Feb 16, 2012 / News

DailyPost Gets New Duds

Click the handy dandy arrows to navigate among the recent photo posts.

You may have noticed that we’ve recently given the blog a new look. Just in case you missed it, or in case you haven’t given it much in the way of a test drive, I thought I’d point out a couple of the more useful changes.

Our weekly photo challenge is generally the most popular post in a given week, so we wanted to really highlight those posts by adding a slider at the top displaying recent photo challenges. Click the arrows out to the side of the photo to slide to the next or previous photo post.

If you participated in the daily post challenge last year, you’ve probably noticed that we haven’t been dishing up new prompts here at the blog each day this year. That doesn’t mean that daily prompts can’t be found, though. If you still need a little daily inspiration, you can keep your eye on our new footer widget listing posts from the Plinky service. You can also just follow @plinkyprompts on Twitter.

If you like the site’s new look, you might be interested in checking out Linen, which we’re using in conjunction with the Custom Design upgrade to tweak a few things here and there. Of course, we have many other themes available, both premium and free.

We hope you like the new look!

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  1. Whilst I like your new theme I hate the fact that you cannot see links you have already visited in the Weekly Photo Challenge Thread. URL’s don’t change colour after you have clicked on them to visit someone’s blog. As I drop in at different times of the day and week to visit blogs I find that I am visiting the same blogs again because of this.

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      1. In my opinion the blog is no longer fit for purpose which, for a year, has been the place to advertise entries in the weekly photo challenge and view the entries of fellow bloggers. This was facilitated by a compact list of comments with links and/or pingbacks in order of submission. The links were easily distinguished from body text by their colour, which changed when clicked making visited entries clearly visible. Some bloggers used a link to their post, some used a pingback and some used both. However, because the entries were listed in submission order and links and pingbacks changed colour when visited, the viewer never lost track of what entries had been viewed. The current system of using links which are not clearly distinguished from body text and do not change colour when visited, and a linkback list separated form the comments makes the blog impossible to use.

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    2. Ah, so I think I was trying to fix the wrong problem. You’re talking about comments on the photo page, I now gather. You’d visit a photo page every once in a while and check link color to find new photo links and visit them. Now, link colors apparently aren’t different for visited links, which makes it impossible to scan the entries in the same quick way. If that accurately describes at least part of the problem, then it’s definitely fixable. Can you confirm?

      The other major issue would appear to be that pingbacks are listed separately (not chronologically). Or so I gather. I’m not sure I can fix that, but I’ll at least check into it. Thanks for this useful feedback.

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  3. Looks good but I really miss the picture of the old-fashioned typewriter. I think using Plinky’s for folks who want a topic inspiration is a good idea – why duplicate if you don’t need to. Thanks Daryl.

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    1. Sorry to hear that, Katherine. All the image posts here were from this blog, though, and to see links from other WordPress.com users, you already had to click into the comments for a photo challenge post, so I’m not clear on what’s changed for the worst.

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      3. There is no link to PostaDay…or have I missed it?
        http://wordpress.com/#!/read/topic/postaday/

        Curious…if daily prompts are not being posted, why call it the Daily Post? I supppose the streamlining is okay, but I also miss the typewriter. For me it was a symbol for this page. I also preferred the layouts for PostaDay2011 and PostaWeek 2011. Individual works seemed to be showcased as they were being posted. Ah, well. Thanks for letting me express my views.

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  7. 1) I don’t see a slider (old Safari on old Mac if that’s of any help)

    2) I liked the typewriter too – really fitted with the simple title

    3) I didn’t miss it until I read one of the comments above 😮 although I did notice something was different

    4) I do find it difficult to visit other blogs for the weekly photo thing so don’t bother. I also find it dictatorial telling me I MUST title my post WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE etc etc. So I don’t 😀

    5) Yes, it’s a clean layout. Hence the linen presumably. Not sure how user friendly it appears. Clean v warm and friendly perhaps?

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    2. Wouldn’t surprise me too much of old Safari couldn’t display the slider.

      Wow, everybody likes the typewriter! I grew to really find it irritating. May have to take a poll and see about bringing it back.

      I’m not much of a photographer type and so hadn’t known about the link issues there. Not sure what the mandatory title’s about — maybe making these easier to search for or boost SEO for the name and thus get people more exposure?

      Clean and airy vs. flat and sterile’s how I would have put it. 🙂

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      1. In other words its change for change sake. Don’t check how and why it’s being used, just change it for some ambiguous reason that nobody asked for and is never likely to appreciate. What is it with WordPress that drives people keep fixing things that aren’t broken.

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      2. Well that seems a little harsh. We wanted to:

        1. Refresh the look because the scope/intent/post-frequency of the site has also changed a bit (no more hand-picked daily prompts, for example).
        2. Try to highlight photo posts front and center because they’re the most popular (we clearly miscalculated a bit in terms of how the comments work on photo posts, but that’s something we can provide at least some remedy for).
        3. Use the features we create. We occasionally give tips on using WordPress.com, and what better way to illustrate theme customizations than by changing our theme? (This was just the teeniest fraction of the rationale, I’ll confess.)
        4. Ok, fair enough: stop looking at the same blah design we had been using for over a year. Sometimes you do just want to paint your house and if one of the neighbors hates the new color, so be it.

        I’m sorry you don’t like the change, and we can certainly tweak based on feedback (I’ve already done some of this). If the overwhelming feedback turns out to be that the new look makes the site less useful to its consumers, then we’d surely make further adjustments.

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  8. The thing about the typewriter was that – apart from being attractive – it was instantly recognisable.

    When moving from blog to blog, the typewriter told me I was on Automattic’s own blog about daily posts.

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  10. I don’t think my comment was harsh. You’ve already admitted, when replying to my earlier response, that you were ‘…trying to fix the wrong problem’. And as for what you’ve said here I’m unable to comment as I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about, other than I’m not forced to look at the new paint job on my neighbour’s house. But if I want to continue contributing to and looking at other bloggers contributions to the Weekly Photo Challenge I have to use The Daily Post blog. So why not give us all a break and put it back as it was?

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    1. When I said I was trying to fix the wrong problem, I meant that I had not correctly understood your characterization of a particular beef with the photo page, and the fix I then applied (adding a sidebar widget) was not in fact a fix for the photo problem you had attempted to communicate. I was not making a blanket statement that changing the blog up was an attempt to fix some undiagnosed problem.

      If the house metaphor doesn’t work for you, that’s fine.

      It’s not clear to me that putting the blog back the way it was would be giving everybody a break. So far, a couple of people have said they missed the typewriter, a couple have named specific problems with the photo pages that I’m going to see about a fix for, and you’ve expressed general dislike of the whole change. But it’s not a given that your view is widely shared. Just because you feel strongly about it doesn’t mean that everybody agrees with you. In fact, if the “like” stats and a couple of explicit comments in favor of the changes are any indication, you’re in the minority. This of course doesn’t mean we won’t make adjustments if overall feedback seems to dictate them.

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      1. My concern is that the ‘Fixes’ don’t appear to addressing the problems that have been raised. If they did, then use of the blog would effectively be returned to how it was.

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      2. Ah, so the issue is that I haven’t yet applied fixes for the photo thing. On my radar:

        • Make the visited link color contrast with the standard link color so that it’s easier to see which posts you’ve already visited.
        • See if there’s a way to make the pingbacks appear chronologically along with the comments (which I think is the other big complaint you raised).

        If I’ve missed any, please do give me clear statements of the problem and I’ll gladly see if I can fix.

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  11. I keep seeing instructions on “Post a day” that say “simply grab a badge.” How do we do that? Have I missed something? I thought I had tried to go through all the tutorials, but evidently I slept through one step. Could you fill me in? Thanks.

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  12. The only complaint I have, which is not really a complaint, is that the front page doesn’t display the author’s name for each post.

    But I have to echo everyone else’s “miss the old theme” sentiments. This current theme isn’t just sterile, it’s dry. It feels like one of those starter themes that’s meant to be customized.

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  13. i don’t mind the overall look but do find it a bit sterile compared to the previous look and agree with the previous comment about looking a bit like it still needs to be customized. But I just checked and the links for the photo challenge comments still do NOT change colour. That is my main gripe really – with so many people posting for the photo challenges, being able to work your way through the COMMENTS and return later with it being CLEAR where you had been and where not was a huge plus for this site. I do miss that and find it very confusing to navigate the weekly photo challenges now.

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  15. I can report back that at least one of the common gripes is now fixed! Links you’ve visited in the comments or pingbacks section now show up in orange, so that it’s much easier now to scan and see what you’ve already visited. We’ll continue to mull over the rest of the feedback and see what other changes we’d like to implement.

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