libcom.org launches new theme!

silhouette of a penguin in white, on a red background, libcom.org underneath

As part of our rolling upgrades to libcom.org version 5, we are very happy today to be launching a new theme, developed in collaboration with the Yalla web development cooperative.

Author
Submitted by libcom on February 23, 2023

This is a major step in the ongoing upgrade which we have been working on since 2018. We launched a basic functioning version 5 of the site in March last year, and since then have been making minor improvements and working on a visual overhaul of the site.

Thanks to support from those of you who donated to our GoFundMe and our patreon supporters, we were able to engage the services of Yalla, a web development cooperative based in London and Palestine.

Working with us, Yalla have built us a beautiful custom theme, bringing back the red feature colour of our old theme, and introducing new visual features. One of these is a new logo, based on a long-running in-joke on our access denied page, which no one can quite remember the origins of.

So we hope you enjoy the new look of the site, which should highlight our different features and ways of navigating the site better, and make content more readable. If you have any technical issues or spot any bugs or errors please just drop us a comment here.

This new theme is not the end of our upgrade, we are still planning a number of major improvements over the coming months and years, including a What You See Is What You Get text editor, to make contributing articles and comments easier, and a user dashboard, to browse new stuff more simply.

As always, we are keen to have new contributors, either writing original content for us, or uploading texts to our archive, so if you are interested in getting involved let us know in the comments.

Let us know what you think of the new theme in the comments, and please share this announcement on social media and encourage people to check out our new look!

libcom.org collective

Comments

Rob Ray

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by Rob Ray on February 23, 2023

Looking sharp!

Fozzie

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by Fozzie on February 23, 2023

Nice one! Definitely looks better :-) good work.

Fozzie

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by Fozzie on February 23, 2023

No biggie, but the enormo images on larger screens mean that some of them are now a bit pixellated. A lot of images I've used have been nicked from elsewhere and there don't appear to be bigger ones available, so I suspect we just need to accept that.

Submitted by Steven. on February 23, 2023

Rob Ray wrote: Looking sharp!

Thanks Rob! We are very pleased with it. More improvements coming soon...

Submitted by Steven. on February 23, 2023

Fozzie wrote: No biggie, but the enormo images on larger screens mean that some of them are now a bit pixellated. A lot of images I've used have been nicked from elsewhere and there don't appear to be bigger ones available, so I suspect we just need to accept that.

Yeah unfortunately don't think there is any way around that

adri

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by adri on February 24, 2023

Looks good! (What's this stuff about "peace and fucking" though?) Also, I've been meaning to mention that it seems that links that are not "https" appear to be converted to https, which ends up making the links not work. Here's an example, VVAW. That's supposed to go here, http://www.vvaw.org/ (but it shows a broken page instead).

Joakim

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by Joakim on February 24, 2023

Nice!

(But what happened to the pull quotes?)

Submitted by Steven. on February 24, 2023

adri wrote: Looks good! (What's this stuff about "peace and fucking" though?)

That was a Nathan Barley joke I put in the draft which I thought catch would edit out before posting, but I think he didn't spot it! It's gone now

Also, I've been meaning to mention that it seems that links that are not "https" appear to be converted to https, which ends up making the links not work. Here's an example, VVAW. That's supposed to go here, http://www.vvaw.org/ (but it shows a broken page instead).

thanks, we will look into this. But that won't be to do with the new theme, that will be a general thing related to the upgrade last year.

Steven.

1 year 1 month ago

In reply to by Joakim

Submitted by Steven. on February 25, 2023

Joakim wrote: Nice!

(But what happened to the pull quotes?)

They are gone for now. Although the data is still there so we could potentially bring them back at some point. They weren't filled in very systematically though and they did take up a huge part of the page on the site because a whole extra column was being used, which didn't really make sense for such a feature which wasn't used very much.

adri wrote: My humble contribution...

damn, those penguins are brutal

adri

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by adri on February 25, 2023

libcom.org of course condemns seal clubbing in the strongest possible terms and in whatever shape or form (even if seals are all terrible animals and the bourgeois oppressors of penguins/the proletariat).[1]

1. This condemnation does not extend to subsistence and non-market oriented practices.

Cooked

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by Cooked on February 25, 2023

Nice to see that penguin becoming the face of libcom. It was always the most memorable image of the site. Best ever error page and many others have tried very hard.

Rob Ray

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by Rob Ray on February 25, 2023

Rob Ray

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by Rob Ray on February 25, 2023

Rob Ray

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by Rob Ray on February 25, 2023

Fozzie

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by Fozzie on February 25, 2023

Heh heh.

Steven.

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by Steven. on February 25, 2023

Loving all of these! TBH Photoshop potential is one of the reasons we wanted to go with a penguin. Also we have to give a shout out to nemo/omen for their sterling work making the access denied image back in the day. For some reason lost to the winds of time...

adri

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by adri on February 25, 2023

Steven.

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by Steven. on February 25, 2023

Libcom.org would like to point out that any similarity or relationship between their logo and the logo of any commercial book publishers is purely coincidental

kasama_libsoc

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by kasama_libsoc on February 27, 2023

Heyo libcom collective. I welcome these developments. I have a bit of a nickpick though. The concept for the new logo is great, but it's a bit of a Rorschach test and unlike the libcom star, it doesn't immediately clear what it is. I think the logo could use more refinement to make it clearer it's a penguin.

Nemo Etomer

1 year ago

Submitted by Nemo Etomer on March 1, 2023

Comrades, great changes - but when a link to a libcom article with a built in picture is put in a thread or comment on Facebook the thumbnail picture which appears is of a penguin - half of the penguin - and not the picture which is connected to the article.

(:-/)

Fozzie

1 year ago

Submitted by Fozzie on March 1, 2023

Body text in articles and comments seems to have gone bold today?

Fozzie

1 year ago

Submitted by Fozzie on March 1, 2023

Yep

syndicalist

1 year ago

Submitted by syndicalist on March 1, 2023

I'm curious as to why when i link a piece, the lib com penguin shows up and not the original page graphic/photo etc?

Submitted by Steven. on March 1, 2023

kasama_libsoc wrote: Heyo libcom collective. I welcome these developments. I have a bit of a nickpick though. The concept for the new logo is great, but it's a bit of a Rorschach test and unlike the libcom star, it doesn't immediately clear what it is. I think the logo could use more refinement to make it clearer it's a penguin.

We tested it with a big group of people before agreeing it, and everyone could identify it. Of course, with a bigger sample, there will always be some who can't, but that's not necessarily a problem. We went through a long process developing the logo and that work is now complete so it will not be changing for the foreseeable future.
Quite a few people have been mentioning the old star logo, which I find quite amusing because we actually stopped using it 11 years ago!

Submitted by Steven. on March 1, 2023

Nemo Etomer wrote: Comrades, great changes - but when a link to a libcom article with a built in picture is put in a thread or comment on Facebook the thumbnail picture which appears is of a penguin - half of the penguin - and not the picture which is connected to the article.

(:-/)

We will look into this and see if there is something we can do about it

Submitted by Steven. on March 1, 2023

Joakim wrote: Body text of articles looks kosher. Kind to my grumpy eyes.

Glad to hear it! One thing we have ensured with the new theme is that accessibility of everything is as good as possible

Submitted by Steven. on March 2, 2023

Joakim wrote: But italics look awful in body text

Can you give us a link to an example? Body text shouldn't have more than one or two words in italics in any case.

Mike Harman

1 year ago

Submitted by Mike Harman on March 3, 2023

New galleries do not show up in recent content/discussions:

Should be here now: https://libcom.org/recent

Submitted by Steven. on March 3, 2023

syndicalist wrote: I'm curious as to why when i link a piece, the lib com penguin shows up and not the original page graphic/photo etc?

this should be fixed now! Thanks for pointing it out. If you have any further problems let us know

Mike Harman

1 year ago

Submitted by Mike Harman on March 3, 2023

Thanks Mike. Er, dunno if it’s a thing or not but there is no commenting/discussion under galleries now either?

It's been like that since the new site launched, but I can't remember why we didn't enable it, possibly because we knew we'd want to re-do how galleries work, but that's already happened, we could probably just switch it on.

Submitted by Steven. on March 4, 2023

Mike Harman wrote:

Thanks Mike. Er, dunno if it’s a thing or not but there is no commenting/discussion under galleries now either?

It's been like that since the new site launched, but I can't remember why we didn't enable it, possibly because we knew we'd want to re-do how galleries work, but that's already happened, we could probably just switch it on.

yeah I can't see a reason not to allow it so I think we should

Fozzie

1 year ago

Submitted by Fozzie on March 4, 2023

Nice :-)

Fozzie

1 year ago

Submitted by Fozzie on March 4, 2023

Also old comments on existing galleries are back. :)

adri

1 year ago

Submitted by adri on March 8, 2023

Seems that quotes with bold text in them have been cut off (i.e. where the bold text begins)? This seems to apply to both comment quotes and article quotes. Might make it difficult to follow some articles/discussions. Just thought it's worth mentioning.

Submitted by Steven. on March 8, 2023

adri wrote: Seems that quotes with bold text in them have been cut off (i.e. where the bold text begins)? This seems to apply to both comment quotes and article quotes. Might make it difficult to follow some articles/discussions. Just thought it's worth mentioning.

Could you give us a link to an example to check out?

adri

1 year ago

Submitted by adri on March 8, 2023

I had to edit a couple of my comments where I added bold to quoted text for emphasis. I don't know of any articles off the top of my head that have quotes with bold text, but I'm sure I've come across some before. I also tested it out with one of my articles; the bold text is still there when you edit it, but it just doesn't appear in the article/comment. Here's an example if it helps (there's supposed to be bold text there, but it doesn't show),

start of bold text: here's some bold text...

Khawaga

1 year ago

Submitted by Khawaga on March 17, 2023

Looks great!

Comrade Motopu

1 year ago

Submitted by Comrade Motopu on March 20, 2023

The columns of text in your articles are harder to read now because they're so wide. The text spacing is very crunched and I suggest increasing the spacing size. I sent you a message on mastodon under another anon handle with screenshots to compare it to a site with an easier to read layout.

I think the site looks good but the text issue seems important to address.

Submitted by Steven. on March 21, 2023

Comrade Motopu wrote: The columns of text in your articles are harder to read now because they're so wide. The text spacing is very crunched and I suggest increasing the spacing size. I sent you a message on mastodon under another anon handle with screenshots to compare it to a site with an easier to read layout.

I think the site looks good but the text issue seems important to address.

We haven't seen that. Could you send us a link to where you have attached the screenshots?

Uncreative

1 year ago

Submitted by Uncreative on March 22, 2023

On this page https://libcom.org/article/militant-unions-backbone-movement-socialism, I noticed that when I highlighed some text the blue highlight from the lower line covers some of the text from the line above. I'm on my laptop. Hardly a major issue but thought I'd mention it, the new style is very good btw.

Submitted by Steven. on March 23, 2023

Uncreative wrote: On this page https://libcom.org/article/militant-unions-backbone-movement-socialism, I noticed that when I highlighed some text the blue highlight from the lower line covers some of the text from the line above. I'm on my laptop. Hardly a major issue but thought I'd mention it, the new style is very good btw.

Thanks very much for the feedback. Yes, highlighting text does make a blue overlap, but this is a consequence of the font, which we don't necessarily think is a problem.