How long does the user session last?
If you are using the Evergreen feature and a user comes to your website, the countdown timer will start counting down and will continue until it ends even if the user leaves the page or the website. Currently this is set to forever, but in the next update to 2.0 we are adding features for you to specify how long the user session will last. For example, you will be able to set it for 3 days.
Will the timer still be there if a user leaves and comes back?
That depends if the timer is still counting down or not. If so, they will see the timer with the expired time. If the timer has ended, what they experience depends on which expiry action you set up, whether that be redirect, hide timer, or show message.
Can I hide other parts of the page too when the timer ends?
Currently no, but this is a feature we are adding to version 2.0 to give you the ability to hide any section, row, or module when the countdown timer ends and hides.
How do I edit the page with a timer that has expired and redirected to another page?
If you have a countdown timer which was set to redirect when it expired, and it has already expired, you may find it confusing on how to get to the page to edit it. This is easy, you just have to go to the backend to the All Pages list and find the page. Then click on the “Edit With Divi.”
I am getting a continuous refresh loop, how do I fix that?
What Is The Problem
If you experience a continuous page refresh loop when the countdown timer ends, this is caused by either your caching plugin or hosting server (WP Engine) caching cookies on your site. This blocks the function of our plugin, so this of course is rather annoying and counterintuitive. This is not an issue with our plugin, but rather an issue with either a caching plugin or the hosting server blocking standard internet technology that is required for the features of our plugin to work.
How To Solve It
In order to resolve this problem, you could simply clear the cache. However, this would only be temporary local solution. To make it permanent for all visitors, you will need to find the setting in your plugin that is blocking cookies or find the setting that allows you to exclude certain cookies from the cache by ID.
Below is the cookie ID that needs to be excluded from the cache:
If you happen to have more than one Divi Timer Pro module on the same page, then you would need to add additional cookies. These are based on the CSS divs of the module, so if you add a second module it would be ditp_countdown_timer_1, and if you add a third it would be ditp_countdown_timer 2, etc. So you would add additional cookies corresponding to the number of modules on any given page. So let’s say you have one page on your website with just one timer, but have another page on your website with 4 modules. In this scenario you would exclude the following cookies:
Exclude Cookies From Caching Plugins
If you experience the continuous page refresh loop (on any server other than WP Engine – see below), it means one of your plugins is blocking the cookies. This most likely is caused by a caching or optimization related plugin. You will need to check the settings of any of your installed plugins to find the culprit.
Here is an example of how to exclude cookies in a caching plugin. The example shown in the screenshot is WP Rocket, but other plugins should have similar interfaces that allow you to do this. In the WP Rocket plugin, you can go to Settings>Advanced Rules and paste in the list of cookies above to exclude them from the website cache. This example would be if there are 6 timers on any single page of the website, which is unlikely. If you just have 1 or 2, see the notes above.
Exclude Cookies From WP Engine
Unfortunately, WP Engine is infamous for their stance on automatically caching cookies on their server. We have reached out to them about this, hoping to find a workaround, but there is none. Since WP Engine does not have any setting or field for users to excluded cookies from the server cache by themselves (like the caching plugins do), they have informed us that users of our plugin (and other plugins that rely on cookies) need to contact their customer support and tell them to exclude the cookies listed above from their server cache.
Exclude Cookies From SG Optimizer
Unfortunately, SG Optimizer can cause the cookies to be removed as well. There is currently no option to exclude cookies from the cache. We have reached out to them to try to determine if they have a solution or any new feature coming. Meanwhile, you can simply exclude the URL of the page containing the Divi Timer Pro module.
If the visitor switches browsers, how will the Evergreen timer respond?
If The Browser Does Not Contain The Divi Timer Pro Cookie
If the visitor uses or switches to a new browser that they have not used to view that particular page with the Divi Timer Pro module, then this is a totally new user session, meaning the countdown timer will start like normal.
If the Browser Contains The Divi Timer Pro Cookie
If the visitor uses or switches to a new browser that they have already used to view that particular page with the Divi Timer Pro module, then the following scenarios will happen:
If the Countdown Duration is still active, the visitor will see the countdown timer. If the Countdown Duration has passed, but the Cookie Duration is still active, then the visitor will see the Expiry Actions, such as redirect, message, button, hidden timer, etc. If both the Countdown Duration and the Cookie Duration has passed, then the countdown timer will restart and begin a new session.
We continually update this page as we receive new questions and notice frequent or common ones. If you have a question, please send us an email.
