Cutline to Coraline FAQs
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A couple of ideas to avoid a repeat performance:
1. If a theme is being pulled, blog the fact a month in advance and disable it for new users. Why were newbies still being allowed to select Cutline when you already knew it was going? Setting up a blog is confusing enough without your theme choice being changed behind the scenes. Launch the replacement and encourage people to switch to it before it is switched for them. They will still complain, but at least they will have some time to get used to the new order. I’m aware that you were under some pressure to get rid of Cutline as quickly as possible, but that’s no excuse for failing to keep end users informed.
2. Two weeks before the deadline, send out an email to remaining users reminding them that their theme will be discontinued in a week and the replacement enabled at that time.
3. Be absolutely clear about which themes are in the firing line. The reasons given for pulling Cutline seem to have given some people the impression that ANY older theme might be at risk. Even if they don’t have custom CSS, people do invest a lot of time in customising their theme and learning to work around its quirks. Don’t allow them to get attached to something you’re already planning to scrap.
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[obviously I meant ‘discontinued in two weeks’. That will teach me not to proofread before clicking submit]
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@wank’s ideas are very good.
WordPress hasn’t been insensitive to users before so I hope, and believe until shown different, that this is a one-time error not a new trend.
Support has been down now since yesterday, when I discovered this radical change in my blog appearance and assumed it was some sort of breakdown. Perhaps all the support people are trying to clean up the mess. I even put a “Temporary appearance problem” post on my blog because I did not want people to think I chose this look, and did not feel it was a good idea to monkey with this new theme thinking it would get changed back any minute.
I have been trying out the Typekit free option to change that wretchedly ugly sans serif font in Coraline and it is mostly working. Seems to respond quickly to user problems.
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Lance, my blockquote problem appears to have been fixed. You guys are amazing! Thanks for your help. Coraline is a great replacement for Cutline.
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I certainly second everything Wank says, and many other comments as well. Many of us thought we had been hacked – – in a sense we had been.
The way this change was made, and the silly excuses (not quite explanations) plus lack of support all suggest one thing: no grownups on board there. Seems there was no thoughtful discussion of this process. Too bad; feels like you’re playing in the big leagues with limited resources and with customer service as a low priority.
I have been very happy with WordPress and recommended it widely. I hope this screwup is taken as an opportunity to rethink and revamp the relevant aspects of user friendliness.
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Thanks for the response. I’m sure I’ll become accustomed to Coraline in time and perhaps I will discovery the fancy new features. In the meantime, I see you’ve addressed my tag cloud problem, for which I am grateful. Really, you guys are quite responsive and having this all for free is very amazing.
Perhaps this is all just a reminder of how important communication really is. As a community of bloggers, we can all try and remember that.
Thanks again.
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It’s totally unacceptable to make a major change without due notice. And I’m spending precious time I don’t transfering my widgets that didn’t show up on Coraline.
I expect better from WordPress.
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Staff appear to be working diligently to fix problems. In retrospect, there should have been some warning that the change was coming. But they did post a sticky in advance, alerting CSS users that their codes would need changing.
As for the rest of us, the new theme is so similar to Cutline in appearance (header, font, default background, default sidebar) that they probably assumed the changeover would go smoothly. Despite the anguish of a few in the support forums, I suspect it has been smooth for most Cutline users. Some had their widgets moved to an inactive area — an unanticipated inconvenience that disturbed some users, but the widgets seem mostly seem to have been salvageable just by moving them back to the sidebar.
Things look and function so much like the old theme that none of my readers has even commented on the change, so I can understand why staff may have thought that the changeover wouldn’t be a big deal. There must be many thousands of former Cutline users, and my guess is that for almost all of them things have worked out fine. Actually, if Coraline had merely been announced as another new theme, I probably would have switched to it anyway. I’ve got no complaints.
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I belong to the minority of users who believe Coraline is actually an improvement over Cutline. In terms of design, however, I am disappointed by the look of the tags at the bottom of each post. Their typeface is almost larger than the actual main body of the post, and they appear to be formed in some sort of column (?). Which is fine, unless you use plenty of tags in posts. If you do that, they tend to form an endless slim column that detracts from the general layout of the blog. Could this possibly be fixed, by making the tags’ typeface smaller and their appearance more discreet?
Having said the above, I do belong to the majority of users who are appalled by the way the abrupt change from Cutline to Coraline was administered by WP. Although I am not one of them, there are numerous users who depend on their WP blogs for their livelihood. For these people, WP’s handling of this change can only be described as extremely insensitive. Please include this in your “how not to do this in the future” list. If you don’t, I think there may not be much of a future for WP. Thanks.
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Thanks, I like Coraline; I agree with comments about the size of the tags–too big. My issue: the theme examples show a byline to the right of the “posted” date just under the post title, and mine had one when I changed themes to coraline from Cutline–but the byline has disappeared (although the “posted” date remains) and I can’t figure out what happened or how to get it back. Ideas?
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Hi, I was caught by surprise as well…mostly pleasantly, as I like the appearance better in general; however, it took me an hour or more to locate and restructure my widgets. And I’ve spent another 30 minutes trying to figure out how to delete the subtitle which wasn’t displayed before and isn’t really appropriate as is.
I went to the header/theme under appearance, but I cannot figure out how to edit the text in the header. Please help me with this. Thanks.
Venita Ramirez
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I used Cutline and don’t like Coraline. Doing what WordPress did was completely unacceptable.
Sadly blogging here has now become a lot less enjoyable, and seemingly far more uncertain. -
While you say it wasn’t your intention to take people by surprise, how could that not be your intention if you changed things without warning? I didn’t have any time to fool around with the blog and won’t until maybe this evening, meanwhile, it looks like crap, my widgets are gone, except for some wierd one I don’t even know I had. Doing this without a warning to those using Cutline was bad behavior. I’ve been very happy with WordPress up until now, but this is really unacceptable business practice.
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I want to clarify that my widgets are gone, as in not visible in any of the suggested spots.
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I have already left: switched my blog to a self-hosted ,org version on http://www.speedlighter.ca now. The only problem: there, I cannot find any good themes either – even fewer than on .com. Any suggestions?
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am still customizing Coraline after the obligatory shift from Cutline. I Haven’t figured out how to delete all the page links that appeared below the banner, I’d like just 3 of mine there, any suggestions please?
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@pryan12 The byline has since been removed to make the post details a little more familiar to former Cutline users. If you’re using Custom CSS you can make it return by adding the following to your custom styles.
.byline { display:inline; position:static; }@venitaramirez You can edit your blog’s tagline by navigating to Settings → General from your dashboard.
@mlegan I’ve sent you an email so we can take a closer look at your blog.
@mvwphoto I recommend the WordPress Themes Directory for WordPress.org themes.
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@vajradaka The Coraline menu is fully customizable with our new menu editor. I hope that helps!
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@ mvwphoto: if you Google ‘cutline theme’ then you should be able to find a download location (I won’t paste the link here in deference to Automattic policy of not promoting its use, even though the theme itself is now GPL.)
In spite of some of the misinformation going around, Cutline is still being maintained, so there are going to be some differences between the latest version and the one you were using, but it’s worth checking out if you were really keen on it.
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@themeshaper now how about fixing the left justification of custom header pictures? Why is header title centered but picture left justified? Come on, it looks terrible and you did it to me.
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