Hi, Justin, 

Thank you for expressing interest in purchasing the wpDataTables plugin.

1. Regarding the usage if you link a table to Excel file - Here is a useful documentation section about this.

Some important things to note if you link the table to Excel source :

They generally work slower than CSV-files, or even Google Spreadsheets; so if your table is larger than 2000 > 3000 rows, it is much better to port it to a different format, or – even better – to MySQL table ( or you can use “Create a table by importing data from data source” to import your Excel file to MySQL).

Our plugin can handle very large data, if a proper setup is made - Here is an example we made with SQL based table that has more than 2 million rows.

2. Regarding the filters, everything you described can be done without issues.

With our add-on Powerful Filters, you can set up Cascading filters, and also, any filter can have a "search" as well as a dropdown to select available filter values.

3. You can change the positioning to a certain degree, for the filter boxes, using custom CSS, but it will be limited.

For example, you can't completely swap positions between all HTML DIVs holding the filters,

but we can assist as much as we can, with some basic CSS adjustments, such as height, width, color, different fonts, borders, positioning to a certain extent and similar modifications.

Any custom styles you need can be added using the Customization Tab, on the table setup, if you want just to target a specific table, or you can place custom CSS to all tables in the main plugin settings "Custom JS and CSS".

Here are some pages from our Documentation on this :

Coloring and styling columns;

Customize table feature.

4. Absolutely, you can try wpDataTables add-ons before purchase on these sandbox sites:

Powerful Filters | Gravity Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Formidable Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Master-Detail Tables

And, just wanted to point out that we have a 15-day money-back guarantee period. So if you purchase the plugin, you can safely fully test it out, and if it doesn't fit your needs you can request and receive a refund in that period. ( same goes for all our products and add-ons).

Please reach out to us if you have any other questions.

Hello Justin,

Apologies for the delayed response.

Glad to be able to assist you.

1. It is possible that it is a bug that we previously encountered. I will pass this detail to our 2nd level Team, and as soon as they advise, I will come back to you regarding that. 2. To style the "Clear filters" button, you can use this CSS selector, and for example, I added some red borders ( you can add any styling properties you need):

.wpDataTablesFilter .wpDataTableFilterSection#wdt-clear-filters-button-block button {   border: 2px solid red; }

3. You can change the Base skin from the Customize Section, and if you set it to Aqua or Purple, you will get the same looking Table Tools as on the Sandbox. Or if you want to customize them, and use the same skin you already set, you can add this custom CSS, and edit the styles :

/* DIV holding all the Table Tools buttons */.wpDataTablesWrapper div.dt-buttons { margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 20px; margin-right: -10px; float: right; border: 5px solid purple;}
/* for each individual Table Tool button */
.wpdt-c.wdt-skin-light .wpDataTablesWrapper a.DTTT_button, .wpdt-c.wdt-skin-light .wpDataTablesWrapper a.DTTT_button:hover { border-color: transparent; border-style: solid;}

4. To reduce the white space between the filters and Table Tools, try this custom CSS, add it to the Customize Tab, and let me know how it looks:

.wpDataTablesWrapper { margin-bottom: 0px;
}
.wpDataTablesFilter .wpDataTableFilterSection:not(#wdt-clear-filters-button-block):not(#wdt-pf-search-filters-button-block) {  margin-bottom: 0px;   }

5. At this time, we don't have a way to change where the "Edit entries" section is placed. For the time being it has to be at the top right. We might add this in the future, but I can't say an ETA on it. 

6. This is a bit trickier, to select only the area above the table. If you could give me a bit more time to work on that one, please, and we will see what we can do? 

 7. For filter - Title colors, use this CSS please : 

.wpDataTablesFilter label { background: blue; color: brown; }

________________

1. To place hyperlinks in the cell, you can either use an URL column - if you only need one hyperlink per cell, but if you need multiple hyperlinks in the same cell, you have to use a multi-string column type and wrap the links in anchor HTML tags.

2. Regarding that freezing of the screen on editing, but the edit saves, it is quite odd. We can take a look from the WP Admin end, if you'd like please provide me a temporary WP-admin (administrator) user for your site where this happens, so we could log in and take a look ‘from the inside’ as that’s the most efficient way to see and resolve the issue. 

We do not interfere with any data or anything else except for the plugin (in case that’s a production version of the site), and of course, we do not provide login data to third parties. 

You can write credentials here just check PRIVATE Reply so nobody can see them except us.

Along with that, please provide us with the table ID so we can check the right one.

Looking forward to your reply.

Hello Justin,

Sorry about the delayed response time

Thank you for the kind words. I am glad to be able to help :)

Regarding white space, yes, sometimes that can happen when we start adding custom CSS and changing the styles, especially if a theme is adding its own CSS additionally. 

We can try to help and advise, as much as we can. Our support goes to a certain extent, depending on how much custom work is needed for a solution.

I am looking at the page, but not sure which white space you are referring to. Can you perhaps highlight or describe that in more detail, and we will try to think of a solution for you?

Regarding the font size is different on the back-end and the front, that usually happens when the active theme overrides something.

wpDataTables is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) concept-based plugin. This means that the table should look the same both in the back-end and in the front-end. If your front-end table looks and behaves differently than in the back-end, this usually implies that there is another plugin (or the current theme) that's changing the behavior of our plugin.

You can try to switch to Twenty Twenty Two WP theme and test if the fonts and layout look different, and we can take it from there, but at least to isolate what is changing the fonts/layot to start with.

1. Changing the filter label can be done in column settings, as I will show you on this screenshot :

2. As for refreshing the data using CSV, for example, if you had only 2000, 3000 rows, that would be easy, you would simply link the CSV file to the table and it would pick up the data from the source,

but because it is larger data set, we have to use the database/SQL, and server-side processing to limit the rows displayed at a time in order to keep your page stable, otherwise, it would become too slow or even crash.

- The best way you can keep updating this through CSV, can be if you add new rows to the CSV, then delete the headers, and only keep the new rows you added/delete the rows which already exist in wpDataTables,

and use PhPMyAdmin or other methods to import the new data into the database table.

Let us know how that sounds and if you need further assistance, I apologize if we didn't cover everything you asked for.

Hi, Justin

Really glad to be able to assist you.

Good to see that you were able to sort out the data refresh by installing the "WP Data Access", that is awesome.

Yes, messing with CSS can sometimes consume a lot of time, but we will do the best we can, and to the maximum extent we can that our support can cover.

I added some new custom styles to your table, check it out, I think it looks closer to what you need to achieve:

-

Regarding the bug that inputting anything in that Media column filter search, freezes after couple of seconds, we've seen this before, and our developers, as I recall, managed to debug it, if I am not mistaken.

I believe it was caused by some kind of Bootstrap/JS conflict with a page builder or another plugin, but I'm not quite sure.

When I tried to replicate the issue by creating a new test table on your WP Admin, just a clean new table did not behave like this, so there must be something specific on that Table ID 6.

We will escalate this to our 2nd level Team, and I will keep you posted on our progress. As soon as they investigate, I will give you more information on that.

Hello Justin,

It took some time for our developers to test everything thoroughly - regarding the search filter bug.

A particular combination of the settings you use together is causing this in our plugin.

Basically, with our Powerful Filters add-on, if you enable the search option for a selectbox/multi-selectbox while having Cascacing Filters at the same time, causes this bug.

At this time, a temporary solution is if you can disable the search option for the columns that have selectbox/multi-selectbox when you use Cascading Filters.

We know this is not ideal; because when you disable the search option,

 a user who views the dropdown for the filters, they have to either manually scroll and find the filter value they need, or they can use "CTRL+F" when the dropdown opens if using a browser such as Google Chrome. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Our developers are still working on this and will implement a more permanent solution in one of the next updates for the plugin.

Hello Justin,

Thank you for reaching back to us.

Which fix exactly are you referring to?

Looking forward to your reply.

Hi, Justin

We are happy to say, our developers advised us we have a temporary fix.

Can you please edit this JS file in any text/code editor, it is located here:

../wp-content/plugins/wdt-powerful-filters/assets/js/wdt.pf.frontend.js   around line 581 

; of you can use Ctrl+F to search for :

return $filter.find('select.wdt-multiselect-filter').selectpicker('val') !== null;

then change it to this :

var multiSelectSelected = $filter.find('select.wdt-multiselect-filter').selectpicker('val');
if (Array.isArray(multiSelectSelected)) {
    return multiSelectSelected.length;
}
return multiSelectSelected != null;

Let me know how it goes. 

They are still in the testing phase, but as soon as they finish testing everything, they will implement the fix into the plugin's core. 

 I still can't say a definite ETA yet, unfortunately, so, if they don't finish in time for the next update - you would have to repeat this process - but we are getting closer.

Looking forward to your reply.

Hey, Justin

Sorry about that  - i forgot to mention, for Simple tables, since we don't have the Customize option;

You will have to implement custom CSS in the main plugin settings > Custom JS and CSS tab :

Hi, Justin

Sorry that it took me so long to re-check everything.

I have to apologise, somehow i have mixed up this bug with another one, to be completely honest with you...

We had something similar in the past where certain filter functionality was not working.

The developers already made a fix for that - it is still in the testing phase before it gets fully implemented into the core, but that is for some users that have an issue that the multiselectbox filter does not work in Cascading filters in certain situations...

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But regarding the search option in the selectbox/multi-selectbox when you use Cascading Filters;

the developers realised this is something that we will have to disable for the time being, until they perhaps improve the functionality, I'm afraid.

So, in the next update, they will remove this option to be used in combination with Cascading Filters.

You will still be able to use selectbox and multiselectbox in Cascading filters, but not with the search option.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

-

I hope i explained this correctly, please let me know if anything was not clear.

We will also add this into our Documentation, and perhaps as tooltips in the plugin itself to avoid confusion.