#cheyeayuh!

that is a tasty late night snack you just served for us on this side of the pond! 

That's what I call down to the wire.

Woo!

OK!  Time to start digging in to see what you guys have done.

Uhhh YAY!

Mmm... I know what I'm doing this weekend! :)

Thank you to everybody at 8Bit and the community!

wooot! You've made my weekend =)

ohhhhhhhh yeeeeeaahhhhhhh

smiles

Awesome. Great work guys. 

one word: WOOT!!

*Squeals of glee* 

This is an absolutely horrible release! You guys managed to take the world's easiest template - and get rid of everything about  it that made it great and user friendly.  Uninstalling and reinstalling to the old template as we speak.  Very disappointed in this new Standard template. Serious fail! : (  I would advise everyone to really research how this changes what you see when you log into your admin panel before installing. 

@Michelle

It's different yes, but to call it a serious fail is a little harsh, don't you think?

Took me a few minutes to get used to the changes, but there were no surprises. If you recall, we had three previews to play with, test, and offer constructive criticism. This new framework is actually quite easy to use (and better) after a bit of initial effort. I recommend putting another half an hour into it, I'm sure you'll like it. 

Michelle: I love the new Standard 3 release and feel/think it is just as easy and user friendly as it was before. Probably even more so now that it is in line with WordPress' latest version and the ability to accommodate Child Themes. It's going to be much easier to maintain when future updates come out; no concern of anything breaking due to code changes. Did you happen to follow any of the pre-release notes or simply excited to dive right in?

Embrace change,

Geoff 

Thanks everyone for your comments back. I bought Standard Theme last year because it is so easy to use. And you don't need a technical background to do it.  Which makes it easy for my assistant to update.  And easy for me to update as well.  I have 5 sites.  2 or on Standard Theme.  And up until last night, I felt that The Standard theme awesomely so easy to use and modify.  I told everyone about it, and wished up unit last night that my other templates were as awesome and easy to use with such great results.  But the new template requires more technical know how and time to make work.  So OK not a total fail for those with time and energy to put into it.  But for someone like me, who loved Standard specifically because I didn't have to put my tech hat on.  It is.  

I have noticed that of late, templates are being created by people with great technical abilities, and they forgot that not everyone has those abilities, or wants to spend the time to develop them (since programing isn't necessarily everyone's strong suit.)

I have reinstalled my site back to what it was a few days ago.  And will keep the old Standard theme on my other site as well. 

I agree with some of the things Michelle says.  No, it's not a complete fail.  However, it's not as end-user friendly as I would like.  Michelle is quite right when she points out that not everyone has the time (or desire) to dig into programming code to make changes that are resolved with other themes by moving a slider or selecting a drop-down option.

Overall, I like the theme and I'm basically happy with it.  I just feel like the developers don't understand that many of us do not want to slog through CSS to make changes.  

Let's take the change to Advertising widgets as an example.  The previous version took our PUB-ID and would automatically handle ad insertions.  They pulled that out saying that we could just as easily do it with a text widget.

Well, yeah you can, but it's not as flexible.  If you look at the 125x125 widget, I don't see a way to plug AdSense into it.  Instead, it wants me to upload a picture and link it to a URL.  Instead have having context-sensitive or rotating ads, now I have to commit to the same ad display all the time.  It isn't a deal breaker for me. but it's an inconvenience and less usable than just plugging in AdSense code.

Michelle:: 
Can you say specifically what is more complicated? For me and all of my 
clients thus far, Standard 3 is much simpler and more intuitive to use 
(even for the most un-techy). Where exactly are you running into trouble?

Thank you William : )

Dustin.  I liked that when I opened the old Standard up I could easily see how to add things like Facebook, Twitter etc. And the very simple video showed me how to do the entire setup and customization with very little work.  I logged into the new Standard and couldn't figure out how to add back in (since they were previously up on my site) Twitter, Facebook etc.  I saw where the social media icons were - but needed to go search tech support to figure out what exactly that meant.  And I"m a busy person.  Who bought this template specifically because it was so user intuitive. 

Another example.  I saw that I had a message saying because of my SEO widget, Standard had decided to use it instead of it's own features.  So I click on the message to determine what the benefits would be to changing it.  And of course, how to do so.  Guess what the documentation said? " Explain pros and cons."  Not the helpful, user friendly Standard I was use to.

Then I looked at my website and realized that only the home page was showing.  My entire menu bar had disappeared with the instal. In the previous version this is a no brainer. In this version you have to customize tool bars and then figure out how to get them where you want them to go.  It was at this point I decided to reinstall the old Standard back.  I paid a premium for The Standard template because - and only because - it saves me time and is extremely user intuitive.  I do not expect or want nor did I pay for a template that makes me go read information that may or may not actually be there on how to do even the simplest of things on my site.  If I wanted to do this type of work I would have used one of the other templates I have bought, (as I mentioned previously I do have 5 sites 2 of which use Standard). And up until last night, myself and my assistant viewed The Standard as the easy to use, hassle free template.  My assistant even said to me, when I asked her to make a change to one of the other sites "well, it isn't The Standard Template, so it took some time."

I'm sure if I really read everything on the site, my questions might be answered partially. (Not sure given that the information I did go look for was only a place holder.)  But I don't have the time to do this.  I bought Standard specifically because it was user intuitive.  And did not required a lot of time and energy on my part to use. I use it for the two sites I need the least customizations on. And everyone else I know who uses it loved the old version because they didn't need to be technical to use it. And all the major elements were right there under The Standard section of the dashboard (you didn't have to hunt like you do in S3 for things like the header and foot for the site).  And they also loved it because there were a couple simple videos that showed how to customized just about everything on a website with a few simple clicks.

I'm sorry if I offended anyone by calling it a fail.  But from an easy to use, no hassle, don't have to think like a techy or hunt for information to customize it - it is.  If the original Standard hadn't  marketed itself as exactly that, than OK. I wouldn't have expected Standard 3 to be anything different than other WP templates.  But the point is, most people who bought this template bought it because of how it was marketed and how simple to use it was.  And so to move away from that and expect us to love it is not realistic. Does that make sense?

Yes, it makes sense.  I had expectations of this release that weren't met. As you mentioned, the new control panel was very disappointing compared to the old one.  What makes that all the more disappointing is the first thing I read on the documentation:

Standard was designed for publishers.

If you’re reading this guide then you’re probably a writer, author, blogger, journalist, or some form of online publisher. Scan through the list of features and it should be clear that we have oriented everything around people who love to publish content online.

It doesn't seem like it was designed for me, as a publisher. I want to spend my time writing, not wading through code trying to find some undocumented CSS element so I can change the color or style of text.  

I don't want to bash the product too much because I find it valuable and it does many things very well.  It's just not useful for many end users to configure it with their own personality, though.  That's the major letdown for me.

@William and @Michelle - The web changes.  Resources have to adapt to those changes.  If you look at what came baked into Wordpress when Standard 2 was released you will see the necessity of having the features in the admin panel that it had in it.  Now those features are duplicating and possibly conflicting with what comes baked into WP.  If you are looking to just maintain the same status quo content management system, Joomla and Drupal are available.  Wordpress is on the cutting edge of end user development (publishing) and the themes that run on top of it have to adapt to those changes in order to be successful in moving with it to the top.  

Things did change dramatically in ST3 and the guys at 8BIT never made any attempts to say they weren't.  In fact, they said the direct opposite.  Theoretically this is a different theme.  2.8 is still a great theme and runs well. 

I for one, am taking the time to jump on the learning curve.  I want to know how to publish better without the headaches I've experienced with extra plugins and theme conflicts with Wordpress core.  I would encourage you to take a look a the features of ST3 vs ST2 and determine if the pros outweigh the cons.  It isn't necessary to change but my decision is definitely determined by the use of Child themes, responsive design and incorporating WP core functionality.  

Just my 2 cents

Child themes did absolutely nothing to address the issues I've raised.  It's a nice step toward solving Michelle's issues, but you still have to slog through code.  That's just not user friendly.  It's very nice that Wordpress now has tools built-in to change fonts, colors, etc.  However, those are generic tools and not specific to any theme's particular features.  Theme developers need to address an interface for areas they develop beyond the generic.

JBrad - that's completely irrelevant to the issues that Michelle and I brought up, not to mention a little condescending.

Oh please. Lighten up, William. I think JBrad was just trying to lighten things up a bit. We have a solid community here but as with anything else, complainers are usually ignored. I used to love the carburetor on my first and second car. And when fuel injection became a bit more mainstream... I was hesitant. But again, just like with anything... in time, I warmed up to it and learned to appreciate it. NONE of us are under any obligation to upgrade right off the bat. And I'm sure you can relate to when digital camera began to hit your industry... there was a learning curve and adjustments needed.

@benrwoodward #fistbump I don't think it can be explained any better. Fine job, sir.

I actually am a technology consultant.  Again its NOT that I CANT figure out code.  It's that I bought Standard Theme specifically so occasionally I wouldn't have to. I have returned to the Standard 2 Theme because as William was saying at some point I would like to stop playing with updates to WordPress and my various websites - I have 5 of them - and just simply publish content!  The old Standard 2 allows me to do just that.  For other templates that I use, for my other websites that require more customizations, I have spent considerable time hunting through things to figure it out and hiring help when it was more cost efficient to do so.  My issue is that Standard 2  was marketed as, and was/is a very user friendly, non-techy template that allowed publishers to actually do what we do best and love to do - publish content - not code. Standard 3 is the exact opposite and the documentation is not up to par.

If those within Standard Templates tech department don't want to hear that.  I'm sorry - then don't have a forum for discussion. But when your sales start to go down from your target market - this is why.  That's all I was saying. Hear me, don't hear me. It's up to you.  I was taking valuable time out of my day to give examples because I was asked to.  And because, having done 18 years of technology consulting on many custom and ERP systems, I know that hearing what you maybe don't want to hear is one of the most valuable ways to actually gain insight and meet customer needs better.  But if that's not what Standard is all about, that's fine.  I will quit wasting my time.  And more importantly stop recommending the Standard Template to others. Hope everyone has a great night. - M

I'm about as tech savvy as today's average twelve year old, maybe less when it comes to css and code. I had no problem moving to Standard 3.0 and honestly found it to be just as intuitive as the previous version. Different? Yes, of course, but just as intuitive. I think perhaps we sometimes forget what the name of the theme means... Standard. Personally I think some good synonyms would be Basic, maybe even Generic. In other words, a very functional out of the box theme that doesn't require a vast knowledge of css or other code to create a decent site and allows the user to focus on content.

Certainly, I've noticed a buglet or two when using the child theme kit, but I've reported what I've found so far and I'm more than sure, based on previous experience with these guys, that they will be addressed as quickly as possible.

Finding the "perfect" theme is virtually impossible because of the amazingly huge array of different things that different people want. So what if we want to make major customizations? Go beyond Standard, if you will? We either hire someone with the knowledge we do not have, or learn to do it ourselves. I do not recall reading anywhere that Standard 3.0 was going to be the answer to every individual's needs or desires. In my opinion however, it's a fantastic place to start!

Thanks, Chris.

That's exactly why I came here to share my thoughts.  It doesn't mean that all of them will get met, but you can't make a decision about things that I'd like if I never share them with you.  I like this product and want it to succeed.  If I didn't, I wouldn't take the time to come here and speak up.

All : : 

For those that do not know me yet, I oversee quality for 8BIT. I try my best to make sure that our products are as good as they can be before they go out the door and that your questions / issues are addressed after they go out the door.

First and foremost, I 100% echo the reply from Chris Ames. I can promise you that no one is more empathetic and passionate about new users (especially non-technical users) and user experiences. He is chomping at the bit over this thread of comments. He will parse and gather every last word for feedback to be discussed and potentially applied.

These forums are a safe space to bring comments and feedback such as this, as long as they are respectful. Never hesitate to voice your opinion. We read every single comment (and try to reply to them all…eventually) and really absorb what this community has to say. Standard 3 is what it is because of users like all of you providing feedback. I do not think that anyone can call into question that we do not listen. We do. We provide an open channel for feedback, and while we might not implement everything that is requested, it does drive the direction of Standard and we will reply to everything to let you know why or why not something will be implemented.

Now… To do what I do and address the particular issues raised by Michelle and William.

But first, a point of reference that will drive a lot of my reply… Standard 2 was released on July 29th, 2010. This is exactly one month shy of two years ago from the release of Standard 3.

Michelle

You joined the Standard community on April 29th, 2011. This was 9 months after the release of Standard 2.

RE: Time And Energy / Relearning

Since you joined 9 months after the initial release of Standard 2, you had the benefit of walking into an established community. While you possess the technical capabilities, you still did not need to spend much time learning because the documentation had time to mature and the forum contained a plethora of already answered questions, FAQs, and tutorials. So even if you did not have much time to figure things out, most of questions or issues you needed help with were already figured out, answered, and addressed on the forum.

Without a doubt Standard 3 is vastly different, but give us those same 9 months and see where things are then in product, documentation, and forum maturity. We just surpassed 1 week yesterday of Standard 3 being released. We will get there, but it will take time.

In the mean time, Standard 2 is still a very viable product. There is no need to switch unless you want or need to.

RE: SEO

Even though this may seem more complex, it is actually far better for you to be more informed in this area. You needed to manually edit Standard 2 to use third party SEO plugins like All-In-One SEO or WordPress SEO. That is why an explicit decision and education is now necessary as Standard 3 does not require any manual editing. There really is a choice each user needs to make in this area, to use Standard or another plugin.

RE: Menus

At the time Standard 2 was released, WordPress did not have the built-in capabilities to create menus, so it was a feature we created to meet the needs of our users. Now that WordPress has an amazing built-in menu system, there is no need for use to create our own. We never create a feature unless we can somehow do it better than WordPress or the "competition" (ie. plugins, etc.). In this case, the WordPress menus are fantastic. They are easy to use and ultra flexible.

There is an in-depth FAQ in place now to explain how to use the WordPress menu feature.

William

You joined the Standard community on June 7th, 2012, just under a month ago and 1 year and 11 months after the release of Standard 2.

RE: Requires A Technical Background

Since you joined only a month ago, you inherited a vastly mature community, forum, product, and documentation. You started using Standard 2 at is absolute best. Its pinnacle. Nearly anything you could have wanted to do had already been asked and answered, so all you need to do was apply what you had found. This resulted in nearly immediate gratification.

All of that took time to cultivate. Give us Michelle's 9 months, let alone your nearly two years, and all of that information will be at your fingertips. I am not saying it will take 9 months. We will get there much quicker than that, but not within 1 week of the initial release.

As far as CSS changes and undocumented CSS classes are concerned, I am not sure why you are upset. Standard, in all its iterations, have never had documented CSS classes, with the exception of the Standard "what color" FAQ and users just asking questions. It would take exponentially more time to document all the ids and classes, especially compared to right-clicking on a website and immediately inspecting an element with Firebug or Chrome Developer Tools. Now that is immediate gratification.

The reason we push so hard for CSS over options is because it aligns closely with one of Standard top core features…speed. The use of color and font pickers in a theme's admin dramatically slows down both the admin and the website itself. That is why you never have and never will see a picker in our admin. We would much rather create FAQs and answer questions so that all your websites will be quicker. The Standard 3 FAQs and tutorials will get there soon, but again, not in a week. Especially since we are still working on actual support issues and bugs, which will always come first before customization help as outlined in our forum guidelines.

RE: Admin Panel

While the Standard 2 admin panel might "look" better, that is about all it had going for it. Switching to the WordPress API for our admin panels have reduced our theme activation issues dramatically. If the old Standard 2 admin panel worked well for you, you were in the minority.

From now on, you will use us stick as close to WordPress native as possible. It is for the stability of the product and for ease of our users.

RE: AdSense

This is something we still have scoped for Standard 3, it just did not make the initial release. However, you will never see us add AdSense on 125x125 ads. Standard 2 never supported this either and we publicly outlined why.

RE: Rotating Ads

This is something we still have scoped for Standard 3, it just did not make the initial release. Based on how the new ad widgets are designed, we still need to think about how to implement this, if we can do so intuitively.

Conclusion

All of this is fantastic conversation. I promise you all of it is absorbed and it will be mulled over and painstakingly scrutinized. We really do like and listen to what all of you have to say, both the good and the bad. We know your websites are your "babies", many of your your primary hobbies or businesses. You obsess over them as much as we do. We use this product, too. We want it to be great, too. Standard is always in active development and we will make it better together if we can continue to have this open and honest line of communication.

Thank you all for the time you put into your replies.

Michael:

Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed response.  Unfortunately, I'm very sad to read your answer.  Not only is it clear that there will be no user-friendly interface to modify Standard Theme, you don't even understand the rationale for providing one.  Your recommendation to use Firebug or Chrome Developer Tools flies right in the face of what Michelle and I have been saying here.  It's not that we can't learn what we need to learn.  We just don't have the time to do it because of other pressing business concerns.  

Let's go back to the portion of your documentation that I quoted a few posts back - you say you designed Standard Theme for publisher.  Well, many of us are too busy publishing to spend time in developer tools. I can appreciate your comments that this helps the performance of the theme, but I wasn't' attracted to buy Standard Theme because of any performance claims.  I bought it because I read about it in Michael Hyatt's book "Platform". When I saw his web site, and then looked at your web site, I presumed that I could create something similar using the tools in the interface provided with the theme.

Silly me for presuming.

Publishers are end users. End users need an interface to the underlying features that you likely take for granted.  We aren't as familiar with the code or the tools you use to inspect them, and that's not what we expect for something that is marketed to us.

Again, I appreciate the time you put into this and the insight to how other features will progress.  Just the same, I'm left with an empty hole when it comes to modifying the design of my site.  Now I know that I either have to put my business on hold while I dig into this mess to do it myself, or pay someone else and hope it works out.

By the way, Michael:

Lest you think that I haven't tried, I have.  I've inspected Michel Hyatt's site with Firebug and thought I identified the CSS code to make the change in appearance I wanted.  I pasted it into my child theme and....nothing.  I cleared my caches and tried it in a few different spots - still nothing.

That's the frustrating part.  There may be a simple answer to my problem for someone who understands the nuances.  For me, it's an exercise in frustration because one simple change leads to hours of investigating something else to learn how it's done - not exactly the user experience I want.

I'm not stupid. I'm just out of practice with coding an unfamiliar with this platform.  That's why your answer about using those tools was so disappointing to me.  It was like telling me there's a simple answer once I run up a hill jumping hurdles along the way.

@William:  Michael Hyatt's site is built off of ST2.  The CSS elements have changes so that would explain much of the problem.  

Chris:

Thanks, I'd be happy to talk.  As I said, I don't expect every idea I have to be approved and rushed into the product, but I bring them up because I do see a lot of great potential here and that's something I want to maximize for my use.  I've bought themes from many of your competitors, always looking for the ideal fit.  Most of them never live up to their potential.  I can tell you that I'm encouraged by the engagement you and the team is sharing here, so I'd like to reciprocate.

There's more than one way to skin a cat, though. Perhaps the tools I requested are never going to make it into the product, but that doesn't mean you can't develop a market for different theme designs to download. The folks at ProPhotoThemes have turned this into a market and I'd gladly pay for a well designed theme that builds upon the framework you've developed.  That would give me what I want for much less than the cost of a custom design, allow you guys to keep your architecture as designed for performance and other factors, and also open up another revenue stream.

In other words, I'm more interested in getting results than the journey I have to take. Maybe you guys can think of other clever ways for me to get results that I hadn't considered.  All I'm telling you is that it's just not happening right now.  There's an opportunity for all of us.

I'll send you an e-mail with my phone number.

William Beem : : 

No one here is calling you stupid. I hope that did not some how come across in my reply. 

I do understand your rationale for wanting to add a user-friendly interface. But here is what I do not understand...

In regards to using CSS for font and color modifications, there is zero difference between Standard 2 and Standard 3. So why did you never provide any feedback on Standard 2? The possible answers for this that I can think of are:

1. You were just as upset with Standard 2, but just never voiced it, so how would we know to change anything? Did you just hope that we would change something?
2. You were not upset with Standard 2 because there was all kinds of existing forum topics, FAQs, and tutorials to explain everything you wanted to know, but now you are upset with Standard 3 because all that information is not available yet.

I am sincerely just trying to figure out why you were never frustrated before and now you are.

The recommendation to use the developer tools was simply made to get you immediate results because you seem to want this done now. Otherwise, you will just need to wait for the forum topics, FAQs, and tutorials to form over time.

And as benrwoodard already pointed out, Michael Hyatt is still running Standard 2. That is why none of his inspected CSS is not working for you. There are very little similarities, if any, between Standard 2 and Standard 3. Many people buy Standard because of Hyatt's use and love for Standard and want to mimic his design and functionality. Please keep in mind that he did buy and use Standard as the base for his theme, but he did hire professionals to design and customize it. He did not do that himself.

Michael:

As you noted earlier, I'm fairly new to the product.  I spent time working with Standard 2 trying to achieve some results before I came to the forum looking for help.  Then I learned Standard 3 was on the way and it would support Child Themes to ease the problems some folks were having with designs.

The simple truth is that I read what I wanted into the announcement of Child Themes, assuming it would resolve these issues.  I waited and discovered it didn't, so that's why I'm speaking up now.

William Beem : : 

Thank you for your transparency. 

I sincerely hope you and Chris Ames get a change to connect.