Feedback for the WP team from a brand new user
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Dear WordPress,
Please send this to your product development team. I have just learned how to use the free version of WP to put together a website for a local non-profit. This is one of the WORST online experiences of my life because your set-up is so user UNfriendly and BUGGY. Here is a list of my complaints:
1. Can’t change widget image: Upload a new image, replace the old image URL with this one, save, refresh and it doesn’t show up. The old one remains there. Add it as a new image widget and it doesn’t show up. The only way around it was to DELETE all the existing widgets and start fresh.
2. Can’t hide widget image – I set it to hide it if it was on the Join Us! Page and no effect. Absolutely asinine you can’t control it right from the edit page screen.
3. Featured image won’t work to change the header image for pages: turns out it’s not an available feature on my template. So why the hell doesn’t it say so when you try and turn it on?
4. Randomized header images: every time you upload a new image it makes that the default image and you have to notice and turn on randomize again.
5. Can’t turn off search box in my template.
6. 2nd image placement difficult on a page: I aligned it right and it was stuck to the left of the current image. Kept having to click enter to move it down and hard to control the gap.
7. Can’t get rid of a space between two lines. And one time it just showed up after I removed and re-inserted a photo. Have to copy and paste it into Outlook note to remove formatting, then re-paste it into WP editor.
8. Photos get copied along with text: Copied new text into the editor on a page but lost the two images I had in there. Now I have to re-insert them and fiddle with spacing. I should be able to replace just the text.
9. Can’t drag photos around: ridiculous that I cannot drag photos up or down a little bit. I have to REMOVE them, then re-insert to see how they look.
10. Hard to get photos lined up on the right side: the first photo blocks the 2nd from being right justified. Have to keep removing it and re-inserting it. totally idiotic.
11. Two GUIs confusing – light blue, and then another one with black down the side. Why not just one?
12. Hard to find where to change menu order – why the hell not just have it in the same place where all the pages are shown for editing?
13. Difficult to change the page order UNLESS you know to click two boxes at the bottom. Why not have some message saying that?
14. Deleting images in Library: you click delete and nothing happens. You click the next button and eventually see your photos did not delete. You keep going round and round in circles as you advance through your photos, some delete and others don’t. Then in the Library view you cannot even see the whole photos to know which ones you want to delete.
15. Can’t crop a photo: opened a photo in my library to edit it and the crop button was shaded out so I could not click on it.Every time I turned around something else was acting up and giving me problems.
I hope you can make improvements so WP is no so frustrating.
thanks!
Robert
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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I read your issues and I think these two are browser related issues.
14. Deleting images in Library: you click delete and nothing happens. You click the next button and eventually see your photos did not delete. You keep going round and round in circles as you advance through your photos, some delete and others don’t. Then in the Library view you cannot even see the whole photos to know which ones you want to delete.
15. Can’t crop a photo: opened a photo in my library to edit it and the crop button was shaded out so I could not click on it.
Please post these:
(a) Exactly what kind of device you are using to connect to the internet and to WordPress.com.(b) Exactly which browser (and version of it) you’re using by checking here if necessary http://supportdetails.com/
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Thanks for your reply timethief. I am using a Toshiba laptop purchased in 2011, Windows7 &, and Firefox Version 38.0 browser. I managed to complete the website and am happy with the outcome, but it was hell getting to that point. I am an experienced online technology user, so it’s not a result of me being a newbie or anything like that. Thanks for any suggestions you have as to what caused my grief.
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Thanks for the details. Staff will respond when they work their way forward to this thread.
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Hi Robert!
I’m going to try to address all of the issues here in this response. I’ll leave the numbering the same so we can reference the issues together.
1. Can’t change widget image: Upload a new image, replace the old image URL with this one, save, refresh and it doesn’t show up. The old one remains there. Add it as a new image widget and it doesn’t show up. The only way around it was to DELETE all the existing widgets and start fresh.
I just gave this a try on my side, and it appeared to work correctly. It looks like you have an image widget in your Sidebar: Pages (Right) area now. Could you try changing the image URL again to another image in your Media Library to give this a second shot?
2. Can’t hide widget image – I set it to hide it if it was on the Join Us! Page and no effect. Absolutely asinine you can’t control it right from the edit page screen.
The “Book Us” widget doesn’t appear to be showing up on this page:
https://acappellaquinte.wordpress.com/join-us/
It looks like this is working correctly now?
3. Featured image won’t work to change the header image for pages: turns out it’s not an available feature on my template. So why the hell doesn’t it say so when you try and turn it on?
You’re correct in that the featured image for the page does not replace the header. However, it still allows you to dictate what image would be shared alongside the page if you share it on social media sites though (like Facebook)!
4. Randomized header images: every time you upload a new image it makes that the default image and you have to notice and turn on randomize again.
Correct – that’s a good piece of feedback! Perhaps it should just stick on the randomize option when you’re uploading new photos. When you upload a new header image, it just assumes you’re going to use that header image instead. I’ll pass this bit of feedback along and see if there’s a way we can improve on this experience.
5. Can’t turn off search box in my template.
Correct – this is a feature of the theme. You would need to use custom CSS to hide it. If you’d like to go that route, please let me know!
6. 2nd image placement difficult on a page: I aligned it right and it was stuck to the left of the current image. Kept having to click enter to move it down and hard to control the gap.
Could you point me to where this is happening (just copy and paste the link) so I can take a look?
7. Can’t get rid of a space between two lines. And one time it just showed up after I removed and re-inserted a photo. Have to copy and paste it into Outlook note to remove formatting, then re-paste it into WP editor.
Whenever this happens, I find it helpful to click over to the Text Editor:
That allows you to take a look at the HTML code that’s creating the page so you can make adjustments that way. If this happens again, please send over the URL to the post or page so I can take a look!
8. Photos get copied along with text: Copied new text into the editor on a page but lost the two images I had in there. Now I have to re-insert them and fiddle with spacing. I should be able to replace just the text.
I’m not quite sure I understand here. The issue is that photos are not getting copied over when you copy and paste from elsewhere. Is that correct?
9. Can’t drag photos around: ridiculous that I cannot drag photos up or down a little bit. I have to REMOVE them, then re-insert to see how they look.
You can actually drag and drop photos within the text. Here’s a screen video of how that function should be working. Note: You won’t be able to change the alignment (left to right aligned for example, just the vertical positioning):
10. Hard to get photos lined up on the right side: the first photo blocks the 2nd from being right justified. Have to keep removing it and re-inserting it. totally idiotic.
Can you point me to the page/post where this is happening? I’d like to see this in action so I can figure out what might be going wrong.
11. Two GUIs confusing – light blue, and then another one with black down the side. Why not just one?
We’re working on improving this! Currently, you’re seeing the difference between WordPress.com (with our new site management section), and the classic dashboard (which is similar on self-hosted sites as well).
12. Hard to find where to change menu order – why the hell not just have it in the same place where all the pages are shown for editing?
You can do this on the menus page under Appearance -> Menus. Here’s the direct link:
https://acappellaquinte.wordpress.com/wp-admin/nav-menus.php
You can read more about setting menus up here:
13. Difficult to change the page order UNLESS you know to click two boxes at the bottom. Why not have some message saying that?
The easiest way to change the menu order is actually through the link provided directly above. Can you give that a try?
14. Deleting images in Library: you click delete and nothing happens. You click the next button and eventually see your photos did not delete. You keep going round and round in circles as you advance through your photos, some delete and others don’t. Then in the Library view you cannot even see the whole photos to know which ones you want to delete.
When you clicked “Delete Permanently” on an image as shown below, did you receive this confirmation dialogue box?
15. Can’t crop a photo: opened a photo in my library to edit it and the crop button was shaded out so I could not click on it.
First, you need to use your mouse to indicate how you would like to crop the photo. Then, the crop button will appear active. Here’s a short video of how the crop button gets activated:
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Hi Jeremey, thanks for looking into these issues. Here are my replies and also a couple of new issues at the bottom.
1. Can’t change widget image: now it’s working perfectly for some reason.
2. I finally managed to fiddle enough to get it to work. Don’t know what the original problem was.
3. Featured image won’t work: what you wrote in your answer sure would be helpful to appear as a little pop-up or note beside it to notify users as such. I had to dig around to find out from the support section that “featured image not supported in all themes.” Very irritating waste of time. It should have informed me right then and there, or be disabled completely in my theme if it didn’t work.
4. Randomized header images: hope the feedback helps.
5. Can’t turn off search box in my template: it seems to be fine for now, but it’s irritating I have to spend time digging around the support section to find this out.
6. 2nd image placement difficult on a page: i fixed the issue but it took a lot of back and forth inserting it, deleting it, re-inserting it. A lot of wasted time.
7. Can’t get rid of a space between two lines: thanks for the tip.
8. Photos get copied along with text: allow me to clarify. i was working on a page where i wanted to leave the images on the right hand side intact, but just change the text. So i highlighted all the text and pasted in the NEW text. By doing so, it wiped out the images too and i had to re-load them. I would have preferred to simply replace the text without having to re-load the photos.
9. Can’t drag photos around: saw the video you sent, but it doesn’t work that way for me. I went into the JoinUs! page, clicked on Edit, and tried to move that one image down. I can click on it to edit it which opens an edit window, but that’s it.
10. Hard to get photos lined up on the right side: sorry, this is the same issue as #6, i should have combined them. I solved the problem only after a lot of time-consuming fiddling which i think should not be necessary.
11. Two GUIs confusing: glad to hear it will be going to one GUI. The one with the black menu down the left side is the most useful. The blue one is just downright confusing because I cannot find most of the tools i am looking for. they just don’t show.
12. Hard to find where to change menu order: thank you.
13. Difficult to change the page order: it wasn’t only that it’s hard to find, it’s that i could not change the order unless i unchecked those two boxes below the menu.
14. 14. Deleting images in Library: yes I did see that confirmation dialogue box and clicked ok but nothing happened. I just tried deleting photos again right now and all is working fine so I don’t know what was going on before.
15. Can’t crop a photo: ok I see the problem, thank you. I was trying to crop the photo the same way I do in MS Office where you need to click the Crop button first. Since MS Office is so prevalent why would WP not have used the same method rather than confuse people with an entirely different way? Might I suggest for this and many of the other issues that WP incorporate little instructional pop-ups in their GUI to help new users like me learn faster?
That’s a big beef I have with WP – the GUI offers almost NO instructions as to what to do. As a new user I found myself totally lost at times and had to then search the support section for an answer. The support section itself has at least three different pages, two of which are difficult to navigate or yield poor results. One of them gives fairly good results when I search for help topics. Overall using support is also time consuming and unnecessarily difficult.
THEORY: I wonder if some of these problems are/were caused by the fact that I switched themes? I started off with Hemmingway and then switched to Academia. I was not pleased some content was lost but most was kept.
Three new issues I’ve encountered:
16. Can’t remove comments box from below two images in my gallery. All the other images do not have comment boxes under them. I have comments turned off under Settings > Discussion so comments boxes do not appear anywhere on my site. I removed the two “problem” photos from the gallery and then re-inserted them – didn’t work. Then I deleted them completely from the gallery, uploaded the same two photos from my PC giving them different captions. In the Library they appear as different photos from the first two. I added these two freshly-uploaded photos to my gallery and the comment box is still under both of them.
17. Remove photo titles from appearing in gallery: the photo titles were appearing along with the photo captions in my gallery, causing confusion and didn’t look good. I could find no setting to “show only caption in gallery” so I had to go into media library and delete photo titles one by one. This is ridiculous. There should be a way to check off what you want shown and not be so hard to find.
18. Remove photo tech details in gallery: below each image in my gallery a box with technical details was appearing such as cameral, resolution, size, etc. I had to dig around and finally found the Metadata box to check off under Settings > Media. Again, an unnecessary goose chase when it would be much easier to just have an option right on the edit screen to “hide this info” and “hide for all photos.” WP makes users do a lot of extra work to adjust very minor things.
In summary, I am a regular user of software programs, and often learn a few new ones each year. I’ve heard a lot of good things about WP so I was very surprised that my experience with it as a new user puts it right up there as one of the most difficult programs to work with. I certainly hope this is improved over time – thanks for listening to my feedback.
And thank you for your support Jeremey,
Robert
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Thanks for taking the time to provide such detailed feedback Robert! I responded to a handful of your comments below. The comments that either indicated something was now working properly or confirmed your previous response are not pasted below, but I’ve still read them!
8. Photos get copied along with text: allow me to clarify. i was working on a page where i wanted to leave the images on the right hand side intact, but just change the text. So i highlighted all the text and pasted in the NEW text. By doing so, it wiped out the images too and i had to re-load them. I would have preferred to simply replace the text without having to re-load the photos.
In the future, I think the best solution here would be to use the Text Editor. That way, you’ll have full control over what text is replaced, and what text/images stay. Can you give that a try the next time this comes up?
9. Can’t drag photos around: saw the video you sent, but it doesn’t work that way for me. I went into the JoinUs! page, clicked on Edit, and tried to move that one image down. I can click on it to edit it which opens an edit window, but that’s it.
It’s a bit hard to see in the screen video that I sent over. When I click on the image, I click again in the center of it and start dragging while I hold down the mouse. Behind the image, you should see the cursor indicating where the image will get dropped of.
Can you give this another shot making sure to click to select the image and then click and hold to drag?
13. Difficult to change the page order: it wasn’t only that it’s hard to find, it’s that i could not change the order unless i unchecked those two boxes below the menu.
You’re referring to these boxes, correct?
Note, you may have fewer depending on your theme. You should be able to drag and drop those menu items without unchecking those options though. If you could give this another shot, I would appreciate it!
15. Can’t crop a photo: ok I see the problem, thank you. I was trying to crop the photo the same way I do in MS Office where you need to click the Crop button first. Since MS Office is so prevalent why would WP not have used the same method rather than confuse people with an entirely different way? Might I suggest for this and many of the other issues that WP incorporate little instructional pop-ups in their GUI to help new users like me learn faster?
That’s a big beef I have with WP – the GUI offers almost NO instructions as to what to do. As a new user I found myself totally lost at times and had to then search the support section for an answer. The support section itself has at least three different pages, two of which are difficult to navigate or yield poor results. One of them gives fairly good results when I search for help topics. Overall using support is also time consuming and unnecessarily difficult.
I definitely understand your frustration here. At the present, our support docs are the best place to read about the various features. For example, this cropping document explains the process a bit more in detail:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/images/image-editing/#cropping
We’re obviously looking to improve these support documents as much as possible and make the UI more intuitive.
THEORY: I wonder if some of these problems are/were caused by the fact that I switched themes? I started off with Hemmingway and then switched to Academia. I was not pleased some content was lost but most was kept.
None of your content should have been lost from changing themes. However, you may notice some widgets were removed from your sidebar/footer areas. This is due to how each theme handles widgets. However, when that happens, you should find these widgets in the Inactive Widget area:
That can be found at the bottom here:
https://acappellaquinte.wordpress.com/wp-admin/widgets.php
Just drag and drop those widgets back up into the appropriate areas.
16. Can’t remove comments box from below two images in my gallery. All the other images do not have comment boxes under them. I have comments turned off under Settings > Discussion so comments boxes do not appear anywhere on my site. I removed the two “problem” photos from the gallery and then re-inserted them – didn’t work. Then I deleted them completely from the gallery, uploaded the same two photos from my PC giving them different captions. In the Library they appear as different photos from the first two. I added these two freshly-uploaded photos to my gallery and the comment box is still under both of them.
You can fix this by doing the following:
1. Start in your Media Library:
https://acappellaquinte.wordpress.com/wp-admin/upload.php
2. Click on the image we want to remove comments from. In this case, we would click here:
Although you have several versions of this image uploaded to your media library, this is the one inserted into your Photos album.
3. From that next page, click “Edit More Details”:
4. Deselect this option under Discussion and then click update:
17. Remove photo titles from appearing in gallery: the photo titles were appearing along with the photo captions in my gallery, causing confusion and didn’t look good. I could find no setting to “show only caption in gallery” so I had to go into media library and delete photo titles one by one. This is ridiculous. There should be a way to check off what you want shown and not be so hard to find.
I believe you’re referring to the distinction between the caption and title in the slideshow (example here: http://d.pr/i/ohsZ). If so, I’m afraid there isn’t a way to select whether you want the title, caption, or both to appear in the slideshow. Both will appear by default.
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