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‘Filter by attribute’ filter stopped working after updating theme

This topic has 18 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 1 day, 10 hours ago ago by Jack Richardson

nmble

Participant

September 1, 2026 at 21:52

Hi there,

My clients website ‘Filter by attribute’ by stopped working after updating my theme.

https://armageddonprints.nz/shop/

Try using the ‘Filter by Designer’ widget on the shop page, you will see how it reacts when you click on one of the designers.

I have cleared the following fields: – WooCommerce transients – Expired transients – Term counts – Brands transients and have also cleared my cache.

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17 Answers

Jack Richardson

Support staff

September 2, 2026 at 06:09

Hello @nmble,

After reviewing the issue, we were unable to determine its source. We kindly request that you provide us with temporary FTP access in a private message. As an immediate solution, you may disable the “Ajax filters” setting by navigating to Theme Options -> WooCommerce -> Shop filters, as shown in this link: https://gyazo.com/d4bd31637da369cf08fd7200648d52df.

For FTP access, we require the following details: FTP host, FTP username, FTP password, FTP port, and FTP encryption type. If you need assistance in creating these credentials, please reach out to your hosting provider who will guide you through the process.

Best regards,
Jack Richardson
The 8Theme’s Team

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nmble

Participant

September 2, 2026 at 07:06

Sure – added those details in the private content box below.

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Jack Richardson

Support staff

September 2, 2026 at 07:55

Hello @nmble,

Could you kindly verify the credentials? We have attempted to establish a connection but were unable to do so with the access provided.

Best regards,
Jack Richardson
The 8Theme’s Team

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nmble

Participant

September 2, 2026 at 09:09

Sorry, could you try these details:

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Jack Richardson

Support staff

September 2, 2026 at 09:49

Hello @nmble,

Please check the private content.

Best regards,
Jack Richardson
The 8Theme’s Team

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nmble

Participant

September 3, 2026 at 07:27

Hi, I have contacted by host and their response is in the private content box.

If this suggestion is not possible then please let me know and I will change the nameservers back to default while you investigate.

“The domain is currently using Cloudflare, so http://ftp.armageddonprints.nz resolves to Cloudflare’s IP addresses rather than directly to our hosting server. Since standard FTP traffic isn’t handled through Cloudflare, this can prevent the FTP connection from working.

A good workaround is to temporarily add an entry to the hosts file on the computer your IT person is using. This will make the computer connect directly to our server while leaving the public DNS settings unchanged.”

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Jack Richardson

Support staff

September 3, 2026 at 07:52

Hello @nmble,

We connected to your FTP account and enabled WordPress debug mode on your website, then performed additional tests related to the AJAX product filtering issue.

During testing, we confirmed that the filtering request is being blocked with a 403 Forbidden response:

https://yourweb-site.nz/shop/?et_ajax=true&filter_brand=arcaminis&query_type_brand=or

This type of response is usually generated by a server-side security layer rather than by the theme itself.

Please contact your hosting provider and ask them to check the server security logs, including ModSecurity, WAF/firewall rules, Imunify360, or any other security protection enabled on the server.

They should check which rule is blocking the request above and, if possible, add a targeted exception for legitimate WooCommerce/XStore AJAX filtering requests.

Please ask them to provide the exact reason or security rule ID responsible for the 403 response.

Once you receive their feedback, you can share it with us and we will review it further if needed.

Kind regards, Jack Richardson
The 8theme’s team

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nmble

Participant

September 3, 2026 at 10:17

Hi Jack,

Please see the response from my hosting provider in the private content box.

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Jack Richardson

Support staff

September 3, 2026 at 11:15

Hello @nmble,

Thanks for the feedback. Upon reviewing the AJAX filters, we have found that they are still not functioning correctly. We kindly request that you contact the hosting provider again to examine the server logs and completely disable any mod security rules. To verify if the solution is effective, they can visit your shop page and filter by any item in the “Filter by Designer” sidebar widget. This issue is related to hosting restrictions rather than theme limitations.

Best regards,
Jack Richardson
The 8Theme’s Team

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nmble

Participant

September 3, 2026 at 22:53

Hi Jack,

This is their response:

Disabling all ModSecurity rules is not recommended as these rules block several types of malicious traffic.

We prefer to take a reactive approach where we whitelist just the rules that are causing you trouble. If you find your requests are being blocked, reach out to us and we can investigate further.

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Jack Richardson

Support staff

September 4, 2026 at 06:52

Hello @nmble,

We kindly requested that they temporarily disable the MODs and test the filters, then reactivate the MODs after testing. Currently, we do not understand if the issue is directly related to this MODs configuration. Additionally, we have attached the steps for testing so that the hosting support managers can perform the test quickly while the MODs are inactive on your website. If the issue is found within the MODs settings, they can then examine the filters in detail when the MODs are active. Thank you for your understanding.

Best Regards,
Jack Richardson
The 8Theme’s Team

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nmble

Participant

September 4, 2026 at 07:16

Hi Jack,

We temporarily disabled the MOD Security and tested the filters and they still didn’t work. MOD Security has been turned back on now.

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Jack Richardson

Support staff

September 4, 2026 at 07:22

Hello @nmble,

Thank you for conducting the tests. Could you kindly attach the server logs, if available, from testing the filters? Since the default WP_DEBUG does not write logs to the debug.log file, we believe that the server logs may help us identify the source of the issue. We appreciate your understanding and assistance.

Best regards,
Jack Richardson
The 8Theme’s Team

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nmble

Participant

September 4, 2026 at 21:53

Hi Jack,

Please see response from server provider below:

Please note, that I disabled the SSL and WP Rocket plugin and the filters still didn’t work.

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Jack Richardson

Support staff

September 7, 2026 at 06:08

Hello @nmble,

Thank you for providing the details. Unfortunately, it appears that the issue remains unresolved. One possible reason could be that you have named your “designer” product attribute as “brand” and such “word” is already cached for live brands across the store. In this case, it would be appropriate to either activate the “non-ajax filters” as we suggested in previous communications, or you may create a staging website and provide us with temporary wp-admin and FTP access so that we can examine the issue in detail. We appreciate your understanding and adherence to our support guidelines.

Best regards,
Jack Richardson
The 8Theme’s Team

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nmble

Participant

September 7, 2026 at 07:55

Hi Jack,

Thanks for all your help on this. Unfortunately my host doesn’t allow staging websites so I don’t know how I could do one for you without having to pay for another hosting plan.

– I’ve disabled the ajax filters, but that unfortunately still doesn’t solve the issue (I’ve disabled them indefinitely for now)
– If I change my product slug to “designer” instead of “brand” – the filter dissapears entirely. So I have to keep my attribute slug called “brand” for it to work. Unless you have any other suggestions on how to rename this?
– I’ve tried swapping out the ‘Filter by attribute’ widget with the ‘Filter products by brand (Xstore widget)’ but that widget doesn’t seem to work either as nothing appears on my filter.

Any help would be appreciated as this filter was working perfectly fine without any changes to attribute names, ajax filtering and then stopped working once the Theme was updated.

Thanks again.

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Jack Richardson

Support staff

September 7, 2026 at 09:02

Hello @nmble,

We have tested your filters using the default shop template with a non-Elementor builder, but the products are still displayed incorrectly. Since your sidebar widget is the default WooCommerce widget, this issue is not directly related to our theme. It appears that the problem may be caused by the WooCommerce code or the product import process on your website. We kindly suggest that you submit your query to their support team (https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/woocommerce/) regarding the incorrect filtering of products with the default “filter by attribute” widget provided by the WooCommerce plugin. This suggestion is made because you are unable to create a staging website, which would allow us to conduct a thorough test with the default theme and other test actions on your website. Thank you for your understanding and for respecting our support policy.

Best regards,
Jack Richardson
The 8Theme’s Team

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