Important theme compatibility notice for WordPress 4.4

WordPress Themes / Blog / Mantra / Nirvana / Parabola / Tempera

For accessibility reasons, WordPress 4.4 changes the HTML markup of the settings sections in an way that’s incompatible with our theme settings pages. As a result, our themes will fail to display the settings sections once you update to 4.4.

We will fix this in theme updates, unfortunately for the new updates to get approved we also need to perform the theme settings removal (previously announced). However older versions of our themes are left unconfigurable on the latest WordPress release.

To help with that we have implemented a compatibility fix using the same Cryout Serious Theme Settings plugin announced a week ago. Depending on the combination of theme version and WordPress version, the plugin will automatically choose the correct solution.

All you need to do is install and activate it – upcoming theme updates will recommend this plugin and guide in installing it with just several clicks but for older version you’ll need to manually search for and install it.

To clear confusion and aid in figuring out whether you need to use the plugin or not, we’ve written this compatibility matrix:

Mantra Parabola Tempera Nirvana Zombie Apocalypse 2.0 +
2.0 + 0.9 – 1.5.1 1.6 + 0.9 – 1.3.1  1.4 + 0.9 – 1.1.3 1.2 +
WordPress 4.4 +
 requires plugin requires plugin requires plugin* requires plugin requires plugin* not supported** requires plugin*  

works
WordPress 4.0 – 4.3.1 works works requires plugin* works requires plugin* works requires plugin*

*) The newer versions will require the settings plugin not because of the incompatibility but because they will have their theme settings removed to pass the review process in accordance with the mandatory Customizer usage rule (as explained in this post).
**) Due to the integrated plugin interference protection, Nirvana versions prior to 1.2 cannot be made to work with WordPress 4.4 by the settings plugin. You will need to update Nirvana to at least v1.2 for the plugin to work.

Notes:

  • The issue only affects the theme settings page (meaning you will not be able to configure the theme). The site itself (the frontend) will not be affected in any way even if you upgrade without having the plugin installed.
  • Some theme versions listed here are not yet available at the time of publication, but they are planned to be released in the future.
  • Installing the plugin on a version combination where it is not required will not cause any issues as the plugin will simply not activate any of its functionality.
  • We do not support version combinations not listed in this table. You should try to update as soon as possible.
  • If you’re still having trouble with the settings page after installing the plugin (and updating the theme) and you are using Chrome, test with a different browser.

119 Comments

  1. I am using all updated themes and wordpress versions. I’m using the Mantra theme. I have followed all instructions. I even tried disabling the Wordfence plugin, which was mentioned in another comment. And nothing. Well, after turning Wordfence off I got the setting options, but none of them open to allow me to access the settings within each section. I am using Firefox. Please help.

  4. I’ve spent the weekend updating the site and all the plugins, and now am getting an error message that shows up on the frontend at the top above the header.

    Notice: Undefined index: WP_Widget_Recent_Comments in /home/xxx/xxx/html/wp-content/themes/tempera/includes/theme-comments.php on line 77

    I’ve already installed and activated the Cryout Serious Theme Settings plugin as recommended.

    I even deactivated it to see if that would change anything, since the notice didn’t show up until after the CSTS plugin was installed, but that didn’t change anything. (Reactivated it.)

    Looked up theme-comments.php, but I don’t know PHP, so not sure what it means:

    remove_action( ‘wp_head’, array( $wp_widget_factory->widgets[‘WP_Widget_Recent_Comments’], ‘recent_comments_style’ ) );

    I might have an older version of the file backed up on my laptop at school to compare it to, will check tomorrow.

    Can anyone lend a hand on a fix for this? This is my school’s site. I’m a teacher who replaced our old, out-dated js site with a beautiful WP site.

  5. Hi there! this comment is not so much a problem, just an observation that may be useful to someone. Today, I added the Cryout Serious Theme Settings plugin to access Tempera’s settings page, and nothing – odd I thought, as it worked fine on another WP installation. After a bit of fiddling about, the Tempera settings appeared after deactivating the Wordfence Security plugin. I’m fairly new to this WP stuff, so apologies if the above statement is obvious.

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