Kadence Theme and WP Rocket: When the Footer Suddenly Disappears

WordPress users often rely on powerful combinations such as the Kadence Theme and the optimization tool WP Rocket to build appealing, fast websites.

With the latest version of WP Rocket, however, an unexpected problem can occur: the footer is no longer displayed. The problem occurs mainly in Safari (on both desktop and mobile devices) and understandably causes frustration.

Cause of the problem: WP Rocket’s “Automatic Lazy Rendering”

The cause is a new WP Rocket feature called Automatic Lazy Rendering. This feature is enabled by default and aims to improve your website’s loading speed by deferring the loading of content that is not visible. However, there currently seem to be compatibility problems with the Kadence Theme and Safari. This can cause the footer (and possibly other areas) not to be displayed correctly on your website.

Solution: exclude or disable the feature

Kadence support has suggested two possible solutions to fix the problem. They use a PHP snippet that either excludes the footer from optimization or disables the feature completely. Here are the two approaches:

Option 1: Exclude the footer from WP Rocket

If only the footer is affected, you can specifically exempt it from the Lazy Rendering feature. To do this, add the following code to your WordPress installation:

/* WP Rocket Automatic Lazy Render Exclusions
This filter matches HTML. Use a portion of the HTML you want to exclude.
*/
function kad_wpr_alr_exclusions( $exclusions ) {
$exclusions[] = 'class="site-footer"';
return $exclusions;
}
add_filter( 'rocket_lrc_exclusions', 'kad_wpr_alr_exclusions' );

This code looks for the footer’s HTML element (in this case class=”site-footer”) and makes sure it is excluded from optimization.

Option 2: Disable the feature completely

If the problem affects not only the footer but other areas as well, you can disable the feature completely. To do this, use the following code:

// Completely disable the WP Rocket Automatic Lazy Render feature
add_filter( 'rocket_lrc_optimization', '__return_false' , 999);

This snippet disables Automatic Lazy Rendering completely, so no area of your website is affected by it any more.

How do I add the code?

If you are not familiar with editing PHP files, we recommend using a plugin such as Code Snippets. This plugin lets you add PHP code to your website easily and safely, without having to work directly on the theme files. You can find instructions for using it here.

Outlook: compatibility improvements in the future

The problem is known to the WP Rocket team, and a future version of the plugin may offer better compatibility. It may be worth contacting WP Rocket support for information on a possible fix or further suggestions.

Conclusion

While WP Rocket is a powerful tool for optimizing your WordPress website, this case shows how important it is to check compatibility between plugins and themes. With the solutions described above, you can fix the problem and make sure your website – including the footer – is displayed correctly in all browsers.

If you need support integrating snippets or optimizing your website, we are happy to help at realmaker.de. Together we will find a solution that is not only technically clean but also sustainable.

Yours, Michael from realmaker.de
Creative agency for film & web