[Mary]

Hello OpenLab team,

I’m hoping you might have a suggestion for me on themes. I’ve been experimenting with different themes for associated sites I’ve been building, and encouraging other users to put in requests for new themes to be made available for the full network. I’m finding that the gray OpenLab wrapper (I’m sure that’s not the proper terminology) on those pages isn’t quite playing nicely with the theme. For example, the Publication theme advertises an exciting full-screen featured image for posts and pages, but when implemented at one of our sites, there’s not only the gray bar for OpenLab, but then a white bar beneath that, and it seems that in Chrome at least, the top bit of the page is chopped off (you’ll see that the three bars indicating an expandable menu are not displaying properly). I include a screenshot for the website as it’s displaying in Chrome and Safari. I don’t understand why this is happening so I’m not sure how to fix it. I’m also wondering if you would recommend limiting associated sites to only certain wordpress themes. I’m crossing my fingers that’s not the case, because encouraging users to experiment when building associated sites is one of the real advantages to this platform.

Many thanks, as always!

-Mary

[Mary]

I’ve attached images again here…after reducing file size.

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[Mary]

aaaaand…one more try with resizing. Here’s the screenshot of the homepage on Safari.

-Mary

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[Mary]

Adding a few additional details here. I now suspect that it’s not a difference between browsers, but a difference between being logged in to OpenLab and not being logged in. When logged in, the gray bar across the top gets thicker and obscures part of the wordpress theme.

I thought the issue might be that I was using a theme that hadn’t been updated in 2 years, so I tried a newer theme and the same thing is happening. The screenshot shows what it looks like in Chrome when I’m logged into OpenLab

Thanks for any insight you might have!

-Mary

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[Bree]

Hi Mary,

Thanks for all the details and screenshots!  I think you’re correct that it’s related to log-in state rather than browser.  Something is causing the links in the toolbar for your profile (“Hi,…”) and “Log Out” to be bumped down.

I wonder though if the cause is the theme, or the item that currently appears above “Hi, Mary Isbell.” (See my annotated screenshot, attached.) Is that from a plugin?

Also, I’m wondering if it’s something only you see as a super admin, since you’ll have more items in your toolbar than other users?  Have you seen what this view looks like from a non-admin account?  Or have any users reported the issue?

Thanks!

Bree

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[Mary]

Hi Bree,

Thank you! That was the problem and once I deactivated the “Jetpack by WordPress.com” plugin, the bar along the top was not so tall. Relatedly, do you or any other developers have thoughts on Jetpack? It’s pushed within each OpenLab dashboard (in what feels like a spam-ish way). Is it fine to ignore it and encourage other users to do the same?

-Mary

[Bree]

Hi Mary,

I’m glad that fixed the issue you were having, although it sounds like we should look into how we can make sure certain plugins don’t cause conflicts with the toolbar.  I’ll bring this up with the rest of the team.

Do the Jetpack notices appear on the dashboard even when you don’t have the plugin activated?  Or are they the notices that appear when the plugin is activated, prompting you to turn on certain Jetpack features?  I’ve only seen the latter, but users should be able to dismiss either of these.

We had a few user requests for Jetpack on the City Tech OpenLab, so we do have it installed, but it’s not network activated so it can be activated on individual sites as needed.  I think it’s probably overkill for most users, but some people do find some of its features useful.  We also have a number of other plugins that include notices prompting users to upgrade to the premium version.  They’re annoying, but if anyone asks, we advise them to ignore/dismiss the messages.

I’m not sure if that helps, but I can also reach out to the rest of the team for more perspectives – just let me know.

Thanks!

Bree

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