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Trellis Themes: Conflicts and Compatibilities

Some WordPress plug-ins don't play well with Trellis themes. This document outlines known conflicts identified by our support staff.

Potential conflicts to watch for:

Below is a list of plugin suites to look out for during the installation of Trellis. These will point to keywords and settings to look out for, but won’t name specific plugins. This is meant to help identify potential conflicts on a wide scale.

Optimization/Minification – Any plugin that performs any type of optimization or minification to HTML, CSS, or Javascript should at the very least have those settings disabled. At best the work done here is a duplication of effort with the built-in optimizations of Trellis, and can frequently result in conflicts.
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​Image Plugins – If you’re using Trellis Images then you’re already generating .webp images for your site. If there are two plugins performing this action, conflicts can arise. Disable .webp generation in your other image optimization plugins.
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​Lazy Load – Lazy loading of images has been part of WordPress core since version 5.5. Additional lazy loading plugins should not be required with Trellis.
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​Rest API – Rest API is used by not only Trellis, but our Create plug-in as well. There are plugins out there that disable Rest API, so this is something to look for during installation.

“Headless” / Containerized WordPress Setups – These types of WordPress setups will separate the WordPress front-end from the WordPress back-end which will cause issues with Critical CSS generation. We recommend avoiding using Trellis on these types of WordPress setups.
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Known conflicts with plug-ins:

Below is a list of plugins that have direct conflicts with Trellis and should be deactivated or settings changed during the Trellis installation process.

Autoptimize/WP Optimize

These plug-ins provide minification and other optimizations that are unnecessary with Trellis. Trellis essentially solves the same problems, and if these tasks are duplicated it can result in broken functionality or layout issues on the site. If you are still considering using these plugins, we recommend disabling any “Optimization” style features ( this includes any HTML/CSS/JS Optimization)

WP Fastest Cache/W3 Total Cache/Siteground

These plug-ins provide a lot of options for minification that can cause conflicts with Trellis. The caching features of these plug-ins should be ok to run with Trellis, but the minification settings should be disabled.

A3 Lazy Load

WordPress and Trellis will handle lazy loading of images and iframes, so any additional lazy loading is unnecessary and can create conflicts. This plugin should be deactivated when using Trellis.

Divi Builder/Thrive Architect/Beaver Builder/Elementor/WPBakery

Pagebuilders are not something that Trellis has built-in compatibility with. Some can work, but they have a negative impact on performance which defeats the purpose of using Trellis, to begin with. They can also interfere with Trellis’ native placement of Mediavine ads.

If you feel that these page builder tools are necessary for the success of your business, Trellis might not be the best fit for you. If you’re trying to get away from heavy page builder tools, we recommend using the WordPress block editor (Gutenberg) with Trellis instead.

Lyrical Host

Sites hosted by Lyrical Host are currently incompatible with Trellis’s Critical CSS feature. We’re currently working with Lyrical Host to resolve this incompatibility.

Ezoic’s Leap

The optimizations offered by Ezoic’s Leap features cause a direct conflict with Trellis’s Critical CSS and minified JavaScript features. We recommend disabling all optimizations provided by this feature.

Jetpack

Jetpack is mostly fine to use with Trellis. However, optimizations in the Performance tab are redundant and can conflict with some Trellis built-in optimizations. We recommend disabling all Performance settings in Jetpack.

Comment Plugins

Trellis includes built-in Comment functionality on posts and pages. Plugins like WPDiscuz, Jetpack’s Comments Module, Tasty Recipe Ratings, and other comment-related plugins are not compatible with Trellis.

However, Trellis’s built-in comment functionality can be disabled if absolutely necessary. This is in Trellis’s Settings under Layout.

iThemes Security, WordFence, Titan Anti-Spam

Security plugins can block Critical CSS functionality from working. Be sure to set your Firewall settings to “Learning Mode” for WordFence and Titan Anti-Spam. For iThemes Security be sure that the Rest API setting is Set to Default Access.

Shortpixel/Smush/Imagify

If you’re using Trellis Images you will want to disable the .webp generation setting found in many image optimization plug-ins like Shortpixel.

If you prefer Shortpixel, or some other image optimization plug-ins, to serve next-gen images, then Trellis Images will be redundant.

For more tips on optimizing your plug-in suite for Trellis, read this post on our blog.