stuntmusic

Can you list the files that are in your ZIP file? Is there a style.css in the zip file?

Are you trying to submit the theme to the Theme section of www.ads-software.com? Or are you trying to apply it a blog you have?

It’s a great product and worth every penny.

Artsiteer is not a paid *service*, it is a software package that helps you to create a theme that can be used in WordPress.

Works great, lots of options to set up the layout (and the ones that are not included are easily fixed in the code)

With free themes, you always have a theme that could look like someone else.

With Artisteer, you can make a unique design, limited only to your technical ability.

Best piece of software ever created for making WordPress Templates.

It can export as a WordPress Theme OR as an HTML page… but you need to choose what point you want to start from, WordPress or HTML. If you start with WordPress, the page it creates looks like a blog. if you start as HTML, then it looks like an HTML page

Does everyone in the WordPress world talk down to people who post on the forums? Seriously, I’ve never thought that would be the case here, but it unfortunately is here.

First point, open source or not, the community that is building it (be it a development team, a plug in author or an open source community) is responsible to a great degree for it’s own QA. The integration of plug ins, design and additional PHP authoring I do DOES get tested and it gets quite a bit before I hand it off to someome.

Second point, I give my customers what they want. If they say they want the ability to have pages and posts and all the other things I can put together within WordPress (or another CMS), then that is what they get. They are forewarned as to keeping their site up to date, etc. I certainly do offer them more than just WordPress, such as other CMS platforms, straight html and php or a host of other solutions. WordPress Multi-User isn’t the answer either.

While I know running a website is work (and thanks for the unbelievable lesson and waking me up to the real world), the clientele that comes thru any design or programming job has no idea as to what being a webmaster *is*. They have no concept of SEO, code, management or anything else… they just want a website they can change the content on and not have to pay a maintenance fee on. Easy enough, I give it to them and off they go, sometimes to be happy, sometimes not.

Again, I just suprised that other users in this forum take it upon themselves to be somewhat condescending in their attitidues, especially without having a grasp as to who I am, who my customer base is and just saying “you know, I can see your point… but have you thought of this?”

I’ll be sure to post to the forums only when I have a REAL problem.

Ok, look, here is the deal.

Sometimes, I manage a customers website. When I am the one doing it, I do all the updates, since my customer NEVER looks at the back end.

However, there are customers who like to think they are saavy and they are not. I build them a site they want with a custom design and get it running, get their content posted and then hand it off to them. They are well informed of the fact they are on an open source platform that gets upgraded often… along with plug ins that also get upgraded often.

That doesn’t change the fact that these ‘saavy users’ will send me an email that says “I’ve had to upgrade this code 4 times plus upgrade the XX number of plugins… why the hell do I have to keep doing this?”

That’s not *me* talking, that’s an end user.

For the clients I have that do have these complaints, I will be adding the plugins suggested and I will manage their sites on the backend of my dedicated server.

Regression cycles, QA cycles and release schedules are all dictated by development and marketing. Neither one leaves the appropriate amount of time for QA, ever. The whole idea of agile or scrum engineering makes me want to barf, since it’s always about getting code out fast. The problem with that is you leave yourself at risk for missing testing in the regression cycles, like the permalinks problem a few rleases ago… a simple feature that went belly up and it never should have.

I’ve done my share of QA work and set process in place for many startups. Every one will say “go fast” and every one winds up having to “slow down” because go fast = breaks eventually.

If it were mine to do, I’d remove the ‘visible’ upgrade notifications and put something on the dashboard that allows you to see the release history and the issues fixed by it.

The X.X.XX version is available, please upgrade now is cryptic at best. Same goes for plugins.

If a user can see a list of fixes and dependencies, they can then choose whether they are affected by those changes and make a decision as to if they should upgrade or not.

Updates where interfaces and functionality changes are implemented should be considered ‘upgrades’, they are new releases… and given the speed with which the fixes come ofter point releases and then the flood of plugin changes, many of us choose to not move right away, just to avoid more work just get get the current content and functionlaity working.

You know what, I give up.

The users here are obviously way smarter than me.

…’appreciate the importance of applying updates…’

Yeah, I’m a software QA guy by trade, and if you have to keep applying patches and fixes at the rate that WordPress does, then there’s something wrong with the QA process they have.

And, as someone who DOES appreciate the need for updates and bug fixes, that’s not my issue. WordPress is a tool that web programmers and designers use… and hand off to customers. Customers who are NOT as saavy as some of the people on this thread.

I’m not saying WordPress is BAD. I’m saying that there are things that could be done to help make it better and my post was out of frustration that after updating 20 some odd sites with new code, now I’ve got 2.7 update messages to deal with, and I’m not sure I want to MOVE to 2.7 just yet, given how fast updates come out with new point releases.

I want to stop updating sites and get some work done on NEW sites.

whoami

So, your answer is to say I need to listen to the violins because I’m voicing an opinion about my frustration with WordPress?

jdembowski
And you are saying that I need to plan, like updates to websites are a necessary evil?

Ok, so since neither of you guys know me from a hole in the wall, how about starting off with a little respect? Attacking someone making a point isn’t exactly the kind of forum etiquette I would expect from advanced WordPress users.

I happen to have 25+ sites all running on different flavors of WordPress, and 250+ sites total. My frustration is bourne on the fact that I can use another CMS and not see all the “update flags” all over my dashboard (which also means that my customers who are in the dashboard don’t see them either). And, if either one of you were in the real world of dealing with customers, you both know that the customer is what drives what I do… and some of them aren’t as saavy as you two (or me for that matter).

When a plain jane customer logs into a WordPress dashboard and sees that a new version of WordPress is out, especially the past 4 versions in 4 months… plus plug ins that are constantly being updated, well, they don’t see it as WordPress improving and getting better, they see it as an application that might not be stable, secure or a whole bunch of other terms and buzzwords they’ve picked up along the way.

So, take your shots at me, I’ve got thick skin, but do me a favor, try to realize that there are other people who aren’t the brilliant and enlightened WordPress zealots that you two are.

If you are using Captcha and have not set the Captcha settings under GLOBAL SETTINGS to check “show Captcha when logged in” or something like that… you won’t see the captcha image.

Ok, it is now working.

Perhaps I missed something or fat fingered something, but its now working as expected.

Thanks for the help.

I will try these tags again to see if I can get it to work

I’ve tried it with a couple of templates and it doesn’t work.

If I choose one page to be the ‘front’ page and then another page to be the ‘posts’ page, I can get the widget to work for the ‘front’ page using is_home() but nothing I do will get the widget logic to work for the ‘posts’ page

The design sorks with all the logic and pages and everything with the exception of the ‘posts’ page, so it’s not the design or the page template itself. if it were that, I would expect it to break other pages.

The permalinks are set to be /%postname%/

Hmmmm.

Much experimenting to do here.

But I am learning and appreciative of what you have told me.

Maybe I’ll make a blank template with blanks CSS all mocked up and sell it ??

Ok, for the sake of being argumentative (since it really is the only way I learn) ??

I have a blog I am working on… if I view the source for the page I have a couple of these

div class="post"

and

div class="entry"

So, are you saying that those two divs are something I put in? I’m pretty sure That’s WordPress, not me.

Granted, it’s all structure, but at some point, WordPress creates some of that stuff, like ‘comment’, ‘post’, ‘content’ correct?

I know enough to be dangerous and modify themes and have embarked on doing one of my own…. but am eager to learn more more more….

And thanks for the help. I know it can be painful to watch guys like me struggle with this stuff. I know I get made when I am doing QA (my real job) and I have to go tell a developer to stop making the same damn mistakes ??

whoami,

Thanks for the advice. I was going in that direction as well, using Firefox etc.

Granted, the theme authors stick a bunch of junk in the CSS to amke it all nice and cool… but that doesn’t change the fact that I can’t find, anywhere, a ‘list’ of the elements that WordPress uses.

I guess if I had that, that would be a good start. Maybe it is overkill, but I am trying to do some funky things with the designs I am coming up with, multiple sidebars, etc and I guess I like the pain ??