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Cutline to Coraline FAQs

  1. lance
    Theme Wrangler

    Thanks to everyone for your feedback on Coraline. We understand that this change took some of you by surprise, and that was not our intention. We know that you care deeply about your sites, and we worked hard to make sure this transition went as smoothly as possible.

    Here are responses to your most common questions since the change yesterday.

    Where did Cutline go?
    Cutline is now replaced with Coraline, an improved version of the theme. It has a similar visual design, and adds many new features. Read the announcement for more details: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/new-theme-coraline/.

    The state of the art in themes has advanced quite a bit since then, and we’re excited about seeing all the cool things you'll do on your sites with Coraline's updated features.

    Is Cutline going away completely?
    Yes, it is replaced by Coraline for all sites previously using Cutline.

    Where did my Widgets go?

    Update: (08/19/10 01:30 UTC) We've now finished restoring missing widgets to the affected sites.

    Most Cutline sites were moved to Coraline with widgets and theme modifications intact. If you don't see your widgets, they might be in Appearance > Widgets under "Inactive Widgets" below "Available Widgets" – you might have to scroll down to see it.

    Where did my header image go?
    Coraline allows you to upload a custom image (just like Cutline). If you'd previously uploaded a custom image, that header image should still be intact. If you'd like to use the default Cutline image (the one picturing a city street), you can download it here and upload it as a custom image via Appearance > Header.

    Can you help with my Custom CSS?
    We're happy to help you transition your Custom CSS from Cutline to Coraline. Please see these instructions for updating your Custom CSS to work with Coraline. Let us know if you run into any problems and we'll lend a hand.

    Update (08/10/2010 03:15 GMT): It looks like more sites were affected by dropped widgets than we thought. We're very sorry for the confusion and trouble this caused.

    Our goal was not to alarm you or make you think we don't care — we do care. Making themes better for WordPress.com is what we do. And, we hear you loud and clear that next time something like this comes up we should do a lot better at notifying everyone well beforehand.

    Update (08/12/10 17:00 UTC) We’re working on restoring all your missing widgets. We'll update this thread when we’re finished restoring widgets to all sites.

    Update (08/13/10 03:00 UTC) The backups are still running, but it's a very slow process unfortunately. If you are still missing widgets, please let us know—we can check your site for you and get your widgets back sooner rather than later.

    Update: (08/19/10 01:30 UTC) We've now finished restoring missing widgets to the affected sites.

  2. maureenholland
    Member

    Trouble dragging widgets to restore. Ideas?

  3. julieshapiro
    Member

    I'm not sure if you want feedback here, but I thought I'd offer some. If it's not appropriate I imagine it won't show up.

    I am among the many who were taken by surprise. Although it may seem like water under the bridge, I would find it helpful if you would describe the actions to you took to notify people of the impending change. I have seen (after the fact) the sticky post about CSS users and Cutline, but even if I had see it before, this would not have alerted me. I'm not a CSS user, and as someone else said elsewhere, I don't have the technical sophistication to understand the import of the message.

    I would find it helpful if someone would take responsiblity for not having managed the communication well. I don't mean that an individual identified, but it's remarkable to me how much difference it makes if someone says--even after the fact--something like "though we tried, we see now that we didn't do enough." If nothing else, this reassures people like me that it won't happen exactly this way again. As it is, you are making it seem as though you do not understand why so many people were caught unprepared. (It really would have made a big difference to have notice so that one could save screen shots, settings, etc.)

    Finally, perhaps you should stop insisting that Coraline is an improvement on Cutline. Obviously people have different opinions about this and your insistence that it is better makes me (and I'll be others) feel like you are not paying attention to what we are saying. I'm particularly unhappy about the appearance of the tag cloud, which has so much wasted space compared to the tag cloud from Cutline or, say, from the WordPress blog. Is there a chance this might be fixed or is this a stylistic choice?

  4. maureenholland
    Member

    Yikes. Trying to edit already published posts. The only way I've been able to do it is to use a pull down to get to post list and click edit in there. Is there a more direct way?

  5. maureenholland
    Member

    While restoring old widgets is still problematic for me, I managed to get the calendar up and it's HUGE. Much too big, had to put it in footer area, but no one is going to know it's there. Any way to edit it - as julie above said - too much wasted space.

    I like as many widgets as possible to be visible on first page view or at least within first PAGE DOWN.

    Ah well . . .

  6. blindcavefish
    Member

    I have Cutline installed on this site: http://www.newsite.pesconsult.com/

    I want to upgrade to Coraline, but can't seem to find it anywhere! Where can I activate and/or download it? It's not coming up in search.

  7. rpregulman
    Member

    I'm having the same problem as blindcavefish. Coraline is nowhere to be found on the wordpress.com site. It won't come up in a search, and it's not listed on the newest site page. How do we find it?????

  8. islandeat
    Member

    Now I'm happy with Coraline, having learned why all my widgets had "disappeared".

    My question is how can I edit or remove the tagline above my banner? I can't find this tagline anywhere on my profile (though I do know I created it when I first started this blog), and the option to not display text on the homepage prevents my blog name from being in its prominent spot. If I could resolve this, I will be happier! Thanks.

  9. anushayspoint
    Member

    I wholeheartedly and completely agree with you, Julie Shapiro. I was so taken by surprise and shock. This upcoming change should have been clearly communicated with users. I was writing a post and once it was published, noticed that my blog no longer looked like my blog! This kind of abrupt changes is not okay without clear and advance notice to alert all bloggers. I am really disappointed and unhappy with wordpress.com

  10. peddlarofdreams
    Member

    Try looking under Settings ---> General :)

  11. sensuouscurmudgeon
    Member

    I posted this in one of the earlier threads, but I think it got lost in the deluge. Only staff can handle this, and I fear it may apply only to me. I've got a problem with the quirky behavior of Coraline blockquotes

    Coraline automatically puts block--quoted text in italics, as did Cutline which I used to use. To avoid the italics, I always "normalize" the text within blockquote codes like this:

    <blockquote><span style="font-style:normal;">TEXT</span></blockquote>

    Although I "normalize" blockquoted material, in Cutline I've always been able to italicize some words within blockquotes by using the "em" codes. The problem is that this doesn't work in Coraline. To get around this glitch in Coraline within blockquoted text, I've tried shutting off the "normalization" code just before using the "em" codes, and then turning it on again, like this:

    normal text </span><em>ITALIC TEXT</em><span style="font-style:normal;"> normal text

    But that doesn't work. However, this clumsy solution does work in Coraline (we're still talking about text within "normalized" blockquotes):

    normal text </span><span style="font-style:italic;">ITALIC TEXT</span><span style="font-style:normal;"> normal text

    The remaining problem is with old posts that were done while using Cutline. Lots of them have some italicized words within a blockquote. At this point it's impossible to go back to find and fix those things. So unless Coraline can be tweaked to have its blockquote feature work as it did in Cutline, I'll be stuck with this problem in older posts. Can this be fixed?

  12. matthiasprospero
    Member

    I keep trying to change it to the darker theme, without success. I'm following the process outlined on the front, but it's still not working. Any help would be greatly appreciated...

  13. moominkarma
    Member

    I am very fed up - I can't make my old widgets work despite following the instructions and some info is just lost.

    As others have said, we should have been told in advance - and much more help now needs to be available to sort this mess out.

  14. iheartthebard
    Member

    Hi there, how do you change the size of the tags below? They seem much larger on the new version than they were before.

    Thank you!

  15. annsullivangallery
    Member

    All is well now, but was a little freaked out at first. Would like to request that in the future to please send an email to all users of the theme when you are going to change.
    Thank you for free WordPress. It is still the best free auto blogging framework out there!
    Thanks!

  16. artandhistory
    Member

    With Coraline Front Page becomes Home, sidebars disappear, text color becomes grey and an edit line appears under each post. Can anyone reading my blog see that edit line and use it?!

    How do I get all my widgets and sidebars back?

    I am not at all cyber-savvy and find this really distressing because I fear I will lose things I can't get back. Couldn't figure out what was "wrong" and thought blog was in peril.

  17. themeshaper
    Staff

    While most Cutline users had all their settings transferred over seamlessly a number of you had their widgets deactivated in the switch and moved to the Inactive Widget pane just below the Available Widgets in Appearance > Widgets (you'll have to scroll down to see it). We're really sorry about this interruption in your blogging. All the settings should still be intact but if you have any issues getting your widgets back into your sidebar please let us know about it and we'll do what we can to get things sorted out for you.

    If you notice any theme wonkiness of any sort with Coraline—including styling issues—let us know about that too and we'll get Coraline updated as soon as we can.

  18. ladylubyanka
    Member

    I also agree with julieshapiro. What she said. And what anushayspoint said, and what annsullivangallery said.

    If you guys can change our themes out from under us without notice and then announce it after the fact, I'm sure an announcement could equally well be made prior to the change.

    I love wordpress.com and I agree it's one of the best (if not the best) free blogging platforms available. So I thank you for that. I really do appreciate you and your work, truly.

    I just think that making what feels to me like arbitrary changes to my own blog without me and only advising us afterwards was unnecessarily harsh, when it's just as easy to alert us beforehand the same way - with a public announcement.

    Please consider announcing future changes like these beforehand? Thank you.

  19. ladylubyanka
    Member

    Oh, wonkiness feedback - on the image pages, clicking on an (unattached) image results in another (unrelated, possibly random, sometimes attached, sometimes previous, sometimes later) image page instead of the image alone, is there a reason for this?

  20. rastewart
    Member

    Disclaimer again (as I mentioned on another thread): I didn't used Cutline. I use PressRow and understand that is doomed, so I'm concerned. But really I'd be concerned no matter what theme I was using.

    Seconding what ladylubyanka said two comments up. I really like WordPress. I can set up extremely good-looking blogs, there's a lot more functionality than I'll ever have the technical chops to exploit, and I like the community of users and the fact that staff are so responsive on the Forum. It's amazing that all this is free, when I think about it. But that just makes the lack of advance notice that much more bewildering. Letting people know what's afoot (and by "people" I mean everybody, not just Custom CSS users) is just simple courtesy, and it's really out of character for WordPress not to treat us with that courtesy.

  21. rastewart
    Member

    Ahem, "didn't use," not "didn't used."

  22. bchurly
    Member

    I wish theme-users could have been notified of the change. I logged in after several days away, and could not figure out why everything was changed. No menus, no headlines, i had to re-do my whole site - widget wise. What a pain! Still haven't found my picasa widget...

    Anyways my BIGGEST problem is it seems ALL my news posts from pre-extisting are now showing up as "asides" - ie. there is no headline on them in the blog, and I cannot click on them to go to the main post. How do I get them back to "regular" post status?? I can't even find this "aside" option you're talking about, even though all my posts seem to be transferred this way... HELP!

  23. deannaadams
    Member

    A surprise indeed. I LOVED my previous picture! I want it back! To be truthful, it was the sole reason I switched to this blog because I love the picture so much of the person walking out into the fields. Beautiful - and exactly how I wanted readers to feel when they entered my blog.
    VERY disappointed that I have no control over this!

    You really should have informed us first, then, if we couldn't have what we wanted on our own blogs, we at least should've had more options. It's just not right to do this to customers without anyone's approval. Where's my beautiful picture? And where can I go to see it again?

  24. deadstein
    Member

    I was shocked and disappointed by the change but I take what I get for nothing and none of my blogs, and more importantly, their look are too important when compared to the hopeful improvements in the new theme. I now have a good deal of work ahead of me to fix 5 or 6 of my blogs that I wasn't anticipating doing. If design was very important to me I would be very upset about this change. In and of itself, this change throws a great blow to the confidence I have in WordPress, especially using it for any commercial use or recommending it to anyone.

  25. wadekwon
    Member

    Add me to the list seconding Julie Shapiro's thoughtful suggestions.

    I'm a paying customer for WordPress.com. I don't know if that puts me in the majority or the minority, but that gives me some say in customer relations. (Often, the excuse is, "What can you expect if you're getting a product/service for free?")

    I'm disgusted by how WP.com cavalierly mishandled this. Some of us are using these sites for business, not just for fun. When you don't have the courtesy to notify us in advance, you damage your reputation. As Julie said, at the very least, own up to your mistake.

    It's a bad day when a company that prides itself on open source tries to "spin" a story, and that this is a misguided attempt to punish someone over GPL issues. Hey, I happened to pick Cutline for my theme. Why am I being punished, too?

  26. lance
    Theme Wrangler

    Thanks everyone for feedback and bug reports. Below are responses:

    @julieshapiro – Feedback is always welcome. We will try out best to make sure this type of situation never happens again. It's not fair to you to be taken by surprise, and not fun for anyone. Regarding the tag cloud, we'll take a look and see if we can improve the display.

    @maureenholland We'll take a look at the calendar, too.

    @sensuouscurmudgeon Can you paste a link to two examples of the blockquotes: 1) new post, and 2) old post. We'll do our best to fix it.

    @matthiasprospero Did you figure it out? The option is in Appearance > Theme Options. You might have to do a hard refresh in your browser afterward to the changes (CTRL-R in Windows, CMD-R on a Mac or Click-Refresh).

    @artandhistory No, only a logged-in use with "administrator" or "editor" role on your site will see the Edit link. See the FAQs above for the widget issue.

    @ladylubyanka The image navigation is intentional, yes. It should take you to the next image in the gallery (or next image attached to the post).

    @bchurly That sounds like a bug. Coraline uses post in a certain category to display as "Asides", but you'd have to choose the category from Theme Option before it'd be set for you.

    @blindcavefish and @rpregulman – Coraline is available for WordPress.com sites under Appearance > Themes. If you have a self-hosted site running WordPress you can get it soon, we're planning on releasing it to the WordPress.org Theme Directory soon).

    @deannaadams You are using the Twenty Ten theme, not Coraline. To switch back to your previous image, go to Appearance > Themes and click Header. Choose the image you would like from that menu, and save the changes.

  27. mvwphoto
    Member

    What wadekwon said.

    It is incredible that my blog was butchered over some infantile fight over whatever licensing. Not my fault. Not my problem.

    Well, it IS my problem now: a giant one. Spent the entire day moving the blog elsewhere, but of course that now has no good themes either. Or traffic measurement (I live by it),. I guess another week wrestling with plugins.

    Disgusting. Unacceptable. WordPress have shown themselves to be totally, completely unready for the real world; a world were people understand business. Keep commitments. Tell the truth. Help their customers. That sort of thing.

    The "we did this because themes have come a long way" and "we told you" do not fly. You did this because of a hissy fit fight over a stupid license. And you did NOT tell me. Check my email inbox: nothing at all from WordPress.

    Well, I for one am leaving, and I suspect many others will do the same.

    WordPress had the chance to be another Facebook, but boy, did they ever screw that up. No way now.

    Do I sound angy? You BET. I just wasted a whole day, and am about to waste a week more I should thing. During that week I earn no money. Yes: I have to work for a living, unlike the spoiled brats at their offsite. And when I am wrestling with my blog, I am not earning a penny.

    Thanks.

  28. wpkarl7777
    Member

    "Cutline launched four years ago and the time has come to replace it."

    That makes no sense to me. Why couldn't you just add Coraline as an option and leave Cutline as it was?

    My right-column links are no longer being displayed. And I'm confused about how to get them back.

    I am hoping that this will be explained to us over the next few days.

  29. qmackie
    Member

    I too am very angry about this high-handed move and wondering when I will have time to make all the tweaks to get my blog looking the way I want it, not the way wordpress has decided it should look. Very very bad move.

  30. artandhistory
    Member

    Widgets and links are gone and following your instructions does not seem to work.
    Also, I still get an edit line under each post. What is this and is it visible/useable to viewers?

    Thanks

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