I live in a very rural area, no wifi available and cell is slow (plus I have a limited cellular data plan), I need to be able to READ the documentation for the Shapely Theme, watching video is not possible. Please point me to the WRITTEN documentation, thank you.
ALSO, I do not use Kali forms, I have a developer license for GravityForms, I assume that will work as well?
Hey there.
I apologize for any inconvenience, but unfortunately, we don’t have a specific written documentation page for the Shapely Theme.
However, if you have any specific questions or need assistance with the Shapely Theme, please feel free to ask, and I’ll do my best to help you.
Regarding your use of GravityForms, it should work well as an alternative to Kali Forms.
Regards
Ok. Not ideal, but this is workable, I will have a number of questions, beginning with this:
Where do I find the widget code for the Contact section? For some odd reason you chose to hard-code in an H1 tag instead of using CSS to control the widget’s title…so I cannot overwrite that even in my child theme but do NOT want that section title to be any different than other section titles, which you’ve also apparently hard-coded to be H3.
Usually a Theme includes Customizer controls for various typography choices, such as page/post titles, widget titles, menus, etc. so that a User can set the size/font/color - this Theme seems to only offer the ability to choose site-wide color changes for links, making it very hard to customize.
I have been combing through all of the Shapely Theme files and cannot find the normal widgets.php file, which most Themes include. Where is that hidden?
Here is another question - the Theme seems to be NOT respecting custom CSS that I add thru the Customizer, no matter how many times I clear cache and refresh, the custom CSS I add is ignored. I have had to hard-code some CSS into widgets to get it to make changes, but there are other places where I cannot access the underlying widget templates because, as mentioned in my last question, I cannot find where you’ve put the widget templates.
Can you please tell me if this is a bug?
Hey there
Sorry for the delay.
Please always provide more details, including a link to the page and a reference of the element you want to change.
Regarding CSS, let me see it, please provide URL of your website and let me know the CSS code you used
Regards.
OK so still waiting on an answer to this question:
Where are the widget templates? I cannot find them.
I am staging a site, so no public URL to give you, this is potential Theme replacement for them. I was trying to do all their customizations via the Customizer to keep it simple for them, but also in a way that would survive Theme updates, but that doesn’t look possible.
I found that I must put all CSS customizations into the main stylesheet, then remove the minified (bootstrap) versions from the server, clear the cache, put the minified versions back on the server, clear the cache again and ONLY THEN will my CSS changes take effect. NO amount of cache clearing will update the CSS if I put it in either the Customizer or the main stylesheet without removing and replacing the bootstrap minified versions.
My next plan is to incorporate a Child Theme (which is what I usually do, but this client would not be able to maintain a Child Theme, hence my attempts to use JUST the Customizer, which isn’t working)…BUT…
Even with a Child Theme, I will need to be able to modify the Widgets - you have hard-coded too much stuff in the widgets that should be in the Customizer OR able to be overwritten with CSS changes…so I need to be able to recreate and modify those widget templates and drop them into the Child Theme…which brings me back to my question…where are the Widgets?
Hi there
Widgets - Check them into the Shapely companion plugin
Regarding CSS - You can store them in Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS
Regards.
Thank you, I did finally find them late yesterday when I noticed the plugin.
If you are open to suggestions, I respectfully suggest that you put the widgets in the main Theme, not a plugin. The Theme is where most people who create Child Themes will need them to be, in order to make necessary customizations. If they exist in the plugin, then Wordpress will not recognize the customized versions in the Child Theme.
Another suggestion would be to not hard-code the A tag when a link is removed from the widget’s URL field.
As an example, my client did NOT like the hover effect (faded image until hovered over) and did NOT want the logo images linked to anywhere. I removed the “#” in the URL field but that did not remove the link, the link still existed because it’s hard-coded into the Widget, and errant clicks would jump up to the top of the page…I finally found and modified the Widget in your plugin (class-shapely-home-clients.php) to remove the <a href=" code that creates a link, but since the Widget lives in your plugin, not the Theme, then it could get overwritten by updates.
SO if someone puts nothing into the URL field (meaning they don’t want it linked anywhere), then the <a href=" code should not be added.
I will tell you honestly that this is a beautiful Theme, there is MUCH to appreciate about it…but please keep in mind that Child Themes are the only safe way to customize a Theme, Widgets should always be in the Parent theme, not a plugin.
Hey there
Thanks for the suggestion 
but the thing is that WordPress has its own rules/codex and it’s not allowed to put such functionality into the theme, that’s why a plugin is needed
I agree with you about the A tag,
Thank you once again for your kind words, we appreciate it.
Regards
I do use some Themes that include their own specialized plugins, which is fine for functionality (such as creating a CPT, which is not something a lot of site owners know how to do), but Widgets are different.
I have been working with WP since just before version 1 (I started with 0.9) and have not yet come across a Theme that put it’s custom Widgets anywhere but in a Theme sub-folder (most often they are in a folder such as /inc/widgets). This way, someone creating a Child Theme has only to re-create that folder structure in the Child Theme, and can then create a modified version of the widget.
For example, on one website, the Theme creator had a widget that had hard-coded some H tags and image sizes that the client wanted tweaked…so we duplicated the widget into the same folder structure in the Child Theme and changed the H tags and image sizes and the client was happy.
When I have happy clients, and they come back and ask for more functionality, then it’s easy for me to say “yes but you’d need to upgrade to the premium version of the Theme”, it’s an easy sale. When they are NOT happy, I have to change Themes…
SO I won’t bother you further, again it’s just a suggestion that would make your Theme much easier for Developers to work with, and Developers can be terrific sales affiliates.
Hi there
Thank you for sharing your experience, we appreciate your suggestion about making our themes more developer-friendly, and we’ll certainly take it into consideration for future improvements. Happy clients and developers are indeed essential for the success of any theme. If you ever have more suggestions or questions in the future, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
We’re here to help.