header via the Header Builder.
Fixed Post Meta icon placement when an item wrapped onto the next line.
Fixed When inserting the Post Content element in a dynamic template using Elementor it would display other elements that were previously added to the page instead of the dummy placeholder.
Fixed The horizontal social share button border radius did not match the defined button border radius.
Fixed Missing aria-labels for the header search and header cart shortcodes.
Fixed The term custom card style setting was not working with the Post Cards element and dynamic taxonomy templates.
Fixed Potential issue with extra spacing between post entries and the pagination element.
Fixed When logged in with the WP admin toolbar enabled the Lightbox toolbar was being placed underneath the WP toolbar so it couldn’t be accessed.
Fixed The Toggle Group element didn’t have any default spacing between toggles when setting the style to “none”.
Fixed The Min/Max Font Size not working correctly with the WPBakery Text Block element causing the max font size to be added to the container resulting in very large space above and below the text.
Fixed When using the “Stack at Breakpoint” option for the Icon Box, the icon was centered on mobile instead of being on the left.
Fixed WPBakery display issues in the front-end editor when in RTL mode.
Fixed Issues with the Post Card block not displaying/updating correctly in the Gutenberg editor.
Fixed Using the keyboard spacebar was not opening the mobile menu or header search elements.
Fixed Issue where you couldn’t use global Elementor colors with theme elements.
Fixed Alignment not working with the “Side Border” theme heading style (it would always be on the left).
Fixed The WooCommerce product entry titles were not taking on heading styles as defined in the Customizer (font-family, font weight, letter spacing, text transform…etc) – this change will only affect new installs or if Classic Styles is disabled in the Theme Panel.
Fixed Theme element icons not displaying in WPBakery when logged in as non-admin.
Fixed The Next/Previous Post Links element wouldn’t display anything in the front-end builder (WPBakery or Elementor) – it now uses “dummy” posts so you can see both items for easier editing.
Fixed When using the left/right alignments in various theme elements it was not automatically switching direction in RTL.
Fixed Missing p tag around custom excerpts.
Fixed The theme was loading the wpex-mobile-menu-breakpoint-max and wpex-mobile-menu-breakpoint-min CSS files when the header builder was enabled even though the files aren’t needed then.
Fixed The theme will no longer display the “Hidden/Show at Mobile Menu breakpoint” visibility settings when the header builder is enabled to prevent confusion.
Fixed Image alt attributes not translating when using WPML.
Removed No longer needed JS polyfills from core js.
Removed Unnecessary link title attributes from social links.
Removed The opacity on the breadcrumbs element separator has been removed because it causes issues when choosing custom colors.
Removed Title from breadcrumbs by default (for new installations).
Removed The theme’s meta generator tag.

Developer Notes

Changes

Added - New utility class "wpex-sticky-offset-p-0" which can be added along with the "wpex-sticky" class if you don't want the default 25px top padding added to the sticky element.
Added - New text-wrap utility classes "wpex-text-wrap, wpex-text-nowrap, wpex-text-balance, wpex-text-pretty".
Added - New z-index utility classes "wpex-z-sticky, wpex-z-dropdown,wpex-z-popover,wpex-z-overlay,wpex-z-backdrop,wpex-z-off-canvas,wpex-z-modal".
Added - New utility class "wpex-unstyled-input" which can be added to any element to exclude it from default theme input styles.
Added - New utility classes added for theme icons that can be used as a wrapper for any SVG icon "wpex-icon, wpex-icon--{$size}, wpex-icon--w and wpex-icon--bidi".
Added - New utility classname "wpex-duration-350" which applies a transition duration of 350ms to the element.
Added - New css variable "--wpex-dropmenu-transition-delay" which can be used to modify the hover delay animation for the menu dropdowns.
Added - New classes "visible-stuck", "hidden-stuck" which can be used with the JS based sticky header to show/hide things when it becomes sticky.
Added - New function "totaltheme_get_icon" which is intended to replace the older "wpex_get_theme_icon_html" function (the later hasn't been removed or deprecated).
Added - New custom field types added to the WPEX_Meta_Factory class (iframe, html and button_group).
Added - New utility classes for svg icon sizes for use with inline icons to match the text alignment next to it. The format is wpex-svg-icon-{size} and the sizes are 2xs, xs, sm, lg, xl, 2xl.
Added - New "header-has-fixed-height" classname added to the body tag for header styles that have a set height (aka flex headers).
Added - Styles for the theme-button element when it has a disabled attribute.
Added - Styles for the "summary" element to give it the same color as links.
Added - New internal TotalThemeCore\Custom_Post_Type_Abstract class added for use with the staff, portfolio and testimonials theme post types to slim down code code and keep things DRY.
Updated - CSS reset to remove old resets for IE9 and under.
Updated - Core theme JS is now added in the head tag with the defer attribute for optimal loading.
Updated - The mobile menus no longer work as an "accordion" closing open toggles when opening new ones. This is an accessibility/usability enhacements.
Updated - The wpex-svg-icon class has been deprecated in exchange for the new wpex-icon class.
Updated - Various CSS has been updated to take advantage of modern :is() and :where() selectors to slim down the code.
Updated - Various CSS has been updated to take advantage of new properties: inset, inset-inline, inset-block, padding-inline, margin-inline, margin-block and padding-block.
Updated - All paddings, margins and gaps use new CSS space variables for consistency.
Updated - Numbered pagination and tagcloud elements now use modern flex styles instead of floats.
Updated - The WooCommerce Customizer typography settings have been updated to use newer classes to slim down the output and make it easier to override.
Updated - Removed the inner left/right borders on the WooCommerce cart for a cleaner design.
Updated - The Meta Factory icon selector has been updated to only support theme icons to greatly slim things down, speed up the backend and create consistency with the new icon selector used for the Customizer and WPBakery.
Updated - Optimized checks used for the header/footer builder templates.
Updated - The overlay search magnifying glass icon has been updated to work with SVG icons, it's no longer added via a pseudo element.
Updated - The staff social links now uses a flex container for better spacing between icons across all devices.
Updated - The searchform HTML has been updated to move the search input outside of the label to prevent styling issues and a dynamic ID has been added to the input and label for accessibility.
Updated - When using a child theme the child theme's style.css will be dequeued then re-enqueued after the parent stylesheet dependencies to ensure your child theme's style.css can override them.
Updated - The WooCommerce add to cart button loading icon is now added using a CSS mask-image instead of added via the HTML which could potentially cause conflicts with 3rd party plugins.
Updated - WooCommerce tabs now use a flex container and no longer have a fixed height which can cause issues with larger font sizes.
Updated - WooCommerce Account page CSS is now only loaded on the account page via it's own file.
Updated - Removed the !important attribute from the border radius utility classes.
Updated - The icon box now uses the classname "vcex-icon-box-hover-text-white" instead of the deprecated "wpex-hover-white-text" classname when enabling white text on hover.
Updated - The skillbar element has been updated so the label and percentage are positioned vertically using CSS transforms instead of line height.
Updated - The "vcex-filter-links" element has been updated to use utility classes instead of specific CSS to slim things down and it now also uses flex styles.
Updated - The Grid and Flex container elements have extra checks to stop the default gap class from being added if a custom gap utility class is added in the extra classname field.
Updated - Optimized the code used on single posts to check for a custom sidebar defined via the post terms.
Updated - The search overlay, cart overlay and mobile menu close buttons now use SVG icons instead of using the letter "x" which slims down the CSS needed to target them, prevents accessibility concerns and allows for easy icon customization. Because the close buttons have drastically changed we've renamed their classes to prevent any potential conflicts with custom CSS added to your site to modify the icon. If you had customized these icons they will be reset back to the original theme design (better than appearing broken).
Updated - Carousel arrows CSS has been updated to work with SVG based icons.
Updated - Carousel arrow CSS has been optimized to use flex styles and CSS properties for easier modification of the various button styles.
Updated - The theme's carousel styles now load with the wpex-owl-carousel.css file only if needed or the page - new classes have been added to apply the theme's styles to prevent specificity issues so if you had modified your carousel via a child theme you shouldn't have to worry.
Updated - The Image Slider CSS has been updated to remove old vendor prefixes and IE specific CSS.
Updated - The wpex-font-serif font style has been updated to a more modern UI stack.
Updated - The max width utility classes are now responsive.
Updated - The header menu dropdowns (non-SuperFish) no longer use the CSS white-space property to expand drop downs. Instead drop downs use a width of "max-content" which allows for greater customizability.
Updated - The WPEX_Meta_Factory "group" type now accepts a "group_sort" parameter (true or false) to enable/disable field sorting.
Updated - The header logo element now uses utility classes instead of it's own CSS.
Updated - The header logo element now has a flex container instead of a table (bringing it to modern standards).
Updated - Header Two Aside element now uses utility classes instead of targeted CSS.
Updated - The Header Two Search element now uses utility classes instead of targeted CSS.
Updated - CSS that targets text based inputs now uses the :where() pseudo-class function to allow utility classes to override the default CSS and to prevent conflicts with 3rd party plugin input styling.
Updated - Buttons now have a defined background-image CSS property (empty by default) that uses CSS variables, making it easier to add gradients to all buttons.
Updated - Sticky Top Bar, Header and Header menu scripts have been updated to be a little bit more efficient on the window.resize event and they now run immediately instead of on the window.load event.
Updated - You can now use the "--wpex-local-scroll-padding" CSS property on any element to offset the local scroll end point.
Updated - The site-header-sticky-wrapper element is now added with PHP instead of javascript so it can be targeted with CSS on page load.
Updated - The wpex-sticky class will now have a default top position equal to the new --wpex-sticky-offset CSS variable. This variable's default value is: calc(var(--wpex-sticky-elements-height, 0px) + var(--wpex-sticky-offset-padding, 25px))
Updated - The Superfish JS script for header menu dropdowns will now only be registered if that specific dropdown type has been selected. It will also be loaded in the header using the defer attribute.
Updated - The Toggle Bar script is now added in the header tag with t he defer attribute.
Updated - The Toggle Bar function that checks if it's enabled and the function that grabs the content to save a static variable of the result so the code only needs to run once.
Updated - The stretched sections/rows CSS has been adjusted to make use of the new --wpex-scrollbar-width CSS variable.
Updated - The dropdown/toggle mobile menu overflow has been moved to the mobile-toggle-nav-inner which makes more sense and allows for easier customizations to the design.
Updated - Scroll bar width is now calculated in the head tag so stretched rows with stretched content render when the user has visible scrollbars enabled on their device.
Updated - The milestone element will now inherit the text color.
Updated - The overlay added over the site content when using the sidebar mobile menu now uses an alpha HEX color instead of opacity to allow for customizing the backdrop-filter CSS property.
Updated - Advanced Parallax JS for WPBakery will now load using the defer attribute and run right away instead of waiting for the window Load event.
Updated - The WPEX_Dropdown_Walker_Nav_Menu class has been updated to use the start_el method instead of display_element.
Updated - The "megamenu__inner-ul" classname added to the main menu mega menus is now added with PHP instead of JS.
Updated - Elements with the "hide-at-mm-breakpoint" class will be not be rendered inside mobile menus.
Updated - The default search form to move the input outside of the label to make it easier to style.
Updated - Optimized the JS used to display theme element data in the WPBakery backend (like the image for the Image element) so it doesn't send an AJAX request whenever the element is updated but rather only if the specific setting was modified.
Updated - The "wpex-unstyled-button" classname not uses the :where pseudo-class function to ensure it can be overwritten easily and it now uses less CSS since theme button styles have also been updated requiring less resets.
Updated - The Social Share element uses as many utility classes as possible now to slim down the style.css.
Updated - All elements using the older "textcenter, textright and textleft" classes now use the theme's utility classes instead, not only for consistency but also because the later are directionally aware.
Updated - The Left Thumbnail style grid which can be selected for the main blog and in some elements (blog grid, portfolio grid, staff grid, post type grid) and uses the "left-thumbs" class has been updated to use a flex box instead of old school floats and utility classes where possible to slim down css.
Updated - The theme's CSS used to override the default lightbox CSS now loads conditionally in it's own file only if the fancybox script is also being loaded to slim down style.css and make overrides easier.
Updated - The Top Bar social links now use a flex container with gap for better spacing and prevent issues if the items stack on small screens.
Updated - The theme will only insert the wpex-share-p-{$position} classname to the body tag if you are using the vertical social share style because it's the only one that needs the class. This is to prevent unnecessary checks and bloat.
Fixed - Color palette utility classes were being added 2x to the head.
Removed - The backwards compatible CSS for the old Events Calendar plugin (pre 5.0.0) has been removed.
Removed - The theme no longer stores the custom card object via set_query_var( 'wpex_card_object' ) to free up memory - the theme instead uses the static WPEX_Card instance to get the current card object.
Removed - Non-minified scripts are no longer included in the final theme build.
Removed - The theme previously added a "wpex-color-scheme-default" to the HTML tag for a potential feature which we've decided to scrap.
Removed - Clearfix "wpex-clr" class on the #site-logo-inner element as it's not needed.
Removed - 100% height added to the .site-logo-text element (was a fix for old browser versions).
Removed - Not needed "wpex-color-scheme-default" classname from HTML element.
Removed - Generic "field" classname from the searchform input element.
Removed - The theme will no longer add category classnames "post-in-category-{category_nicename}" to the body tag for new installations or when "Classic Styles" is disabled in the Theme Panel.
Removed - Old deprecated "comment-author-highlight'" classname from the body tag from when the theme used to add a blue border around the comment author avatar.
Removed - Old deprecated "hasnt-mobile-menu" classname from the body tag when the mobile menu is disabled.
Removed - The "sub-menu" classname is removed from the "megamenu__inner-ul" element to prevent having to do complex resets and slim down CSS.
Removed - Some legacy classnames (non-utility) that were not being used anywhere in the theme have been deprecated.
Removed - The "Inline with Content" Customizer setting that could be used with the Dropdown mobile menu style has been removed and converted to the new "Dropdown (Inline)" mobile menu style to slim things down.
Removed - CSS that forced a 16px font size on mobile device inputs. This was used to prevent a zoom affect when clicking on inputs where the font size was smaller than 16px. But it's recommended these days to use at least a 16px font size for your site so this extra CSS was just bloat and caused issues if your site was using larger font sizes.
Removed - The theme used to keep a backup of the Custom CSS when saved in the Custom CSS panel and WordPress auto loads options by default so if you have a ton of custom CSS it could slow down the site a little. The theme will now only create a backup when your Custom CSS fails to save so that when the page refreshes the new CSS you added will still be there so you can try and save again.
Removed - Initial negative z-index on the hidden menu dropdowns and toggle bar element which was a fix for old IE browsers that would allow elements inside elements with visibility hidden to be interactive.

New Hooks

totaltheme/mobile/menu/titletotaltheme/mobile/menu/logo

totaltheme/topbar/sticky/is_enabledtotaltheme/topbar/sticky/run_on_window_load

totaltheme/post/excerpttotaltheme/post/excerpt/argstotaltheme/post/secondary_thumbnail/idtotaltheme/post/gallery/include_post_thumbnailtotaltheme/post/gallery/listtotaltheme/post/format/icon_name

totaltheme/header/sticky/run_on_window_loadtotaltheme/header/menu/sticky/run_on_window_loadtotaltheme/header/menu/search/auto_insert_icon

totaltheme/search/modal/result_template

totaltheme/search/ajax/highlighttotaltheme/search/ajax/throttle_delaytotaltheme/search/ajax/excerpt_argstotaltheme/search/ajax/post_datatotaltheme/search/ajax/character_threshold

totaltheme/search/archive/styletotaltheme/search/archive/card_styletotaltheme/search/archive/columnstotaltheme/search/archive/wrapper_class

totaltheme/search/entry/excerpt_lengthtotaltheme/search/entry/card_argstotaltheme/search/entry/wrapper_classtotaltheme/search/entry/inner_classtotaltheme/search/entry/content_classtotaltheme/search/entry/excerpt_classtotaltheme/search/entry/header_classtotaltheme/search/entry/title_class

totalthemecore/vcex/is_bidirectionaltotalthemecore/vcex/post_query/max_sticky_poststotalthemecore/vcex/carousel/owl/prev_icon_nametotalthemecore/vcex/carousel/owl/next_icon_nametotalthemecore/vcex/carousel/owl/use_owl_classnames