gcextempora

Hi @luciamarinescu,

Thanks for your reply.
I confirm my appreciation for your theme which has so much good, very good, otherwise I wouldn’t be here to spend time. However, I confirm that the recent update has produced serious problems (in a different way) in sites that used it.
(Obviously always keeping it updated, and usually used in conjunction with Elementor for customizing some layouts: few essential things, to allow the user to be autonomous in the management of his wordpress site with a friendlier interface than gutenberg (powerful but not so successful in this aspect.)

If it can be useful to someone, I share my experience and feedback here.
1. Luckily backups exist, for wise users!
The rollback procedure (it would be great!), if possible, increases the damage, so in my experience I don’t recommend it as a solution: if you see serious problems, it’s better to restore from an updated backup or try to redefine the layout where it is ruined.
2. In some cases it may be enough to simply add a style class to tighten the maximum size of containers in “contained view”, which doesn’t seem to respond anymore. In this way it is perhaps possible to recover the main structure of the previous layouts.
3. This was especially necessary on customized single pages, instead viewed blogs and posts, original to the theme, often required minimal intervention (title).
4. I did differential experiments, which cost me a lot of time: whatever choice you make, the new style panel (in the customize menu) keeps flashing (for no reason?). I point out that in Italian you see the option “lagacy color variant” is not “Legacy Skin”: perhaps it indicates a problem or it simply depends on the translation, but the two concepts are different. While on newer implementations of Neve (series 3) “style” doesn’t appear at all (probably because there is no old skin to recover).
5. I see that the developers have been very concerned that version 3.5.5 could interfere with headers and footers, where many innovations are concentrated. Certainly complex headers and footers require some work, but the new organization improves usability does not limit it and it does not seem devastating at all. It’s understandable that you’ll have to do some tweaking to your site from time to time, and it will be easy to get layouts that match your preferred scheme. It’s an improvement, not a change. I point out minor problems here: some menu qualifiers, second-level items, no longer implement the transition graphic effects on hover (::after), but perhaps the limitation is intentional..
6. Instead, more reconstruction work may require the pages and layouts developed ad hoc starting from the good old original Neve. Of course we are talking about sites that use the child-theme, and custom css to specify the graphic identity, using the solid(!) structure of the theme as an evolved starting point.
7. In these cases, after restoring from a backup, I am dramatically evaluating starting from scratch with a new theme (Neve or other) as a faster and safer solution. Or don’t update Neve beyond 3.5.4 at all, which I don’t think will be a long-term solution though. This is why I wrote that, free to update your theme (thanks for your continuous development!), a clear indication of the pitfalls that could be linked to this 3.5.5, would have given the opportunity to reflect, experiment and decide without anxieties and disasters to recover, and saved so much time for those who trusted you. Having said that, in my opinion the new version of Neve brings appreciable improvements, generously even in the free version. The theme is beautiful, even more powerful and usable, but the doubt remains: if I take a deep breath and patiently rebuild everything… when will a new sudden(!) disaster?

regards

Dear Neve developers,

I really enjoyed your theme,
which I have been using for several years, since its first appearance. (at the time I preferred to develop responsive themes by myself). There are many reasons for appreciation:
first of all the relative simplicity of configuration which made it usable with good results even by non-expert users, and then the completeness and integration with other equally useful web tools. After all, WordPress was also born with this spirit, allowing people to make their own contribution of content and ideas through the web, with efficiency, practicality, quality and freedom, even without being technical developers!
It has happened other times that the update of your theme has led, BLINDLY, to some problems in the sites of those who had chosen it, but these were issues that at most could concern the intervention on some configuration, on some style and container, nothing unsolvable except sometimes with a good dose of patience. This time, forgive me for telling you, in my opinion you have really gone beyond a reasonable threshold of acceptability, forgetting the first essential rule for any “update”: backwards compatibility. This too is technical baggage! Of course, it is often a very difficult requirement to maintain, especially if the application is evolving a lot. However, in the impossibility of maintaining it, it is good to call things by their name: define it as a new product, in this case a new theme. In this case, also including the possibility that the previous theme can no longer be supported in the updates.
In all of this the user MUST always be warned. WordPress is not a place where everyone can do what he believes; respect for the users of this CMS is due! To all intents and purposes, they trust those who provide them with tools based on the authority and prestige of the platform. It is not because a plugin or theme is free that there are no responsibilities, at least moral, both in providing it and equally in using it.
It is understandable that some of these tools are premium, or in any case with recognition consideration, we know well how much work and how much study there is behind an application. However, it should not be forgotten that the spirit of the platform is based on mutual liberal collaboration, and that it is made what it is thanks to the support and free work of many generous and responsible people.
For the same reasons it is understandable, legitimate and predictable that a project at a certain point can or should be abandoned, modified, withdrawn. Just as freely, the user community will be able to weigh the authoritativeness and reliability of the developer or software house from this. I repeat this time in my personal opinion you have gone further, and not even the rollback procedure appears to be decisive, the sites remain damaged without remedy. I’m afraid you’ve gone deep into tables and fields. I will take the time to analyze the reasons for the invasiveness of your “update” of which I am sure you have not fully considered the destructive potential on the sites of those who had chosen your theme, otherwise you would have posted at least one warning to protect your reputation.
I have several sites that use basic Neve and I have recommended it to many users (now I am advising them one by one, because some are contacting me in desperation!). Luckily, my personal site management protocol calls for two local host cycles before going into production, and I only screwed up those of just one site.
A theme that from highly appreciated is starting to become inadvisable par excellence. So thanks for the past, even if it turned out to be a time bomb, something else must be said for the present. For the future we will see.

Best regards.

Thank you very much for your attention, correction and video tutorial(!!!). I easily followed the instructions and the problem in my pages is solved. So super positive feedback!
One question: I use your plugin on several other sites, can I wait for the normal update of your plugin (I see that there is a 5.6.1 version) or do I install this DEV version?

gc

Thanks for your prompt feedback.

Thank you so much for your ultra-fast fix.

I’m sorry to bother you again, but I realize that although the preview pdf is perfectly produced with the Ubuntu font, now that I’m experimenting with sending it as an email attachment, the pdf sent via email still continues to report the default font (DejaVuSerifCondensed, embedded).

Great, your fix works very well for me.
I took the time to test various configurations of my document and everything works. Bold and Italics are also shown correctly (without annoying simulations).
A respectful little suggestion after my endless tests: perhaps adding a “preview button” at the top, near the first “save setting”, would help a lot when testing complex graphics documents step by step.
Thank You very much.

Reading your tutorial better, I saw that you use the mpdf library, and I went to read the specifications. The problem is perhaps a little clearer to me now. If I understand correctly, the additional fonts should be added in the plugin and cannot be loaded from the outside as is normally done with the CSS style sheet. Given this, it would be great for me to be able to choose from your list, if only then I actually saw the choice applied in the pdf (maybe it depends on MAMP?). Since I read a bit about mpdf I noticed that some CSS instructions work there in a particular way: for example overflow but also position. In fact, this has given me some problems. Here I solved with absolute positioning (and patience) in containers with problems.