Upcoming Changelog: 6.0

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.
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 "Legacy Typography" 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 of legacy mode 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.

Added 🔥 New Menu Elements: Horizontal Menu, Vertical Menu & Drawer/Off-Canvas Menu.
Added 🌑 New “Dark Mode” functionality (must be enabled in the Theme Panel).
Added You can now set “Dark Mode” color variations for your color palette colors, accent and color scheme colors.
Added Icon select field in the Appearance> Menu Dashboard for easily adding icons to menu items.
Added Image Position option to the Image Sizes panel that can be used with the Aspect Ratio setting.
Added Utility classes for color palette borders: has-{color_slug}-border-color.
Added A 200ms delay dropdowns to prevent “flickering” when quickly hovering over menu items.
Added Sticky Summary and Sticky Gallery settings in the Customizer for WooCommerce.
Added aria label options for the Toggle Bar Button under Theme Panel > Accessibility > Aria Labels (defaults are Show notice & Hide notice).
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 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 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 Carousel arrow styles: Rounded White, Rounded Black and Rounded Accent.
Added More theme styles to the WPBakery Tabs element.
Added “Auto” layout option to the Callout element.
Added Icon size options to the Button element.
Added More Cart icon options added to the Customizer.
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 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.
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 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 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 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 “Legacy Typography” 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 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 BBPress styles to clean a few things up and remove forum title icons.
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 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 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 basic CSS for the Gutenberg font family and size in the editor because Gutenberg reverts these to the browser default which looks terrible.
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 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.
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 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.
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.

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 utility class "wpex-z-max-plus" which is the max z index plus 1.
Added - New classnames "screen-reader-text--collapsed" and "screen-reader-text--expanded" which can be used to assign screen reader text to aria-pressed elements without having to use javascript to modify the text.
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 Helper function "totaltheme_render_drawer" which can be used to insert custom drawers on the page.
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.
Updated - All margin, padding and gap utility classes have been updated to use CSS variables making it easy to control spacing globally. For example if you want to change any element that currently has a 10px margin regardless of where it's added you can simply modify the --wpex-space-10 CSS variable.
Updated - Core theme JS is now added in the element with the defer attribute for optimal loading.
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 default search element has been updated to use flex styles so it automatically offset the search button icon regardless of the size.
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 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 - Mobile menus created with javascript are now delayed to when the user first opens them.
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 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 - Advanced Parallax JS for WPBakery will now load using the defer attribute and run right away instead of waiting for the window Load event.
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 - 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.

New Hooks

totaltheme/mobile/menu/titletotaltheme/mobile/menu/logototaltheme/theme_icons/auto_biditotaltheme/content_wrap/is_flextotaltheme_post_format_icon_namevcex_navbar_link_attributesvcex_inline_style_util_spaces_arraytotalthemecore/vcex/post_query/max_sticky_poststotalthemecore/vcex/carousel/owl/previous_icontotalthemecore/vcex/carousel/owl/next_icontotaltheme/post_gallery/include_featured_imagetotaltheme/dark_mode/icon_dark_choicestotaltheme/dark_mode/icon_light_choicestotaltheme/topbar/is_stickytotaltheme/topbar/sticky/run_on_window_loadtotaltheme/header/sticky/run_on_window_loadtotaltheme/header/menu/sticky/run_on_window_loadtotaltheme/header/menu/search/auto_insert_icon