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Why was "The Journalist" template changed?

  1. openanthropology
    Member

    I used The Journalist by Lucian Marin for my blog. Suddenly, tonight, it changed, and not for the better. The blog is centered in the page, grey shadows added that ruin the minimalist design, a silly little balloon added to the top right of the page with the subtitle of the blog, the font is awful and big, and then for some bad reason right under the title of each post without comments it says: WITHOUT COMMENTS as if that were somehow the really significant point about the whole post.

    I am protesting this, it is a very bad change and should be reverted to what it was before. as quickly as possible.

  2. thesacredpath
    Staff

    I just checked in my test blog, and you are right. It has changed pretty drastically.

    I'll modlook this so hopefully staff will drop by and give a a clue.

  3. thesacredpath
    Staff

    It looks like it has been updated to the latest version by the theme designer: http://lucianmarin.com/page/themes/

  4. thesacredpath
    Staff

    The explanation is on the wordpress.com blog: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/the-journalist-revised/

  5. openanthropology
    Member

    Thanks very much, sorry I missed it there.

  6. thesacredpath
    Staff

    I hadn't seen it either. Sometimes posts to the wordpress blog run a little behind.

  7. jamesobrien
    Member

    Much improved, IMHO. I used to use it ages ago, but then went looking for something that was still simple, but with a little more style. And now with the changes, I'm back...

  8. patrickobrien
    Member

    Not improved, IMHO

    These changes -- including the black balloon, an intrusive WITHOUT COMMENT signage, extraneous shading, unnecessary format changes, loss of code and others -- have appealed to some users judging by the previous comment and those on the WordPress Blog (thank you for the link, sacredpath)

    No doubt, with time, I could get used to these changes (maybe even grow to like them) ... but the introduction of a default sans-serif font is the kicker

    "Disappointed" is the best word I can think of to describe my feelings

  9. upteniq
    Member

    Lamentable !

  10. jtur001
    Member

    The comments to the post about the new redesign don't seem to be updating, which leads me to think that changes are still being made to it.

    One essential change I expect to see...nay DEMAND...is that the old limits for picture sizes are restored, instead of being reduced as they are at the moment. The reduction has meant that my pictures are too big and have pushed my sidebar to the bottom of my page, and if the new limits are maintained then I'll have to manually readjust hundreds of photos to fix it! Can you imagine the work involved?

    Needless to say, you absolutely can't have a theme offering pictures 720 pixels across and then suddenly reduce those limits in a new verison of the theme. What are I and thousands of users who like me that chose the theme for the large photo sizes supposed to do? It's not like there's many other themes offering 720 pixels around.

    Now I love WordPress, and but for this small pronblem I like the changes to the theme too, but if the old size limits aren't fixed then I really will have no choice to move over to WordPress.org...it would take much less time to arrange!

  11. jtur001
    Member

    Hmmm...taking a closer look, individual posts seem to be okay regardless of the image sizes; it's on the main blogpage itself that the sidebar is pushed to the bottom. Yay! I imagine that WordPress is working on it then?

    Thanks to them in advance!

  12. schmid
    Member

    The new Journalist is clearly worse. I used the old version from the moment it was introduced because it was clear, clean, simple, discreet. Most of these qualities are lost in the new version. It looks amateurish now, that awful bubble thing is childish. I went back to WordPress Classic that I used before there was The Journalist. I'd very much prefer The Journalist (the old version) though because WordPress Classic isn't perfect either. One thing I don't like there is that capital letters in the titles of pages are automatically turned into lower case letters. What is this supposed to be good for? I am a grown up person with a good knowledge of language and I'd like to decide myself when and where I use captitals and when and where I don't. Back to the topic: The new version of The Journalist is rather useless for the reasons mentioned in other comments and I would really really like to get the old one back. PLEASE! Are you listening, WP designers?

  13. yammering
    Member

    I posted a reply earlier which also lamented the changes, but my reply has now been inexplicably deleted. The change of content font is especially unfortunate, completely changing the look and feel of the theme. I agree - it now looks amateurish and cheap.

    So why was it changed? What was it that people didn't like or were unhappy with?

    Are the changes an attempt to deliver things that users of this theme were actually asking for? (Not that I recall being consulted about them, of course!)

    Why were the changes made?

  14. openanthropology
    Member

    I think the adoption was hasty and that bloggers should have been allowed a choice, especially if we are the ones using these themes. This is what posting a single comment on a post does, and it appears in large print right beneath the title:

    "leave a comment »with one commentwith % comments"

    That it does that and no one noticed before suggests it was not even properly tested. Yes, amateurish for certain

    The format is no longer clean, simple, minimalist, and professional looking. If WordPress cared at all, it would revert the template to what it was before. You would think they actually would take note instead of just imperiously making changes and staying silent in face of the criticisms.

  15. vivianpaige
    Member

    Had this theme been updated back when it was first available (shortly after the original was introduced), I would have loved it. As it is, they should have put up a second version of the theme (like they did with Sandbox) instead of replacing the old version.

  16. justjennifer
    Member

    I use The Journalist for my photoblog Random Acts of Photography because the theme offers one of the largest image sizes available on wordpress.com themes. The revision? Two words, hate it.

    Even though the resizing problem with Gallery images has been resolved (thank you Sheri), single images still break out of the center DIV.

    Three words, just hate it.

  17. openanthropology
    Member

    Good news everyone! The old version is now also available, and I switched back. Go to Design>Templates and you will see two versions of The Journalist side by side, the older one being v 1.3.

    I am very happy that they listened to us, it is rare to get such a response in non-blog world.

  18. justjennifer
    Member

    Thank you WordPress.COM for listening to your users!

    Just two words, HAPPY, HAPPY!

  19. patrickobrien
    Member

    Thank you, WordPress.com ... *most* impressive!

    :)

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