More WordPress Questions? - Comments Are Closed | WordPress Websites, WordPress Help

Hi Mark,
I’ve just finished watching your tutorials on inserting a picture into a text widget and I keep getting the dreded red x within the white box!
The picture works fine in the context of a “Pages “Who Am I”” widget but for some reason it doesn’t like the text. I’m wanting the Who am I to show up on the main page as you open the site.
I’m using exactly the same picture so I know it’s uploaded correctly. I even went so far as to upload it a number of times to see if that made any difference.
I copied your html code

from your wonderful tutorial,
(the * is where I insert the uploaded picture URL but I still get the red x).
Thanks so much for the time and effort that you have taken to teach us newbies how to use wordpress. I think I like it! Well I will if I can iron out the kinks. I just keep telling myself “Learning curve Jo, learning curve!”
I thought that a red x meant that the picture was not there…..what am I doing wrong?
Are you able to shed some light on this problem please.
Thanks
God bless
Jo

Mark McLaren

5:47 AM

#2

Hi Jo,
Check the quotation marks you are using around the URL for the image. They look like “smart” quotes to me. They are tilted slightly. Not sure but maybe WordPress has trouble with these in widget HTML.

Can you see the tilt? <img src=“http://fearofstupidpeople.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/nepal1999561.jpg” />

You can’t really see the difference on my site because of the way quotes are rendered. It’s tricky. Instead of copying and pasting, try retyping the quotes directly in WordPress.

Jo

6:18 AM

#3

Hi Mark,
I did what you said because I could see that it was tilted but that didn’t work either (it still tilted when I typed it directly into wordpress.
What I ended up doing was opening up Notepad and typing it into there then copy paste it…..now I have a picture…..yipeeeeee!!!!!

Can you please tell me how to make it into a thumbnail size though. As it’s rather large.
I went into Media Settings and it says
”
Thumbnail size Width 150 Height 150
(ticked)Crop thumbnail to exact dimensions (normally thumbnails are proportional)
Medium size Medium sizeMax Width 300 Max Height 300
Large size Large size Max Width 1024 Max Height 1024
Embeds
Auto-embeds
(ticked)Attempt to automatically embed all plain text URLs
Maximum embed size Width 150 Height 150
”
Can you please tell me what the settings should be for a thumbnail.

Thanks so much for all of your help.
God bless,
Jo

Mark McLaren

6:28 AM

#4

@Jo
Try inserting a thumbnail into a post or page using the editor, and then look at it in the HTML side of the editor (rather than the Visual side). You will see the URL for the 150×150 size and you can use that to insert it into the widget. If you need it to be smaller than that, seems to me there’s a way to edit images in WordPress now but I haven’t tried it. You might be able to use that to make a smaller thumbnail. Or check out this rocking photo editing site where you can upload and edit images for free.

Jo

7:05 AM

#5

Wow!!!! What A Man!
Thanks so much for helping with this problem….I’ve been scratching my head about this for 2 days and couldn’t get it sorted out.
Oh by the way, “Greatings from Down Under”.
Would you be able to help with another problem please.
I’m not sure how to hide the section at the top called Featured Posts. I can’t find the spot that you tick or click a delete button to hide that section.
Thanks once again,
God bless,
Jo-Anne

Mark McLaren

1:58 PM

#6

@Jo
Looks nice!

Your theme might give you a way to hide the Featured Posts section from within the Dashboard. Be sure to look around for that setting. Sounds like you already have, though.

So, what you need to do is modify the header.php file. You can do that in Appearance > Editor or you can use a text editor and FTP. I recommend the latter. I also recommend reading my Terms of Use before trying this.

You need to open header.php and comment out or delete the section called <div id=”board”>. I would also change the <div id=”body”> to <div id=”body” style=”padding-top:14px;”> for aesthetic reasons. I will email you a page to show you what I mean.

Be sure to keep a backup of your original header.php file in case something goes wrong so that you can put it back and delete the modified header.php file.

This is fairly advanced stuff. You need to know how to use FTP. But if you don’t, you shouldn’t try to modify your theme.

Good luck!

Here’s a WordPress tutorial that shows How to Make Changes to a WordPress Theme Sidebar Using a Text Editor. It’s a few years old, so the Dashboard might look different (if that’s a part of the tutorial – haven’t looked at it for a while), but the techniques are still the same.

Jo

11:50 PM

#7

Thanks Mark for taking the time and effort to help me.
I haven’t tried to do the fix yet, but once I’ve got some more time
and
after I’ve watched the tutorial you sent
and
once i’ve copied the original header.php file to a word doc and saved that….
then I’ll give it a go.
Do you have a “text editor” that you recommend?
Oh by the by….I’ve looked at your Terms of Use and of course I realise that anything I try to do to my site is my own responsibility.
What’s the worse that can happen?….. I ruin my own site and have to rebuild it? I’ve got copies of my posts in word already so there’s no problem there!
I’m just extremely grateful that there is an expert out there that is guiding me on the WordPress path.
So thanks once again.
I’ll let you know how I go.
Thanks
God bless,
Jo-Anne

Mark McLaren

May 7, 2010

1:16 AM

#8

@Jo
Great. But, don’t use Word for text editing or any HTML / PHP stuff. It will mess things up.

Here is the best free text editor for Windows: Notepad++. If you are on a Mac, I think it’s TextEdit that comes with OSX. (Shameful that I don’t know that. I’m too lazy to turn on the old Macintosh 4G.)

Note also that you can backup your posts and pages by using Tools > Export to make a .xml file from your site.

Dr. Dan

May 7, 2010

11:23 PM

#9

Hi Mark…

I would like to add a “Subscribe” option to my WordPress site…but I’m totally lost as to how to go about doing that. Do you have a tutorial for placing one…or can offer some advise on doing so…?

Thank You…Continued Success…

Best Regards,
Dr. Dan

Jo

May 8, 2010

11:56 PM

#10

Hi Mark
Thanks for the info re backing up to my computer.
I’ve also gone into the best free text editor for Windows: Notepad++, but when I hit the download button, it gives me all of these options:

Binary Files
Source Files
Plugins
Notepad replacement
Explorer context menu entry (right click)
Logos
Language files
User defined language files
Theme files (styles.xml)
Skin packages

I’m at a loss as to what I am supposed to be downloading.
I’m running Windows XP if that’s any help.
Please help!
Ta muchly
Jo

cken

May 9, 2010

5:54 AM

#11

Hi mark,
I am newbie & just came across your video tutorials yesterday & they are very easy to understand. I havent finish watching all of them yet but will eventually.
Anyway I wonder if you could help me. I just upload a new website in worldpress but i wanted to change the template. I found one i like in http://www.worldpressthemesbase.com under food & drinks category & the title is Fresh fruit (it has as pictures of asparagus, pineapples, pears etc in water)
I tried to add it to my theme in world press but I cannot get it on the search no matter what i type & I cant find who is the author either. Can you help me to have a look? Thanks.
I also have another website which was set up for trainning purpose , will be expiring soon & I dont intend to renew it. My question is do I need to delete all the data in opt-in page & post in blog before its expiry date? If somebody else bought this domain name later ,will they see any info/post that was not deleted by me? How about the few back links i have for this website? Is there any where to transfer them to my new website or I have to redo again for my new website?

Hope you can help me.
Thank you very much in advance.
Regards
Cken

Mark McLaren

May 17, 2010

11:50 PM

#12

@Cken
To your first question, you can download the theme to your computer. Then under Appearance > Themes, click the Add New button (at the top of the page). Under Install Themes, click on the “Upload” link. Click the Browse button and go and find the theme you downloaded. (This will be a .zip file.) Now you can upload and install the theme.

To your second question, you don’t have to worry about someone who registers the domain getting access to your files or data. There’s no way for them to do so. Third, if you let the domain registration expire, you will not be able to redirect any links. You need to keep the domain active to be able to do that.

cken

1:19 AM

#13

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your help. I finally manage to install the theme I wanted.

About my other website that’s expiring soon, is there a way for me to save it in my computer for future reference?

How about if I want to transfer everything over to my current new website? How do I go about it & will it show all my post transfer over as published straight away or as draft?
I have a lot of people linking to this website & they are not related in anyway to my site topic. i dont intend to have these links on my new site.

Hope you can help me.

Thanks
Regards
cken

cken

6:43 AM

#14

Hi Mark,
You wont believed this!!!! After I told you I manage to download my theme, my worldpress got HACKED!!! by SnL-ayaz-/was-here.
So I told my hosting co-3ix & they did something & asked me to reinstall again. So i went into cpanel, Fantastico, worldpress. I click the remove button & reistall it back. However it says file name already exist & i have to remove it manually. Since I’m not a technical person, I asked 3ix to help. I got my website back now but I would like to know where do i click to get it remove. Also what am I supposed to be removing. I really hope you can teach me on this cos its my 2nd time I got hacked.
How do you do backup on worldpress & how to reinstall this backup incase anything happends again

Thank you in advance.

Regards
cken

cken

6:46 AM

#15

Hi Mark,
You wont believed this!!!! After I told you I manage to download my theme, my worldpress got HACKED!!! by SnL-ayaz-/was-here.
So I told my hosting co-3ix & they did something & asked me to reinstall again. So i went into cpanel, Fantastico, worldpress. I click the remove button & reistall it back. However it says file name already exist & i have to remove it manually. Since I’m not a technical person, I asked 3ix to help. I got my website back now but I would like to know where do i click to get it remove. Also what am I supposed to be removing. I really hope you can teach me on this cos its my 2nd time I got hacked.
How do you do backup on worldpress & how to reinstall this backup incase anything happends again

Thank you in advance.

Regards
cken

Mark McLaren

2:31 PM

#16

@cken
For backups, try this plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/

3ix should be able to help you remove WordPress files manually using Cpanel.

For security, when you install, use a username that is complex like a password (not “admin”). If you don’t have this option, see this post: http://www.mcbuzz.com/2009/wordpress-security-create-a-new-user-and-delete-the-default-admin-account/ Also, be sure to use a long complex password with special characters (*&^%$#@), upper case, lower case and a number.

cken

May 21, 2010

4:48 AM

#17

Hi Mark,
Is it possible to insert images into worldpress and put them side by side like 123, all in the same row?
I try but I cant get it. Its either on top or bottom. I even try to move the picture by dragging the small squares serounding the picture but still still dosent work.
Hope you can help.

BTW, the back up plug that which recomended, how does it work? Could you run through an example senario ?
Thanks

Mahommed

May 26, 2010

2:34 PM

#18

Dear Mark

Thank you for a wonderful site and your tweets. Both have been an excellent resource for WordPress related matters.

I would appreciate your input on the best WP plugins for a

1. video gallery
2. photo gallery
3. audio gallery (I’m currently using audio-player from WP)
4. Slideshow tool
5. Subscription tool so visitors can leave their emails for promotions, freebies etc

Thank You, in advance, and all the best.

Mahommed

Mark McLaren

May 26, 2010

4:49 PM

#19

@Mahommed
Thank you for the great questions and your kind words. For a photo gallery WordPress plugin, check out FancyBox.

For video, I haven’t found anything I really like. I should add that I have not done an exhaustive – or even very respectable – search. See my recent post: “10 reasons why YouTube is the best choice for WordPress video hosting“. For visibility, you can’t beat YouTube. However, last time I checked, their widgets and galleries were not so hot.

On the last version of mcbuzz.com, I used a sidebar “gallery” from YouTube. I think the technical term for that gallery was “crap”: about a 3 out of 10 for usability, design and overall effectiveness. I wonder if they have anything better available now. It’s funny – and painful – to consider that if they had better widgets, plugins and galleries, more people would watch their videos, but for some reason it’s not a priority.

There are third party services like http://Vodpod.com that have better widgets, and maybe galleries, too. I haven’t checked lately. You can post the same videos to YouTube and Vodpod and then just use the Vodpod widgets.

Audio gallery. I have limited experience with these. Can you work iTunes into the mix? The same visibility advantages that come with YouTube apply to iTunes.

Slideshow tool. If I understand what you mean by slideshow, I really like http://www.slideshare.net/ Also, for a different kind of slideshow, http://www.slide.com/ has an awesome widget-thingy on WordPress.com. Check them out.

Subscription tool. Constant Contact is tried and true. For a free solution, you can use FeedBurner. You can also use a plugin like Contact Form 7 to make your own signup form.

Prabin Dangol

1:40 PM

#20

Hi Mark,

I am new to wordpress. I installed and reinstalled it more than thrice into my site. Since I started in a very low webspace, I am not being able to clean the webspace to it’s initial stage. I uninstalled wordpress and all the plugins but still 38MB space is occupied. Is it because that wordpress reserves the space whenever the installation is done, as the occupied space increases whenever I install wp again. Would you please suggest me on this.

Thank you.

Mark McLaren

1:58 PM

#21

@Prabin Dangol
How are you doing the installation and uninstallation? Using Fantastico or some other script provided by your host? Do you have FTP capability?

Prabin Dangol

2:02 PM

#22

I really thank you sir for cooperating with me. Yes I’d used Fantastico in installing. I haven’t used the ftp yet but I think I can. Would you please suggest me further?

Thanks again

Mark McLaren

2:09 PM

#23

@Prabin Dangol
That’s something your web host should be able to help you with. If not, you might consider getting a new web host. With FTP, you can be sure to remove all WordPress files.

Mahommed

May 30, 2010

8:17 PM

#24

@Mark

Thank You. I have used the audio-player widget and it is working fine. I will follow up on the other suggestions you made. Once again, thanks for taking the time to respond.

Regards

Mark McLaren

Jun 1, 2010

6:18 AM

#25

@Mahommed
Cool. Thanks for the follow-up. And thanks for your questions!

Vik

Jun 3, 2010

2:25 PM

#26

Hi Mark,

I wanted to know how to add categories as boxes on main page which shows latest topics of that category. I got to this plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/list-category-posts/ but I am not quite sure how to use it.

And another thing the page like this – http://thepiratecity.org/movie.htm which has categories listed there and it filters data the way users select categories.

Any help will be appreciated,

Regards,

barbara loraine

Jun 4, 2010

1:21 AM

#27

I think the help you offer here is great. I’m sure my question has a quick answer (although it might not be a quick fix.)

I’m clicking along with WordPress then, bam. In the theme editor, when I click on any of the .pdf files, I get the message: “sorry, that file cannot be edited.”
I tried using a different theme, thinking that the theme had a problem. I’m pretty sure it’s “pilot error.” Although I’ve made a lot of progress with WordPress, I AM new. I fear that if I uninstall and reinstall WordPress to get rid of the problem, it will still be there when I bring in my backup. (I did the backup after the problem.) And, I’ve already added lots of posts that I don’t want to have to redo, will I lose them if I reinstall WordPress?

Creative Graeme

Jun 5, 2010

3:00 AM

#28

Mark, I love your stuff, but one thing for me missing…. How on earth do I create a Twitter badge like yours in the sidebar? I know that it’ll be the same idea as creating the bio in the sidebar, but I can’t for the life of me find code to put in to get a badge like yours. Please help????

Mark McLaren

Jun 7, 2010

1:24 AM

#29

@barbara loraine
Thanks for your question. If I understand you correctly, you are trying to edit a PDF file by selecting it in the Editor. Is that right? (Under Appearance > Editor?) You can edit any of the files that are part of your WordPress theme in the Editor, but you can’t edit PDF files there.

I don’t know if it’s even possible to *see* PDF files in the Editor. I’m thinking not. So maybe you mean you are looking at PDF files in the Media Library? But there’s no way to edit them there either.

There’s really no way to edit a PDF unless you download it to your computer and open it using Adobe Acrobat.

Not sure if this helps! 😛

Mark McLaren

Jun 7, 2010

1:29 AM

#30

@Creative Graeme
Here’s what I use. Just drop it into a text widget. You can change the title attribute (“Become a Fan of Business…”) and URLs to match your Facebook profile and badge. You may be able to leave the Facebook image as is if you want to use that.
<a href=”http://www.facebook.com/pages/WordPress-Tutorials-Business-Blogging-101/254975659197″ title=”Become a Fan of Business Blogging 101 on Facebook” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://mcbuzz.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/business-blogging-101.gif” /></a>

Mark McLaren

Jun 7, 2010

1:34 AM

#31

@Vik
That looks like a cool plugin. I haven’t had a chance to try it yet. I’m sorry. I have been very busy. Let me know what you find out.

cken

Jun 11, 2010

12:36 PM

#32

Hi Mark,
Its me again.This will sound wierd but i hope you can help me with Freeautobot. I ‘m going to insert an opt in at the side bar of my worldpress & I need to create an email under html messages in freeautobot. My problem is when I try to change the color of some text & link to my pdf link it dosent work.(Both color & link) The bottom page says page error. Where did I go wrong?
Hope you can help me. i email them but no reply.
Thanks a million

Regards
cken

Prabin Dangol

Jun 12, 2010

4:17 PM

#33

Hi again,

Sir, My page has just been hacked. Would you please suggest me on this?

Thanks
Prabin

Mark McLaren

Jun 14, 2010

5:53 AM

#34

@Prabin Dangol
Sounds bad, but are you sure you have been hacked or could something else be wrong? I would start by going into your plugins folder via FTP and deleting your plugins. (You will need to put them back later so be sure you know where you can get original copies.)

See if that puts your site back online. What were you doing when the site went down? Could it have been something you did, or were you not working on the site before it crashed?

I’m not sure what the permissions issue is about. Sounds like you have had trouble with this host. You may not have a strong enough username and password. I’m not sure. What does your host say about this situation?

Prabin Dangol

Jun 14, 2010

6:16 AM

#35

Dear Mrak,

I did nothing on the site, I had just installed a single plugin that shows local date and time. Rest I uploaded some photos. I had left the site untouched for more than a week or so. Later on when I tried to view the site it says somthing like “sorry admin” with arabic alphabets and a creepy photo. It doesn’t let me log on into the dashboard.

I also have another site where I just intalled wordpress and haven’t done nothing else. It also had the same problem. For this site I’ve reinstalled WP and for now it is working but lets see what happens again.

If I get something like that I’ll send you the file.

Prabin Dangol

Jun 14, 2010

6:22 AM

#36

Dear Mrak,

I did nothing on the site, I had just installed a single plugin that shows local date and time. Rest I uploaded some photos. I had left the site untouched for more than a week or so. Later on when I tried to view the site it says somthing like “sorry admin” with arabic alphabets and a creepy photo. It doesn’t let me log on into the dashboard.

I also have another site where I just intalled wordpress and haven’t done nothing else. It also had the same problem. For this site I’ve reinstalled WP and for now it is working but lets see what happens again.

If I get something like that I’ll send you the file.

Thanks

gururayar

Jun 15, 2010

5:49 AM

#37

Hi

I have a query on the blog subscriptions. If I go in the location dashboard -> blog stats, i find that there are people who are subscribed to the blog. But if there are any updates done to the blog (for e.g. some comments on the post or a new post is made), the subscribers come and report to me that they are not getting notified on these additions/modifications – even though they have subscribed to the blog.

As a blog administrator, is there any other place where the automatic notification to the subscribers of blog updates be enabled for this to happen?

Please provide inputs of how to solve this issue.

Thanks in advance

Mark McLaren

Jun 15, 2010

6:36 AM

#38

@gururayar
Thanks for your question! If your site/blog is on WordPress.com, then, as far as I know, readers can subscribe to comments for a specific post, but they will not receive an email when someone submits a comment to a post on your blog unless they have subscribed to comments for that post. In other words, comments are not part of the blog feed.

As for whether people are receiving an email when you create a new post, I would test this. I will subscribe right now. You can post a test if you like and I will let you know if I receive anything. Or we can wait until your next actual post. Do people have to have a WordPress.com account and be logged in to subscribe? I have never used that widget myself, so I may not be the best one to ask.

Finally, you are probably already aware of this, but when you publish material on a *page* (as opposed to a blog post), that is not part of the RSS feed so people won’t get an email for that.

cken

Jun 15, 2010

2:19 PM

#39

Hi Mark,

I just published my website. Is there anywhere to hide the Home (title of my page post) that appears on top before my heading?

I would like to hide the extra Home which I put under about page also. My problem is, this widget comes with the template & I have no idea where to insert the # for the exclude page.

Also I find my Opt-in column will go out of allingment if I click other pages a few times. Is there anywhere to make my opt-in page appear only on my home page ?
Hope you can help.
Thanks

Regards
Cken

cken

Jun 20, 2010

9:49 AM

#40

Hi mark,
I would like to insert my keywords into the meta source code but I can only view my original source code in worldpress. How do i go about it & where do i click?
Thanks

Mark McLaren

Jun 21, 2010

6:11 PM

#41

@cken
Check out the Search Engine Optimization tutorial slide show on the McBuzz home page. At about slide 36, I start talking about the HTML title tag and the description meta tag – and how to change these using the All in One SEO Pack plugin for WordPress. I highly recommend this SEO plugin. Install it and you’ll be able to change page title, description and keywords on every page and post.

Dale

Jun 22, 2010

9:25 PM

#42

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 7:56 PM, Dale wrote:
Name: Dale
Email: dale.carroll@sehc.org.au
Website:

Hi

I am trying to add new (upload) to the media library in WordPressand nothing will work neither browser upload of flash. Surprising as has worked prior. Maybe a problem reading the server file?

Any tips please,

Cheers

Dale

Time: Tuesday June 22, 2010 at 2:56 am
IP Address: 123.243.113.60

Mike

Jun 22, 2010

10:02 PM

#43

I was able to make a static home page by watching your tutorial on how to do it. There were a few things that were different. I’m using Hostgator for hosting.
I bought this theme called the Socrates Theme and I don’t know if it was because of that or not but when I changed my home page to be a static Page I didn’t get 2 HOME icons in the navigation bar and I typed in PUSHING SIXTY for the title and the HOME in the top navigation bar took me to my PUSHING SIXTY static front page however when I added a Page with the title Blog and selected it for the Posts, no icon with the name Blog appeared. I had to do that through the Socrates Theme by adding a link in the Navigation setup but the result was the same. I just started this site so it’s only a few hours old as it now appears and I’m going to add much more. I’m more or less playing around.
What I’d like to know is why is it that when you click on the Blog icon the address bar displays over-sixty.com/.blog-4. Where did the number 4 come from? I didn’t put it in the link and I’d like to be able to remove it but I don’t know where it’s coming from.
I’d like to also know why the WordPress WYSIWYG editor doesn’t show any HTML when you click on it. There’s a visual part and an HTML part but how do you insert your own code if you want to. Although I’m a newbie I’ve used NVU and Komposer as editors for learning and when you click on HTML in those editors you can actually see the HTML and CSS code to fine tune so to speak.
How would I change the color of the links in the Pages column to blue?
Sincerely,
Mike

Mark McLaren

Jun 29, 2010

4:49 PM

#44

@Mike
The over-sixty.com/.blog-4 URL (does it have “.blog-4” in it – with a period – or just “blog-4”?) usually comes from the fact that you may have already created a “blog” page and then deleted it. WordPress keeps track of all the pages you create whether you delete them or not. As far as I know, the only way to get rid of the “4” for sure is to edit your MySQL database by removing all the “blog” pages. Then you’ll be able to create a new one: over-sixty.com/blog I could be wrong though. You might try deleting all your “blog” pages, then emptying the Trash. Then see if you can create a “blog” page.

Mariane Uehara

9:20 PM

#45

> If you do not mind I have a little question for you: How can I insert
> “primary sidebar”, “bottom content” and “footer” in a theme that it just
> show one sidebar
> The theme I am using is
> Panorama 2.1 by Themocracy.
> Do you know if we can add secondary sidebars and bottom content in this
> theme?
>
> Thank you very much.

Mark McLaren

9:46 PM

#46

@Mariane Uehara
Hi Mariane. It looks like the only options you have with page layout and the Panorama theme are putting the sidebar on the left or right. Otherwise, modifying a theme to include things like “bottom content”, “footer”, etc., that you can edit using the Dashboard requires some serious work and the ability to code with PHP. I recommend trying some other themes. You could also write to Themocracy. Tell them what you are looking for and see what they suggest.

Richard Casey

10:45 PM

#47

I am doing my first website and somehow screwed it up right off the bat. I contacted my hosting compay for my domain and hosting and they said they did not have the coding to help me out. WordPress gave me the following fatal message. Could you help me or refer me to someone who could.

Fatal error: Call to undefined function is_multisite() in /home/votra/public_html/wp-includes/wp-db.php

I comend you on your tutorial and your work on WordPress. Now that I have your site study your tutorial and maybe will not foul up my websites. If you can help me I will make I will make a donation to Business Blogging 101.

Richard Casey

Mark McLaren

11:09 PM

#48

@Richard Casey
Hi Richard. Sorry to hear that things got difficult for you so early in the process. Googling “Fatal error: Call to undefined function is_multisite()” I found this forum discussion. It’s not obvious to a newbie what is going on here, but unless you are interested in switching to a different host that has an easier installation script – or possibly just starting over with a fresh installation of WordPress on your current host – there’s only one thing to do. You need to do a manual installation of WordPress. For that you need to know how to use FTP software. Or you need to hire someone to do it for you since your web host is not going to help you.

There are also some free services that will install WordPress for you, but typically you have to use their affiliate hosting service. (Try Googling “free wordpress installation”.) On your current host, can you uninstall WordPress and then do a fresh installation? Or do you have a lot of content already included in your current installation that you don’t want to lose?

Dan Black

Jul 19, 2010

8:45 PM

#49

Do you know how to make a static page for each category on any wordpress
blog?

I would like to setup a wp blog that I can create multiple categories for
every product I want to sell. I think want to create multiple blog posts
for each product in each category, but when each post is picked up by the
search engines, I want the person to land on the static page (which would be
a squeeze page, or sales page for that product in that category) and not the
blog post that contained the keys they used to search with.

Of course setting the home page to static won’t work, as I have many
products to sell. Each product would be in a different category and would
have 100’s of blog posts with keywords about that product.

Once searched for, and clicked on, I want the visitor to land on the sales
page for that product (which would be in a seperate category), and not see
the orginal post full of keywords for that product. Hopefully this makes
sense to you?

WordPress is great for marketing, but I can’t figure out how to setup
seperate static pages for each category.

Thanks,

Dan Black

Mark McLaren

Jul 19, 2010

9:09 PM

#50

@Dan – When a page is indexed by Google or another search engine, it’s the search engine that decides which page a user is going to see when they click on the link. If you want a Google user to see a specific page through natural search results, you need to optimize that page – one of your category posts, for example. There’s no way to optimize one page to get it to rank in search engine results and then send the user somewhere else when they click on that result. This is true for any website or blog, not just WordPress. Using a “redirect” won’t work – at least not for long – since Google will index the page you redirect to, and more than likely leave the original page out of its index or much further down in the rankings.

cken

Jul 21, 2010

4:34 AM

#51

Hi Mark,
I want to make my text bigger in worldpress but it does not have that function. So I make my text all in bold to make it look bigger. Will this effect / hurt my website? Will it effect my site in terms of indexing / ranking?

Thanks
Cken

Mark McLaren

Jul 21, 2010

5:52 AM

#52

@Cken – Making text bold using the WordPress Dashboard editor’s “BOLD” button will probably not effect your pages’ search rankings. If you know how to edit your theme’s style.css file using FTP software and a text editor, you can make a global change that will do the same thing so that you don’t have to add BOLD manually all the time. You could also make the change using the Appearance > Editor to edit the style.css file.

If you look at about line 13 of your style.css file, you will see the following:

body
{
margin: 0 auto;
padding: 0;
background-color: #FEFEFE;
background-image: url(‘images/page_t.jpg’);
background-repeat: repeat;
background-attachment: scroll;
background-position: top left;
font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
font-size: 13px;
color: #262C2C;
}

Find the line that says
font-weight: normal;
and change it to
font-weight: bold;

(Don’t delete the semicolon at the end of the line.) Be sure to save the changes (and upload the style.css file back to the server if you are using FTP). Done!

I highly recommend learning how to use FTP software. The software I like is called WS_FTP.

You might also check out this tutorial about Changing Fonts and Font Size Using WordPress. It’s a little old, but still useful.

Terry Fortier

Aug 22, 2010

10:03 PM

#53

Just recently my website began displaying “read more” instead of showing the first part of the post. I would greatly prefer the way it functioned previously when it showed the beginning of the post instead of the boring “read more.”

I can live with that problem but more recently another strange fluke has surfaced. My theme’s home page displays posts from 3 categories. The wierd part: For the first post under first category the words “read more’ are replaced by the first word of the most recent title listed under the third category.

In the only case where “read more” is not displayed below the title, what is displayed is misleading and confusing. How can I fix this bug?

Mark McLaren

Aug 23, 2010

5:47 AM

#54

@Terry Fortier
Thanks for your questions. When a change like the “read more” appears, I first usually try to figure out if I may have changed a theme setting inadvertently that could have caused the switch. There are settings in your theme that control the way text displays under headings. You have a special home page as part of your theme, so the best place to look for help is the StudioPress forums, which are quite good. You may be able to find an answer just by searching the existing forum questions and answers.

The same applies to your second problem. Once you have a certain amount of content on the home page, your theme may default to the “read more” / snippet of text. You may be able to adjust the length of the snippet under each heading using your theme’s special settings. If not, try the StudioPress forum. You may also be able to do a Google search using “studiopress” and “church theme”. E.g. http://www.studiopress.com/support/forumdisplay.php?f=13 and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWZr2ZzzlNk (There are a number of good tutorials for the Church theme on YouTube.)

Michelle

Sep 7, 2010

9:12 PM

#55

Hello Mark

I created a wordpress site over three months ago now and find it has not been ranked by Google, yahoo or bing. Even though there are backlink pages showing. What have I done? Or not done? And what is the best way to fix this? My website is a blog on low cost and no cost marketing tips, and full of unique content (except for the Wayne Dyer video :))

My friends and I are having a wordpress intensive using your tutorials very soon, so I was thinking maybe set up the site again.. this time with a registered domain name.. maybe this will help in my ranking?

Thanks and I look forward to your advice.

Michelle

Mark McLaren

Sep 8, 2010

5:24 AM

#56

@Michelle – Search engine optimization can be tricky at first. It’s partly a technical challenge and partly a more general “best practices in marketing and communications” kind of challenge. Also, keep in mind that, in most cases, ranking well in search engines does not happen over night.

I gave your site a quick review in the search engines to see how pages are indexed. There is, indeed, something unusual going on. For example, when I search Yahoo! Site Explorer, I see only four indexed pages. This is obviously wrong. Something is keeping Yahoo! from indexing pages.

Similarly, if you try the standard “site:url” search on Google for your site, you find what looks like an accurate list of your posts, pages, categories and archives. http://www.google.com/search?q=site:focusedchange.wordpress.com (Does it look accurate to you?) However, when I search for a specific sentence in one of your posts using Google, I don’t always get a result. In other cases, Google presents me with the category page instead of the single post. I haven’t really seen this before, but it suggests that Google does not know which of your pages is the primary source for the information.

The first thing I would recommend is assigning only one category per post. Categories work differently on WordPress.com than they do on a self-hosted WordPress site. That is probably one factor keeping your posts from ranking well. You should probably put a widget listing categories in your sidebar. If you do that and cut your category assignments down to one per post, it may go a long way toward solving your problem.

Then I would recommend picking up “Search Engine Optimization for Dummies”, which is a very good guide to SEO despite the “for Dummies” title. (All the for Dummies books are very good, actually.) This will shed lots of light on the other problems you may be having. I see a number of SEO issues on your main site, like missing HTML title tags. And there are lots of things you could be doing to get your blog to rank better using the main site. For example, you currently link to your blog from the main site using the text “BLOG” in the link rather than a keyword like “low cost marketing solutions”. And I notice that the link itself is to http://www.focusedchange.wordpress.com rather than http://focusedchange.wordpress.com WordPress.com removes the “www.” for you, but it is still better for SEO to always use the URL without “www.” when it is a subdomain of wordpress.com. (See “Search Engine Optimization for Dummies” for more on this.)

To answer your other question, yes, you should use your own domain name. Even if you host your blog on WordPress.com, you can use a subdomain of your main focusedchange.com.au domain (that would be my recommendation) or you can use a different domain. More info here: http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/

Michelle

Sep 8, 2010

8:14 PM

#57

Hi Mark..

Looks like I have a few changes to make with this site.. Thank you so much for the feedback and taking the time to look into the issues. You have definitely answered my questions.

As to the google search you made, yes the page listings, categories, etc are correct. I appreciate the suggestions made by you and will start working on fixing the current site for the time being, but will set up and use my own domain name..

The world of search engine optimization and the wonderful world of website building!!

Thank you again Mark.. no doubt I will be online asking questions again Cheers ~ Michelle.

CodCom

Sep 9, 2010

2:40 AM

#58

My problem is as follows: The frontpage of the blog shows 5 articles. When I try to go to the 2nd page, to see articles 6, 7 etc I get to see the same 5 articles on the frontpage.

Do you have any idea how this is possible or how I could fix this? Thanks in advance for any help or time you spend looking for a solution.

CodCom

Mark McLaren

Sep 9, 2010

6:00 PM

#59

@CodCom – The front page problem you describe doesn’t seem to be happening any more. Is callofduty-community.com the site you’re referring to? If it’s a different site, what’s that URL?

CodCom

Sep 9, 2010

6:02 PM

#60

Thanks a lot for having a look at the website Mark. After asking the question I spend some more time trying to figure out what was wrong and found an answer.

There was something wrong with the template, you can have a look here in case more people have the same issue http://mysitemyway.com/support/topic/page-navigation-error-wordpress-30x

Once again, thank you for having a look. Appreciate it.

Giovanny

Sep 16, 2010

2:10 AM

#61

Gotta say you have the best tuts for WordPress. I’m new to it and ur vids helped me a lot.
One question I have, is there any way I could link my menu button to an external site?

Appreciate anything you throw at me.
Gio-

Mark McLaren

Sep 16, 2010

4:14 PM

#62

@Giovanny Your WordPress site is self-hosted so you can link to an external site in at least two ways. If your theme is built for WordPress 3, you can use the new Appearance > Menus feature to create a custom link. I don’t have a tutorial on this but check out the WordPress 101 tutorial called Building Custom Menus.

If your theme is not built for WordPress version 3, you can use Mark Jaquith’s plugin called “Page Links To“.

For readers that host their site on WordPress.com, as long as your theme is built for WordPress version 3, you will have the same Appearance > Menus option. I have not checked to see if all themes available on WordPress.com are version 3 compatible. I will look into it. The theme used on my WordPress Tutorials site (hosted on WordPress.com) was created before version 3, but it is now compatible with version 3, which is pretty darn cool.

Dennis

Oct 13, 2010

11:50 AM

#63

Hi Mark,
I have been using dreamweaver for building websites and thought I would see what wordpress themes I could use. no problem installing wordpress and Mamp for Mac. My question is how to get the wordpress theme into dreamweaver and then how to change the code to html. its very confusing and I could use your help.

Thanks.

Mark McLaren

Oct 13, 2010

4:05 PM

#64

@Dennis With WordPress installed, you can start customizing themes. WordPress uses PHP rather than plain HTML. You can use Dreamweaver to edit the .php and CSS files of any theme. I recommend starting with the Twenty Ten theme, the default. Make a copy and save the original for comparison. You can make modifications to the Twenty Ten theme itself, but a better way to go is to work with a child theme like Thirty Ten. Thirty Ten was created by Aaron Jorbin and Aaron Hockley. You can use it even if your name’s not Aaron. A. Jorbin has a great tutorial for the Thirty Ten theme here.

You can create your own child themes once you get the hang of it. Refer to the WordPress codex to learn more about Child Themes. Google “child theme tutorial wordpress” and you’ll find some more good tutorials.

Social Media Guru

Oct 23, 2010

10:03 AM

#65

I want to display all posts filed under the category (of the current post) in a post.

for example I have a post http://www.xyz.com/category1/post1 which is filed under ctegory1

when i click on the above link it should show me all the posts filed under category1 like it would have shown when i click on http://www.xyz.com/category1

i do not want redirect the post url to category url .
i want somehow to embed the content of the page http://www.xyz.com/category1 into the post

please let me know how this can be done.

Mark McLaren

5:45 PM

#66

@Social Media Guru – Would this be the same as displaying the category page whenever someone clicks on a link that would otherwise be to a single post – or different somehow? If you want this to happen for post1 only, you can build a page template (I think) that WordPress will show when someone requests post1 that shows all the posts from the category. Or do you want this to happen for every post so that no one sees any single posts?

Social Media Guru

5:49 PM

#67

Hi Mark,
Thanks for replying. actually I have a featured Slider in my site. I want each image of the slider to be redirected to a category page (which could be the category of the post itself or it can be manually selected) and when i click on the image it should lead me to a post which would have all the posts from a category. like how we get when we click on any category name in blog. i just want that page to somehow embedded in post.

Thanks for your help.

Mark McLaren

7:08 PM

#68

@Social Media Guru So this is just for the links/images in the Featured Content slider? You could modify the Featured Content slider code to use the category link – or a link to a custom category page – instead of the single post link that’s there now. So when someone clicks on an image in the slider they would go to the category page. Does that sound like what you want?

Social Media Guru

7:17 PM

#69

yes sound like what i want. I have a Family Tree Theme with Genesis Framework.
Here is my slider.php code:

genesis_get_option(‘slider_cat’), ‘showposts’ => genesis_get_option(‘slider_num’))); while($recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_post();?>

{ <a href="” rel=”bookmark”> }

What should I modify in it?

Thanks.

Social Media Guru

7:18 PM

#70


			<img src="/images/slider-blank.gif" alt="Next Tab" class="jFlowNext" />

			
			<img src="/images/slider-blank.gif" alt="Previous Tab" class="jFlowPrev" />

			
                     genesis_get_option('slider_cat'), 'showposts' => genesis_get_option('slider_num'))); while($recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_post();?>
                                    
										{ <a href="" rel="bookmark"> }

                                    

                                
                                <a href="" rel="bookmark">

Social Media Guru

7:21 PM

#71

sorry it is disturbing your comments. here is the complete code of slider.php http://beckylombardi.com/wp-content/themes/freshnews/styles/grungelight/slider.txt

Mark McLaren

7:33 PM

#72

@Social Media Guru – If I’m not mistaken, you can change while($recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_post();?>
to
while($recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_category();?>
Be sure to keep a copy of the original to put back in case this does not work.

Mark McLaren

7:46 PM

#73

@Social Media Guru – Wait. Sorry. That’s wrong. It will display a link to the category. I’m going to have to get back to you on this.

Social Media Guru

7:48 PM

#74

@Mark yes I tried this and unfortunately didn’t work out. In the Mean-while I came across this plugin and this almost did the job http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/list-category-posts/

Thanks a lot for your awesome support

Vasan

Oct 27, 2010

4:56 AM

#75

I have a quick query on the display order of the posts within a single page. Currently, I am having these displayed in the ascending order – older posts gets displayed at the top of the new page and newer posts have to be scrolled down to be seen – within that page. I feel that this is not too friendly towards the visitors to the page and an impatient visitor will come to a quick feeling that the blog is not updated. Is there a way to change this order in the settings page – to display the newer posts at the top and move the older posts down. Please clarify

Thanks much.

Mark McLaren

Oct 27, 2010

5:20 PM

#76

@Vasan – It’s unusual that a theme would display posts in reverse chronological order as you describe. There is no setting for this in WordPress, though a custom / premium theme might let you do it. You can open the index.php file for your theme and look for code that is making posts display in reverse order. On this Custom Order of WordPress Posts article, look for the code under “posts listed in reverse chronological order” to see what I mean. You can remove that, if it’s there, to fix your problem. If it’s not there, let me know. Good luck!

Vasan

Nov 3, 2010

11:40 AM

#77

Hi Mark

I am using the wordpress.com itself as my hosting site. I could not find the index.php file associated with my theme (Spring loaded). Can you suggest how we can find the index.php file associated with this theme for this to be edited?

Thanks

Vasan

Mark McLaren

Nov 4, 2010

5:02 PM

#78

@Vasan – On WordPress.com-hosted sites, you can’t edit the theme files. You will need to move to self-hosted WordPress to be able to do that.

Giovanny

Dec 12, 2010

4:01 AM

#79

Hi Mark,

Quick question, how can I hide a child page on my Nav? I’m currently using the Exposure theme (by Woothemes). I was able to setup a static home page and setup the other home page as a child of ABOUT, however, I want to hide this specific child under ABOUT nav button.
Can you please assist?
Thanks!
Gio-

Graham Segal

Dec 13, 2010

3:18 PM

#80

Mark,

re #142 on your other page about multiple blogs: Delete all reference to the entry. I intend to go with the full WordPress multi-site configuration. It’s the sensible thing to do. I was just being lazy, thinking there might be a short cut but the reality is there is none.

I am slowly getting through my site building project and have reached the point where I need to address SEO. I note that there seems to be two popular SEO plug-ins: All in One SEO and Headspace 2. I have looked for an operating comparison chart for the two but have not been able to find one.

Unfortunately, at this particular time, I do not yet have the knowledge or experience to determine which would be the better plug-in for my purposes. I note from your answer to cken in June last that you strongly endorsed the All in One SEO plug-in. Has anything changed since last June to prompt you to change your view?

I need a plug-in that can be handled easily by a greenhorn. What I am really leading to is that I would be strongly guided by your comments/recommendation here.

Thanks,

Graham

Mark McLaren

Dec 13, 2010

7:21 PM

#81

@Graham – I don’t have anything against the Headspace SEO plugin, apart from the fact that I once tried to install it so that I could compare it to All In One SEO Pack, and it was more complicated than I had time for. That is a very subjective assessment, but because my SEO presentations are typically for newbies to intermediate users, I figured that if Headspace was complicated for me, it would be complicated for my audience.

Most of what the average WordPress user needs to do to optimize their site for search is very simple. The All In One SEO Pack plugin can handle it, and it’s easy to use. The only slightly tricky part is configuring the plugin when you activate it, but if you Google “configure all in one seo plugin”, you’ll find plenty of help.

Mark McLaren

Dec 13, 2010

7:28 PM

#82

@Giovanny – See my comment #62 above

Graham Segal

Dec 16, 2010

6:17 AM

#83

Mark,

Thanks for your advice. I appreciate your candour.

Graham

Newbie2

12:29 AM

#84

Hi. I need your help here. I am not getting notifications in my wordpress admin panel whenever a new user subscribes.

I used a different email to test the landing page area at my site, towards the middle right side of the home page.

My site is at http://ultimatebodybuildingguide.com
New users get notified as I learned using my own e-mail but I received no notification in my admin panel.

The second issue is that the notification new users receive comes with an address and text message which seems like default. I can’t find a place at the site where I could change this to my own text. I made modifications in the AutoResponse area but did not do the trick.

Thanks so much for helping here. John

Mark McLaren

12:46 AM

#85

John – Looks like your site uses AWeber for signups. AWeber won’t generate notifications in WordPress. You’ll need to check with the person who installed AWeber in your site. That will also help resolve the problem of modifying the default message.

Newbie2

1:33 AM

#86

Thanks Mr. McLaren. I will do that.

Giovanny