Stallion Responsive Theme version 8.4: added over 70 new color schemes! Stallion Responsive is not just a WordPress Theme that’s SEO friendly, it’s an entire WordPress SEO package of built-in plugins and SEO features taking WordPress to the next level in Post Panda SEO and Google performance metrics with advanced SEO measures to help take full advantage of the Google Hummingbird algorithm. Hummingbird is the Google search algorithm that understands human natural language patterns better than ever before: long tail keyword SERPs with a human touch and Stallion Responsive v8 includes multiple features to take advantage of Google: no other WordPress theme or SEO plugin has these Hummingbird features. Tested to WordPress Version 4.8.*. Note: It’s tested every day on […]
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Page Rendering Issues
Hi David,
I have updated one of my sites with your new theme and want to roll it out to some others.
I’m having problems with the page rendering and can’t find a similar mention on your site elsewhere.
My site is at skeetshootingtips.com and when loaded you will see the menu renders horribly with the background colour coming in and then the titles appearing. Also the borders between sections show the background colour before they render and disappear. Your site has the menu bolted on and does not show similar issues.
I note my site shows direct stylesheet links but your site and the examples I checked appear to use something with wp-content/minify/cache in the link. I tracked this down online to a plugin WPTotalCache, installed and activated it, but see no difference in stylesheet linking or page issues.
Can you point me in the right direction.
Thanks.
GJ
Page Rendering Issues
Webpage Rendering Explained
On webpage rendering I don’t see what you see when I loaded your site, but I know what you are referring to.
As the browser loads your webpage it’s trying to rendering the content as it ‘reads’ the files from top to bottom.
The CSS files are ordered layout/fonts/colour/mobile rules (4 CSS files).
Having the 4 files is how we can have so many layout/font/colour variations in one theme, it’s over 12,000 combinations. If I wanted to limit Stallion to one CSS file to achieve the same layout/font/colour combinations would mean there would literally be over 12,000 CSS files instead of under 100 CSS files where 4 are used at any one time!!!
So your browser will load the layout rules before everything else, if there’s a connection delay with either your server and/or your internet connection you can have a small delay between the other files loading which means the colour rules etc… aren’t available.
It’s the same as you see with images loading, some load faster than others.
As you’ve discovered my site runs the W3 Total Cache Plugin which is a highly recommended SEO plugin.
W3 Total Cache includes minification for CSS files, this combines multiple CSS files into one file and minifies them (one small file) which means when the CSS rules are loaded they are all loaded at once.
Under the W3 Total Cache Performance > General Settings
Find the Minify settings, my settings are:
Enable (ticked)
Auto (ticked)
Disk
Default
JSMin (default)
Default
Under Performance > Minify
Find the CSS options there’s 4 tick boxes, my settings are:
Enable (ticked)
Combine only (not ticked)
Preserved comment removal (not applied when combine only is active) (not ticked)
Line break removal (not applied when combine only is active) (ticked)
This will combine the 4 CSS files into one and remove all blank spaces etc… (puts all the rules on one line, makes it as small as possible).
I’ve considered adding this option to Stallion, but W3 Total Cache does it so well it would be reinventing the wheel for no gain.
I recommended everyone who uses Stallion Responsive to use W3 Total Cache as well.
David
Webpage Rendering Explained
Use the latest version stallion responsive zip when setting up a new blog
Hi
Just a quick note, when using a 7.1.1 zip on a new blog it wouldn’t accept my transaction ID but gave no warning. Make sure you use the latest zip version to upload to themes, which worked fine with my ID. (I found the latest version zip on this page.)
Stallion Responsive 8.2.2 compatibility with Child Theme 8.0
Hi Dave,
Thanks for this latest update. You’re always working to improve this theme.
Question on compatibility with Child Theme version 8.0: For me, Child Theme 8.0 has worked fine with Stallion Responsive 8.1. However when I install Stallion Responsive 8.2.2 and run it with Child Theme 8.0, my “pages” all look okay, but my “posts” have an issue where the borders and most of the sidebars disappear, as does the footer area.
Is there anything that comes to mind that would be different between the pages and posts in the code in the latest version that might be causing that? Again, as far as I can tell, pages look fine, only posts have the problem.
I would just install Child Theme 8.2, but I’m hoping to keep things ultra-simple and just figure out if there’s a way to keep running on Child Theme 8.0 in conjunction with SR 8.2.2. I have made a lot of styling changes in different places throughout the theme (not just in the CSS file, where I put all changes at the bottom of the file as you recommend), so if there is a way to keep going on Child Theme 8.0 for now, it would work great for me.
Thanks again.
Erik
Stallion Responsive 8.2.2 compatibility with Child Theme 8.0
Updating a WordPress Child Theme
On the sidebars issue, if it’s the Stallion SEO Posts widgets (the popular/recent posts one) that’s playing up (blank output), go to Appearance >> Widgets and edit the widgets and click the Save button. Have added new options to the widget and there’s no easy way to import default options to widgets already added to a sidebar. By clicking the Save button any blank options (the new ones) are saved and the widget works.
Made a lot of CSS changes between Stallion Responsive 8.0 and 8.2 so I could break the one colour CSS file (had font colours and sizes) into two files: font colours in one file and a font sizes in another CSS file.
This multiplies the output combinations, have 39 colour schemes and 26 font schemes, that’s over 1,000 combinations add on the 13 layouts and we have 12,000 combinations of layout/colour/fonts.
Also made a lot of font size changes to pass most of the Google PageSpeed Insights warnings related to mobile usability. Run a Stallion 8 install through the PageSpeed Insights Tool and you’ll see what I mean. The earlier versions of Stallion had the fonts set to small for mobile devices, so increased the font sizes significantly to take into account mobile devices (tap targets).
99% of the changes are in the main Stallion Responsive theme, not the child theme (not much changes in the child theme), so if it were me I’d upgrade both the main theme and the child theme and redo your CSS modifications.
As you followed my advice on keeping all the CSS at the bottom of the CSS file, will make it a lot easier to rebuild your changes. Make sure your CSS changes are in the last CSS file loaded, that will override all CSS rules loaded previously.
As mentioned above I split the colour file into a colour and a font file, this comes with a new options page for modifying the fonts separately. You might find some of the changes can be achieved on the new fonts option page without manually changing CSS code. I changed the way I created font sizes etc… because though there’s lots of ways to change a font size etc… using CSS I couldn’t find a way to make it work consistently if I mixed and matched the different formats. My earlier code mixed and matched the different ways to change fonts, when I broke the CSS files into two found using only one format resulted in consistent font changes when using the new fonts options page see https://stallion-theme.co.uk/stallion-responsive-theme-colour-scheme-css-creator-fonts/ for details. You might find some of your older modifications don’t override the new CSS font format, mixing and matching is inconsistent when trying to override rules (you have to override with the same format).
David
Updating a WordPress Child Theme
Lazy Load & Jump Link Functionality
Hi Dave,
I love the lazy load feature, I found that it really boosted my results in speed metrics tests. However after using it awhile I’ve discovered one thing about it that is making me reconsider it.
The problem arises with jump links. I find that in most cases when I have a jump link that takes a visitor down the page below an image which has not yet loaded, the jump link lands the visitor at the appropriate spot on the page, but then the image or images above that spot on the page load, and immediately jerk the page so that the user is not where he should be (the user ends up below the jump link destination, so they inevitably have to scroll up to find the content section they were after–if they even realize to do that).
So essentially when I’m running Rocket lazy load, jump links don’t function as they should. Might there be a tweak that would prevent this jumping? I would be willing to trade off a bit of speed for that functionality.
I use jump links on a number of important pages on my site (as I suspect a number of sites today do), and have considered simply disabling lazy load for those pages, but I’d prefer not to sacrifice the performance benefits since they get a good bit of traffic.
Thanks,
Erik
P.S. A belated thanks, for the reply to my question above about the different Stallion versions.
Lazy Load & Jump Link Functionality
Adding New Comment Pages to Sitemap Plugins
Hi,
I think it would be useful to add a way for these comment pages created to be added to the popular xml sitemap plugins.
Then every time a new comment was created, it would ping the search engines to index it, and help them find all of the new pages.
How to Test the Stallion Responsive Theme?
I have a number of websites, the main one being a site about Quick and Friendly Loans which uses the Strategy Theme and I also have been using Yoast SEO (sorry for all the bad words :)).
I have read a lot of info on forums that you have put on and I think I should really test what you say to see if it works (oh ye of little faith).
I would not be comfortable at this stage on changing the main website, but maybe I could try it on one of my other smaller websites perhaps.
Anyway, my questions at this stage are:
1. do I totally have to re-learn SEO writing, setup, etc. using your plugin or is it “similar”
2. is the $40 charge for one website or can it be used on more than one website?
3. do you think the “changeover” to your program would be fairly straight forward for my websites?
I am not technical at all, so any guidance would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Brian.
How to Test the Stallion Responsive Theme?
Testing the Stallion Responsive SEO Theme
The Stallion Responsive license is unlimited domains you own, so yes one off $40 for your entire network. If you sell a site with Stallion on, you need to buy a separate license.
Stallion Responsive is a theme not a plugin, so it should work with current plugins used. That being said the Yoast SEO plugin has some issues, they didn’t make it possible to disable some Yoast features so it’s best not to use Yoast with Stallion Responsive.
SEO is SEO, so as long as you’ve been following good SEO advice there shouldn’t be much change needed. What Stallion mostly does is protect your hard earned link benefit (avoids wasting it) and has features that add extra SEO to a site. For example with Stallion you can make comments create their own pages that Google will index: this comment will be indexed with an SEO’d title tag, internal links etc… similar to a WordPress post. If you use silo SEO, Stallion can make it much easier to achieve silos using posts and categories (many silo plugins expect you to use static pages). There’s loads of optional features like the SEO comments and the silo SEO, you don’t have to use them.
Stallion can use the SEO data you’ve added via Yoast, so the time you’ve spent adding Yoast title tags, meta descriptions etc… doesn’t need to be repeated. Unlike your current theme, Stallion will use your Yoast title tags for internal links as well.
Slight tangent: I built Stallion to be able out the box to use the Yoast SEO data and/or the All In One SEO plugin data (don’t like those SEO plugins, but they are popular) without having to convert the data with a plugin (tick a box and it works). Stallion also includes 4 additional keyphrases, these are like the Yoast title tag, but used for internal links and other parts of the theme output: see the phrase “Leave a reply to Stallion Responsive SEO Theme” above the comment form, that’s one of the 4 keyphrases: it’s automated on-site SEO.
The 4 Stallion keyphrase along with the Yoast or All In One SEO title tags can also be used for some of the widget links, the Popular Articles widget uses 6 different keyphraes (Post title, Yoast or All In One title, 4 Stallion keyphrases, that’s 6), which is used depends on the type of page you are on. What you see on a single post (like this page) is different to what you see on the homepage or a category etc…
It’s a complex setup and you don’t have to use them and the user doesn’t have to fully understand it to benefit. If just a post title is set, that’s used, if a Yoast or All In One title tag is set that might be used (depends on settings), if 1 or more of the 4 keyphrases are set they might be used (depends on settings). So you could have 6 phrases used as internal anchor text instead of just the post title (or “Continue Reading” for some non-SEO themes).
Out the box you would have the post title and the Yoast title tags, with a few settings your Yoast title tags can be used for most of the internal links (few minutes to setup) which if you’ve set them different to your post titles could add additional SEO benefit.
If you want to test before buying download the full zip files (they are on this pages main content) and run in demo mode, you’ll see all the options etc… available with the full theme, only difference is the main options pages reset roughly every 500 pageviews. If you like what you see, buy a license and turn demo mode off. If not all you’ve lost is time testing.
David
Testing the Stallion Responsive SEO Theme
Opt in area possible on home page?
Hi there
The theme has my interest.
Is it possible and easier enough to do, for me to have a opt in box at the top of my home page below the header?
It would be centered in the middle and below will then be my latest posts or static home page content.
Also can I use the plugin ( Thrive Leads )?
With this plugin I can place a shortcode in a widget area that then displays my email opt in boxed area.
I can do this with the Genesis theme by adding a widget area to display below the header and I’m hoping that this theme can also.
Kind regards
Colin
Opt in area possible on home page?
Adding a WordPress Optin Form Widget
Stallion Responsive includes 26 widget areas (plus an unlimited number you can make via a Stallion feature), there’s 5 widget areas related to the header area, several of them could be used to achieve what you want by adding a widget with an optin form to a particular widget area.
These are the widget areas around the header area.
Above Header Area : Above everything.
Within/Over Header Area: This one floats a widget over the header area to the right when the search form is disabled (theme feature to disable search form), basically replaces the search form (though wider than the search for: designed primarily for adding AdSense ads over the header).
Below Header Area 1 : 970px wide below header and main navigation menu.
Below Header Area 2 : As above except it comes after the photo navigation menu and the features slider (two theme features).
If looking for full width of webpage the two above are what you want. If you want the optin form to be the width of main content, the next option is better.
Below Banner Image Area : This is the same width as the main content and directly above the main content. Banner images is an optional theme feature, so if you use the feature it’s below them followed by the main content, if you don’t use banner images it’s directly above main content with the header above that.
As you can see there’s plenty of ways to add content. Stallion has a widget display feature so you can set where a widget should load, so if you only want the widget to load on the home page you can do that, want it to loaded on home and a few select pages/posts can do that as well or want it only for posts in a particular category, can do that as well.
There’s also a shortcode system for adding widgets anywhere within content, so if you had a static home page (WordPress core feature to use a Static Page as the home page) you could put the widget anywhere in the main content. Got an example at https://stallion-theme.co.uk/stallion-responsive-theme-recent-comments/ scroll down to just below the Google search box and the Latest Comments output is a widget added via the widgets anywhere feature , lower down the page is another widget for Most Commented Posts.
Regarding the Thrive Leads plugin I’m not familiar with it, though I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.
You can download (zip file links at https://stallion-theme.co.uk/stallion-responsive-theme/) and install the full version of Stallion Responsive and run it in Demo mode for testing (in Demo mode main options reset roughly every 500 pageviews). I would try it out and check everything works as you want it, if not you only wasted your time.
David
Adding a WordPress Optin Form Widget