Mantra and the buggy version 1.5.3

Mantra

Although the newest version of the theme got accepted at WordPress, it did come with a few flaws.
Don’t worry, they were fixed (hopefully) and a new version was submitted just moments ago.

Nevertheless, installing the current live version of the theme (yours truly 1.5.3) found on the WordPress site, will make your site look pretty strange. That’s the bad news. The good news is that fixing it only requires you to Go into the admin section, under Appearance > Mantra Settings and click Save Settings.

We also noticed (and were also informed) that the “Save Settings” button does not work on Opera (beside the already known issues with Internet Explorer versions 9 and lower). So if you are using Opera (specifically versions 10 and 11, since 9 and lower do not exhibit this issue), temporarily switch to another browser (Chrome or Firefox) to be able to click the button and save the initial settings. We are investigating this issue. This issue is (hopefully) fixed in 1.5.7.

Also, if you’re fond of the colour-scheme you previously had, in order to keep that, you need to go to the Mantra Settings Page again, under Colour Settings and add a ‘#’ sign before all the numbers there. For example 333333 should become #333333.

And as a technical explanation to these problems.. we added quite a few variables and didn’t assign them default values, so until you hit Save Changes these new variables are left without values.

Sorry for the inconvenience and we hope WordPress will release the newer (fixed) version to the public pretty soon.

Mantra is a clean, highly configurable and totally free WordPress theme. For more info check out the theme's page.

40 Comments

    1. Well… plugins and themes need to be compatible with WordPress. So their compatibilities meet somewhere in the middle 🙂
      You can try any contact form plugin since it shouldn’t affect the theme in any way. If it doesn’t work the way it should, just uninstall it and try another one.

  3. So i see 1.5.6 came out today and i see you added that it will include the preview image into all the posts. Of course for those of us who were adding the image into a post already, we have double images now. Is there a way to turn this off? I didn’t see a setting for it in the menu.

  4. 1 bug to note, the theme doesn’t work with Syntaxhighlighter evolved properly. It overtakes the css styling of the plugin and replaces with Mantra styling. Also another thing to note is the Disqus comments are kind of broken with Mantra. Take a look here:
    http://www.putdispenserhere.com/openvpn-debianubuntu-setup-script-for-openvz/

    The avatars have been offset when they are not supposed to, as well as the icons that say “M Subscribe by email S RSS” are missing. Take a look at a working version here: http://blog.disqus.com/post/870654196/migrate-your-threads-by-uploading-a-url-map

    Thanks,
    Bob

    1. Hmm… When we create a theme we cannot take into consideration all the plugins that could be installed with it. What we can promise you is that we’ll take a look and see what we can do.

  6. I’m having trouble with your recent update and it totally freaks me out!

    Every time I log in to my dashboard and view the current changes on the theme, it’s all organized as before. But when I hit the logout button and visited my site, it’s an entire mess!

    Is there any way I could do in order to get things back as they were before? Can I just step back and grab you old version?

    I need some help.

    Thank you so much!

  7. Hi, I am not talented at this sort of stuff so please speak slowly to me.
    I can’t change any of the colours- I try and i press save but then nothing changes. I am not using Opera – using explorer.
    Any suggestions?

  8. I’m loving the Mantra theme, although a plugin that I use very often – Widget Context, to allow specific widgets to appear on specific pages, doesn’t seem to work. Is there something specific within the theme that would not allow this functionality?

  9. First, thank you for such a clean, easy to set up theme! Is it possible to edit the fixed width (the white space width)? When I change the width in style.css, the sidebar then overlaps the content (I changed it back so it doesn’t overlap currently). I imagine there’s something else I need to change related to the sidebar position – but haven’t figured out what it is yet. Thanks in advance.

    1. You do not need to edit the style.css ( at least not for changing the width). You can go to your WordPress admin section then under Appeareance you have Mantra Options. There you’ll have a lot of customization options related to the theme ( including variable widths).

      1. Thanks so much – I couldn’t figure out what you meant – and then I realized I was using an older version of Mantra! 😳 Wow – all the extra options in the new version are great! Thanks for the info about how to get it to work until the bugs are worked out!

    1. Write a new post or edit an existing one. In the right hand sidebar you can see an option to choose a Featured image Click on it and select a featured image . You can now see the thumbnail on the front page.

  11. First, I love this theme! I am having an issue with Links in my posts though. Any time I put a link in my post, it will not show. When I’m in the Visual editor, the hyperlink buttons are greyed out, and if I use the “<a href=" tags manually in html mode, they still won't show! Help!

  12. I noticed that when I navigate to a permalink / archive page for a specific post that the post title does not show.

    Is this expected behavior? Is there a way to get it to show up?

  13. Hi,
    I really don’t know too much about building my website (not a blog). Chose Mantra as a great theme and like the features so far.
    Having some difficulties and Kay has answered one previous question for me. 🙂
    Can anyone tell me please:
    1. Can I access a place to put in ‘meta tags/descriptions/keywords’ etc?
    2. How can I make certain words ‘live’ so that they can be clicked and will take you to that place? So that for instance choosing ‘about us’ in the text on my home page, will take you to that page on my site. Choosing a website address in my text will link you to that website.
    3. Can I move the menu tabs, so that they appear down the side and without the tab shape around them – i.e. just as words.
    If this is too many questions in one go, I will split them up!
    Many thanks, Norma

    1. I have answered one of my own questions -2. by reading up on ‘Links’ and see that they are easy to create. Thank you for the great tools.

      So it is just: 1 & 3 that I am trying to get to grips with now. That is until I come to change my background! 🙂

      Thank you for reading and for any information that you may be able to share for this newbie to the whole world of website building.
      Norma

      1. Hi Norma.
        Questions 1 is not theme related, and the answers can be found by digging through the WordPress Codex. http://codex.wordpress.org/Meta_Tags_in_WordPress provides some answers. Or a plugin such as All in One SEO Pack would do some of the work automatically.
        As for no. 3, moving the menu around is not an option either in WordPress or the theme. You can do that manually, by modifying/editing the theme.
        Removal of the background images from the menu buttons can be done by modifying the theme’s style.css, given that you have the HTML/CSS knowledge to know what to change.

        1. Much appreciated Zed. Thank you. I took a look at the Meta info on codex.wordpress.org as you suggested. It directs to a youtube video of a conference with Google, who say that meta tags are not necessary these days for Google ranking, but meta descriptions are good to have. I’ll learn more.
          Regarding the menu, I guess I will need to wait until I have funds to have someone do this for me.
          I am happy with my Mantra theme though. It is a great first for me. 🙂

  14. Hey guys, new theme changes seem fine, had to tweak a few things to get it back to normal as far as the layout goes. I like the “Back to top” Button! Unless that was there already… But my Header is really short now (90px) it used to be a bit taller which worked really well for me because I have a randomized header set up which accommodates my tall paneled comics. How do I get it back to the height it was in the immediately previous version??

    Thanks, keep up the good work!

    1. In a future version we’ll add an option that will allow you to choose the dimensions of the header. Making it shorter was more of a design ‘fix’ really.
      Anyway, until that update, here’s how to modify your header’s dimensions:

      Open functions.php in your Mantra folder and search for these lines :
      define( 'HEADER_IMAGE_WIDTH', apply_filters( 'mantra_header_image_width', $totalSize ) );
      define( 'HEADER_IMAGE_HEIGHT', apply_filters( 'mantra_header_image_height', 90 ) );

      The rest is pretty much self explanatory : Change that 90 value with something that better suits your needs to change the height. Also if you want to change the width you need to insert a value (a number) instead of $totalSize .

      Hope this helps.

      1. hugely helpful, Kay. Thanks so much. Yeah the shorter headers normally do better for people but I’d already sorted it to work for me so it looks perfect again. Thanks so much for the speedy response!
        I look forward to the next update for that flexibility!

        Chris, Out!

  16. the header title and blog description were on the same line until i up’d to 1.5.3. they’re now on separate lines, which makes the header much larger, a thing i hate intensely. how can i get the two back on one line without bunging up the rest of the theme?

    1. Actually they should still be on the same line; it’s just that now your site is just a little smaller. Please make your width at least 10px larger (by going to Mantra Settings >Layout Tab) and everything will be back to normal.

  17. This morning I updated the Mantra theme, after the update the lay-out is ruined (main menu, logo and have a look at page Wales, the primary and secondary wigets are at the bottom of the page). When I try to alter via Mantra Settings, my changes aren’t saved. Everything time I click on Save Changes, I look at my website, nothing is changed and when I go back to Matra Settings everything is back to its normal state which causes a not so nice looking lay-out.
    Would you please fix this? I can’t finish pages at the moment!

    1. You’re probably using Opera. Please switch to another browser (like Mozilla Firefox) while saving your options. Opera has some compatibility issues with our latest version and we’ll fix that soon.

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