Thinking it might be an issue with Toolset Starter Theme, I switched a site to TwentySeventeen and installed the Layouts TwentySeventeen Integration plugin. Same problem. Theme is not the issue.
Two things changed recently that affect all the cases I've experienced or heard from others about:
1) WordPress 4.8
2) The new text widget that supports rich text (which was part of WordPress 4.8)
So I copied the WordPress 4.7 text widget class over the WordPress 4.8 version in a test site and it solved the problem. This isn't a workable fix for real sites as I don't know what the side effects are and having rich text in the text widget would be nice to have but at least it points at exactly where the troubleshooting effort should be focused.
Shane, I'm also seeing odd behavior in text widgets with Toolset Starter. If I edit a text widget from Appearance / Widgets, part of the contents are gone. Not sure if this is related or not or even if it is a global WordPress issue with the new rich text enabled text widget v. something specific to Toolset tools, Toolset starter theme, etc. but it is making the use of Toolset and widgets very challenging. I can open a separate thread on this if you think I should.
Hello,
I was just wondering if there had been any updates on this issue. We ended up rolling back the text widget to the WP 4.7 version in hopes that there would be an update. I need to know whether I should have my users start transferring the content to the Visual Editor type or will you be providing a fix. Thanks,
Joe
Hi Shane, I understand. I got a slew of messages from the bot yesterday asking if this issue was resolved or not and saying it would be closed if I didn't respond so I added that short update to keep it alive. I'd like to see this fixed at some point but I can live with the workarounds.
The biggest issue is the content trapped inside single text widgets in existing sites. I can't open them for editing so I can't get the content out to move it to one of the other solutions. I can usually work around this by viewing page source and copying the html from there but that doesn't work if there are shortcodes in the widget.
On a related note, the only reason this is a big issue is because of the way the visual editor layout element fails when used with plugins that use page templates. The major example being Events Manager. Events Manager tries to render its output in every visual editor cell on the page so I have had to use text widgets where I'd normally use visual editor cells on all sites where I use Events Manager. Modifying Events Manager to be aware of Toolset isn't a great option as it isn't very update proof. Having Toolset somehow differentiate Post Content cells from Visual Editor cells in a way (perhaps an optional way) that prevents the duplication of Events Manager's output would be really, really valuable to me and many other Toolset users. There are multiple other tickets on this subject so not asking you to address it here, just letting you know it is how I ended up with so many single text widgets.
