Lest I come across as grousing about change, let me say that the new look is really nice.
There seems to be a technical glitch. Below the banners in the first box on the top left, the latest article appears. However, there are apparently two floating boxes (CSS maybe?) one of which says "Breaking Story" and the other the title of the post. The problem is that they float over the text in the box--the "Breaking Story" banner obscures the title and date of the post, and the title banner covers the left half of the first four lines of text.
I'm using Netscape 7.2, which is the last version that contains the full package (including the all-important e-mail client); I have the NS 9 update, but I installed things in the wrong order, and anyway I prefer the way the tabs and things work in 7 (that's me disliking it when software developers change the shortcuts I use to something else). Also, it may have to do with my screen resolution, which is 800x600 so some information is pushed off the right edge (my eyes are not good enough to make smaller resolution practical, even with the glasses). The Comments banner also seems to be floating, but it seems to have landed in almost the right place and isn't obscuring anything.
I like the layout of newest, new, previous. However, I notice that the second category--right now containing the most recent blog other than the one just posted today and most recent review below it--does not have the comments links below them.
That's the next point of interest. I'd gotten accustomed to checking the front page for most recent comments, not merely to nail the Spam but also to go directly to the articles with new comments. That seems to be missing from the front page now, and I'm not sure where (if anywhere) to find it. To get to the comments, I actually had to
- Open the comments section of the account/posting system to see all recent comments;
- Click on the article name beneath the comment, which took me to the post edit page;
- Click on View This Post to get to the post itself, and page down to the comments.
Also, I had recently discovered and found quite useful the index by months that ran down the right edge (off my screen when I didn't go to it) of the front page. I'm hoping that that's still somewhere, as I've not explored too far yet. It made updating and locating old articles much simpler.
Anyway, those are my first observations, and I thought I'd let you know. As I say, it looks quite good.
--M. J. Young
Note: found the catalog by months in the Archives link. Thanks for that.
--M. J. Young
I think the problem with the display of the first/featured article might have something to do with the layouts expecting a picture there. Take a look at the designer's sample of the theme (http://livewire2.premiumnewstheme.com/) to see what I mean. If that's the case, I can fix it just by sticking in a default picture or messing with the setup a little bit. I'll get that taken care of.
On the recent comments, I'd thought they were there on the front, but I guess not. I'll get those in there, probably replacing one of the tabs in the box on the right (the one under the ad, that currently has Latest News/Most Read/Most Commented).
This theme is pretty easy to customize -- which is why I got it for the site, since it does 90% of what I want out of box and the rest is simple to add/fix. So I'll try to jump in there this week and see about all these remaining issues.