Hi guys,
We are playing around with tagDiv composer for our site redesign and it is amazing. We are still learning new things everyday as we explore new ideas. The ability to be able to control how the site appears on each screen size at a granular level is brilliant.
Also really pleased with the new cloud template function. It addresses my biggest bugbear with Newspaper – the ability to adjust the overall width of the columns – but it’s allowing us to create some genuinely unique page designs rather than seeing different sites that look exactly the same as ours.
Couple of requests for future updates. Some may already have been mentioned, some may be bugs, some may not currently be on your radar, but hopefully it helps:
– can’t choose a sidebar from the main post composition screen if using a cloud template. We would like to be able to run sidebars that are customised for different article categories, but that’s not currently possible. We could create several near-identical page templates, each with a different sidebar, to address this but it seems clunky when everything else is so sleek.
– paginated articles don’t work. It doesn’t seem to recognise page breaks. We may be missing something but we really can’t get it to work.
– TD composer doesn’t have accordion/tab functionality. We’re currently scratching our heads to work out how we will replicate or replace this, as we currently run a lengthy glossary that uses an accordion to hide and display all the descriptions, and we can’t do this with TD composer.
– following on from the above, it would be great to have the ability to load anything into a row that only displays a certain height and then has a ‘load more’ pagination function, like the blocks do for posts. For example, we are using the testimonial features in quite a different way, but there will be potentially loads of them on a page so it would be good to only show a few with the rest hidden behind a ‘load more’ button. See here:http://compareallvans.co.uk/reviews/ford-fiesta-active-2018/
– we have been trialling closing off comments after X days. Using cloud templates, this causes a “Comments are closed” message to pop up at the top of the page under the menu. See here:
http://compareallvans.co.uk/used-car-warranty-consumer-rights/
This doesn’t happen with the traditional Newspaper templates, which display the message in the correct place after the last comment.
– We’re currently having trouble with smart sidebars using inner rows, but this is probably our own fault rather than a bug.
– Newspaper (and Newsmag) lack behind other themes when it comes to presenting reviews. Given how slick the rest of the features are, this is something we’d really like to see developed in future editions. We’re also currently looking at plugins for incorporating user ratings, but not sure whether they’ll play happily with TD composer.
Thanks guys, and we’re really enjoying building a new site with Newspaper 8.8!
stuart
Hi,
Thank you for all your appreciation and suggestions, it is always great when users provide feedback. Without feedback it would be much harder.
– Indeed, when using a cloud template the sidebar that is set in the template will be used. This may change if a different functionality is found or more options will be introduced in addition.
– Paginated posts currently do not work with cloud templates, we will fix this.
– The tabs are a much requested element, it may be considered for a future update along other new elements.
– I understand what you mean about the Load more, I don’t think this has been requested before. I will make a note of it.
– About the comments, I tested it and the same happens for me. I will add this on our fix list and it will be taken care of as soon as possible.
–> Please describe the issues with sticky columns and inner rows, I will try to replicate it on my end.
– The additions to the reviewing part were minimal, that is true. There were and still are plans to update the reviews, but it seems that always there is something else that has priority.
I conclusion we are sorry for any inconvenience, we constantly try to improve the theme and plugins while also adding more new features with each update. Many tasks take a lot of time and effort to complete and test however. The cloud plugin is still at the beginning (beta) so it may change in the coming updates, fixes will be made and options will be added.
Thank you!
Hi Simion,
Many thanks for your answers, it’s very helpful. Look forward to seeing the theme and templates continue to develop.
The issue we’re currently having with the sticky sidebar using cloud templates is as follows:
When we have the sidebar in a normal row, it works fine, like this page:
http://compareallvans.co.uk/revised-hyundai-i20-on-sale-at-13995/
When we try to put the same sort of layout into an inner row (so we can have a coloured background to the main row for contrast), the sticky sidebar stops working, like this page:
http://compareallvans.co.uk/most-capable-jeep-wrangler-on-sale-in-september/
I assume that we’re doing something wrong, but we can’t work out what it is.
Our only other major problem at the moment is that we are having so much fun using the TD composer and cloud templates to create that many new template designs, we can’t work out which ones to actually use for the final version of the site! So far we’ve created about a dozen that we like, and just playing with the different elements is giving us more and more ideas…
stuart
I see now what you are refereeing to, I don’t think that this is intended for inner rows, the inner columns do not have the sticky option. I will add this on our suggestion list and it will be considered.
As for cloud templates, there are many new ones to come. Our designer team have many more ideas and are working as we speak to create beautiful templates. We are glad that you appreciate the work, and you are having fun with the theme and page builder.
Please have a nice day!
Thanks Simion. It’s not very important that we style the pages that way, so it’s not critical that it’s addressed anytime soon. We were just wondering whether we were doing something wrong or if it was just not possible.
Have a great weekend,
stuart
