Frustration With Theme Excessive CSS Errors And Things Breaking

  • Resolved mddsharp

    (@mddsharp)


    6 years, 10 months ago

    This is not a support question, it’s more of a statement and request for information that may happen to others here with the same issue. Core AMP has a requirement that inline CSS be 50 kb or less to be AMP compliant. As of the latest update to my theme (ColorMag), even when I just put text (no images, no video, no forms, no HTML/PHP/Java/anything), I am getting a excessive.CSS warning.

    This tells me that the developers of my theme are busy adding CSS to make their themes more attractive.

    Just today, I noticed that the latest update to my theme broke the mobile hamburger MENU and when I contacted the developer they basically said that they aren’t programming around AMP, that they have to add CSS to be competitive, add better appearances, and functionality.

    I can not alter my design, heck I am just adding text, nothing else to posts. I can deal with forms and stuff not working inside posts, but when a mobile menu breaks and 54% of my traffic is mobile users, it’s pretty much a deal breaker.

    So now I am stuck trying to find a fully featured magazine theme that is compliant with the 50 kb CSS requirement and who knows how long before that theme and it’s developers go over the limit.

    What are some ways others are dealing with excessive.css errors in AMP when using large, fully featured themes in WordPress? Or is the answer simply to find a new theme?

    Anyone know of a fully featured magazine style theme with related posts built in and all the bells and whistles, that is maintained AROUND AMP?

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Plugin Author Weston Ruter

    (@westonruter)

    6 years, 10 months ago

    Thanks for sharing. That’s frustrating.

    Some good news is that Jetpack’s Related Posts module is now fully AMP-compatible. You can see it running on my own Standard-mode site: https://weston.ruter.net/2019/03/21/using-the-amp-plugin-to-protect-site-visitors-and-debug-security-vulnerabilities/

    What are all the features you need in your theme?

    There are also the themes listed on amp-wp.org: https://amp-wp.org/ecosystem/themes/

    Twenty Fourteen is designed as a magazine-style theme, but perhaps it is too limited.

    Something else that may be relevant here is the intention to Discontinue excluding excessive CSS by default on Standard mode sites. This will help in the situation where your site is normally under the 50KB limit but then on some pages with a lot of content, the limit is breached.

    Thread Starter mddsharp

    (@mddsharp)

    6 years, 10 months ago

    I guess all I really need built in is related posts under a post that shows the featured image and title by category, post author picture and bio, comments that show comment author pictures, and a magazine style front page.

    I know most of this can be added with plugins, but there agin that is adding more CSS to each page.

    I guess my disappointment is that seemingly most modern WordPress theme developers are not thinking about AMP and it’s obvious importance. Some are even blowing AMP off completely and bloating their themes.

    How many people have bought $69 beautiful themes, then got turned on to AMP and it’s significance, only to find out a lot of the theme’s functionality will fail once AMP paired mode strips non-compliant stuff out?

    I will look at the ecosystem themes, and let’s hope that more and more theme developers start building their themes with AMP in mind.

    Thread Starter mddsharp

    (@mddsharp)

    6 years, 10 months ago

    @westonruter how hard do you think it would be to get all WordPress developers to consider having AMP capable themes that are not having new features and styling added but are being maintained for security issues only?

    Example in my case with Colormag. Up until the last update, I had literally no AMP errors, everything on the page worked in AMP. Then, with their latest update there were security fixes and feature additions. I had to update to get the security features.

    But with the new update, my mobile menu is borked. Site traffic has dropped 30% and the developers don’t care.

    So back to my original thought, starting some type of movement where major theme developers maintain their free and pro versions, but also have their AMP capable version where all features of the free and pro version will be added that can handle AMP, then only maintain that version for security and bugs and no new features or styling?

    Plugin Author Weston Ruter

    (@westonruter)

    6 years, 10 months ago

    My understanding is that ColorMag hasn’t explicitly added AMP compatibility, but it was nevertheless mostly compatible since it had suitable fallbacks for when JS was disabled. But now that they’ve added too much CSS, this is now causing a fundamental incompatibility. Is that correct?

    Our hope with the Themes ecosystem page is to provide some (small) incentive for theme authors to make AMP-compatible themes, and to maintain that AMP-compatibility. These are examples of theme developers that add first-party support for AMP, so it should not break with new theme updates.

    But generally, we cannot force theme developers to make AMP-compatible themes. The only way that could happen is if the ww.wp.xz.cn theme review team made AMP-compatibility a requirement, similar to accessibility or the use of Customizer. But we’re a long way from that happening (if ever), I think.

    The only real course of action is for users (like yourself) to speak up as you are doing, so that theme developers see there is a demand for AMP-compatibility. We’re also happy to help provide guidance for theme developers who need pointers for how to add AMP-compatibility.

    Flikki

    (@flikki)

    6 years, 7 months ago

    Dear Sir / Madam,
    I think this happened with the latest theme updates but not sure for sure. WordPress is now available for update 5.2.4. I use the Color Mag Pro. Could you help me please? If a click on the title of the article or photo, the page opens without text, only the photo is visible. What to do and why?
    Thank you

    Plugin Author Weston Ruter

    (@westonruter)

    6 years, 7 months ago

    @flikki Please open a new support topic: https://ww.wp.xz.cn/support/plugin/amp/#new-post

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

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