Requests & Bugs

Site in reference to: http://artsartistsartwork.com

• I use Webmaster tools and I’d love to see a spot in the theme admin settings to add information to the header without having to edit the header manually.
• I’ve never seen this feature before in WordPress Menus, so I’m assuming it came in via the theme features of Kleo – the hidden menu items when not logged in. ?? Anyway, I noticed it has a number of the buddypress page links listed, but not all of them. It seems to miss completely the option to add the whole buddypress pages, which I ultimately thought would be an excellent feature. Making some places visible and accessible and others hidden unless they are logged in.
• Captcha for the contact form. And if I choose not to use it, a way for the theme to play better with other contact form plugins. I didn’t get the necessary details for this unfortunately, but I’m told it wouldn’t play nice with Contact Form 7.
• Navigation Menu issue that still bugs me and I cant’ figure out how to resolve. The dropdown menus are pushed down below the additional message/contact me bar. I really don’t like it and it is problematic at times when moving the cursor down – sometimes the dropdown disappears before my mouse gets there.
• There is a lot of script and it seems to take longer to load than other themes I’ve used. I’d like to suggest integrating a caching feature for some of the code elements that will make the site response time improve. Not sure how this could be done but it is a persistent idea that keeps coming to me.
• If someone publishes a blog post without any images, I’d like the theme to pull a default image that I can specify so the benefits of the design are not lost.
• Running a very visual type site, some control over options and where and when to show images is important to me. It was late and I was tired, but I seem to recall the next page of posts in archives doesn’t show images – it only lists the posts title and excerpt. If I’m not remembering right, forgive me. It was someone else’s site I saw.
• When the theme was first installed, none of the images showed up with the posts shown on the home page. I don’t know what my tech-guy did but he has the first 3 showing up now. I noticed one thing, if I use the Featured Image panel on WordPress, that image showed up. I hate using that, I like themes that pick up the first image. They’re easier to publish.
• Community Announcement Bar – running a community often requires a way to share an important message to people who are online. Having a block to enter the text-message in the theme dashboard would be fantastic. A checkbox determines whether to push it or ignore it – keeping the code light when not in use. When checked, a nicely theme-specific message banner appears above the current theme layout, pushing the whole page down a slight bit, displaying the important announcement. Ideally, we would only publish on the community pages, unless required sitewide (another option setting?)
• On the community pages when I try to post an update, I’m having a strange issue, and it apparently isn’t affecting everyone. I can’t post images, video, or links. The spaces are there to do so, and they load fine, but the strange thing is that the POST button disappears once I click one of those options. If I click into the Status Bar to write something, and don’t use these other 3 features, the Post box is there.
• For some things, it is a shame to write extra code or use plugins for this feature. Redirect when logging in, and Redirect on Logging out options. Where can we set them? How can we choose via dropdown the specific page or member-profile (their own) to visit once they log in? This would be nice.
• Member Profile view – when looking at this page, it has a nice polished look to it, but it is also very stark. No images and no option for the user to add one. Or am I supposed to be more technical and know how to do this? 🙂
• The Forum page doesn’t look so great. When created, they are created similarly to Groups, often with Groups actually. And they include a description and profile image. Could we have an option for the Forum layout? I can imagine having 2–3 different layout options for the Forum page would be extravagant, but really nice.
• If you take a look at my profile on the community site, you will notice another button there for Projects. This is a plugin that demonstrates some of the difficulties I’m encountering with utilizing other plugins with the theme. I can’t get a layout within the Buddypress Profile view for this at all. With the previous Buddypress theme, it worked fine.
• I also found that the Forums profile view button also took me away from the profile and to the forums page, rather than displaying the forums I created underneath my profile. This also worked with the previous theme if I’m not mistaken.
• If these aren’t possible, or in some cases necessary to have on the profile view, how can we deselect which profile optional view buttons we show? I can see taking Forums away beneficial. I can also see the ability to re-order them as being critical to accommodate the different audiences target sites represent. Is this a Buddypress only feature, or a theme possible feature?
• On the http://artsartistsartwork.com/activity/ page, I have found that others who have posted video and text show me two very different things. For example, one of the videos posted includes very little or no text update with the shared video. The other two I saw this issue have much more descriptive lead-in text posted with the video. This results in the Read More button for their update in the activity feed. Clicking that, all the text appears and about 1/4 of the bottom part of the video. The whole video-screen isn’t expanding to view.
• I don’t know what I did to cause this issue. It was fine in the beginning but as you can see it is off a bit now. The “You can talk to me” message bar is out of alignment now.
• When I view the member list the nice Add Friend button takes care of everything and the page doesn’t need to reload. When I visit a profile member view, the button is blue instead of the nice styling on the member list, and clicking the button reloads the page rather than taking care of it the way the other member page does. When the page did reload, it said friend request sent on the page, but the blue button still said Add Friend.

Now a little about the back-end experience if anything is missed above.

• When I come to your admin panel, I would like a welcome screen with some important information. Most importantly, a direct-link to your support forums and site registration page. 🙂 Doesn’t have to be a welcome screen, could just be part of the header.
• Featured Posts – I always like a featured post function with themes I use, for obvious reasons. Are there any plans to offer more feature layout options? Or sections? Or Random vs Featured tag?
• Language Switching – I love the feature and idea behind this and definitely could use it. However, I’m also on a very fixed and limited budget at this point and already have access to other language plugin from WPMU people. As well, I found another plugin that could have been used. Being ready for the other that you list, does this negate the possibility that these others will work? I am still trying to figure this out. Your guidance would be appreciated.
• Users being able to Like Posts – I’ve set the Like button to on – I don’t see it showing up anywhere. I want that to drive top content on the site somehow. Is it only for blog posts or does it work with activity feed posts, too?
• Styling Options – if there was a button there titled Replicate, could it create another option panel for a new class that would then be used for the new template we want to use? Just a crazy thought that suddenly came to me.
• Facebook Integration – this area has me concerned. There are other advanced plugins for Facebook that also itnegrate. How is this situation conflicting my setup if I use another one? Can I turn yours off and the other will still integrate nicely? Or turning yours off, do I lose other functions & features? I am puzzling over this. Mainly trying to keep the site efficient and conflict free, and user friendly.
• Nice to have – on the social features page for inputting all our social links. Having those titles hotlinked would be a nice shortcut to have. 🙂
• Social Icons only appear on the home page? I’m disappointed not to see it elsewhere on the site when I was looking through my Buddypress pages. Is there a specific reason it isn’t or just happened that way?

As you can see, I’ve been working with it for a little bit and failed to bring these forward. I was relying on someone else initially but realized today that I want to be always using the update feature / benefit and the less I customize the better.

Thanks, Lee

PS – oooo I’m sorry. I just scrolled back up through. This is a lot for one submission. I hope it’s all good. 🙂