So here it is, folks: the new We Hunted the Mammoth, which is exactly the same as the old We Hunted the Mammoth, but with a cleaner and more up-to-date look.
Hopefully this move to a newer WordPress theme, and some behind-the-scenes tinkering, will help to prevent the glitches that have been knocking the site offline in recent days.
The new theme should preserve the same basic functionality of the old theme when it comes to things like commenting and navigating. (In case you’re wondering, the “Recent Posts” and “Recent Comments: widgets are now at the bottom of the page.)
I may do some additional customizing of the theme in days to come. Let me know what you think of this new look!
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Ok, trying a light grey background. Does that help?
I think the retro graphics will still work with the new design; I think the problem with Rosie is the shape of the graphic more than the style — it’s meant for a narrow colunm, not a wide one unless I ran it full size which would be a bit much in that space. I’m going to try something else in that space. And I may try that thing with borders for the graphics; I”m thinking that might work well.
The pale grey, and the lavender text, are soothing yet clear. I also like the new Related post section a lot better than the gigantic block from earlier tonight, and the assorted reduced but still perfectly legible font sizes. Good work David!
The biggest problems for me are:
* No page number links for other pages of comments. I second others suggesting these at both top and bottom of the comments section.
* I’m seeing six recent comments, rather than either five or eight. Eight was good. Ten might be better.
* The recent comments headings no longer include the timestamp.
Likely big problems for other people include:
* Where did the resource links go? E.g. “if you’re being harassed…”
Cosmetic:
* I liked the old masthead better
* I’m not seeing the white background people are complaining of. Seems to be a pale lilac color on my monitor, with the input boxes for comments being clearly whiter. I have no complaint about this, just an observation.
Under the hood:
* I am getting, at least intermittently, a “server not found” when submitting comments, though just browsing and reading stuff works normally.
And the favicon is missing.
And the new glitch when appearing/disappearing/reappearing comments persists.
Input a comment and hit send. Assuming the new “server not found” glitch doesn’t strike, likely your comment is now visible at the bottom of the comments. Now hit “back” and then “reload” … the comment is missing. Even though you just reloaded the SAME DAMN PAGE you were on, e.g. page 1 of the comments on this article right here. What the heck could be causing this? It started only two or three days ago.
New site looks fantastic! Excelsior!
The comment sections on the FAQs and other special pages returned after 5 years.
…
How long until some ass necros them again?
Listen, I love your blog. But in this case the “update” makes it look like a geocities page from 1998. I’m guessing this is a upload problem from my end?
The new background is much better on the eyes. As stated before, I agree with most of the other feedback given.
I generally like the new look, nice and bold and uncluttered.
My only critique is that being severely dyslexic, I find black text on white background difficult or even painful to read. Even a slightly tinted background would help that enormously.
Like the colour changes. Very readable*. Definitely getting there!
* It’s not something I bother to mention often, but I don’t see shades of red particularly well – they’re all a muddy grey/brown. Got a glitch in my genome that gives me very few functional red cones. Sadly, it’s heiritable – two of the kids got stuck with it too.
With the exception of the titles being a bit big, and the black on light being a bit jarring, the new site looks great on my phone. Would love a light on dark option, but don’t know if that’s an option with WordPress.
On my computer, there is a lot of unused white space on the sides, but it might be worth to make the look more consistent with the phone version.
Malitia,
Thanks for alerting us to the comment sections returning to the glossary and FAQ pages. There’s about a million trolls in the glossary and some funny mockery of them.
@WWTH
Is there a way to keep the comments on those posts visible but lock trolls from necroing them again?
On other news, police have gunned down the suspected murderer of a Trump partisan. That’s… not unexpected, but also a really distressing sign in my opinion.
This is a very minor quibble, but the site no longer appears to have a link to your Twitter feed.
Owwwwwwww, that bright white! (OK, I get it’s actually lavender, but still, it hurts. Still too bright. Or mebbe the text is too dark. And that’s during the daytime. I don’t wanna even think how too-bright it would be at night, in the dark.)
Please, could the background be a light grey (or some other neutral)– I have old eyes too, and I get the need for contrast, but as it stands now, the site actively *hurts* my eyes.
Okay, I gave it the rest of the morning* and my edit did appear in the previous comment thread. But it was between the two original paragraphs for some reason.
I’m not getting any sidebars at all but that’s probably to do with settings on my ‘puter.
*Not sitting around waiting or anything, it’s just a cooking day and I was in the kitchen.
edited to check that I maybe wasn’t keeping track of where the cursor was last time.
further edited to say that yep, I probably didn’t move the cursor the first time and also that my edit showed up right away.
I want to second the point about the “if you’re being harassed” links. Omitting those would not be helpful.
Otherwise, while I love minimal design since I find it anti-elitist (am browsing on mobile right now too), I do find the background to produce quite a bit of glare for those browsing at night without browser extensions or an app.
The typography is usable at least. Not my taste to have a serif font, and the exact serif font used happens to be practically identical to what WordPress uses with their branding based on my experience (Noto Serif), but at least “l” and “I” are easier to tell apart. Roboto was the previous font used and at least that had an identity separate from WordPress.
The comment widget looks a bit off too with regards to the visual style.
@Hambeast
I’m not getting sidebars either, I think they’re just gone.
The new look is a little rough around the edges (the section headings’ fonts are a bit gigantic, and so are the page margins on desktop) but I’m loving it already because it loads so much faster for me both on mobile and desktop. Good job!
One serious gripe I have is that the comment section really needs navigation controls on top as well as on bottom, and the ability to jump to a particular comment page. As it is now, if I go to an article with a lot of comments and want to start reading them from the beginning, I have to scroll all the way down and then click “Older comments” several times.
I see that some people are still finding the font/bg color combo too harsh on the eyes even with the darker bg color, so here’s a tip from a web dev: instead of true black, try playing around with a slightly transparent black. Something like rgba(0,0,0,0.9) (this would give a 90% opacity black). Something that won’t make it too difficult for the people who need high contrast but won’t be too harsh on the eyes. It’s tricky to find that balance, I know. Good luck, and feel free to reach out with questions!
I understand why the riviter isn’t here, but I miss her. “Take that, Mister Misogynist!” Heck, I always though a version of her and that phrase would make a nifty tshirt. Just, that phrase, followed by ‘we hunted the mammoth/site url’.
Any way she can keep showing up under individual posts, under the ‘please send a few bucks out way?’
That said, I’m just glad you’re still here, and have a site that’ll avoid crashes and such.
Comment pagination tutorial for wordpress. It seems it should be built it, maybe!
Not sure if the numbers will go on the top and the bottom, but having them in one pace would be a good start. 🙂 HTH!
Another bug with the new site version: it is sometimes serving up webp files mislabeled as jpegs.
Totally O/T: Merriam-Webster updated the definition of “female” in their dictionary (the one TERFs love to cite) to include the definition of “having a gender identity that is the opposite of male.” While there are some issues with this definition (it’s a bit binary, for one), TERFs are very upset.