How to Use Kadence Element Hooks

Adding an affiliate disclosure to every post by hand is slow work, and it gets worse the day you need to change the wording. You end up opening old posts one by one to fix the same 2 sentences, and it is easy to miss a few.

Kadence Element Hooks fixes this. You build the notice once, hook it to a spot in your post layout and tell Kadence which posts should show it. If you’re learning how to use Kadence Element Hooks, a disclosure is the best first job for it, because the whole setup comes down to 2 decisions: where the notice sits on the page and which pages are allowed to show it.

The feature comes with Kadence Theme Kit Pro, the premium plugin that adds Hooked Elements, conditional headers and other add-ons to the free Kadence Theme. Kadence uses both names, Element Hooks and Hooked Elements, for the same feature. The example below uses a Content Section with a single paragraph, so you can confirm the placement before you spend any time on design.

What You Need

Kadence Hooked Elements isn’t available in the free theme on its own, so your site needs all 3 of these:

• The free Kadence Theme, installed and active.
• Kadence Theme Kit Pro, uploaded under Plugins > Add New Plugin and licensed for this site.
• Hooked Elements switched on under Appearance > Kadence, which is step 1 below.

How you license Theme Kit Pro depends on when you bought your plan. Liquid Web moved Kadence to a single unified license in May 2026:

• Plans bought after that change: copy your key from the Liquid Web Customer Portal, go to Settings > Liquid Web Products in WordPress, paste it in the Unified License field and click Activate. Then activate Kadence for the site and add the site in the portal when it asks. The unified license guide shows each screen.
• Older, grandfathered plans: there is no key to enter. You install the latest Theme Kit Pro ZIP and the license applies on its own, as the Theme Kit Pro documentation explains.

If you already own a Kadence plan, check its included downloads before you buy anything new, because Theme Kit Pro may already be in it. The Kadence theme review covers what the other Pro add-ons do. If you’re still choosing a theme, Astra and GeneratePress have their own hook and display-rule systems, and the Kadence theme alternatives comparison is the better place to make that decision.

Kadence Element Types

When you add a new element, Kadence asks you to pick 1 of 4 types. The type decides what the element can do on the page, so it’s worth choosing it deliberately before you build anything.

Type	Best for	Check before publishing
Content Section	A notice, CTA or banner inserted at a hook	The placement and the pages that should show it
Fixed Section	A sale bar pinned to the top or bottom of the screen	Its width on mobile and whether it covers menus or cookie controls
Template	Replacing an existing area, such as the header, sidebar or single post layout	That the area exists in your layout and the replacement still carries what readers need
HTML Editor	Custom HTML, scripts or a third-party embed	The code itself and where it loads, before you target the whole site

A Content Section is the right type for a disclosure. It works like a small post: you add blocks, style them however you like and hook the result into the page. Templates are the advanced option, and full post templates with dynamic content can need Kadence Blocks Pro as well. HTML Editor elements can also load code inside the <head> tag or just before the closing </body> tag, which suits tracking scripts but is more than a disclosure needs.

How to Use Kadence Element Hooks

By the end of these 7 steps, you’ll have one affiliate disclosure that appears before the article body on posts in a category you choose, for every visitor, with no end date. The same steps work for any notice you want to manage from one place.

1. Enable Hooked Elements

Go to Appearance > Kadence in your dashboard. With Theme Kit Pro active and licensed, the premium add-ons are listed on that screen. Switch on Hooked Elements and refresh the page. A new Elements item appears under Appearance > Kadence, and that’s where every element you create will live.

2. Create a Content Section

Open Appearance > Kadence > Elements, click Add New and choose Content Section from the 4 types.

Give the element a name you’ll recognize later, such as “Affiliate Disclosure”. Readers never see this title, so plain is fine. Once saved, the Elements list shows each element’s type, placement, display rules, audience and shortcode, which makes it a handy audit screen when you have several elements running.

3. Add the Disclosure

Add a Paragraph block with the notice you want readers to see. A clear version reads something like this:

I may earn a commission if you buy through links in this post, at no extra cost to you.

Match the wording to your actual affiliate arrangements and keep it short enough to read before the first link. The hook only controls where the notice appears. Whether the wording is clear enough is still your call, and the FTC disclosure guidance is a good reference if your readers are in the US.

You can style the notice with a border, background or icon using core blocks or Kadence Blocks. If you’re weighing block plugins for this kind of design work, the Kadence Blocks vs GenerateBlocks comparison helps with that choice. I’d still keep the first version plain, because a plain paragraph makes a placement problem easier to spot.

4. Choose the Placement

Placement decides where the notice sits inside the page. Open Element Settings with the icon at the top right of the element editor, next to the gear icon.

Set Placement to Before Entry Content. This puts the notice right before the post body, which is the spot readers pass on their way to the first affiliate link.

Its exact position relative to the title and featured image depends on your post’s title and hero layout, so check one real post instead of assuming it will sit right under the title. 2 more placement details matter once you run more than one element:

• Priority sets the order when 2 elements share a hook. Lower numbers come first, so an element at 10 appears before one at 20. The default of 10 is fine for a single disclosure.
• Custom Hook lets you type the name of a hook from your theme or a plugin. As the Element Hooks guide notes, the hook must already exist in that code, so typing a new name doesn’t create a new insertion point.

5. Set the Display Rules

Display Settings decide which pages are allowed to show the element. For the disclosure, that means single posts, and only the ones that carry affiliate links:

1. Under Display Settings, set Show On to Single Posts.
2. Set Select Post By to Group, choose Categories and pick the category your affiliate posts use. In the example below, that’s Deals.
3. Under Exclude Settings, add a Hide On rule for any post in that category that shouldn’t carry the notice.

Single Posts with a category filter and Category Archives sit close together in the dropdown, and they target different pages. The first shows the notice on every post in that category. The second shows it on the category listing page, which is rarely where a disclosure belongs.

If you add more than one Show On rule, the All show rules must be true? toggle decides how they combine. With it on, a page has to match every rule. A single category rule like this one doesn’t need it.

6. Check Visibility and Expiry

The last 3 panels decide who sees the element, on which devices and for how long. A disclosure has to reach every reader who can see the affiliate links, so all 3 stay broad:

• User Settings: All Users, which is the default.
• Device Settings: All. With no device rule, the element shows on every device.
• Expires Settings: off. A permanent disclosure shouldn’t have an end date.

User Settings earns its place on other elements, such as an ad that only logged-out visitors should see. If you run a paid membership, keep in mind that a logged-in rule can’t tell paying members from free accounts, so let your membership plugin control what paying members see. The element settings documentation lists every visibility option.

7. Publish and Check the Result

Publishing saves the element and switches it on, so the next job is confirming that the rules match the right posts:

1. Open a published post in the category you targeted. The notice should appear right before the article body.
2. Open a post outside that category, or one you excluded. The notice should be missing there.
3. Check the matching post in a private window, logged out, and on a phone-width screen to confirm the notice is still readable.

While you’re logged in, the admin toolbar shows how many elements are running on the page you’re viewing, and hovering over that count lets you jump straight into any of them. If something looks wrong, switch the element back to draft or narrow its display rule while you fix it. Both changes are reversible, so there’s no reason to delete the element and start over.

Why Your Kadence Element Isn’t Showing

When a Kadence element is not showing, the cause is usually a saved setting, so check the configuration before you rebuild anything. The editor preview can’t confirm it, because Preview Settings only change what you see inside the editor, while the live page follows the display rules.

Symptom	First check	Fix
No Elements menu under Appearance > Kadence	Is Theme Kit Pro active and licensed, with Hooked Elements switched on?	Turn on Hooked Elements under Appearance > Kadence and refresh.
The notice is missing on a post	Do the placement and the Single Posts rule match that post, including its category?	Fix the category filter or remove the exclusion that catches it.
Some visitors see it and others don’t	Are User, Device or Target Language rules narrowing it?	Set those panels to match the audience you want.
It worked, then stopped	Has the expiry date passed?	Turn off expiry or set a new end date.
Dynamic content shows “No Content” in the editor	Is a preview post selected under Preview Settings?	Pick a representative post. The live rules still decide where it shows.
A custom hook shows nothing	Does that hook exist and run on this page?	Check the exact hook name in the theme or plugin code.
The element shortcode outputs nothing	Does the page match the element’s display rules?	Widen the rules, or use Entire Site for a shortcode you place on many pages.

Target Language only appears when a multilingual plugin is installed. After each change, reload the same page. If the saved settings are right and the old result still shows, clear the page cache for that URL before you touch any other setting.

More Hooked Element Examples

Once the disclosure works, the same 2 decisions carry over to other jobs. These are the most common next steps:

Job	Type and placement	Where it shows	Watch for
Sale banner that ends on its own	Fixed Section, fixed on top, with expiry on	The pages that should carry the offer	Your timezone setting, cached pages and overlap with mobile menus
Different sidebar for one category	Template, Replace Sidebar	Single posts in that category	The post layout must already have a sidebar
CTA after the article	Content Section, After Entry Content	Single posts in the relevant categories	Posts that already carry an equivalent CTA

Expiry is what makes the sale banner low maintenance. Turn on Enable Expires, pick the date and time the campaign ends and the element stops showing after that moment. Make sure the timezone under Settings > General matches the one your campaign runs in, and remember that a cached page can keep showing the banner until its cache refreshes. The Fixed Section guide covers each fixed placement.

Device Settings help with sidebar elements too. A Kadence Table of Contents block in a replacement sidebar is useful on a wide screen and mostly wasted on a phone, where the sidebar drops below the article, so that element can be set to desktop only.

Kadence Element Hooks FAQs

Final Remarks

Start with 1 Content Section and a narrow display rule. Once the disclosure shows on a matching post and stays off an excluded one, widen the rule if you need to. You end up with one notice you can edit in a single place, and the Elements list shows the rule that decides which posts carry it.