Massive changes to the WP interface
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Reading this thread has been utterly depressing. I’ve always heard good things about WordPress – the ease of use being the primary one.
Yesterday I took the plunge and started to set up a blog. Nothing but aggravation and the two themes I’ve tried to work with seem to be missing the features that were the main reason I chose them. It has been so far impossible to find the information I need to either access those features or make them work.
Sorry to hear this! Sounds like your complaints are regarding themes. If you can post at https://en.forums.wordpress.com/forum/themes#postform and mention the features that you were having trouble with, we will help you get set up.
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Not sure if this is related to the changes but when I go to sign into my blogs I’m taken to the Stats page instead of the My Sites page (which was improved/messed up a while back). Anybody know what if anything I’m doing wrong?
You aren’t doing anything wrong. That was part of the recent changes. I’m not sure if it will stay or if the sites view will come back. I think the reasoning was that a popular section like stats should show first and the site selector should be built in to the navigation on the left.
Does it work for you to use the site selector in the top of the left sidebar at https://wordpress.com/stats ? If not, what is it specifically that you really like and miss about the /sites page?
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@designssimply
Yes, I can use the site selector but I have 19 (!) blogs on the collectireland username and I now have to go to the avatar (top right on the tool bar) to access them. This defeats the much trumpeted recent improvement (?) to the Sites page – which was rubbish too. To me it’s change for the sake of change. I’ve just paid WordPress to renew my .com domain name but I reluctant to spend money on further add-ons with all the messing that’s going on. Thanks for your help.
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designsimply
I really wish I could believe that you test things!
e.g. At the bottom of the appalling new statistics page is an invitation to go to the old stats page. Press the button and (surprise, surprise) the link doesn’t work. To get to the old stats page (that we all want) is like an obstacle course!
The inability to sign out from the new screens is a big error. Are you sure it was tested?
Sorry if I sound irritable but you are just not taking this matter seriously! -
I might be inclined to believe it was an issue with the specific theme I had chosen initially – if the problems I encountered weren’t repeated when I chose a second theme to try out instead.
I simply cannot seem to access features that are listed as part of the theme package. They seem to be completely missing from the options available.
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I understand that you are a conduit in this matter and hope you do not take it personally. However, the decision makers should have the courage to come forward and answer for themselves rather than hide behind an unfortunate buffer.
QA should begin before product launch; result in remedial action and have an auditable trail.
Competent testing could not have taken place. If it had, the glaring omission of a sign-out would have been noticed. Although, apparently you have noticed, but nobody took any remedial action.
Answering your questions.
New Summary View
I saw them, they do not provide averages or show percentage increase/decrease trends. What is shown is not all there in one view. It is inferior
No classic editor direct link from post to
“ We actually added a link for that, it’s at the bottom of the right sidebar and says “classic mode.” “
I know there is a link from the new editor but there I no direct link from the post. That is, it imposes a time wasting intermediate step.
A non wysiwyg editor
I was not referring to the Text tab that would obviously not be a wysiwig view. I was referring to the difference between the editor’s Visual rendition and the published version. For example:-
The editor’s Visual view cannot be adjusted to same width as the post width. Hence the word wrap is not the same and image positioning can radically change. Here is a member with that problem.
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/aligning-pictures-on-1-line?replies=3
I hesitate to offer the solution because it is tricky and unstable.
The line spacing is not necessarily the same with additional CR’s sometimes appearing in the post.
In other circumstances CR’s beside an image in the editor are not rendered in the post and the following text rides up.
There is no “What You See Is what You Get” rendition.
A New Thread
It is not wise to separate a conjoined problem. It makes an auditable trail more difficult. In this case. I’ll make an exception.
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designsimply,
Thank you for being the messenger; you’ve taken a lot of heat from us, and you’ve borne it well.
As I’ve written before, the hostility to the interface isn’t so much a rejection something new, but rather out of the sense that we’ve had a radical series of changes forced on us in a very short period of time. Many of us are long-time computer users who have weathered a series of radical changes in the past (XP to Vista, Win 7 to Win 8, OS 9 to OS X, PowerPC to Wintel), and I don’t believe that we’re inherently resistant to change.
The difference is that in the list above, users had, for a time, the option to stick with their chosen platform or hardware before making the leap. That isn’t possible when that platform is web based, and there’s a growing sense of resentment toward the imposition of often radical changes without a sense of user input—someone mentioned MeetUp, and Facebook certainly comes to mind as well.
WordPress does have to evolve, and mobile platforms are going to necessarily be a part of that evolution. According to Statcounter, roughly half the visitors to my WordPress site are using mobile or tablet operating systems, and I’m sure that a staggering number of bloggers use phones and tablets to publish content.
However, what works for one platform might not work for another. I’m glad to hear that you’re willing to maintain the older tools for those of us who find the newer interfaces to be less than intuitive. I just hope that our friends at WordPress don’t dismiss our complaints as an inevitable reaction to change. The mobile friendly 1 column design looks dreadful on a screen that’s 2,560 pixels wide, and most of the advantage of having a large screen is squandered by the need to scroll to find information that was once easily viewed all at once.
Though I only have one regularly updated site, I have too much invested in it, and in WordPress, to leave over the changes to the UI. But it’s probably safe to say that many desktop and more than a few laptop users feel increasingly put-off by the rise of mobile-inspired designs that don’t, frankly, translate well to the desktop.
Ensuring that we’ll have access to the older management and posting tools might go a long way towards quelling the tempest.
Thanks again for braving the hornet’s nest.
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You can still go to https://wordpress.com/sites directly right now in case that helps in the short term.
The change isn’t just for the sake of change. There are some back end changes that are going to be the foundation for updates in the future—things that can’t be done in the current WP Admin setup. For example, becoming API-driven. I know not everyone can see the benefit of a change like that up front when the changes are starting and when you’re coming at it by noticing early UI changes only, and I just wanted to mention it here briefly because even if it seems to you like it’s change for the sake of change, it really isn’t.
Cheers! And thank you very much for the feedback.
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e.g. At the bottom of the appalling new statistics page is an invitation to go to the old stats page. Press the button and (surprise, surprise) the link doesn’t work.
I actually did test that. :) Could you have just been seeing a temporary glitch? I noticed they just updated the old stats page with a survey. Did you see that?
apetcher, what is your browser version and OS please? I tested and the old stats page link at the bottom worked for me, but I will try some more tests to see if I can reproduce the problem.
Is anyone else having trouble with that link? If so, what is your browser version please?
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Have you filled out the “Give us your feedback” survey that is linked in the first section of the new stats page?
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I shameless quote myself…
Comparison: screen estate of the old stats element is 960 pixel wide. Fact check, the new stats element is just 653 pixel wide resulting in a loss of 307 pixel in width!!! That means the designers threw away one third of screen estate and that in times of wide screens for desktop systems. This is clearly setting a focus on mobile experience.
What do the developers say to it?
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@cmurray72, if you want help with that first theme you tried, definitely post over in the Themes Forum—they are ready to help with theme questions over there! Include the theme name and the features you couldn’t find and someone will take a look
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New Summary View
I saw them, they do not provide averages or show percentage increase/decrease trends. What is shown is not all there in one view.
Quick update on this one. We will be adding it back in. Thank you for posting specific feedback on this particular topic.
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I do not like the “new” Stats page, too much scrolling, too-blue, and too many words for a Stats page. Give me numbers, please on a Stats page.
I do not like the “new” add a new post button. It’s too big, too much white space, overall too ugly.
Thank you for these notes.
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“ We actually added a link for that, it’s at the bottom of the right sidebar and says “classic mode.” “
I know there is a link from the new editor but there I no direct link from the post. That is, it imposes a time wasting intermediate step.
Aha, I see. Now I understand. Thanks for clarifying.
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We actually added a link for that, it’s at the bottom of the right sidebar and says “classic mode.” I know some people might not think it’s prominent enough, but I wanted to point it out because it was user feedback that got the link there at all, which is a good thing.
@designsimply: about the poll that appears when I click on the link
My vote:
Why do you prefer this Stats page?
- It’s faster.
- It’s less confusing.
Cheers. :)
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I completed the survey. May I ask why you don’t ask for “search engine queries” at the end? I used this quite often even if Google for example doesn’t transmit all search terms, but the ones that came through were the very popular keywords.
I assume that you already decided to stop providing this information to us. I assume this because you didn’t even ask for it in the survey. Why do you take away a highly important stats element?
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As request by “designsimply” I have opened a Topic just for “Missing Sign Out”. It can be found here:-
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/missing-sign-out?replies=2
So, if you would like to help them count the number of people who find an obvious omission a nuisance, please pop over and add you disapproval. Thank you :-)
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I was not referring to the Text tab that would obviously not be a wysiwig view. I was referring to the difference between the editor’s Visual rendition and the published version.
Okay, now I understand. Thanks for clarifying. New editor updates will be coming soon. I will forward your feedback about users having a hard time with things like image alignment as in the example you linked. Part of the added challenge there is some people don’t realize how content is fluid on the web, i.e. it may look different at various screen sizes no matter how it looks in a differently sized editing box. Even if you made the edit box match their view exactly, they still don’t understand that someone may have a different sized monitor and the images may fall on different lines in that case. And again, the same applies for mobile where the width of the viewers’ screen is different again.
I agree it could be better, but I also understand that updating the editor is a big challenge, which you can see from the feedback on the first update when the beep beep boop editor was installed.
Good feedback. :)
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