I uploaded the most up-to-date theme and after a bit of tinkering with plug-ins, managed to solve the outstanding issues above. Thanks for your help and advice. Please feel free to close this thread.
1. (widgets) this worked as you suggested thank you.
2. (syntax error) I’m not aware of any custom code or anything. At least not lately. I checked the console and ‘binned’ that page. I then ‘binned’ another page that displayed the same error. After that, this error is shown: https://pasteboard.co/yd9PZh5.png
3. (socialshare) disabling the Jetpack plugin solved the issue of the ‘sharethis’ function.
Also, with the new theme, on all pages other than the homepage, in-between the call-to-action and the page footer area, a ‘share-this’ social media bar appears and splits the two apart. I have no idea where this has appeared from: https://pasteboard.co/wHiuuwa.jpg
Thanks for your reply. After speaking to the plugin developer, he has explained to me that there is nothing wrong with the plugin, but seems to think that there are errors with the site theme conflicting with WP 4.5 that is causing it to not display correctly.
He passed this screengrab onto me with the site errors displaying on his console: https://pasteboard.co/iV3fJbX.png (he did mention the ‘measureit’ error is browser related).
Do you think it’s a possibility that updating the theme to the new version (as well as visual composer) could fix the issue?
Just to add, I’m not sure whether this information will help or not, but, I previewed the site on a standard WordPress theme (Twenty Twelve) and the ticker functioned and displayed as normal.
Thank you for your reply, it is much appreciated. This is exactly what I needed to allow the blog content to display as requested. Thanks once again for your help. Please feel free to close this topic.
I’ve disabled parallax scroll on the homepage, and tested on an apple tablet – both orientations. It scrolled fine on both. I still need to test on on the Galaxy S tablet, but it’s looking promising. Thank you for your advice. Feel free to close this topic, I can always post again if I need to.
I’ve done some further research on this. After testing the homepage via Google’s page speed test, one of the points to consider was the following:
Consider fixing: size content to viewport.
The page content is 390 CSS pixels wide, but the viewport is only 375 CSS pixels wide. The following elements fall outside the viewport:
The element: <div class=”wpb_column vc_column_container”>15.03.16 – The…ess imperative</div>
The element: <div class=”wpb_column vc_column_container”>Mike Gillespie..rd at the NEC…</div>
These are the news tickers on the homepage and part of the ‘Ditty Newsticker’ plug-in. I can’t disable these as they are a crucial element. Is there a specific place where I can adjust the Tower or visual composer settings so that I can specify the column to scale to the width of the device?
Just to add to this, even the ‘standard’ blog view does not allow for a full post – even when I ensure that ‘full post’ is checked for ‘for each article in a feed, show’ under the settings > reading tab. I’d prefer to use the ‘creative’ blog view, is there any custom css code I can add to disable it cutting the posts short?
Just as a note, I also had trouble with slow loading and I am using a number of plug-ins that I need to use. I did some research around it and the conclusion was pretty much the same as what is specified within the article that Mihaila has posted.
I first used Google PageSpeed Insights – to test and analyse.
