Lose the look and feel control freaking
-
I’ve just created a blog. I’d like to set photos (which I’ll be hosting elsewhere because of your space limitations) against a black background. In general, I’d like to set all of my content against that black background, because I find it restful and attractive. I’d like to give my blog a minimalist look, with widgets along the side so I can give links to a few of my other pages, run a few feeds and tie of all my content together.
These are simple, reasonable things that bloggers have done on many platforms, this one included – note the existence of the “hero” theme from a few years ago, which we still see on a number of blogs. So, why is WordPress so hellbent on busting my … umm, reproductive glands … over this?
On other platforms, I could just find a template (or make my own), paste in the code and be ready to run. But WordPress won’t let us do that, because reasons. So I have looked and looked and looked for a minimal theme that will just let me set a black background for my content. Not a black rim around the page, a black background for everything.
Photos set against a white box of eyestrain-inducing glare, lined with black, is just not the same thing, at all. But so far, this is all that I’m finding, as I am reduced to doing trial and error on the various “minimal” themes that management will graciously allow us to use, to find out exactly what the developer means by the word “background” when he tells us that we can customize it. So far, in every case, I’ve found that the “background” is nothing more than that rim around the edge, and that one can’t turn off the glare in the center.
As a user, what I am saying is that like most normal people, I’ve got a life and I have things to do today. Things that are a lot more important than any feeling of success I’m going to get out of working past problems that exist only because some developer or developers has chosen to be difficult. This is where I give up, shrug and say “that’s on them.”
My page on this site is going to look like a piece of trash, but as a user, I’ve decided to not care, because I am not willing to let my entire day be taken up by somebody else’s psychological issues – and yes, control freaking and narcissism do fall into that category. I made a reasonable effort and if that’s not enough, eff it.
I’ll just post my photos somewhere else, and use my membership here for nothing other than commenting on other wordpress blogs, and maybe do some token microblogging, pointing visitors in the direction of the discussions. I’ll have a brief explanation of why this all looks as bad as it does, and then give the matter no further thought. Why should I?
Before anybody parrots the line “how much are you paying for your account” – get off it. Even small children know that barter is a form of economic transaction. Free users do pay for their accounts, by providing the company with content on which advertising may be placed. We are not recipients of charity. Multi-billion dollar corporations like Google have been built on transactions like this.
Charity is not given to the user, it is shown by the user when he shares his content without compensation, which is what almost all of us do. When one’s entire business model is based on the charity of one’s users, common sense should tell one that one ought not go out of one’s way to exasperate and anger those same users.
We’re not being paid to be here. The staff is. So, if anybody should be making an effort to make this platform a workable one, that effort should be made by them, not us. So, while there are more minimal themes for me to try, forget it. I’m done. I’m declaring defeat, and seeing that for the victory it is.
As a user, I find myself dealing with yet another group of developers who, rather than choosing to be reasonable, expect me to jump through hoops in order to get their poorly thought out system to do what I need it to do. The acceptance of defeat becomes a victory, because I’m taking back the time somebody else would take from me, in his arrogance.
I’m sure some fan boys (and girls) will show up to do some trolling in defense of their beloved company, and that somebody will say something negative about the length of my post, because somebody always does. It’s part of the script. But if you’re working for Automattic and seeing this feedback, you’d better think about it.
Remember – if this company folds, we can post our content elsewhere or not bother to post it at all, because we’re not being paid. But if the company goes out of your business, you’ll lose your livelihood and be professionally associated with a business failure. If you want to believe that’s not going to hurt you when you go out looking for your next job, you’re free to do so, but you’re in for one nasty surprise.
Are you so in love with the idea of messing with people, just to prove that you can mess with them, that you’re willing to put yourself out on the street at a time when your profession is shedding jobs? If the answer to that question is “yes”, I’m not even going to try to talk you out of that. Why would I? One should never send a mathematician to do a psychiatrist’s job.
That just doesn’t work.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
This site https://saguarolounge.wordpress.com/ has next to no blogger created content.
To save you time you can type the actual URL of the site you are referring to into http://whoishostingthis.com to determine who hosts the site so you know where to post for support.
We provide support only for sites hosted on WordPress.COM servers. You could be posting to the wrong support forum. To be clear we do not provide support for local installs of WordPress.ORG software, or for WordPress.ORG software installs on paid hosting, linked to WordPress.COM accounts with the Jetpack plugin so they display on the My Sites WordPress.COM account page.
WordPress.COM and WordPress.ORG are completely separate and have different username accounts, logins, features, run different versions of some themes with the same names, and have separate support documentation and separate support forums. Read the differences here http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
The wordpress.ORG support forum is at http://wordpress.org/support. The wordpress.ORG login link is here https://login.wordpress.org/ If you do not have an account yet then click Create an account https://login.wordpress.org/register/ and if you have lost an account password click Lost password? https://login.wordpress.org/lostpassword/
WordPress.org support docs are at https://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page
See also https://apps.wordpress.org/support/ for app support. -
The sniping and trollage may not begin. If it helps, I’m university-educated, poor, partially disabled, ethnically mixed and Jewish. Not just any kind of Jewish, either – the Sephardic kind. Also, I’m from Chicago. Any alt-righters reading this should be in Heaven – when will you ever have the chance to use this many different epithets on the same person?
It’s sweet, am I right?
As for the passive aggressive “nice” people who were going to show up to tell me that I could get more flies with honey than with vinegar – would you please come up with another cliche, if you must use cliches at all? That one was always a little strange. In real life, I always I’ve always seen people shoo flies away. Except for one classmate from grade school who would tear their wings off before eating them. But we don’t talk about that guy, much.
If the discussion lead in a productive direction, instead of becoming an excuse for kissing up to management while personally abusing or condescending to a user with a reasonable concern, that wouldn’t just be awesome, that would be a first. I don’t believe it will happen, but I’m always open to being surprised.
-
The sniping and trollage may not begin. If it helps, I'm university-educated, poor, partially disabled, ethnically mixed and Jewish. Not just any kind of Jewish, either – the Sephardic kind. Also, I'm from Chicago. Any alt-righters reading this should be in Heaven – when will you ever have the chance to use this many different epithets on the same person?
It's sweet, am I right?
As for the passive aggressive “nice” people who were going to show up to tell me that I could get more flies with honey than with vinegar – would you please come up with another cliche, if you must use cliches at all? That one was always a little strange. In real life, I always I've always seen people shoo flies away. Except for one classmate from grade school who would tear their wings off before eating them. But we don't talk about that guy, much.
If the discussion lead in a productive direction, instead of becoming an excuse for kissing up to management while personally abusing or condescending to a user with a reasonable concern, that wouldn't just be awesome, that would be a first. I don't believe it will happen, but I'm always open to being surprised.
-
Timethief writes
“This site https://saguarolounge.wordpress.com/ has next to no blogger created content.”
You have got to be kidding me. Of course it doesn’t, because I just created the account. You know this, because I just told you this.
“We provide support only for sites hosted on WordPress.COM servers”
Can you really not tell which domain saguarolounge.WordPress.COM is on? I mean, really?
“if you have lost an account password click Lost password? https://login.wordpress.org/lostpassword/”
Thank you, but I don’t know why you’d tell me that, given that I’m currently logged into that account and posting from it.
Is this going to be the drama in which you give me irrelevant replies and then complain about how mean I’m being because I don’t appreciate them?
-
You are subscribed to this topic – unsubscribe or view your subscriptions
saguaroloungeMemberMar 6, 2018, 11:22 AM
I've just created a blog. I'd like to set photos (which I'll be hosting elsewhere because of your space limitations) against a black background. In general, I'd like to set all of my content against that black background, because I find it restful and attractive. I'd like to give my blog a minimalist look, with widgets along the side so I can give links to a few of my other pages, run a few feeds and tie of all my content together.
These are simple, reasonable things that bloggers have done on many platforms, this one included – note the existence of the “hero” theme from a few years ago, which we still see on a number of blogs. So, why is WordPress so hellbent on busting my … umm, reproductive glands … over this?
On other platforms, I could just find a template (or make my own), paste in the code and be ready to run. But WordPress won't let us do that, because reasons. So I have looked and looked and looked for a minimal theme that will just let me set a black background for my content. Not a black rim around the page, a black background for everything.
Photos set against a white box of eyestrain-inducing glare, lined with black, is just not the same thing, at all. But so far, this is all that I'm finding, as I am reduced to doing trial and error on the various “minimal” themes that management will graciously allow us to use, to find out exactly what the developer means by the word “background” when he tells us that we can customize it. So far, in every case, I've found that the “background” is nothing more than that rim around the edge, and that one can't turn off the glare in the center.
As a user, what I am saying is that like most normal people, I've got a life and I have things to do today. Things that are a lot more important than any feeling of success I'm going to get out of working past problems that exist only because some developer or developers has chosen to be difficult. This is where I give up, shrug and say “that's on them.”
My page on this site is going to look like a piece of trash, but as a user, I've decided to not care, because I am not willing to let my entire day be taken up by somebody else's psychological issues – and yes, control freaking and narcissism do fall into that category. I made a reasonable effort and if that's not enough, eff it.
I'll just post my photos somewhere else, and use my membership here for nothing other than commenting on other wordpress blogs, and maybe do some token microblogging, pointing visitors in the direction of the discussions. I'll have a brief explanation of why this all looks as bad as it does, and then give the matter no further thought. Why should I?
Before anybody parrots the line “how much are you paying for your account” – get off it. Even small children know that barter is a form of economic transaction. Free users do pay for their accounts, by providing the company with content on which advertising may be placed. We are not recipients of charity. Multi-billion dollar corporations like Google have been built on transactions like this.
Charity is not given to the user, it is shown by the user when he shares his content without compensation, which is what almost all of us do. When one's entire business model is based on the charity of one's users, common sense should tell one that one ought not go out of one's way to exasperate and anger those same users.
We're not being paid to be here. The staff is. So, if anybody should be making an effort to make this platform a workable one, that effort should be made by them, not us. So, while there are more minimal themes for me to try, forget it. I'm done. I'm declaring defeat, and seeing that for the victory it is.
As a user, I find myself dealing with yet another group of developers who, rather than choosing to be reasonable, expect me to jump through hoops in order to get their poorly thought out system to do what I need it to do. The acceptance of defeat becomes a victory, because I'm taking back the time somebody else would take from me, in his arrogance.
I'm sure some fan boys (and girls) will show up to do some trolling in defense of their beloved company, and that somebody will say something negative about the length of my post, because somebody always does. It's part of the script. But if you're working for Automattic and seeing this feedback, you'd better think about it.
Remember – if this company folds, we can post our content elsewhere or not bother to post it at all, because we're not being paid. But if the company goes out of your business, you'll lose your livelihood and be professionally associated with a business failure. If you want to believe that's not going to hurt you when you go out looking for your next job, you're free to do so, but you're in for one nasty surprise.
Are you so in love with the idea of messing with people, just to prove that you can mess with them, that you're willing to put yourself out on the street at a time when your profession is shedding jobs? If the answer to that question is “yes”, I'm not even going to try to talk you out of that. Why would I? One should never send a mathematician to do a psychiatrist's job.
That just doesn't work.
The blog I need help with is saguarolounge.wordpress.com.
timethiefMemberMar 6, 2018, 11:29 AM
This site https://saguarolounge.wordpress.com/ has next to no blogger created content.
To save you time you can type the actual URL of the site you are referring to into http://whoishostingthis.com to determine who hosts the site so you know where to post for support.
We provide support only for sites hosted on WordPress.COM servers. You could be posting to the wrong support forum. To be clear we do not provide support for local installs of WordPress.ORG software, or for WordPress.ORG software installs on paid hosting, linked to WordPress.COM accounts with the Jetpack plugin so they display on the My Sites WordPress.COM account page.
WordPress.COM and WordPress.ORG are completely separate and have different username accounts, logins, features, run different versions of some themes with the same names, and have separate support documentation and separate support forums. Read the differences here http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
The wordpress.ORG support forum is at http://wordpress.org/support. The wordpress.ORG login link is here https://login.wordpress.org/ If you do not have an account yet then click Create an account https://login.wordpress.org/register/ and if you have lost an account password click Lost password? https://login.wordpress.org/lostpassword/WordPress.org support docs are at https://codex.wordpress.org/Main_PageSee also https://apps.wordpress.org/support/ for app support.
saguaroloungeMemberMar 6, 2018, 11:36 AM
The sniping and trollage may not begin. If it helps, I'm university-educated, poor, partially disabled, ethnically mixed and Jewish. Not just any kind of Jewish, either – the Sephardic kind. Also, I'm from Chicago. Any alt-righters reading this should be in Heaven – when will you ever have the chance to use this many different epithets on the same person?
It's sweet, am I right?
As for the passive aggressive “nice” people who were going to show up to tell me that I could get more flies with honey than with vinegar – would you please come up with another cliche, if you must use cliches at all? That one was always a little strange. In real life, I always I've always seen people shoo flies away. Except for one classmate from grade school who would tear their wings off before eating them. But we don't talk about that guy, much.
If the discussion lead in a productive direction, instead of becoming an excuse for kissing up to management while personally abusing or condescending to a user with a reasonable concern, that wouldn't just be awesome, that would be a first. I don't believe it will happen, but I'm always open to being surprised.
saguaroloungeMemberMar 6, 2018, 11:40 AM
The sniping and trollage may not begin. If it helps, I'm university-educated, poor, partially disabled, ethnically mixed and Jewish. Not just any kind of Jewish, either – the Sephardic kind. Also, I'm from Chicago. Any alt-righters reading this should be in Heaven – when will you ever have the chance to use this many different epithets on the same person?
It's sweet, am I right?
As for the passive aggressive “nice” people who were going to show up to tell me that I could get more flies with honey than with vinegar – would you please come up with another cliche, if you must use cliches at all? That one was always a little strange. In real life, I always I've always seen people shoo flies away. Except for one classmate from grade school who would tear their wings off before eating them. But we don't talk about that guy, much.
If the discussion lead in a productive direction, instead of becoming an excuse for kissing up to management while personally abusing or condescending to a user with a reasonable concern, that wouldn't just be awesome, that would be a first. I don't believe it will happen, but I'm always open to being surprised.
saguaroloungeMemberMar 6, 2018, 11:44 AM
Timethief writes
“This site https://saguarolounge.wordpress.com/ has next to no blogger created content.”
You have got to be kidding me. Of course it doesn't, because I just created the account. You know this, because I just told you this.
“We provide support only for sites hosted on WordPress.COM servers”
Can you really not tell which domain saguarolounge.WordPress.COM is on? I mean, really?
“if you have lost an account password click Lost password? https://login.wordpress.org/lostpassword/”
Thank you, but I don't know why you'd tell me that, given that I'm currently logged into that account and posting from it.
Is this going to be the drama in which you give me irrelevant replies and then complain about how mean I'm being because I don't appreciate them?
On Tue, Mar 6, 2018 at 11:36 AM, The Saguaro Lounge / Joseph Dunphy wrote: The sniping and trollage may not begin. If it helps, I'm university-educated, poor, partially disabled, ethnically mixed and Jewish. Not just any kind of Jewish, either – the Sephardic kind. Also, I'm from Chicago. Any alt-righters reading this should be in Heaven – when will you ever have the chance to use this many different epithets on the same person?
It's sweet, am I right?
As for the passive aggressive “nice” people who were going to show up to tell me that I could get more flies with honey than with vinegar – would you please come up with another cliche, if you must use cliches at all? That one was always a little strange. In real life, I always I've always seen people shoo flies away. Except for one classmate from grade school who would tear their wings off before eating them. But we don't talk about that guy, much.
If the discussion lead in a productive direction, instead of becoming an excuse for kissing up to management while personally abusing or condescending to a user with a reasonable concern, that wouldn't just be awesome, that would be a first. I don't believe it will happen, but I'm always open to being surprised.
On Tue, Mar 6, 2018 at 11:29 AM, WordPress.com Support Forums wrote:
timethief replied to a forum topic that you subscribe to
in response to the topic “Lose the look and feel control freaking”:
This site https://saguarolounge.wordpress.com/ has next to no blogger created content.
To save you time you can type the actual URL of the site you are referring to into http://whoishostingthis.com to determine who hosts the site so you know where to post for support.
We provide support only for sites hosted on WordPress.COM servers. You could be posting to the wrong support forum. To be clear we do not provide support for local installs of WordPress.ORG software, or for WordPress.ORG software installs on paid hosting, linked to WordPress.COM accounts with the Jetpack plugin so they display on the My Sites WordPress.COM account page.
WordPress.COM and WordPress.ORG are completely separate and have different username accounts, logins, features, run different versions of some themes with the same names, and have separate support documentation and separate support forums. Read the differences here http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
The wordpress.ORG support forum is at http://wordpress.org/support. The wordpress.ORG login link is here https://login.wordpress.org/ If you do not have an account yet then click Create an account https://login.wordpress.org/register/ and if you have lost an account password click Lost password? https://login.wordpress.org/lostpassword/ WordPress.org support docs are at https://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page See also https://apps.wordpress.org/support/ for app support.
Reply View forum topic
Want less email? Unsubscribe from this topic
Thanks for flying with WordPress.com
-
Thanks so much for your contribution. If Staff choose to implement it they will contact you directly at the email address you registered with.
-
I’m going to go out, grab a little iced coffee, see if I get a good conversation out of that, and then run some important errands. As strange as somebody here will find this, I prioritize my real life over my online activity.
If an actual helpful response is seen, cool. Thanks. I don’t expect to see that happen, but then I didn’t expect to see a 65 degree day in February, so who knows?
But if I get trolling, whether it’s the blatant or the passive aggressive kind, I’m just going to unsubscribe. I don’t have time to butt heads with people, or to play games with them.
Straightforward, reasonable discussion or nothing.
-
Oops. Sorry about pasting of the entire discussion into a post, in the same discussion. That really was an accident, and I’d delete that post if I could.
In my own inbox, I was cutting and pasting a copy of the discussion into an email to myself for own records, and I guess slipped into the wrong tab. The one in which the WordPress.com system was notifying me of new comments.
-
So I have looked and looked and looked for a minimal theme that will just let me set a black background for my content. Not a black rim around the page, a black background for everything.
Have you viewed these:
https://wordpress.com/theme/pique
https://wordpress.com/theme/afterlight
https://wordpress.com/theme/saga
https://wordpress.com/theme/orvis -
This is a joke, right?
https://wordpress.com/theme/pique
https://wordpress.com/theme/afterlightNot a black background, in either case. Neither even has a solid color background; the backgrounds themselves are made of photos. In what sense are these minimal themes? They’re two one of the busiest designs I’ve ever seen.
https://wordpress.com/theme/orvis
Not as overdecorated as the previous two, but that background is a washed out brown, not black.
https://wordpress.com/theme/saga
Again, we have the white box in the center of the screen. The photos are set against white, not against black.
Are we going to go through all of the themes like this? If so, I don’t have time to play that game. Did I just tell you anything about the themes you suggested that you couldn’t see with your own eyes? You knew that they were not suitable when you suggested them, so why did you do that?
-
Hi there,
You can find all themes that support setting custom backgrounds, and that are also classified as minimalist and with a dark colour scheme here:
https://wordpress.com/themes/free/filter/color:dark+custom-background+minimal
Orvis is the closest match to your requirements except for the actual colour of the background. That you can change by going to My Sites ->Customize ->Colors and Backgrounds where you can either change only the background colour, or apply one of the featured free colour palettes which includes one with a completely black background.
However, in the majority of cases that background does not apply to the content block itself, but only to the background for the site as a whole. To change the background colour of the content block in that case you’d need to override your theme’s design directly using custom CSS. This is only possible in the Premium and Business plans.
Are we going to go through all of the themes like this? If so, I don’t have time to play that game. Did I just tell you anything about the themes you suggested that you couldn’t see with your own eyes? You knew that they were not suitable when you suggested them, so why did you do that?
I suggest you take a few moments to read through our forum community standards:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/best-practices-community-standards?replies=1
@timethief is a volunteer who gives up her free time to help out other users in the forums and went above and beyond by suggesting some specific themes for you, and you have replied with nothing but sarcasm and snark. We expect all users in this forum to maintain a respectful tone towards volunteers and staff when asking for help.
-
“To change the background colour of the content block in that case you’d need to override your theme’s design directly using custom CSS. This is only possible in the Premium and Business plans.”
OR I could just go over to Blogger, Tumblr or Livejournal, where this problem does not exist, at all.
“went above and beyond by suggesting some specific themes for you”
She suggested themes that did not meet the description she quoted, herself.
“and you have replied with nothing but sarcasm and snark”
I truthfully went point by point, and asked her why she did the intellectually dishonest thing that she did. You then acted to shield the policies of your own company from mildly expressed reasonable criticism by seizing on that as opportunity to trump up a charge.
My point was a valid, even if you aren’t man enough to admit this. How many themes do you have. If timethief is going to live up to her name by doing as she did above, how long would that take?
As for her original cut and paste response, that was beyond bizarre. Talking about a subdomain that ends in the string .wordpress.com, she asked me if that was hosted on wordpress.com. What am I to say when somebody who is supposedly human fails a Turing test?
Even the Ask Eliza program from the last century, the most primitive of AIs, could handle strings. When a human being acts as if she can not, the logical conclusion is that she is trolling in a passive aggressive manner. As are you, at the moment.
“I suggest you take a few moments to read through our forum community standards:”
What you just did, oh “happiness engineer”, was make a barely veiled threat against my account when I dared to tell the truth in a manner not flattering to one of the in-kids. That’s a line that I’ve never even saw the infamously censorious Yahoo cross, and an excellent argument against blogging on WordPress.com, at all.
When even simple matters of easily confirmable fact are greeted with threats and lies, what has become of free and open discussion? Without that, what’s the point of blogging, at all? I’ll just go over to Tumblr or Blogspot where, by the way, getting a minimalistic look and black background is an easy thing to do, and cut all links to all sites run by Automattic.
I’d call you a low rent fascist, but I’d think to say this would to be do fascists an injustice – and you’re hearing this from an observant Jew. The Fascists, at least, had some notion of serving the greater good, however distorted and immoral that idea turned out to be. Your motivations, on the other hand, are purely venal. You are corruption, personified.
Was that too “snarky”? I think we’re done, here. I said it and I meant it, because it’s the truth, hipster boy – Automattic needs its users a lot more than its users need it. If your competition proves to be just as bad as you are, what is the worst loss I will endure? I won’t have an opportunity to work without compensation, sharing my content for free?
Oh, how will I ever endure?
-
By the way, I’ve saved copies of this entire discussion, so if you were thinking that you could just delete it and lie about it after the fact, dream on. I’ll just repost it in its entirely, elsewhere, and let others see what passes for integrity at your company.
If you want to file a meritless nuisance copyright suit, be aware of the fact that there are attorneys in my immediate family, that I get my legal representation for free, and that we will countersue. The reposting would fall under fair use, as I’m sure that you already know, so don’t try bluffing me. You won’t like where that ends.
-
I am closing this thread to further replies.
What you just did, oh “happiness engineer”, was make a barely veiled threat against my account when I dared to tell the truth in a manner not flattering to one of the in-kids.
I did not make a threat. I asked you to follow the rules of these forums.
Now that request is turning into a warning. If you are unable to follow those rules in future threads here, you ability to post in these forums will be permanently suspended. We will not tolerate abuse against any volunteer or staff member here.
- The topic ‘Lose the look and feel control freaking’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 