Last week I was working on a project and noticed that the page titles* were missing on several pages.  From that realization I got the idea that a breadcrumb trail might be a good addition to the website. A breadcrumb trail can help users maintain context as they venture deeper into the content of a website. However, after activating a breadcrumb plugin, I noticed the trail was also missing on several pages of the website. It turns out that the same pages that were missing the breadcrumb trail were the same pages that were missing the page title. The other thing that these pages had in common was that I was using  Conductor Plugin to control the display.

I researched the issue by comparing the display on other similar websites and submitted a support ticket (thinking my installation had a bug). I finally realized that I would need to modify the Conductor template. Luckily there was a blog post and a video that gave insight into the approach needed to modify the plugin template file. Neither the blog post nor the video specifically gave the solution to add the breadcrumb trail, but I was luckily able to extract and piece together the concepts to get the result I needed.

NOTE: I probably would have considered the need to modify the plugin template file(s) before submitting a support ticket if the theme I was using did not already have extra support for the Yoast Breadcrumb plugin built into the theme template file system.

The purpose of this article is to share the solution I used to change my situation.

Here’s a list of the stuff in my WordPress environment that I used to accomplish this task:

• Symphony Pro Theme installed (there is also a free version of this theme available)
• A child theme activated (name of my child theme in the demo is “mrchild“)
• Yoast Breadcumbs plugin installed and activated
• Conductor plugin installed and activated (no add-ons are needed)
• Filezilla FTP client installed and connected to my web hosting account (free)
• Optional- relaxing music

TEXT DEMO: Here is the list of steps you can take to fix the 2 plugin issue on the Symphony Pro theme:

1. Take a deep breath and turn on some relaxing music
2. Make a full backup of your website
3. Open your favorite FTP program to get to your child theme files
4. Add a new mrchild/CONDUCTOR (folder) directory in your child theme directory
5. Create a new file inside the CONDUCTOR directory in the your child theme. Name the file content-wrapper-before.php
6. Look for this directory: /wp-content/plugins/conductor/templates
7. Copy the contents of the content-wrapper-before.php file from the plugins/CONDUCTOR directory into the new file you created
8. Create a new file inside the CONDUCTOR directory in the your child theme name the file yoast-breadcrumbs.php
9. Copy the contents of the yoast-breadcrumbs.php file from the themes/symphony-pro directory into the new file you created
10. Open up the functions.php file in your child theme directory and add the following code into your child theme functions.php file
11. Save the changes to your child theme’s functions.php file
12. Smile when you see that the breadcrumb trail is properly displayed on the pages with Conductor enabled
13. You may need to adjust some CSS to match your other breadcrumb trail display

Missing page titles can be added using a procedure similar to the one described above.

Extra resources to learn more:

Understanding the Conductor Template System
Conductor Office Hours #6

*Missing page titles can be added using a similar procedure to the one described above.

Image Credit: Jeremy Snyder