Wordpress Blues

[Spider]

What a load of crap! I am angry! I have just completed a whole set of pages for a group of public speakers for Toastmasters in a particular theme (Cutline) and now it's gone and my pages look terrible! What! I have to start all over?! Why on earth couldn't this new one just be added instead of replacing one that was working. I don't suppose I'm the only person who was using Cutline. This is appalling!

[mattbeck]

Did you (or another admin) run an automatic update to the theme?

That will overwrite the theme you are using with the new version of the base theme.

ALWAYS rename the theme in style.css and rename the folder it resides in if you are making heavy customizations.

If you are doing lighter weight stuff you should be using a child theme to avoid this.

[jamestl2]

Wait, so what exactly happened with the theme here? Which site was it for?

Writing and setting up pages isn't normally controlled through the theme, that's what Wordpress' back-end is for.

[Spider]

As mentiioned in the first post, WP have deleted the theme I was using, called Cutline, and replaced it with some other theme that makes my pages look like crap. And I am pissed off about it. I haven't been happy with the operation of WP since I started and this is the last nail in the coffin. Does anyone know of a similar application I could use that is more stable?

[Harold Mansfield]

As mentiioned in the first post, WP have deleted the theme I was using, called Cutline, and replaced it with some other theme that makes my pages look like crap. And I am pissed off about it. I haven't been happy with the operation of WP since I started and this is the last nail in the coffin. Does anyone know of a similar application I could use that is more stable?

Wordpress is plenty stable but your problems stems from using the free version for something important. As you can see you have very little control over changes when someone else runs the operation. That was one of the reasons that I and others suggested that you use the free version for practice and when you were ready to use it for something business related that you self host. What you are experiencing has nothing to do with the software itself, but more to do with the administration running the free version of it.

You can use Blogger, Livejournal, Blog.com, Typepad or any other of the services that offer free blogs but if you are not the sole administrator..meaning hosting it yourself, you are still vulnerable to things like this at any given time.

The good news is that in Wordpress pages and posts are part of a database and will transfer to any theme that you use, you just may have to make some minor adjustments to account for differences in dimensions and other things that are characteristics of the new theme. Unless you have a lot of pages (or even if you do), it should be relatively easy to use a different theme. There is no loss of information.

My suggestion...if you have no intention of ever hosting your own Wordpress site, and are losing patience learning the software, is to get out now because if you are unhappy with the free version, you will really get angry once you want to take more control of the site, add functions and plug ins, or monetize it in anyway and figure out that you can't do any of those things on the free version.

[vangogh]

The main issue here is that WordPress and the developer of Cutline don't see eye to eye. It's a long story, but the gist is the Cutline developer has until recently not honored the WordPress GPL license. In the last few weeks the issue came to a head and he's since offered a split license (to his Thesis theme) to avoid a potential lawsuit, though many in the community (myself included) would still say he's violating the spirit of the GPL license. It's a long debate and not pertinent to this thread.

WordPress doesn't want to support themes and developers who don't support the GPL completely and so they pulled his theme. Probably not in the best way since yours isn't the only site broken, but know it's an issue that's going back over several years. Had you been using any other theme this wouldn't have happened. You're getting caught up in what's becoming a public battle between Wordpress and one theme developer. That doesn't make what happened right. Just trying to explain why it happened.

Ultimately Harold is exactly right. This is why you host things yourself. So you have control and not leave things at the mercy of another company who's interests may or may not align with yours.

[Harold Mansfield]

Oh wow, I didn't know it was from the same guy. That is a nasty battle. Frederick that was really just an unfortunate luck of the draw. In the past I have never known Wordpress to just leave people hanging like that by deleting a well used theme. It all make sense now.

[mattbeck]

Oh! I had no idea that cutline was the same guy.

I also made the assumption that you were using the self-hosted version.

But yeah, that explains it.

FWIW, I think Automattic made the right call to push back against the developer.

Sorry your theme got switched though, that would bother me too.

[vangogh]

Yep same guy. Matt Mullenweg posted this today (http://ma.tt/2010/08/syn-thesis-3-switchers/) about dropping Cutline. If anyone is interested I've bookmarked tons of posts on the whole issue and I'd be glad to link to a few.

Another issue here is that support for Cutline stopped long ago, probably about the time Thesis showed up, and it's no longer compatible with many of the new features in WordPress. Sooner or later the theme was going to break on its own. WordPress could have given a little warning, but my guess is they checked their stats to see how many people were using Cutline and decided that for most people the effects of dropping it would be negligible. Obviously not the case for Frederick as well as some others.


I think Automattic made the right call to push back against the developer.

Me too. I have 0 respect for Chris Pearson, since long before he developed Thesis. I also don't think much of Thesis as a theme. It's always been more marketing hype than great theme.

[jamestl2]

Sorry, I didn't realize your theme was on wordpress.com, Fredrick. But like the others have already hinted at, you really do have MUCH more control on a self-hosted WP site.


Me too. I have 0 respect for Chris Pearson, since long before he developed Thesis.

What exactly did this Chris Pearson guy do?

I never really cared for Thesis either, it's very developer unfriendly, IMO, but I wasn't really aware of anything the theme developers did inherently wrong.

[vangogh]

He's always come across to me as someone with a very self-inflated view of himself. Follow him on Twitter and it's seems like an endless stream of self promotion combined with general rude comments. I think most of his success comes from an early connection he made with Brian Clarke of CoyBlogger fame. Granted a big part of business is who you know instead of what you know, but I don't think Chris really knows all the much. Certainly not as much as he thinks he knows.

He comes across as full of himself and thinking he's better than everyone else around.

Now that's how he's always come across to me. I've never met him and obviously can't say what he's really like. For all I know he could be the nicest guy in the world. However I've thought the above for about 4 years and every action I've seen him take since only reinforces to me that my impression is right and I'm far from the only person who thinks so.

For all the people who love Thesis I think if Chris had a better offer he dump Thesis in a heartbeat without any thought to how it would affect his users. He strikes me as only caring about their wallets and not them.

Again I've never met him. Just how he's always come across to me and why I've never had any respect for him.

[Spider]

The story behind Cutline makes it easier to accept. The theme appealed to me because it was clean and uncluttered, which was probably the result of it being an old theme. Still, it shows badly against the Wordpress people (Autommatic, I presume.) Like so often, people in business are more interested in scoring a few points or "punishing" someone who breaks their rules, instead of taking care of their customers. Taking care of customers is in the best interests of the business, in the overall picture, but that is frequently forgotten.

[vangogh]

I agree this wasn't the best way for WordPress to handle this, but know that the issues go a lot deeper than wanting to punish someone who breaks the rules. It's not a clear cut issue in any way either. The WordPress side is that they publish a GPL license and all themes and plugins need to also then be released under GPL. They have legal opinions that back them, but this hasn't really ever been tested in court. From their perspective when theme or plugin developers violate the license it could have far reaching repercussions for WordPress.

Whether you agree with them or not (and there's a lot of mixed opinion) WordPress has been very consistent. They don't want to promote any theme or plugin that isn't released under full GPL. Themes can technically release their images and css under their own license and the php part as GPL and be within the law. Chris chose this kind if split license to avoid court. Matt and WordPress are removing Cutline, because they only want to support fully compliant themes and plugins. They've pulled themes and plugins before for the WordPress repository.

I do think they should have at least given people like yourself some warning and time to choose a new theme. Pulling Cutline without warning ends up affecting you more than Chris, especially since he stopped supporting Cutline and likely doesn't care what happens to it anymore.

[Spider]

But surely, they could have produced their own version of Cutline - Superclean or Simple Dimple, or something - slipped that in and no-one would have noticed. They have a replacement - Coraline - which is, by all accounts, very adaptable, manageable, variable, lots of options, gazillion widgets, etc. - exactly what I do not want, although with work one can make it look somewhat like Cutline. Trouble for me is I have to do whatever work 13 times over for each of the speakers of the site.

Not saying that dealing with someone for breaking the rules is of little consequence to them, but it is to us users. So - standard practice prevails - focus on their own needs and forget that they are in business to serve their customers - forget that their customers ARE their business.

[Spider]

Okay. Grumbling aside. Two things I have not been able to do (because the software will not obey standard HTML) and I wonder if anyone can advise.

1. On page Book a Speaker | Houston Area Speakers Bureau (http://d56speakers.wordpress.com/about/) the html box will accept 'border=0' in the table but will not obey it. Any ideas how I can remove the table's border lines?

2. On every speaker's page (except one that does not have a photo) the text begins at the bottom of the photo. The html box accepts 'align=left' but ignores it. I have tried left, absleft, top, texttop and removing the command altogether - none of them work. Any ideas how I can get the text to begin at the top of the photo?

Your help would be appreciated.

[Harold Mansfield]

But surely, they could have produced their own version of Cutline - Superclean or Simple Dimple, or something - slipped that in and no-one would have noticed. They have a replacement - Coraline - which is, by all accounts, very adaptable, manageable, variable, lots of options, gazillion widgets, etc. - exactly what I do not want, although with work one can make it look somewhat like Cutline. Trouble for me is I have to do whatever work 13 times over for each of the speakers of the site.

Not saying that dealing with someone for breaking the rules is of little consequence to them, but it is to us users. So - standard practice prevails - focus on their own needs and forget that they are in business to serve their customers - forget that their customers ARE their business.

Wordpress doesn't have customers. It's free. It has users and they are given permission to use the platform free of charge but must adhere to the T.O.S. which state that they can and will make changes and administer the platform as they see fit and for the benefit of the ALL users. Again...the problem when you are using someone else's stuff...they are going to run it their way.


Okay. Grumbling aside. Two things I have not been able to do (because the software will not obey standard HTML) and I wonder if anyone can advise.

1. On page Book a Speaker | Houston Area Speakers Bureau (http://d56speakers.wordpress.com/about/) the html box will accept 'border=0' in the table but will not obey it. Any ideas how I can remove the table's border lines?
Try using the hidden attribute, or "none" ie: <TD style="border: none">
If that doesn't work, it is possible that table attributes are coded into the theme's style sheet, which I don't believe you have access to, to change.


2. On every speaker's page (except one that does not have a photo) the text begins at the bottom of the photo. The html box accepts 'align=left' but ignores it. I have tried left, absleft, top, texttop and removing the command altogether - none of them work. Any ideas how I can get the text to begin at the top of the photo?

Your help would be appreciated.

I looked at the speakers pages and it seems you have that worked out. The text of the pages I looked at is justified,padded and starts at the top of the post.
Am I missing something? If so, show direct me to a specific example to look at.

[jamestl2]

Yeah, the table code is in the theme's sylesheet. If you can access it, open it up and try this:

1) Find this around line 29 or so:


.entry-content table {
border:1px solid #CCCCCC;
margin:0 -1px 24px 0;
text-align:left;
width:100%;
}


And this:


.entry-content tr td {
border-top:1px solid #CCCCCC;
padding:6px 24px;
}


And just remove the borders there.

For 2)

It looks like the text is already lined up right next to the photo, as Harold already mentioned, like here for example:
Frederick Pearce | Public speaker (http://frederickpearce.wordpress.com/)

[Spider]

Interesting reaction from the app. When I first added-- style="border: none" to the first TD segment, the app automatically deleted it. Then I tried it again and this time it remained, but the app changed it to-- style="border:none;" (removed a space and added a semi-colon. But it only removed one line, so I had to add the style element to every TD.

That left me with a border round the whole table but not the internal lines, so I tried adding-- style="border:none;" to the TABLE segment and it held and removed the outer border. So, to remove the border, I had to add-- style="border:none;" sixteen times!


Regarding the positioning of the text relative to each speaker's picture. I remembered you guys like Firefox and tried it - the text positions correctly in Firefox, but still not in IE. I even tried align=right and that didn't change things, either. (Did in FF) so it seems, the html align code is working but for some reason IE is not seeing it. Any ideas?

[jamestl2]

Do you not have access to the stylesheet? Because just removing those two lines of border code I posted would have done the trick.

Anyway, and with the text, I'm checking in IE8 and it seems to be just fine there too. What version are you using?

[Spider]

No, I don't have access to the style sheets, James, but thanks. I am at the bottom of the totem-pole, using (gasp!) WP.com WP-hosted, WP supplied theme. My presence is barely tolerated but I'm hanging on by my fingertips! : )

I am using IE8 -- IE 8.0.6001.18702, to be precise.

So, how can you be seeing the text starting at the top of the photos, wrapping down the righthand side of the photo and across to the left margin at the bottom of the photo, whereas I am seeing the first line of text starting at the bottom righthand corner of the photo and the second and subsequent lines justified to the left ?

Is there a conspiracy afoot here?

[jamestl2]

OK, yeah then inline styling is probably your best bet, which it seems like you took care of already.

I'm not entirely sure how to explain the text around the image. Here's exactly what I'm seeing on the author pages:
http://jameslewitzke.com/images/fpw.jpg

[jamestl2]

The only solution I can think of at the moment is to perhaps try clearing your cache, as the cache would store non-updated web pages like that.

[Spider]

Thanks, James. At least I now know that others are seeing what they should. I'll get round to clearing my cache. For now I have all the passwords to the different speakers on 'remember me' so when I don't need such frequest access, I'll clear the decks.

[Harold Mansfield]

There should be no issues with Wordpress.com between the browsers. All of the themes should be fine in every browser.
Did you upload the images with the editor or place them in manually?

If you use the editor and apply the styling as well (hover over the image and you will see an image box...click it and you will get a pop up of options for border, justification and spacing)
, it should work just fine.

[Spider]

Harold, it appears to be this particular theme (Coraline) because on other themes I have tried, the text is wrapped from the top of the photo, in IE, as it is supposed to. As James says, perhaps it is the cache, except I have used other themes and they do not seem to override the cache, so maybe not. Changing to align=right is ignored in IE but moves the photo to the right in FF, which I interpret to mean that IE is not reading that bit of code, although it is reading the rest of the code by bringing up the photo.

To answer your questions: did I use an editor? Do you mean the Edit Post page? On the dashboard, there is a section for Media: Library: Add new. I added the photo on the next page, Upload New Media. I then included in my blog post the usual html code <img src= la-de-da> (Exactly, <img src="http://frederickpearce.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/frederick.jpg"> )

That is where I have been adding and removing the align command trying various things to make it work.


Another funny thing - when you hover over the speakers names on the 'Book a speaker' page of the main site - http://d56speakers.wordpress.com/about/ - the thumbnails are correctly aligned, but when you get to the actual page, the alignment is wrong.

[jamestl2]

If you're just trying to align the image to the right, and still have the text wrap, you could always try floating it:


<img src="http://frederickpearce.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/frederick.jpg" style="float: right">

[Harold Mansfield]

Try using the image settings as I suggested...through the editor..how ever it needs to be configured so that it works across browsers is already programmed...you don't have to try and guess what is compatible manually.

[Spider]

Actually, I don't want the image to the right - I was only trying that to see if IE was reading anything, and it didn't. But now that you have given me that style coding, I will try -- style="float:left" - in the hope that will jog IE to wrap the text properly.

Thanks.

[Spider]

I think I understand what you mean, Harold. I'll try it and see what happens. Thanks.

[Spider]

Latest developments — problem solved!

James - I replaced - align="left" - with - style="float:left;" - and it brought the text up to the correct position in both IE and FF. Thank you for your help.

Harold - I'm sorry to say (and I report this only for information purposes), when I switched the 'Edit Post' box to Visual (which is what I think you meant by 'using the editor' and clicking on the image and adjusting the image settings to "left", that simple action screwed up the text (changed the font face) screwed up the two bulleted lists (by moving the </ul> command from the end of the list to part way through the list) and screwed up the widgets (by duplicating them.) That is what I meant earlier when I referred to WP as "unstable." That is not the first time I have done something in the Visual frame that went awry. I appreciate you taking the time and hopefully we both learned something from this. What I learned was, Don't use the visual editor, stick with the html editor.

I've corrected the first two speakers pages - I'll do the rest tomorrow, now that we all have figured out what was needed. Thanks, guys.

[Harold Mansfield]

What I am seeing is that you are hand coding simple things that the software is already programmed to do and the code you are using is conflicting with the natural functions. You don't have to switch to HTML and hand code it...because you are in essence placing code to override what it already does.

For future reference, here is a video on placing images, video and audio in posts:
Embedding photos, video & audio into your posts &#171; WordPress.tv (http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/embedding-photos-video-audio-into-your-posts/)

It's a publishing software. It already does it with the click of a few buttons and settings of your choice to justify, resize, add a border, set spacing and padding, add a gallery of images what ever you want to do. You don't have to do it manually.

You only need to drop code when you want to do something fancy, which you aren't doing.


Also here's a quick article about using tables in Wordpress.com
How to make html tables for your WordPress blog &#171; onecoolsitebloggingtips (http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2008/03/31/how-to-make-html-tables-for-your-wordpress-blog/)

[Spider]

What I understand you to be saying, Harold, is that you cannot swirch between Visual and HTML - you have to choose one and stick with it. That is exactly what I found. In some instances, the mere fact of opening the other window changed the code, even though one might have made no changes oneself.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, they say. I had enough knowledge to change some things I didn't like, but not so much knowledge that I wouldn't do some damage!

I would have abandoned WP at the outset if I was unable to increase the size of the font and/or change the font face. Neither of these can be accomplished from the Visual window, so I was forced into the HTML window. Which I am glad for - it enabled me to do a few other things, too, like change the line spacing and add some white space.

All's well that ends well. : ) Thanks for your help.

[Harold Mansfield]

What I understand you to be saying, Harold, is that you cannot swirch between Visual and HTML - you have to choose one and stick with it. That is exactly what I found. In some instances, the mere fact of opening the other window changed the code, even though one might have made no changes oneself.


No, not at all. I'm just staying that you can save some time and frustration by letting the software work for you. Things like image justification, spacing and padding are simple settings in your individual image settings and don't require you to hand code them.