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Thanks, Brad. The existing image is 1600x600 - just like on the old site. I'll follow-up with you on your site. I appreciate the help.
–William
http://williambeem.comOh, I absolutely would prefer that. I just don't see how to do it in the instructions.
–William
http://williambeem.comWhat is the correct size? The documentation says the following:
Note: This background image does not need to be a specific size since the theme is responsive and will crop, shrink, and grow the image as needed. However, due to the nature of the effect applied to this background image, not all images will look correct. Images without a specific focal point, such as natural scenes that will not look unusual when only a portion of the image is displayed, will work best.
If there's a correct size, I'd love to know it. In the mean time, here is what I'm seeing. Check out the image on my site using the old Minimum vs Minimum Pro.
New: http://williambeem.staging.wpengine.com
The differences is ghastly.
–William
http://williambeem.comAs Brad mentions, you can add a portfolio. The problem is that it's not a very good portfolio. Must of the plugin portfolios that I've found are both cumbersome and unattractive.
I'd recommend considering a separate theme or site for your portfolio. Instead of having it as a page on your site, create a subdomain like portfolio.mydomain.com and link to it from your web site.
That opens up a lot of potential to use other WordPress themes that do a much better job of displaying your images. Just remember to have the menu system of that sub-domain theme point back to your main site.
–William
http://williambeem.comHave you considered leaving those widget areas empty and just using the simple social icons on your sidebar or footer?
–William
http://williambeem.comOK, working with Pingdom showed me where to find my bottlenecks. I learned something that many others already know. JetPack is a huge suck on performance. While I like the Stats module, I can do without most of it. Since I have Google Analytics, I deactivated JetPack (though I do like its statistics better than Google's).
Short story, now I'm getting better performance on my site with Magazine Pro than the demo site on StudioPress. It's still a heavier child theme than some of the others, but just killing JetPack was a major improvement in performance.
–William
http://williambeem.comThanks, that's encouraging. My own site is on WP Engine and it needs a lot of optimization before I'm pleased. However, I've found the same issue with TypeKit or Google Fonts being a drag on the load times.
I still need to activate my CDN for my site and tweak a few other things. That's why I was testing on the demo site to see a baseline compared to other themes. Magazine Pro is still slower than the other themes there.
–William
http://williambeem.comYou're right. If you include your FeedBurner, then you can't use the other features for a newsletter subscription.
–William
http://williambeem.comI guess tastes differ. I was never that thrilled with the previous version, but I think the current Magazine Pro is beautiful.
–William
http://williambeem.comThat's why I'm using the theme demo as a source. The assumption is that it's hosted in its most favorable configuration and may only get slower as a user loads my stuff onto the theme.
Right now, it's slower than the other models on the showroom floor. I'm trying to understand what elements are slowing it down, considering that it likely has the same hosting and underlying architecture.
–William
http://williambeem.comI just moved over to WPEngine.com and they have a very useful feature for each domain - a staging site. You can keep your production site running while you build your changes in the staging area. When you're ready, it migrates over to production. Very useful and one of the reasons I chose them.
–William
http://williambeem.comDev,
You seem to have come away with a different meaning than I intended. At no point did I mean to imply that StudioPress doesn't care about its customers. What I'm saying is that they are delivering exactly what they promised.
You appear to want something else. That doesn't mean StudioPress doesn't care about its customers. It doesn't mean that you're unimportant to StudioPress. Clearly, they don't want customers who go forth and say unpleasant things about them.
So why would you or anyone else do so when StudioPress delivers exactly what it promised?
By the way, I turn 50 this month. I've done my own share of software development and IT service delivery. I see no reason to be upset by the new Agency theme or any other new theme.
–William
http://williambeem.comPlease, SP… listen to your customers… or you will lose them.
Think about this from a different perspective. If you already bought the developer pack, then you aren't a customer for new themes. As you mentioned, you still have the option to get the old themes and you still get whatever new themes come along. You even get information on how to update the old theme to HTML5, but you have to do that work yourself.
New themes exist to entice new customers - people with cash to pay. Those of us who paid our cash and aren't offering more cash are not new customers. StudioPress is fulfilling the promise it made before we bought - to have access to all the new themes as they come out.
I don't recall any promise that the existing themes would get new technology added to them.
StudioPress can't lose you as a customer when it isn't selling anything to you. You paid, you're getting what you were promised when you signed up. The customers that StudioPress has to worry about losing are the ones who haven't bought anything yet, or maybe returning to buy another individual theme. So, the new themes are trying to lure new business.
–William
http://williambeem.comI really like this theme, too. Using it on one of my sites that's more text-driven and it works very well.
–William
http://williambeem.comNeither version was quite right for me. I would love to find a Genesis theme that works to replace a StoreFront Theme I use for eCommerce, but it just isn't there with Agency or anything else in the library.
You're right that the background image is a huge part of the impact, but who says it has to be a photograph? It could just as easily be an illustration, a texture, something you get off iStockPhoto. You don't need to have image editing skills to make this theme work. You just need to have some design vision to work with the possibilities it presents.
It may end up as something I use on another site in the future For now, my wishlist is on a different path:
1: A better portfolio section to use in any Genesis theme
2: Updated Education theme
3: An eCommerce theme that works for selling eBooks, videos and downloadable content onlineI guess it's good to want.
–William
http://williambeem.comUpgrades don't always go the way you may expect. Just look at the issues over at Apple with the changes to the iWork suite. Plenty of people think that Apple dumbed it down to be compatible with the iOS versions. In effect, they released an upgrade that eliminated useful features.
That doesn't mean the new product is a bad product. It's just not one that works for the folks who are complaining about it. Others who don't use those features, but appreciate some of the new touches, are happy with the new version of iWorks.
This looks like the same issue here. It's a re-invention of the idea for the product. If it's not for you, stick with the old generation.
The lesson I'm learning from it is to keep my own archive of the themes that I like in case of a replacement. Yes, it means that you're stuck in time and may not have access to new technology. That's life. Nobody truly gets to have it all.
–William
http://williambeem.com@Bill - Thanks, I'll take a look. I'm running about six different WordPress sites. Where can I find pricing/resource information about your service?
–William
http://williambeem.comI tried MaxCDN once. While I liked the service, I must not have configured it properly because it wouldn't show my photos in an expanded mode, like ShadowBox, FancyBox, etc. I need to allow folks to click the image to see a larger version. Since that wasn't working, I gave up on it and haven't gone back to resolve it.
My embed code comes from a WordPress plugin and it generates HTML for folks to use. It's a direct link.
–William
http://williambeem.comI haven't checked Twitter. Just happened to be on the site and saw it on the Blog. Then it came in my RSS feed a bit later, so I must have caught it as a fresh post.
The Denali theme I've been waiting on could be a good one for my photography site, though.
http://demo.studiopress.com/denali/
–William
http://williambeem.com@Mealtog - There are other resources. Some photographers host their images on Flickr and then use an embed code to show them on their site. However, I find that's not best for my business or SEO. I even go so far as to share an embed code for my photos on my WordPress site so people can use them, but I get the link to my photography site - not to Flickr. That helps lead other people to my site, and there may be some SEO juice for having tens of thousands of backlinks.
It comes with a price, though. I have to host those images and deliver them quickly. So it's not just space that I need, but web server performance.
–William
http://williambeem.com