What we do is place the image in the story, select featured image; then in post settings turn off the “show featured image,” which removes the duplicate in the actual post. 🙂

<LOL> my one pet peeve since version 1x.

Right now you have to manually comment this out here in loop-single.php

            <div class="meta-info">
                <?php echo $td_mod_single->get_category();?>
                <?php echo //$td_mod_single->get_author();?>
                <?php echo $td_mod_single->get_date(false);?>
                <?php echo $td_mod_single->get_commentsAndViews();?>
            </div>

to
<?php echo $td_mod_single->get_author();?>

I keep trying to press the point that ALL newspapers show a byline for the journalist who writes an article — for the past 100+ years, and this should be *on* by default for the post page. It should be manually turned OFF for those running something other than a NEWSPAPER.

(HINT: RADU AND CO – please make this the NORM !!!! Author = ON for post page!)

@Fudoki
you know, I think Radu was going to try to come up with something like an additional user account field for “image” where you could link to the image in your media repository, but I think that wasn’t high on the 140+ user requests relative to some other stuff. I think there was a hack for that, or plugin, or something… e.g., comment out photo in the author box code, then use plugin for custom author image…. but it’s been awhile. I was out sick most of May/June, and pretty wonky the 2 months prior to that. Only been getting better the past 2 weeks. So, just getting back to this stuff.

We both need to do a search in the forum for this topic, methinks. I don’t have an answer at the moment 🙂

Hm. Weird. On our server it optimizes them for progressive if we upload them that way.

OH: wait, I think our mod_pagespeed is rewriting them to progressive if not already, which is why we haven’t gotten that error you’re getting (doh).

Some people seem to like this WP plugin for optimization:

EWWW Image Optimizer — automatically makes progressive unless smaller file size from non-progressive.

SmushIt — also super popular. Now that WPMU has taken it over, it should still be viable option. We used this for a bit prior to changing the functions.php for compression level and installing mod_pagespeed in January with the rewrite images functions.

Hi,
this is what we do on our sites, in the functions.php file .. this overrides the default quality setting and is a WordPress function, not a hack. We have our set to “50” — for a portfolio site or photography site, you might choose “60” (it’s not a “percentage” of compression but a quality factor).

—-from my old post in the pagespeed thread–
For example, you could set the compression of images to something like 60% or even 50% in your child theme functions.php … will only change level on new images uploaded unless you use the regenerate thumbnails plugin or similar.

add_filter( 'jpeg_quality', create_function( '', 'return 50;' ) );

NOTE: Download your existing image files via FTP for safety backup, before you apply this with “regenerate thumbnails” as it will overwrite old files with the lower quality optimized images.

This is likely obvious but be sure to check the CORS settings on the CDN, to make sure the newer images have allowed permissions to load off your domain vs everyone, or if allowed for everyone make sure that’s still the setting. Also if the thumbs are not showing “suddenly” this obviously implies something changed on your site, server, or CDN connection (the theme cannot magically change something while you sleep, as you know) — perhaps the expirations were set to expire at certain time, or the CDN content needs to be expired and recaptured. Regenerating all the thumbnails might help, also. And check to make sure the folder permissions didn’t change (sometimes “touching” the image folder at server level can reset it). I’ve run into various things like this with our CDN setup last January until we got it dialed in. Check memory setting in case some pages running out of memory to generate or show images. Check the page source of a page missing thunbs and see what is in the spot if anything, such as bad link to an image, or image file name with spaces not getting corrected with the entity for blank spaces which would serve broken/missing images. Pardon stream of consciousness … 🙂

Make sure the server is running deflate/gzip properly, and you have the proper expires headers set, and server side normal caching if so provided, …. compression and expires headers are good for at least 20 points.

Just for a reference point, one of my pages on the test site, with caching plugin turned off, and the disqus, adsense stuff running (3 ad spots), Gravatar, and one YouTube video.
http://ga-ga.com/1763/book-review-anti-americans-star-sons-wichita/

is 90 desktop / 79 mobile

I need to swap out Gravatar for local author image and should shave off 708bytes from the featured image upload (has “red” in it, so didn’t compress as much).

With the gravatar fixed, and if I ignore the “errors” from Disqus and AdSense, it’s totally in a doable range for us.

I think it works out to be 93/83 without the “errors” on there.

Not bad since NOT running any caching plugin, not using CDN, and not using a minification plugin other than mod_pagespeed optimizing the pages on the fly.

• This reply was modified 12 years by simchris.

@manual
best bet for my stuff, is go “backwards” from here as the stuff for htaccess file still good, for Apache/Linux. I’m only running nginx for some stuff on our server, we use Apache for compatibility with 20 years of content and some stuff not practical to reinvent at this time.

mod_pagespeed … I am running kind of a moderate number of things with defaults on server wide, then htaccess for local per site/folder controls/over-rides or “off.” With nginx I think you have to use a config file.

Anyway…. here’s my htaccess minus the 301 stuff:

<IfModule pagespeed_module>
ModPagespeed on
ModPagespeedEnableFilters collapse_whitespace
ModPagespeedEnableFilters move_css_to_head
ModPagespeedEnableFilters combine_css
ModPagespeedEnableFilters remove_comments
ModPagespeedEnableFilters rewrite_images
ModPagespeedEnableFilters insert_dns_prefetch
</IfModule>

# start WordPress
(removed; might be diff for other setups :-)
# END WordPress

AddType text/javascript .js

# BEGIN Expire headers
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault "access plus 5 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 2500000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 2500000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 2500000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 2500000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access plus 2500000 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 700000 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 700000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 700000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 700000 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 600 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/xhtml+xml "access plus 600 seconds"
</IfModule>
# END Expire headers

# BEGIN Cache-Control Headers
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
<filesMatch "\.(ico|jpe?g|png|gif|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "public"
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch "\.(css)$">
Header set Cache-Control "public"
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch "\.(js)$">
Header set Cache-Control "private"
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch "\.(x?html?|php)$">
Header set Cache-Control "private, must-revalidate"
</filesMatch>
</IfModule>
# END Cache-Control Headers

<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header unset ETag
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_alias.c>
RedirectMatch 403 /xmlrpc.php
</IfModule>

Here’s my robots.txt file (again, your needs may vary)

User-agent: *
 Disallow: /cgi-bin
 Disallow: /cgi-bin/
 Disallow: /wp-admin
 Disallow: /wp-admin/
 Disallow: /wp-includes
 Disallow: /wp-includes/
 Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
 Disallow: /wp-content/cache
 Disallow: /wp-content/themes
 Disallow: /wp-content/upgrade
 Disallow: /wp-content/backup-*
 Disallow: /aff/
 Disallow: /search/*/*
 Disallow: /trackback
 Disallow: */trackback
 Disallow: /trackback/

We’re currently not running things off our Amazon CDN for the WP sites, in favor of using the horsepower of the dedicated server with high-speed switch, APC, mod_pagespeed, etc. Not finding it super beneficial to load those 1kb sprites off the CDN, frankly. (Brand new web server Dec. 2013). And for us tweaking is simpler when it’s all using one system, and letting mod_pagespeed fix some stuff.

I was manually minifying the style.css file and couple other things. Have not done that with latest version (just updated last weekend). Simple to do … some of my posts on here reference the websites like css minifier where you can copy/paste your code, make new file and over-write the theme css file to solve that issue (takes 5 minutes).

I had too many issues with the caching plugins so not using right now.

Take Google’s PageSpeed Insights with major grain of salt.

On one of my project sites (not running WP), we have the CSS loading from external file, minified, got pagespeed score of 87 and warning about only 47% of page loading above the fold (menu wasn’t showing up), and this could be seen missing from screen capture. So, we put all the code inline, speed went to 95 desktop, 85 mobile, but warning about above the fold now says only 1% was able to be loaded, but snapshot of screen shows everything above fold loaded properly.

Similarly on our WP install running Newspaper, here’s one of their wonderful “suggestions” ….

Reduce server response time
In our test, your server responded in 0.36 seconds. There are many factors that can slow down your server response time. Please read our recommendations to learn how you can monitor and measure where your server is spending the most time.

So, apparently 0.36 seconds is considered slow?

🙂

AH! Yes… in fact, I just did this same upgrade process to my 2 sites running theme on Friday. Went perfectly. Just over-wrote files via FTP, then deleted the one old bakery folder, installed plugins, then over-wrote my mods to the functions.php and style.css, and two module files, single-loop file, done. Everything worked!

Be sure to update the plugins found in the theme plugins folder; I do these manually to be safe.

@mbasche
thanks so much. Worked perfectly. For some reason my fragile little mind couldn’t work out the syntax on that, even though I have various other things removed/blocked/optimized in my functions.php file, as per usual. 🙂

I think I had been putting in visual-composer vs visual_composer, which is ultra dumb on my part. Doh.

THANK YOU!!! 🙂

Yep same issue I have with many themes, browser, etc.

Again, simply copy the URL for the image in your repository, then paste that URL in the box for the logo, press save. If you go back to the logo options, it will now be there. No FTP required.

I see this with some themes from major companies, and some themes do not. It’s an Ajax/Java issue between the WP panel, theme panel, and browser.

I’m sure Radu et al will look at that issue, but it’s fairly common, and can change from each version of browser, theme and WordPress, in my experience.

If you’re using Internet Explorer (e.g., IE11/Win7-64), you will get spinning squares of doom with some save actions. Some weirdo issue with java/ajax and IE. Try using Chrome, Safari, or Firefox (depending on platform).

With Firefox, I’ve also seen issues with oddball customizations that use Java/Ajax or something and conflict with the browser doing things on ALL web pages.

That may not apply to you, but it’s been my consistent issue with WP the past couple of years with a number of themes using Virtual Composer.

I’m sure you’ve already tried things like clearing cache, etc.

I’ve found best to use version with theme, as it’s “tested” to work with everything. You could probably install new version, TRY IT, and if it doesn’t work, just go back to the included version.

I’m sure the support team may have more definitive answer.

This has been an issue with all themes for years, not just Newspaper.

We’ve found it’s simpler to FTP up the logo, then put in the URL to logo. such as mysite/images/logo2014_600x200.png (or whatever), then save, them reload page and the link will be there. Super annoying. I gave up on the upload function looooong time ago.

Not sure that helps, but it’s what I do on my dozen or so websites now. Especially if using Internet Explorer on Win7.

If you don’t want to FTP, you can still upload logo with media manager, make note of URL, then put in the full URL in the theme panel(s) for logo.

• This reply was modified 12 years by simchris.

I believe there is an “export and import” settings in the theme panel.

@Gee95
thanks … health getting better. Stress finally got to me!

Hope you get it sorted.

Just as an anecdote, each time I post my website URL here I get huge influx of comment spam; which I don’t think is coincidental. Moving all the sites to Disqus anyway, which solves that issue mostly.

Likely some file or plugin or something is missing a trailing slash in the path; with a “literal” path vs the [theme path] use by WP. (I’m doing not accurate terminology there.. just using general terms.)

No idea. I don’t recommend using stars in your URLs, though.

Hi,
sure. You can look at one of our oooooold sites currently being “rehabilitated” using this theme, as a work in progress — it has been in Google news since they launched. We switched over from our in-house WP theme to Newspaper end of last year (time flies!).
http://PublishersNewswire.com

(NOTE: above site is several versions of theme back, when the visual composer was still built in; I was sick most of May and June with a high blood sugar, onset diabetes issue **sigh** and so I am waaaay behind on things since May. Slowly catching up. That is ALSO why you don’t see a visual composer home page setup there at the moment …. I got sick right when about to do that.)

Ah. Makes sense on subdirectory

If you click on one of the 404s in Google webmaster tools does it say WHERE the soft 404s are being linked FROM ?.

If pages on your site, you may want to go to one of those pages and look at the META data at header and footer and see if anything is linking into that folder with wrong URL.

If you’re using child theme, make sure you have any referential links consistently with a trailing slash.

Alternately, you could use Yoast SEO and activate the “enforce trailing slash” which will force a trailing slash on everything and redirect anything which is missing it. Might be simplest fix for you, if you exhaust everything else.

I think you need to remove them from the functions.php file, if memory serves.

Shouldn’t the URL show your full URL and not /v3/ ?

In my webmaster tools when it shows soft 404 errors it shows the full site URL.

Likely something with your permalinks, tag or category removed, but still being linked to, etc. The trailing slash is usually set in Yoast SEO or similar, or may be in your permalink settings (compare them in two browser windows side by side is helpful).

Not a theme issue, but how you’ve setup your content, links, and permalink structure.

Nothing wrong with a soft 404 error if you have a few. It happens — I have some inbound broken links from some other site, where THEY linked to bad content. So, it makes a 404 error… and like so what. That is why the 404 page is there.

I have 20 soft 404 errors out of 21,000 pages. Not a big deal. Mostly bad links to content from 2005-07 that don’t exist.

• This reply was modified 12 years by simchris.

We have 7 or 8 sites in Google News. One got kicked out 3 years back when we added a couple of columnists who Google didn’t like (a psychic who was writing about some spiritual stuff, but it wasn’t “news” — learned lesson on that one). We removed one. Working on new site to submit. We have one site in GN using this theme, and another site we’re working on — it’s actually being used for other things too like testing mod_pagespeed on our server, and some things related to syndication.

Having original images for each post also really helps – not copied from other sites. So, if you do a review of a video game – make your owm images. Stuff like that. Make sure your post titles are UNQIUE too. Basic SEO stuff, obviously; but Google hates news sites with only “duplicate” content.

Hope that all helped somehow 🙂

Hi,
the post ID before post name is popular way to do it now. In olden days GN used to like having date in there too, but that was prior to the XML sitemaps, and the XML news sitemap which have the date/time and modification as part of it.

Some of our sites even had .php on the end as in oooooold days many systems expected a file extension for individual pages, vs the landing page in a real directory.

Main thing to get accepted now, is actually having NEWS and having it first, posting ORIGINAL articles from a staffer (with byline), not having too many ad systems running in addition to AdSense, NO advertorial or paid posts/sponsored content, all the usual stuff like privacy policy, legal statement, publisher page on G+, etc.

You can always revisit your content and resubmit, but they may tell you they will only revisit in three months, which is a pain.

Google has been cleaning house on junk news sites (our news network sites have been in GN since it was in beta many years ago) and getting stricter on what kind of sites they will allow; specifically if you’re just copying YouTube videos and cloning stories from major news portals, stealing images without permission, and not creating “first of its kind” original content, they might not take your content. They also don’t want “made up” stuff like a psychic blog, or things which attack other groups, and they do want to see an editorial staff, content which is not “guest posts” or paid content.

You need a Google XML sitemap, Google Webmaster account, unique URL for each story — traditionally they needed a unique ID number for each story which is why you see those strings of numbers on URLs to most real news sites.

Often done as

site/12345/pretty-url-here/

or

site/pretty-url-here_12345

But they do have specific guidelines you can read – both for content and technical requirements (for example they don’t expect to grab content more than 2 days old, so you need to have “current news” every day once you submit your application). Bylines, proper dates/times, etc.

Also remember that the XML sitemap, and Google News sitemap are two totally different things. Your XML sitemap should be working for awhile (not a brand new site), and you should not ping Google News with your news sitemap until approved.

Hope that helped somebody.

I know of many websites which have been kicked out due to “low quality content” this year.

I have not yet submitted one of our sites running this theme, which we’re still messing with as it’s consolidating 3 ooooold sites into one new magazine (ga-ga.com); but one of our sites running this theme *is* in GN right now, although the site is 10 years old and pre-dates GN. We switched over with zero trouble. This theme is properly optimized for Google News as long as your content is newsworthy.

• This reply was modified 12 years by simchris.