WordPress Glossary Plugin (CMTG) - Getting Started - Troubleshooting

General WordPress Plugin Troubleshooting Procedure

Back to User Guide

If you are having some issues with the plugin behavior here are some initial assumptions and several checks you should take before contacting support.

Initial Assumptions

The Free, Pro, Pro+ and Ecommerce plugin versions cannot be activated together, and doing so will result in an error message. If you have purchased the Pro or Ecommerce plugins, please deactivate the free edition before activating them. Your data will not be lost and will show up in the premium plugin once activated. 

Another assumption is that you are using the latest version of the plugin and are running the latest version of WordPress.

First Check – Server problems

Please check that the system information in the plugin user guide section to make sure all checks return the “OK” status.

You can reach the user guide from the list of links at the top of the plugin page:

Second Check – JS errors

Please check your browser console (right-click on the browser page and select Inspect Element, then click on the Console tab) to make sure that your website does not have any js errors. If it does, make sure to fix them first. Please make sure that you check this for both the Glossary index page and for both a page and a post page.

Third Check – Plugin conflict

Please deactivate other plugins you have and activate them one by one to check if one of them has a conflict with the CM plugin. If you find a plugin which conflicts you can always use Plugin Organizer to make sure they don’t run together.

Fourth Check – Theme conflict

Replace your theme with one of WordPress default themes to see if the problem arises from a conflict with your theme. This will help in understanding the source of the problem.

Detailed Troubleshooting

This section has information about some more specific problems.

404 Errors

If you are experiencing 404 or Fatal Errors on your WordPress website while using the WordPress Glossary plugin, the most likely fix is refreshing the permalinks. 

Read more: WordPress Glossary Plugin (CMTG) - TroubleShooting - 404 Errors

JS in the footer

The plugin settings allow the JS to be loaded in the site’s footer (which is generally advised in the means of performance) but some of the themes don’t include the “wp_footer()” call and then the JS is not outputted to the page and tooltips don’t work. If the terms on your page are correctly marked but the tooltips don’t appear on hover and you have set the “Load scripts in the footer?” option – and they reappear if you uncheck this option – it means your theme doesn’t call “wp_footer()”.

Glossary Index Page looks different

If the Glossary Index Page doesn’t look as in documentation, but instead it’s blank or displays the list of the custom posts (with “glossary” type) it means either your theme or one of the plugins changed the default way of how the pages are working.

To know if the problem comes from the theme or from the plugins – first try to change the theme to one of the built-in WordPress themes. If the problem persists – that means it comes from one of the plugins. In this case, try to call our support describing your problem with as many details as possible (also what you’ve already tried) and we will try to help.

On the other hand, if the problem doesn’t exist in the other theme – it means you have to make some changes to the theme you’re using and ensure that:

– the template for the page is loaded and not for the archive of “glossary” posts.

– the page template uses “ the_content() ” or “get_the_content() ”.

Glossary Index Page disappears when Jetpack by WordPress.com is activated

To solve the conflict between WordPress Glossary plugin and the Jetpack by WordPress.com plugin, you have to go to the Settings -> General Settings and uncheck the option  “Run the function outputting the Glossary Index Page only once” then save the settings. After doing so the Glossary Index Page should reappear.

Glossary Index Page is not displayed

If the Glossary Index Page is not displayed or something else is displayed instead of it, there might be a conflict with a third-party plugin that can also use the shortcode [glossary] which is used by our plugin to display index page. In this case, you can change our shortcode to avoid conflicts. 

It can be done using the option Shortcode for Glossary Index which islocated in plugin settings, in the General Settings tab under the Performance & Debug section. You can change the shortcode from glossary to cm_glossary, for example (or any other variant). Don't forget to save the changes, and then change the shortcode to [cm_glossary] on the page where you want to display the index page. Juse keep in mind that it shouldn't be named the same as some other shortcode to avoid the conflicts. Note: this option was introduced in version 4.1.3.

Asian languages support

To make the plugin parse the content of the posts/pages written in the languages which don’t use the space to separate the words (like Korean, Japanese, etc.) the option: “Highlight only space separated terms?” have to be unchecked.

Tooltip appears as "undefined"

Sometimes instead of the tooltip content from the Glossary Term, the “undefined” shows up. Usually, this means there are some JS errors on the page that need to be solved first.

For more information about this problem please go to this page.

Permalink Issues

Permalinks must be enabled in your WP in order for the plugin to work properly. Please go to Dashboard -> Settings -> Permalinks and enable the permalinks.

For more information about permalinks please read these two pages:

• Getting Started - Permalinks
• WordPress Glossary Plugin (CMTG) - Troubleshooting - 404 Errors

Characters in non-English languages that do not appear correctly

Usually, this means that there are some problems with character encoding. For instance, the database tables are not using the utf-8 encoding.

For more information about this problem please go to this page.

Some Terms are not parsed

Make sure the terms are defined in your Glossary, and that in the Plugin’s settings you haven’t set them not to be case-sensitive. 

You can find the Terms case-sensitive option in the Tooltip tab on the plugins Settings page:

Glossary parsing is not working properly?

For detailed information about this problem please go to this page.

Related Articles link does not work (Pro Edition)

For detailed information about this problem please go to this page.

On the Glossary Index Page, Terms are not sorted alphabetically

For detailed information about this problem please go to this page.

The term is defined in the Glossary BUT it is not showing highlighted on the page

For detailed information about this problem please go to this page.

Some element is missing regardless of being enabled by settings

For detailed information about this problem please go to this page.

Related articles are appearing in the widget area

When the options for the related articles are set it’s possible that they were generated for the post/page appearing in the widget area of the page. If the content of that post/page will be displayed by “ the_content() ” function – the list of related articles may be displayed. In that case it’s worth checking for the widget settings if one of them allows not to run the filters.

Run backlink generating function only once

For some users backlink generates two times, to fix this bug the option should be enabled. Go to Settings -> General Settings -> Performance & Debug.

Use a non-minified version of tooltip script

For some users, there is an animation related bug, caused by the minified version of the tooltip script. Go to Settings -> General Settings -> Performance & Debug.

Tooltips Don't Appear on Other Plugins' Pages

Many plugins use custom post types to differentiate their content. When you want to show tooltips with content from this new plugin, you have to enable tooltips in these custom types.

Learn more: Terms - Terms on Custom Post Types

Tooltip Glossary Term Error "Update Failed"

If while updating the glossary term you receive the error Update Failed, the problem may be caused if you use Cloudflare. Then you need to disable the rule 100173 - XSS, HTML Injection - Script Tag in the section Cloudflare Managed Ruleset.

Learn more: WordPress Glossary Plugin (CMTG) - Troubleshooting - Tooltip Glossary Term Error "Update Failed"

SQL Errors

While creating or updating posts/pages where glossary terms are found, if you receive SQL errors like "Duplicate entry 'xxxxxx-xxxxx' for key 'PRIMARY'", you need to enable the option Add additional DB checks for related articles to solve this issue. To find this option, navigate to Admin Dashboard → CM Tooltip Glossary → Settings → General Settings → Performance & Debug.

Conflict With Fixed TOC Plugin

When using 2 plugins together - CM Tooltip Glossary and Fixed TOC, it may cause a conflict in the work of the plugin Fixed TOC. The table of content continues displaying, but the headings no longer add the ids and classes needed to click through to the sections listed in the TOC. In this case you need to enable the option Convert content to initial encoding, as shown on the screenshot below:

Tooltip Glossary Pro+ Edition And Avada Theme Compatibility

When using the WordPress Glossary plugin Pro+ version and Avada Theme / Avada Builder, there Avada Builder can have a problem with missing layout conditions for Tooltip Glossary post type.

To fix this issue, head to the plugin settings and find the option Glossary Breadcrumbs Title. Remove the symbol "+" from the title and save the changes.

After that, the Avada Builder will able to detect Tooltip Glossary post type.

Removing all options

On the plugin settings page, above the tabs, you will find a button with an option to reset the plugin:

By clicking the Remove all options button, all options are reset the default. This may help solve issues.

After resetting the options, you will need to create or select a new Glossary Index Page from the General Settings tab.

Reference for more Troubleshooting Information

• Conflict Diagnosis Guide for WordPress plugins
• How To Fix WordPress Plugin Problems & Broken WordPress Installations

	More information about the WordPress Glossary Plugin Other WordPress products can be found at CreativeMinds WordPress Store
	Let us know how we can Improve this Product Documentation Page To open a Support Ticket visit our support center