Prologue Gets an Update
The Prologue introduction earlier this week provided us with a lot of feed back. Based on that feed back we’ve made a few changes:
- The front page now shows a stream of recent updates instead of one update per user
- Pages now have their own template and look much better
- Avatars are only shown once for sequential posts by the same author (front page and tag pages)
- Post titles are no longer empty, they are generated based on the beginning of each post
- Works out of the box for WordPress.org 2.3.2
The front page on Prologue originally only showed one post per user. Many people were confused by this or didn’t like it. After taking a step back I tend to agree, so a more traditional stream of the most recent posts is now shown. Pages are first class citizens again with their own template. Since posts in Prologue don’t have user supplied titles it now generates a title for WordPress based on the content of the post. This makes other features of WordPress work as expected (like the Recent Comments widget).
For those of you who want to try out Prologue on your own WordPress.org site you’ll be happy to know that it now works with WordPress 2.3.2 out of the box. Initially I’d made use of a function (in the author template) that wasn’t available in 2.3.2, now that has been fixed. Sorry about that.
The version in style.css has been bumped to 1.2. This update is available via Subversion and in use now on WordPress.com.
January 30th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Nice update.
Keep on going !
January 30th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Joseph, I’m a little goosy about changing the style of my blog just to try out Prologue. I suppose the only way to find out what the fuss is about is go and create a new blog and give it a whirl? Is there no way to incorporate Prologue into an existing blog without borking what’s already there?
January 30th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
@Gerald Buckley -
Prologue is just like any other theme, you can turn it on, try it out and then go back to your previous theme without any problems.
Of course you can also try it out on a new blog as well.
January 30th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Gerald, switching themes in WordPress is a click of a button — there’s no risk. You could also create a blog on WordPress.com in 5 seconds to try out a theme.
January 30th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
You know you guys are awesome!
But the trouble is, how do we keep up with you?
I just discovered how to use the widget rss… so I am pretty slow…
Ich blogge auf deutsch, I blog in German with WordPress!
January 30th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Very Kewl
January 30th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Cool!!
January 30th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Tanks!!!
January 30th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
wow! another great updates
thanks scott
January 30th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Lots of improvement, really! Thanks. Is it possible to also have WYSIWYG text editor?
January 30th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Excellent!
January 30th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
thats so much better
Adam G
January 30th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Thanks!
January 30th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Haven’t even had a chance to use it yet, and you’ve already upgraded it. Maybe I don’t belong in the Twitter age…but Thanks!
January 30th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
oh
a instantaneous is very consummate and Spicy
Thanks joseph.
January 30th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Dear Joseph,
Great work. Just installed. One issue though: I can’t figure out how to show the avatar. It is simply missing…
January 30th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
cool yay 4 updates!
January 30th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Good for you wordpress team!!!
January 30th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Sounds Great! But I don’t understand any of it. I can’t get my “RSS Feed” dohicky on right.
All that said, read my WordPress blog “About Renee Ashley Baker” at:
http://reneeashleybaker.wordpress.com
January 30th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
w00t – this rocks – thanks everyone @ wordpress.
January 31st, 2008 at 1:21 am
It’s better! Ty WP!
January 31st, 2008 at 2:10 am
I agree with Gerald – can we insert a prologue widget?
January 31st, 2008 at 2:17 am
outstanding work as always guys!
January 31st, 2008 at 2:22 am
Gerald,
I run a second, private, blog to test out themes and other such things – giving me a perfect development environment. Give it a go.
January 31st, 2008 at 2:37 am
this is very impressive… as the guy upthere says… thanks everyone @ wordpress
January 31st, 2008 at 2:56 am
i had difficulties in prologue last time. i did not tried this update. after trying this i will give you exact comment.
January 31st, 2008 at 3:17 am
Great work guys and thanks!
January 31st, 2008 at 3:23 am
A sample of the update would have been better demostrate the idea.
Thanks for your continuous endevour to make the things good.
January 31st, 2008 at 3:23 am
Great…
Thanks for the updated version. I am really excited.
Keep up the good work guys..
January 31st, 2008 at 3:25 am
I tried this theme once I got this news, take a look at http://kutucape.com. There are some usability issues so far but this is a great simple but nice theme. Some usabilities issues are:
- user don’t know where to comment. I know there’s a link with number showing the comments, but the average users don’t have a clue what it is. I suggest to change with ex comments (number_of_comments)
- Title is missing. I don’t think I’m the only one to see this bug(?). A post must have a title in it, at least a tiny row contains title. CMIIW
January 31st, 2008 at 4:02 am
Can we please have a simple option to make the font bigger/smaller in the toolbox? The headline stuff [sic] is frustrating. Just thought I’d ask, no harm in it.
January 31st, 2008 at 4:49 am
thanks for the update…
January 31st, 2008 at 4:54 am
thanks for the notice!
January 31st, 2008 at 5:03 am
Nice
January 31st, 2008 at 5:29 am
Bravo! Thank you for the source code; GPL is much appreciated.
Keeping something similar to twitter relatively small-scale in terms of users for the sake of communication and productivity sounds like a good idea. WordPress backbone is mighty.
January 31st, 2008 at 6:12 am
looks great!
January 31st, 2008 at 9:11 am
wow, i just requested this yesterday and it’s already here. awesome, you guys rock. Thanks!
January 31st, 2008 at 10:15 am
The header-image uploader-thingie still doesn’t work with Safari…
January 31st, 2008 at 11:16 am
Joseph, I am curious whether i can get a theme like this to post asides. Now if i use prologue to post asides, it doesn’t show the titles of bigger posts. This isn’t the intended use of prologue, ofcourse. But if i can get a theme for asides like this, i can use wordpress as a full-time twitter+blog
- ravi
January 31st, 2008 at 11:20 am
Yes
Thanks so much!
As usual, you WordPressians Get It Done
January 31st, 2008 at 11:45 am
I love Prologue and did exactly what Gerald Buckley above suggested (opened a test blog to check it out). However it would be cool if it could be incorporated into a traditional blog. I don’t have that loyal of bloggers that they’d hit my blog then my prologue
January 31st, 2008 at 2:06 pm
rocks. thanks to WP team.
January 31st, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Gerald asks my question quite well!
January 31st, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Wicked stuff – I wonder if the folks at Twitter are having some sleepless nights?
January 31st, 2008 at 4:47 pm
I love the idea on giving the posting stream into recent updates. Then, reader can comment on other pages too. One thing is that I really want to make another blog using these theme.. It’s rock. Thanks for listening to your loyal user…
January 31st, 2008 at 10:39 pm
This has the potential to be the best theme I have seen. Only it needs more options. And some tweaks. Like are larger typing box. Or one where you can set the size of it through customization. To bad it can’t just operate like the write post function, with lots of functions. Then anyone could easily and quickly reply to each others posts while on the same page.
As far as I can tell the theme still does not have support for categories or tags. I mean, you can put something there, but I doesn’t take it, and sort by it. Let me give you an example:
I have categories or tags up on my side bar. I have WORK RELATED there as a category or tag. I type in something, and I tag it WORK RELATED. The post goes to the top of the list, but doesn’t appear under the work related category or tag. And it is auto posted in uncategorized.
Let me try reseting the theme, since I haven’t since you updated it, maybe that will help.
Ah I see how it sorts stuff, a new widget thing, recent projects…ok, but it still doesn’t have support for categories, only tags. And I can’t use it since it doesn’t have password functions, I can’t use it for my community page. I could use this theme if you had the same little text type box thing on each page, then I could use the pages as the separate categories, and just password lock each page, except the community ones…
but then you would have to put the text on each page, or turn it into a widget of some sort. That would be really cool, and instant post widget, for the bottom, or even the side.
let me show you what I’m working with so you can see my point. Otherwise it would be perfect: http://virtualredearth.wordpress.com is the community site I’m still building, where I would use it.
February 1st, 2008 at 1:03 am
Fantastic idea guys! I was looking for a way to communicate with the Co-authors of my collaborative blog for months. Since a forum was to bloated, E-Mail to un-blog-ish and Chat/IM to unstructured and non-durable, this is the perfect concept. Thank you so much.
Can’t wait to translate it into German, but at the time it’s — of course — a bit to unstable. Any chance to have support for external translations in the SVN version? This .mo/.po-file stuff, you know?
February 1st, 2008 at 3:49 am
Does this work in MU 1.3.2? I get an error about wp_register_sidebar_widget() being undefined in Prologue’s functions.php.
February 1st, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I have been to think that it is the ascent to my dreams……….thanks for your kindness.
February 1st, 2008 at 12:26 pm
One tiny complaint: Youtube Videos are a little to wide for the homepage.
February 1st, 2008 at 1:13 pm
One thing I found very odd — there’s no way to login on the site from the homepage.
Also, the user pages in IE6 aren’t rendered properly — the user icon is somehow chopped off (under a margin or something?)
“I wonder if the folks at Twitter are having some sleepless nights?”
Probably not — this would have a ways to go before it could be as easy or as “connected” as twitter is right now. Certainly possible, but not there yet. Additionally, twitter will always be easier than getting a distributed network setup
February 1st, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I think this is a fantastic idea. However, I would love to see a way to integrate this into a current theme, such as a Prologue page.
February 1st, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Wow, some of those changes I didn’t even notice in the original! Very awesome, guys, it’s always heartwarming knowing how much input the userbase has with things. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and loved.
February 1st, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Is there a way to control which category the post is assigned to? Right now, they all appear as “Uncategorized”, ignoring the options>writing>default category setting.
I’d like to incorporate this front-page posting idea into my own blog, but assign all of the posts to “asides”, as a sidebar stream next to the primary blog. To do that, I need to control which category the post is assigned to. Any thoughts?
February 1st, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Hi Joseph, Thanks for listening first of all – I didn’t expect the observations on my test bed were going to be read
That said I’m actually in two minds about which is better between single post per person per page and multiple.
If a reasonably sized group of people were to use Prologue as a central space for their activities it might be useful to continue to have the option of a single post per person.
Any chance of including this as an option in the admin area so people could decide for themselves? I’m thinking of Prologue as a portal or hub for coordinating the activities of a group of individual bloggers, where the most recent activities of each person could be easily tracked.
In the instance of a classroom activity for example, if the single post option remained, an instructor could quickly read through the latest Prologue updates from his students to see what they were up to.
Cheers
Mike
February 1st, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Cool!
February 1st, 2008 at 11:29 pm
Great work, I think I need to take closer look of Prologue to see if it would be good for some group communications. Keep the good work coming.
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Do you have a demo version of the updated prologue?
February 2nd, 2008 at 8:45 pm
thank you
February 2nd, 2008 at 11:34 pm
love the updates, love the theme. Using it now at whateverist.wordpress.com with some buddies. The main thing i wish it had were a better way to create a link or post a photo without having to post, then edit that post and resave. I’m sure you are already on this, but I thought I would cast my vote for next change! Thanks, again.
February 3rd, 2008 at 1:03 am
Very cool, but we need to be able to make the icons smaller…anything that uses them in the sidebar is throwing the sidebar to the bottom of the page. With so many posts, it’s not too helpful down there. Both “Comments” and “Authors” I’ve tested have this effect. VERY FUN, VERY COOL!
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:19 am
Long post names are throwing the sidebar down under as well currently, but I can wait until Monday…maybe…
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:13 am
Hi, in my Prologue (http://edvcafe.wordpress.com/) i can’t hide the text title of the blog (EDV CAFE) when i upload a graphic header. Could you improve it please? The other WordPress templates let to do that.
There is also a problem with the authors widget, the avatars are too much on the left side so they lay over the main area’s text.
Thanks
February 3rd, 2008 at 4:42 pm
looks promising
February 4th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
@Joseph, is there a way to combine the two WP loops (posts and comments) in the home page? This would do Prologue looks more Twitter like…
February 4th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
I love this update about Prologue. thanks !
I’d like to use for our internal project management on the site.
February 5th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Very cool!
February 5th, 2008 at 5:45 am
Hi Joseph and gang!
First of, thanks for the great theme! I was thinking how is it possible to integrate this
(http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_list_authors) into the Prologue theme, by having a public profile page (displaying their About profile info).
I think this is somehow missing from this theme, and I’m no great code tinker to mess the stuff… any thought that if this could be achieve or done?
Look forward for more updates!
February 5th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Hmm I guess I wil start a new prologue blog and incorporate rss feeds on to my sidebar! that should work I guess!
February 5th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
A group of us are trying it out over at http://lawlibrarians.wordpress.com. We are having great fun playing with it.
tfooq, you can add links with html from the front window. Not sure about adding photos, I haven’t tried coding that.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Thanks for the work!
February 6th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Very interesting…
This reminds me of the “Red de Miniposts Distribuidos” (Distributed Mini-posts Network) from the creators of Feevy.com:
http://www.deugarte.com/rmd (in spanish)
They also made many plugins for WordPress.
February 6th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Nice job guys
February 7th, 2008 at 11:44 am
very useful
is there any way of changing “Hi, . Whatcha up to?”
February 8th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Tanks Joseph