No, you aren’t imagining it. There are now only five gravatars showing on your Likes. Never more than five. Just a stubby little line of five. WordPress decided just a few days ago that our Likes will no longer display more than five (5) gravatars. Sure, if you click on the next line, you’ll get a little dropdown scroll-down list showing all the gravatars, but five is now the most that will be displayed on the Likes line. Ever.
I really enjoyed that long and (hopefully) growing line of familiar faces. And sometimes new faces. It told me, at a glance, how well you liked my post. It told me how many of you had taken the time to come by. It rewarded me for a job well done. It was satisfying to watch that line of images grow. Now it’s just the first five. Forevermore. Five gravatars. A stubby little line just like the stubby little line on every other blogger’s posts.
Of course I’ll still be clicking and scrolling to see everybody who visits. Don’t for a second think that if you’re Number Six or higher, I won’t see you. (You won’t get off that easy!)
Anyway, WP’s “Happy Bot” was pleased to inform me that five is now the default maximum. And it thoughtfully explained, “The intention behind this change is to provide a cleaner and more streamlined appearance for Likes.” Did I ask for that? I thought it looked fine the way it was. It looked like I wanted it to look. I appreciated and enjoyed the way it looked.
But I’m only a WordPress blogger. What do I know.
Fingers crossed again, Colorado, that my comment will ‘take’ ..
WordPress has become a crock of shit.
There you go, darlin.
So you didn’t encounter that weird message/block this time? I wonder if WP fixed it or if it was just some sort of temporary anomaly …
Gotta say it: WHOSE NOSE ? [grin]
and every time they create one of their ‘improvements’ it boggles my mind
At least most of their changes are behind the scenes. They confuse us and affect how we assemble or create our posts — behind the scenes. But our readers don’t see it. This time they changed how our blogs look to others, in a way we can’t control. That ticks me off.
Darn! Looks like I’m number 6 on this one. For the record: LIKE. So there, WP!
Thank you! I love all LIkes. Except for the one I see from some commercial website.
Hey, I see my sixth gravitar above. Maybe not implemented yet.
Hi! I’d forgotten that a new Like goes in at the beginning of the line. Or end, depending on how you look at it. I guess it will take six more to push you out of sight. You’re probably safe with this post. Congratulations.
Hmm, there is some difference from blog to blog, or theme to theme. I just commented on another blog and my gravatar went in at the end of the line, where it will be the next one pushed out of sight. That doesn’t seem right; that means the first five posted will never disappear, they will always being the ones displayed … on that blog. And there the number you click on to see the entire list appears on the same line as the pictures, instead of underneath like here. Maybe the WP guys are still working on it.
There has to be a way to set it in your theme, but I’ll bet there’s another reason for restricting it to five. Maybe the back end computing and data transfer costs for looking up more than five gravitars. So it’s likely the old, “In order to serve you better, we’re going to make this suck.”
Theme options are generally limited to something like Show Likes or Hide Likes. Beyond that, I can delete or hide them with a bit of code. But we have no control over the limit of 5. You’re probably right about it being more than a mere design decision; it has some advantage for WP in terms of time, money, manpower, etc.
I’m with you on this, Andrew !