Wheel Not Displaying: The Invisible Campaign

Wheel Not Displaying: The Invisible Campaign

You designed the perfect wheel, set your probabilities, wrote the copy, and published the campaign — then you visit your site and nothing happens. This is rarely a bug. Ultimate Spin Wheel is deliberately “smart”: it hides itself to avoid pestering visitors who have already played or who do not match your targeting. If the wheel is missing, some rule is almost always telling it to stay hidden. This guide walks through that logic in the order it runs so you can find the missing wheel quickly.

1. The “Who”: Already Played or Dismissed

The number one reason you cannot see the wheel is that this browser has already played or dismissed it. After a spin, a win, or a close, the plugin records the state in the browser under keys namespaced to the campaign — for example uspw_<id>_played, uspw_<id>_completed, and uspw_<id>_dismissed. These are stored in both localStorage and a matching cookie, so a normal page reload will not clear them.

• Why it hides: Once you have spun (or closed the popup), the system trigger is blocked until the stored expiry passes, so returning visitors are not shown the same popup on every page.
• The quickest test: Open an Incognito / Private window and visit your site. If the wheel appears, the plugin is working — your normal browser simply holds the “played” or “dismissed” state.
• Preview mode (best for building): Add ?spin_wheel=preview to your page URL. Preview mode bypasses every blocking check — played state, dismissed state, and device rules — so you always see the current design while you work.
• The reset: To test as a fresh visitor in your normal browser, clear the site’s cookies and local storage (or use Incognito). There is no “show on every page load” toggle — use Preview mode or a private window instead.

2. The “Where”: Targeting Rules

All of the following live in your campaign’s Visibility settings. If a rule does not match the page you are on, the wheel will not render.

Page Targeting

• Check which pages the campaign is set to show on. If it is limited to the home page but you are testing on /shop, it will not appear.
• Targeting a specific post or page by ID — “show only on these specific pages” — is a (Pro) feature. In the free plugin you can target by general location (whole site, home, posts, pages, and similar) and role and device.

User Role Targeting

The Visibility panel lets you restrict the wheel by login state and role (for example “logged-out visitors only” or specific roles). This is the most common self-inflicted trap:

• You are the site admin and you are logged in. If the campaign is set to show only to logged-out visitors, it correctly hides from you.
• The fix: Test in an Incognito window (where you are a guest), use Preview mode, or temporarily add your role to the allowed list.

Device Targeting

• Visibility includes a device option: All Devices, Desktop Only, Mobile Only, or Tablet Only. If you set “Desktop Only” and open the site on your phone, the wheel will not show.
• On the front end the plugin treats viewports narrower than 768px as mobile and wider as desktop, so resize your window or use device emulation when you test.

3. The “When”: Trigger Logic

For the Popup layout you choose a show trigger. The free triggers are None, Instant, and Delayed (plus manual triggers — a click on your button class and a shareable URL hash). Two more triggers are available in Pro and are easy to misconfigure:

Exit Intent (Pro)

• Exit intent shows the popup when the cursor leaves the top of the window. On phones there is no cursor, so it may never fire on mobile.
• The fix: If mobile matters, switch the trigger to Delayed or Instant so mobile visitors reliably see the wheel.

On Scroll (Pro)

• The scroll trigger fires after the visitor scrolls a set distance or percentage down the page. On a short page with no scrollbar, that threshold can never be reached, so the popup never opens.
• The fix: Lower the scroll distance, or use Instant / Delayed on short pages.

4. The “Blocker”: Caching & Conflicts

If Incognito and Preview mode both fail and your settings look correct, something is preventing the code from running.

Aggressive Caching (Cloudflare / WP Rocket)

1. Your host or CDN may serve a stale copy of the HTML from before the plugin was configured. Purge everything from your caching plugin and from Cloudflare (“Purge Everything”).
2. If you use JS minification or “combine files”, disable it temporarily. If the wheel reappears, the minifier was breaking the plugin’s script — add it to your minifier’s exclusion list.

Script Conflicts (JavaScript Errors)

1. Right-click the page, choose Inspect, and open the Console.
2. Look for red errors such as Uncaught SyntaxError or ReferenceError. A fatal error thrown by another plugin can halt all JavaScript on the page, including the spin wheel.
3. Deactivate other plugins one at a time to find the culprit, then report the conflict to that plugin’s author.

Frequently Asked Questions

I see the dark overlay but no wheel — what happened?

The wheel canvas only draws once its container has a visible width, so this usually means the popup opened while its container was hidden or zero-width (often a theme or z-index conflict). Ensure the popup is not sitting behind your page content — for example, raise it with custom CSS such as .ultimate-spin-wheel { z-index: 999999; } — and reopen the popup so the wheel can size itself.

Does it work on draft pages?

Test on a published page. Targeting and query logic are evaluated against live content, so a draft or preview of an unpublished page is not a reliable test. Publish the page first, then check it.

It works in Incognito but not in my normal browser. Is it broken?

No — that is the expected behavior. Your normal browser is holding the “already played” or “dismissed” state for this campaign. Clear the site’s cookies and local storage, or simply keep using Incognito or Preview mode to test.

Related Documentation

• Common Issues: The broader troubleshooting index for the plugin.
• Win Probabilities: How the server-side weighted draw decides each spin.

Conclusion

When the wheel is invisible, work the logic in order: check the browser’s played / dismissed state (Incognito or Preview mode), review your Visibility targeting (page, role, device), confirm the trigger can actually fire, then rule out caching and script conflicts with the Console. The large majority of “invisible wheel” reports are solved the moment you open a private window. If you are still stuck, reach the wowDevs support center.