You are gentlemen and scholars, as my dad used to say 🙂

🙂

the main downside to messing with the theme tooooo much, is that it’s still very much in development. It started as a wonderful project with v2, and then a billion requests were made, and v3 is the response to that along with all of Radu(s),Marius,et al having many great ideas on their own (of course). So, I think a couple more months and it will more “done done” while now it’s very usable, with some very very minor things to fix.

They’ve been doing a fantastic job. If I can get one image management thing added we’ll be “golden” over here as some folks say. I didn’t need mega menus or flying bunnies, but image handling is critical for us since we *do* have working news portals.

Anyway…. it’s an adventure, that’s for sure 🙂
I’ve not messed with SASS/LESS, as it’s just one more thing to break my camel back. !

I think with the tagDiv speed booster, gzip/deflate on your server (which *should* be running properly if talking about speed), and mod_pagespeed, that might be one thing too many, in my humble opinion.

I don’t know anybody using it. Most “pro” developers simply mod their SASS/LESS code for what they need and the super cool geeks use COMPASS.

With WordPress you have a number of inter-dependent things, so likely more of a “does it work well with WordPress” before “does it work with the theme.”

There is some discussion in the WP core about the subject of autoprefir and prefix-free
https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/27078

However it may be that what you think it will do for you, isn’t what it actually does. It does “reduce the size” of CSS3 code, but was built in 2011 when it was a slower world, prior to HTML5, mod_pagespeed, and many of the efforts to write simpler code — again, take a look at SASS/LESS formats, along with minification.

While it was a good tool for a super high traffic site, to basically build in “shortcoding” of the elements, in the real world with average blog it won’t REALLY do that much for you — I doubt you would increase a pagespeed score by even a point.

If you’ve already minified all your CSS/JS, have caching, expires heading, using CDN for common elements, smushing and compression all your images, using cache for pages, and not injecting a ton of external content in your pages … and you still need to get one point someplace, it might be worth trying. But, why? Not really going to do much, if you’ve already done everything else. My 3 cents, anyway (2 cents adjusted for inflation). 😉

…at least now one could upscale from “featured image” unlike old days where pulling from “first image in post” was pain in the caboose.

Happy to pay for dev time to make it a go ! 😉

It depends on the view port and the type of ad you’re serving (static vs responsive), and the width of your website (fixed/responsive, 1170, 980).

but typically

sidebar = 300×250 /300×600 (250×250 iPad vertical, or 200×200 for iPad landscape)
header = depends on fixed or responsive layout; 728×90 won’t fit with 300px wide logo on a 980 wide layout; but 300×100 does. Turn off for mobile/phone view.
before/after post = depends; 468×60 is often safe; 300×100 works.

Everybody may find the “official” IAB ad unit sizes to be helpful, found here:
http://www.iab.net/guidelines/508676/508767/displayguidelines

Technically 468×60 is considered OLD, but still supported due to legacy layout dimensions and because Google/Doubleclick not yet TRULY responsive. Their ad units should resize for the div/space they are in with max width, but don’t work that way.

Not sure that helps, but some info to get started 🙂

This is a great source for content you can use for your blog, provided you retain the “attribution” and copyright for each story.
http://freenewsarticles.com/

Hi
you can see the extra spacing in very bottom footer (coyright “row”):
http://ga-ga.com/492/growing-older-in-a-youth-oriented-society/

The issue with the < > arrows missing with broken icons – for the previous and next story elements – appears in both the 980 and 1170 responsive layouts, on iPad portrait mode. Again, I think this is due to the breakpoint for that style class being “not used” for the iPhone, but it disables the icons too early, so on iPad portrait mode you get the [] no icon box. It may be a Safari issue, *BUT* I also noticed this issue AFTER turning the tagDiv speed booster back on, and not seeing that with it off.

Thanks :-0

I use my iPad almost daily since version 1 of the iPad came out and great for testing these kinds of things. Need to get an Android tablet, too, but can only deal with so much.

• This reply was modified 12 years by simchris.

Of course, the issue is needing the images to upscale “when published/uploaded” and not have to delete all the thumbs and regenerate them over and over….

I don’t have a test production site I can test these without possibly damaging them, but will try that out.

Obviously built-in support is still preferable as with existing themes that hook into imagemagick libs (now default support with WP), or which use timthumb or vt_resize.

Since WP now supports ImageMagick as default over GD libs, it seems preferable to use the server side capability to easily resize/crop from top images.

(phone rang mid sentence)

… In any case the issue only appears on 980 responsive width, no boxed layout.

You can see that from the link — happens on both IE11, and Chrome/Windows.

One other oddity is that on the iPad vertical view the < > arrows under post for previous and next story disappear and have [] broken icon. I think it’s due to the breakpoint style turning that OFF for mobile, but still on for iPad portrait (Air/Retina/iOS7.1).

UPDATE ON MOD_PAGESPEED with NEWSPAPER THEME and TAGDIV SPEED BOOSTER.

Okay, seems to work fine with Newspaper 3.6 – some oddity with 3.5.

So far, only real weirdness in 3.6, is on the iPad Air/Retina iOS 7.1 in vertical mode, the < > arrows for previous and next article below post disappear. Can’t figure that one out yet. Might need to replace those with » if I can’t sort it.

In every theme I’ve used I’ve always had to create my own CSS for that pesky widget. You will likely need to add some CSS for that in the custom css box to use it. I’ve actually found it’s easier to use one of the third party RSS widget plugins which have a style panel, and options to grab thumbnail, etc. You and I are in the minority of folks who still use RSS 🙂

(We used it on some of our sites to show “news from our sister sites”…)

Again… desperately need upsample function for theme.

OR EXAMPLE CODE:

/*  Thumbnail upscale
/* ------------------------------------ */ 
function alx_thumbnail_upscale( $default, $orig_w, $orig_h, $new_w, $new_h, $crop ){
    if ( !$crop ) return null; // let the wordpress default function handle this
 
    $aspect_ratio = $orig_w / $orig_h;
    $size_ratio = max($new_w / $orig_w, $new_h / $orig_h);
 
    $crop_w = round($new_w / $size_ratio);
    $crop_h = round($new_h / $size_ratio);
 
    $s_x = floor( ($orig_w - $crop_w) / 2 );
    $s_y = floor( ($orig_h - $crop_h) / 2 );
 
    return array( 0, 0, (int) $s_x, (int) $s_y, (int) $new_w, (int) $new_h, (int) $crop_w, (int) $crop_h );
}
add_filter( 'image_resize_dimensions', 'alx_thumbnail_upscale', 10, 6 );

ref
http://alxmedia.se/code/2013/10/thumbnail-upscale-correct-crop-in-wordpress/

http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Filter_Reference/image_resize_dimensions

***OR***
perhaps use scriplet calling ImageMagick to upscale, since WP now can access ImageMagick vs GD libs if available ?

Purpose of caching is to serve the PAGES very quickly. As per the note in the docs, you should use “page cache ONLY” to avoid issues with things getting cached you don’t want to be static for a long long time. Others will likely provide more detailed answer, but the simplest one for using W3 is here in the docs:

https://forum.tagdiv.com/w3-total-cache-configuration/

You can, of course, “experiment” with caching with any theme/site – it’s your site. But, you don’t want database cached or updates wouldn’t be loaded on indexes or front page.

But best to err on side of paranoia. Also be sure to do full site backup before enabling any cache plugin. And make sure the plugin is running at same user permission level as the ftpuser vs the server/apache as that was a big implosion of doom on one of our sites!

That may not have been perfect answer.

Aha! Great. I see you did it that way for those who like to runs ads in background. I was able to figure out the “middle” section but not the other 2.

That was super helpful., and will try it out this coming week… thanks!! 🙂

I think you need to use Contact Form 7 to create that.

http://contactform7.com/getting-started-with-contact-form-7/

Hi, Marius
Yikes … is this something I can pay you to add as a feature or extension, or custom plugin for Newspaper? We’ve moved from Woo Canvas, which still supports this function, since “featured” images are often larger than the image in post, particularly legacy content. For instance on some of our news sites we have 400×300 images for many stories, and these can scale up fairly well, as seen here:
http://californianewswire.com/

Basically we need the facility on some sites like CNW (above) to be able to enlarge the images to fit the featured slider, and on the category pages. Not horribly complex, just need the function, perhaps as a checkbox “add scaled images” which would turn on the two thumbs for category and home page slider.

E.g.
here, the main image should scale up to fit slider area
http://ga-ga.com/
and here image should scape up/crop to fit the feature box
http://ga-ga.com/gogaga/lifestyle/

This is worth US$100 to me to make it happen, btw. Or, happy to buy (3) more licenses via ThemeForest 🙂

Since everybody seems afraid to use timThumb anymore even with the security fixes, perhaps the vt_resize.php might be considered?

Original:
http://academe.co.uk/2013/08/resizing-of-images-in-wordpress-from-within-a-template/
Fixes for latest WP:
http://www.pirenko.com/blog/2013/01/22/vt_resize-php-image_resize-deprecated/

Since almost every theme developer is now abandoning any kind of image support except what is built into WP, this is problematical for many news sites which have legacy images from many years, not being able to be used to fit the new layout of Newspaper and other themes.

This would mean to have featured home page images, every image would need to be uploaded at the largest possible size used by theme, perhaps 745×483 – which isn’t clear in docs and also is different from what we were doing with v2, where the images were going up as 700×406. So, this mean EVERY image MUST be “GIANT” and then down-sampled for all other sizes. However this isn’t always possible.

This is why plugins like TimThumb and others over the year have been essential for creating complex image layouts where minor enlarge/crop is needed to “fit.”

So, money in hand. This would be another HUGE selling point for your theme, as it’s a VERY critical issue for MOST news sites, and we need it for our legacy news portals.

PLEASE CONSIDER – either as a custom add-on solution, or as a core feature option. I need this ASAP, hence willing to pay for development. This is the *only* thing we’re missing for our sites, right now.

Thanks 🙂

Hi, Radu A
I went back to the full width 1170 layout
as ran into issue with the 980 size layout, unboxed,
the Google AdSense 728×90 ad overlaps the logo vs having the logo area “responsive” to make the logo smaller – which makes sense since

300 logo | 728×90 ad
won’t fit in the 980 size.

I switched the theme back to 980 (8:48am PDT/PST 4/7 local time).

🙂

I will need to shrink the logo size manually for that spot (upload new logo).

In any case the issue only appears on

This is very weird. Even with ajax-thumbnail-rebuild and checking the larger sizes, it won’t actually build them.

You might try using one of the WordPress plugins that do this without having to load code from external source.

Or, double check that hellobar is even compatible with wordpress, and/or if they have a wordpress specific version. Usually compatibility problems stem from a service like hellobar using the same css classes already used by somebody else vs having custom unique ones, or they are trying to load something like jquery a second time when already loaded by theme.

Might not help, but ‘dems da facts. I’d look at a message bar plugin for wordpress first.

• This reply was modified 12 years by simchris.

Be careful installing demo data, as that is typically for folks starting with blank (new) site, not changing an existing site.

FYI – from the demo source code:

PT+Sans:400,700,400italic
Ubuntu:400,400italic
Open+Sans:400italic,400
Oswald:400,700
Roboto+Condensed:400italic,700italic,400,700

Oh yeah. You can style just about everything. We started using it long time ago for a custom theme we did, and also because most theme devs never included an author bio box, so this was of course why the fellow built the plugin. He’s updated it over the years with lots of features for styling and since he uses custom classes, in theory the custom css box in Newspaper theme panel “should” also be able to change anything else. This was important back in the day when every damn sidebar thing was done with an H3 tag. Ugh.

Interesting. It looks to do some of the things many security nuts do.

Fact is, some hackers will troll a website even if WordPress is not installed. One of our sites gets probes everyday to /site/wp-admin/ even though no such directory exists, nor does wordpress (custom CMS on our main business site).

Some things you can do yourself with edits to your wp-config file if you research that, which I think is preferable. And perhaps some other things are being done via a custom rewrite in the htaccess file (basically 302 redirects, perhaps).

I think if you have a lot of worry about being hacked, it’s actually simpler to use common security practices:
1) don’t have an admin account for wordpress; create superuser, delete “admin” …
2) install Limit Login Attempts plugin
3) read up on several fixes for your config file such as turning off the “lost password” function, pingback support, etc.
4) simple fixes to function.php to turn off showing version numbers

Also be aware that your web hosting company should be running things like iptables/csf/ldf to limit port scans and IP attacks, DDOS, email port attack (53), etc.

YOu may find some of these useful for adding to your functions.php, perhaps not:

/*NEOTROPE CUSTOM MODS -  */

remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wp_generator' ) ;
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link' ) ;
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'rsd_link' ) ;
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'feed_links', 2 );
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'feed_links_extra', 3 );

add_filter( 'pre_comment_content', 'wp_specialchars' );

function no_errors_please(){
  return 'GET OFF MY LAWN !! RIGHT NOW !!';
}
add_filter( 'login_errors', 'no_errors_please' );

/* Disable YOAST SEO Admin Bar. */
function mytheme_admin_bar_render() {
	global $wp_admin_bar;
	$wp_admin_bar->remove_menu('wpseo-menu');
}
// and we hook our function via
add_action( 'wp_before_admin_bar_render', 'mytheme_admin_bar_render' );

function delete_enclosure(){
 return '';
 }
 add_filter( 'get_enclosed', 'delete_enclosure' );
 add_filter( 'rss_enclosure', 'delete_enclosure' );
 add_filter( 'atom_enclosure', 'delete_enclosure' );

function remove_cssjs_ver( $src ) {
    if( strpos( $src, '?ver=' ) )
        $src = remove_query_arg( 'ver', $src );
    return $src;
}
add_filter( 'style_loader_src', 'remove_cssjs_ver', 10, 2 );
add_filter( 'script_loader_src', 'remove_cssjs_ver', 10, 2 );

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

function remove_pingback_url( $output, $show ) {
    if ( $show == 'pingback_url' ) $output = '';
    return $output;
}
add_filter( 'bloginfo_url', 'remove_pingback_url', 10, 2 );

I would not try using that commercial plugin on a production site, but might be worth testing on a test project and see what it actually does. 🙂

• This reply was modified 12 years by simchris.

@cooldude
on most professional news portals, popups (“interstitials” on many sites, technically) are actually managed by the AD MANAGER toolset, and not the CMS portion. Meaning, the CMS runs the content, the Ad Manager runs the ad placement, timing, tracking, etc.

You likely will want to look into an ad management platform to integrate, which offers pro level tools to implement interstitials, tracking, and other elements for your specific needs.

Or, you could use very simple existing tools like “nBar – Advanced WordPress Multipurpose Bar Builder” which allows you to slide in footer or header ads. Or, “WordPress Advert Flap Pro” which has fly in ad elements, or “Interstitial Ads for WordPress.”

Hopefully you won’t be too easily frustrated by that idea.

Well, of course that data is for Google to not show the Google author data on home page meta tags of your site.

One thing you can try: export your settings data, switch to default theme, do a save from a page NOT already saved to FB, see what it does. FB pulls that data from your OG tags (that is purpose), but as to how they are getting “author name” from your site vs “account logged in with” I have no idea. I thought it was impossible to share to FB without being logged into an account, where that person/account would then show as “who shared this.”

Sorry no better answer 🙂

• This reply was modified 12 years by simchris.