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Questions About WordPress? - Comments Are Closed | WordPress Websites, WordPress Help | McBuzz Communications

Questions About WordPress? – Comments Are Closed

Mar 17, 2010

Comments on This Page Are Closed.

This page was formerly called “Questions About WordPress? Ask Them Here!”, but you can no longer ask questions here.

Here are my suggestions for WordPress resources: WordPress.org support (WordPress support for self-hosted sites), WordPress.com support (WordPress support for sites hosted on WordPress.com), WordPress Answers, the Seattle WordPress Meetup discussion board, and Bob Dunn’s WP Chatter on Google+.

P.S. If you’re into WordPress, follow Mark McLaren on Twitter for free tips and howto’s.
And if you are in Seattle, check out the Seattle WordPress Meetup on Meetup.com.

Comments: 207

207 comments

Hi Mark, I have a question about product delivery.

You know when you optin on someone’s site to receive a free report, free download and so on?

Well my question is, how do you set that up in your autoresponder and WordPress site so your free report is delivered to the people opting in?

note: I am currently using GetResponse

Thanks for your help!

Hi Thomas,
Thanks for your question. It sounds like this is more of a GetResponse issue than a WordPress issue. When you look at the GetResponse tutorials, do you find anything there that looks like a solution? Where are you getting hung up?

Hi, I’m new to wordpress and am setting up http://www.thehowtosuperstore.com as a website and blog combined.
Am having trouble setting up categories and sub categories in left hand side bar.
In my dashboard it says I have 3 categories pending, 2 of which are not showing up in side bar. Why are they pending?
I’m going into posts-categories-setting the parent category- setting the child category.
What am I doing wrong?
Please help

Thanks Loran

Hi Loran.
Thanks for your questions! I think the quick answer is that you haven’t assigned those categories to any posts yet. Usually, category listings won’t show up unless there is a post in that category. If you want to see every category, you’ll need to create a placeholder post (assuming you haven’t created an actual post that has the category assigned to it) for each one.

I usually recommend assigning only one – or at most two – categories to a post. If you use more than two, it tends to water down the meaning of “category”. Instead, you can use tags to apply lots of terms to a post. Tags can be much more random. You could easily have a tag that’s used on only one post, but you wouldn’t want to have a category that’s applied to only one post.

ADDENDUM
I just noticed that the McBuzz.com Blog has a bunch of categories that have – apparently – been used only once! “Do as I say, not as I do,” as the saying goes! Honestly, that is due to the way I structured the blog in the early days (way back in 2005-2006), before I got a clue about how important a strong keyword theme is to blog SEO, particularly on a business website. When blogging for business, stick to the topics (categories) you want to be found in search engines for – for your business – and use Facebook or Posterous, or some other social networking site, for your social, fun discussions, pictures of your cat, etc., etc.

Hi – I am new to WordPress and I have two queries.

Re Logins for password protected pages – Does WordPress automatically generate a login and submit box on the protected page. If not how does one create them please?

Re news archives links – on the home page sidebar I have links to news posts and when I select one and it is displayed it displays with a sidebar which now has links to news (recent) and (archived). How do I delete them (the links) and if I was to keep them how do I determine which news articles they will display please?

Hi Dale,
Congrats on getting started with WordPress!

To answer your first question. I suggest that you just try it out by making a new test post or page and using the Visibility settings (in the Publish box on the right side of the Dashboard editing window when you edit the post or page) to select “Password protected”. You decide the password by entering it in the box provided and when you publish, you get a password protected post or page. The link to the post/page will be visible. When you or someone else clicks on it (and you are not logged in), WordPress will tell you that a password is required and present you with a dialog box. When you’re done trying this, you can just delete the post/page.

Regarding news archives and the appearance of different sidebars, this is something that is built into the theme you are using. If you want to get rid of links in a sidebar, or to have the same sidebar that appears on your home page appear on the news page, either your theme has to be built so that you can change sidebars and sidebar contents from within the Dashboard, or you would need to modify the code in your theme’s PHP files to make those changes yourself.

I would need to look at the files for your theme to be able to tell you anything specific about what is possible with that theme.

Some themes have multiple page templates, and some of those themes have multiple sidebars that you can customize using Widgets. At the moment, I can’t find any simple examples. One fairly powerful example is the WPRemix theme. This is a very customizable theme that lets you put different sidebars on different pages, but I don’t recall whether it lets you change the sidebar on a particular category page, which is what you are talking about.

If you want to do this kind of customization yourself (I’d say go for it!), then you will need to change,or add to, the page templates for your theme. This is not all that difficult, but you need to know how to edit the code using a text editor and you need to be able to upload the new files to your web hosting server using FTP software.

This may be way more information than you bargained for! Better too much than too little, I’d say. Here are a couple of places to look for more about page templates.

How to Create Multiple Dynamic Sidebars for WordPress Widgets

Creating Your Own Page Templates

First of all, really like the new site. Was your move easier than mine? LOL

Yet another question from me:

If I have wordpress.com on old site, wordpress.org self hosted on new site and I buy the domain mapping through wordpress.com , am I correct in the assumption that all the traffic to the old site gets automatically rerouted to the new one?

Also what happens to all the subscribers by email and feeds? Do they have to resubscribe or do their subscriptions get rerouted?

I was also a bit confused as to how long it takes and if I understood correctly there was something I needed to do on my host about changing the servers. Since I had that fatal error the other day, i am in panic about wiping things out…So any help would be greatly appreciated.

By the way-find the link I put up to your site on the right side of my website. :-)

I’m sorry you had to go through that. Maybe I should have been more emphatic about the risks of switching themes on a live site when we were talking about the fact that your sidebar didn’t allow multiple Links widgets. I don’t know the cause of the problems you had, but switching themes might have been it.

If I have wordpress.com on old site, wordpress.org self hosted on new site and I buy the domain mapping through wordpress.com , am I correct in the assumption that all the traffic to the old site gets automatically rerouted to the new one?

Yes. At least that is what it says in the domain mapping instructions. As I said, I have not done this myself. So it is riskier than using a “THIS SITE HAS MOVED” notice on the old site’s home page and in the sidebar (example here). It does look like – if something goes wrong – you can just turn off domain mapping. But, again, I have not tried this.

Also what happens to all the subscribers by email and feeds? Do they have to resubscribe or do their subscriptions get rerouted?

Excellent question. They will have to resubscribe. You have access to their email addresses in the dashboard under Dashboard > Blog Stats > Email Subscribers – so you can send them an email to let them know. In theory, I recommend using http://FeedBurner.com to get more out of your new feed (rather than the default WordPress feed). But this will add more complexity and another thing to your TO DO list. I see you have a FeedBurner form in your sidebar, so you just need to put http://www.newdaynewlesson.com/ into FeedBurner to convert the feed. Then, depending on your theme, you need to replace the default feed (http://www.newdaynewlesson.com/?feed=rss2) with the FeedBurner feed. There are plugins that will do it. You can also do it manually. You or your plugin need to change the feed URLs everywhere in your theme, including the <head></head> section of the header.php file. I haven’t done it yet for the new mcbuzz.com site! Although FeedBurner is owned by Google, it is not well supported and the online help is mediocre at best.

…there was something I needed to do on my host about changing the servers.

If you are referring to redirecting traffic from newdaynewlesson.wordpress.com, you take care of that using domain mapping mentioned above. Or you skip it and use a “THIS SITE HAS MOVED” notice on the old site’s home page and sidebar. I don’t think you need to change anything on the new server / domain – unless I’m not understanding you correctly.

Since I had that fatal error the other day…

If you want to test things out, you can create a new installation of WordPress in a subdirectory of your BlueHost web hosting, like http://www.newdaynewlesson.com/test/ Add password protection to that directory so that search engine spiders cannot access it. (BlueHost tech support will help you do this.) Then you can put a copy of your theme in the themes folder for the test site and test any new changes to the theme, plugins, etc., on that site before putting them on your real site.

Thanks for the link!!

Hi Mark
Thanks for your previous response re creating categories in WordPress and as suggested I have posted 2 articles and now I have 2 sub categories showing but they are not indenting plus both articles are showing in all parent categories?

If you can pleeeease go to http://www.thehowtosuperstore.com you will see what I mean.

Is there anyway of getting rid of the line at the top of the post that says “Archive for the ‘How to Play Guitar in Just a Few Days’ Category”

Sorry but also the links to Clickbank products don’t work, it send me to WordPress blog page? I’ve done many links before so I feel sure I’m doing as I’m suppose to.

Hoping you can help once again.

Regards

Loran

Mark,

I had a chance to see your tutorial videos on WP and absolutely love them! I started my own first WP site a few months ago was always very comfortable with Dreamweaver and HTML sites, figured this WP thing seemed big, maybe not as adjustable per se to my free hand html stuff but worth a try to dig into. It has now been about three months since putting up my own site, and I am taking a liking to WordPress in a weird quarky way…OK I am a bit hooked I am now doing sites for other people..I have changed some easy stuff within the backbone, but really would like to find more material. I am hungry to learn more advanced methods of editing and adjusting wordpress themes. I have a plugin for dreamweaver which allows me to see WP in a visual way and also to see how elements interact…In addition I now use artisteer which is cool foundation for a theme. Now I want the meat and potatoes stuff. I wanted to know what books or info resources you may suggest to really dig into WordPress.

Thanks in advance

Regards,

Jeff Turner
http://www.daltonskygazer.com

PS When you gonna release a book or DVD with tuts? I think your video tutorials are top notch!!

Loran,
You can only remove the “Archive for the ‘How to Play Guitar in Just a Few Days’ Category” if you have a self-hosted site. You need to be able to modify the theme files, which you can’t do on WordPress.com. That is also why the Clickbank links don’t work. You need a self-hosted site for that.

As for the category links in the sidebar, it’s a matter of setting up your Links / Categories widgets so that they display the way you want. I don’t have a video tutorial on this. I could login to your site temporarily and tweak it for you if you want.

Tight on time today. I’ll see about doing a tutorial – maybe next week.

Jeff,
Thanks very much for your comments.

You raise an excellent question: For someone who has web development experience with things like Dreamweaver and HTML, what are the best resources for a solid introduction to WordPress fundamentals? Sorry to say, I don’t have an answer ready for you. I’m going to put it out there to the WP community and see what we can come up with.

Obviously, if you google “free wordpress tutorials” or variations on that theme, you’ll find a ton of stuff. The question is, What’s the best? Here are a few resources I can think of:
Check out the videos for “WordCamp.tv” on WordPress.tv:
Like this one by Shane Sanderson: WordPress, PHP, and CSS: Oh, My!
There are videos on WordPress themes.
Anatomy of a WordPress Theme – exploring the files behind your theme.
And lots more. In the links window on the right of the video player, scroll down to see the TAGS: CSS, Themes, PHP… All kinds of good stuff.
Here’s another list: WordPress.tv How-to Category

Beyond that, there’s a WordPress group on LinkedIn that was started by WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg.
I have often find solutions to specific WordPress problems in the WordPress Support Forums.
For learning CSS and PHP, the http://w3schools.com website is excellent.

I wonder if anyone has done a massive compilation of WordPress resources. Now that would be some mighty good link bait! Googling “wordpress resources” is a start. WordPress expert Lorelle van Fossen has an extensive list of WordPress Resources. The trick is staying current – because WordPress is always being updated and improved.

What do you think?

Hello Mark…

Thank you for offering this offer to help folks like myself…who are brand new to WordPress…and trying to fumble through getting things going. I watched your tutorial online about static pages…and I was able to add my “About” page with great success…so thank you very much.

My question is…I tried posting some information on the “Home” about my new site…but less than half of what I composed showed up on the page. So went back into the Dashboard and deleted what I wrote…and then re-wrote a very short blurb to fit the space…how can I open the space up so what I really want to say…will post in its entierty…?

Thank You Again Very Much…Continued Success…

Best Regards,
Dr. Dan

Hi Dan!
Right now you have the blog on your home page, so when you add more than a certain amount of text, you will only be able to see it when you click on the title of the blog post and are then taken to the “single” blog page, the page showing only that post.

If you create a few more posts, you’ll see that they are all truncated at the same length. If you click on any title, you’ll see a single page for that post.

In my Static Home Page WordPress Tutorial I show how to make a Home page that is not your blog page. Try creating a page (not a post) called Home and then make that the home page. You will be able to make that as long as you like. Then make separate Blog page for the blog.

Let me know if you have any other questions. Good luck!

hey mark- can you look at my blog? any suggestions as to HOW to drive people to my website?
HELP!
and hi there!

Hey Vera! Thanks for stopping by!

Your garden pics look really nice. Village Green Nursery – West Seattle, folks, check it out.

Driving people to your site, eh? Let me look the site over a bit over the weekend and we can discuss.

Regarding the blog, maybe we can set you up with a little less retro theme. There’s a new Default theme on the way with WordPress version 3.0, and there are plenty of other nice themes out there. The good thing about WordPress is that you can keep on putting up new posts and then switch the theme without touching the content.

Hello Again Mark…

Thank you for your answer and help with my previous question. I have another question if I may: On my site on the right sidebar…and again in the center at the bottom of the Home page…there is a title that says META…and under that are a few subtitles.

Is there anyway to get that off my site…? I did find the heading under “Appearance” but I can’t delete it.

Thanks Again…Continued Success…

Regards,
Dr. Dan

Hi Dan,
Whether you can remove this set of links or not depends on your theme. Most themes today use Widgets in the sidebar. If you look in Appearance > Widgets your sidebar will either have “Recent Posts” “Categories” “Archives” “Blogroll” “Meta” – or it will have nothing in it. If the former, you can drag the Meta widget out of the sidebar to remove it.

If the latter (no widgets showing in the sidebar), try dragging a “Recent Posts” widget into the sidebar. Click Save. You can drag the others in there, too, if you want, without Meta. When you save all those, and view your site, the Meta widget should be gone.

As for the Meta links in your footer area (bottom) of the page, some themes let you change this, some don’t. If your theme lets you change these footer links, you should see something in Appearance > Widgets for those links, and you should be able to drag a different widget into the one corresponding to where Meta now appears.

Thank You Mark…

I tried what you suggested…sorry to report Meta, didn’t go away. Under the Appearance tab there is an “Editor” link…and that takes me to the HTML set-up for the theme.

Since I know absolutely nothing about HTML…I didn’t mess with anything…but I did find the Meta / sidebar and footer areas. If I delete those items…will the Meta stuff go away…?

And…would you please advise what parts of the HTML I would delete without messing up the whole theme…?

Thank You Again…

Regards,
Dan

Hi Dan,
Unless you like living dangerously, never use the Appearance > Editor. Instead, get some FTP software like WS_FTP and edit your theme files on your computer. Upload them to the server when finished, and always be sure to save a backup of the original file so you can put it back up on the server if anything goes wrong.

I don’t have a tutorial about removing the Meta widget, but if you look at my WordPress text widget tutorial, you will see the widgets I’m talking about.

Ah, it just occurred to me that your theme may be old and therefore not be “widgetized” or “widget enabled”. That may be why you’re not seeing what I’m referring to under Appearance > Widgets. Check out the text widget tutorial above.

Nope. I looked at your theme’s website and it is widgetized. See the notes the author includes on this page – along with my text widget tutorial and you’ll hopefully get an idea of how to change those footer widgets (note the names the theme author uses) as well as the sidebar widgets.

Hi, Mark … such a wonderful service you are providing here, and you are a clear and precise trainer/writer. Thank you!

I’ve recently started my own company (Context Communications) and set up a blog on wordpress.com where I activated the “subscribe to” widget to enable easy email updates of new posts/content to subscribers. Then, I realized I would probably want to use the full-feature wordpress.org software included with my host so that I can easily incorporate the blog into the overall website structure I am planning (maybe on WP, maybe not).

Luckily, I switched over to the self-hosted WP before I had promoted the .com WP URL anywhere.

BUT (there is a question here, bear with me…): there is no “subscribe to” widget in the self-hosted WP. In an old wordpress.com personal blog I had, before WP.com had the “subscribe to” widget built in, I used a very simple feedburner subscription process in a textbox widget. Worked like a charm and still does (it’s here: http://eccentricmuse.wordpress.com/)

I set up a new feed for Context Communications’ blog with feedburner, but I must be losing my mind, because I don’t see anywhere the address for the simple email subscription that I can include in a text box widget.

In my new self-hosted WP blog, I am using the “Connections Reloaded” theme, and it even has a feedburner / custom feed option into which I have entered my feedburner feed address, but it’s not showing up anywhere. AND, when I include that address in a textbox widget (it’s there now at http://www.contextcomm.ca/blog), it takes people to a VERY confusing page asking them to choose their preferred feed reader. I don’t want people to have to do that, I simply want them to enter their email address so: a) I have it for marketing / newsletter distribution purposes; and b) they can get a simple email announcement when there are new posts on my blog.

I’m really getting frustrated. The free WP was so much more user-friendly for us non-techie types. Can you help me? What am I missing/what am I doing wrong? Many thanks for your help…..

Jennifer,
Thanks for your questions and the kind words. Always nice to get comments from a Torontonian! Hooray, Toronto! We used to visit all the time when we lived back East. Awesome city.

You have identified one of the trickier minor parts of moving from .com WordPress websites to self-hosted WordPress sites.

On Eccentric Muse here’s what I see when I click the Subscribe link. This is the email signup form for FeedBurner. I think you can get the same link for your new ContextCommunicationsBlog feed. You just have to dig around in FeedBurner for the Email Subscription link. Here’s what I see when I make the link myself: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=ContextCommunicationsBlog So you need to enable Email Subscriptions first and then FeedBurner will provide the link. This should solve the problem of users seeing the confusing page with all the reader options.

There’s one more very minor issue right now with the feed in your page <head> section. There are usually two ways people can get the RSS feed for your blog. One is via the link you put in the page, a link that comes pre-built into many WordPress themes. The other is via the RSS button that appears in the address window of most web browsers – shown here circled in red. Here’s where the button is in Internet Explorer 7 browser.

When you use FeedBurner, some RSS widgets will replace the default WordPress RSS link with your new FeedBurner link without managing to replace the one in the page <head> section. Some will replace both (as they should). What’s happening on ContextComm.ca right now is somewhere in the middle. If you click on the RSS button, you’ll get a dropdown menu. Select the feed from the menu, and you’ll see this: an error message. The reason is that, somehow, you’ve got a space between “.com/” and “ContextCommunicationsBlog” in the URL. (The space might appear as the encoded value “%20”.) Maybe your widget is inserting the space, or maybe it’s getting in there some other way. If you remove the space and hit Return, you’ll see the proper FeedBurner page (the confusing one). Even though it’s the confusing page, you should fix the problem by removing the space from the URL in the page <head> section. To do this you either need to edit your theme’s header.php file or tweak the widget if that’s the problem.

I agree that WordPress.com is easier than .org. I recently encouraged another reader to switch to .org. She had difficulties. But I still think, in the long run, if you plan to use your WordPress site for anything more than a hobby, at the very least you need to register your own domain name. And, nine times out of ten, it will be worth it to make the switch because of the power and flexibility you get with self-hosted WordPress websites that you don’t get with .com WordPress sites.

Mark, thank you! (and yes, I love Toronto too — although the PNW is so heartbreakingly beautiful. I lived in Vancouver for a while, but never made it down to Seattle. Some day!)

So — yup, I found that nasty space and all seems to be well on that front. I’m still searching for the feedburner email subscription link, but have a rejuvenated sense of purpose and possibility with your reply. I shall persevere because I do know deep-down in my artsy-fartsy and non-techie heart that the self-hosted WP is the way to go. It may end up being the app I use to create the site overall, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it!

Thanks again!

The Email Subscriptions settings are under “Publicize” (click for screen shot).

Yes indeed, I found them! TYVM

Hi Mark…

I would like to place a PayPal “Buy Now” button on one of my static pages I plan to publish. I already have a PayPal business account…if you are familiar with this process may I ask for assitance please…? Or, if this is something a person like yourself should take care of…please advise, and I can contact you directly.

Thank You,
Dan

Hi Dan,
I think PayPal online help is pretty good for this. Take a look at the resources here. When you’re logged into your PayPal account, find the HTML code for the button you want to use. You can change the parameters, set the amount, etc.

Once you have the code, you can paste it into the WordPress Dashboard HTML editing window on a page. You can also put the HTML into a text widget.

Hi Mark,

Love your videos… I’ve really learned a lot!

But I didn’t see one on this problem I’m having…
Have you heard of anyone having problems with making changes to their WordPress content and it doesn’t take or stay? It looks like it was done right, so I saved it, but the changes didn’t end up stay!

I do have a new Mac computer, so I figured maybe it has to do with that, so I redid it on my pc laptop. And after playing with it to get it the way I wanted, the same thing happened. What’s Up With This?

Could I’ve done something wrong when I copied and pasted it in from my notepad or Microsoft word?

And it’s just on my Home page. I ended up deleting the home page cause I was so disgusted. It was either the color, size, or style of the letters that went wrong. Or even the spacing between paragraphs. Even after I went into the html source and put at the end of the paragraphs the or code.

Can you help me?

And can you please put it in BEGINNERS terms.

I’d appreciate it!

Thank You Extremely Much!!

Denise F. from N.H.

Hi Denise,
Sounds frustrating! There are a number of things that can keep content from showing up on a page. In general, there is a limit to the length of a WordPress page or post. It’s quite long. I don’t know the exact length or amount of content, but I do know that you can exceed it. If your page is long, try putting something very basic on it as a test, like one or two sentences of plain text.

The other thing that might be happening is that formatting is causing a problem. Using my browser to View > Source (or View > Page Source in Firefox), I can see lots of additional formatting that suggests you are copying and pasting in your content from Microsoft Word or some other text editor. I see this on the About page but it does not prevent the About page content from showing on the page. Maybe on your Home page has something more that WordPress doesn’t know what to do with, so when copied and pasted in, WordPress just removes it.

Again, I would try putting something simple on the Home page like text that you type directly into the editing window. You may need to clear out anything that is already there first. To do this, open the HTML editing window (not the Visual editing window). Select All and then delete it.

In general, if you are going to copy and paste content into WordPress, I recommend that you paste it into the HTML editing window, not the Visual editing window. This will strip out most of the formatting that you need to get rid of. Once you do that, you can go to the Visual editing window and apply formatting using the editing tool bar from within WordPress.

If none of this solves your problem, there might be something funny going on with the static Home page. Try making the blog your home page (the default) and see if you can get the “Home” page to publish properly when it is just another page like About or MY MISSION or Privacy.

After trying all that to no avail, you could start turning off plugins one by one to see if that makes a difference.

Be sure to look at the McBuzz Terms of Use before doing any of this.

Hi, Mark-

I just watched your tutorial on How to Upload & Link to a PDF, Microsoft Word doc, or other doc in WordPress 2.7. After I uploaded the PDF, I linked the PDF’s URL to the “Please click here” phrase in my post. After I updated my post, I went to the site and I tested it and while a new window opened like I had wanted, it was blank. So, I went back and just hit “insert Into Post.” It inserted, but after I updated the post and went to test it on the site, the same thing happened where the new window opened but it was blank. I’d appreciate any suggestions you have to help me. Thanks so much!

Hi Julie,
From your description, I don’t see anything wrong with what you are doing. Can you tell me the page that the link is on, and also the URL of the PDF so I can get a better idea? Did you try uploading the PDF again? How about uploading a different document?

Hi Mark-

I uploaded the document again. It did the same thing. However, this time, I tried opening it in Firefox where as before I was in Safari and it started downloading the PDF. When I tried in Safari again, it still opened another window that was still blank. I checked to see if it had automatically downloaded anywhere it hadn’t. The link is on our homepage at http://www.seventhsister.com at the bottom of the post. It says , “To download a brochure/registration form for this year’s camp, please click here.” The URL of the PDF is http://seventhsister.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/2010-Shakes-Camp-Brochure.pdf . I’ll try uploading a different document.

Thanks!

Hi Julie,
The link to the PDF on your homepage works fine for me in Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Internet Explorer 7. I’m on a PC. When I click on it, it opens as a PDF in the browser window. You could include a note to say, “PDF file. To download, right-click and select ‘Save Link As…’ or ‘Save File As…'” or something like that. But otherwise, I don’t have a problem.

Maybe what is throwing your browser off is that the link is set to open in the same window. But that’s not likely. Can you open other PDF links with that browser?

That’s so strange. I’m on a Mac. I wonder if that makes a difference. Well, hopefully people won’t have a problem. Thank you very much for your help! Have a nice day!

@Julie
Try opening a PDF from a different web page with that browser, or try using Firefox on your Mac to open that link. Also try not setting a “Open link in new window / the same window” – just leave it on the unselected default for that link. Sometimes odd stuff happens with Safari.

Hi Mark…

I did it…! I placed a PayPal button on a new page for my site…thank you very much for your time and help.

I did notice something on my “Home” page however…and that is, the tabs for my static pages are not in alphabetical order…? Is there a way I can fix this…?

Thanks Again…

Best Regards,
Dan

@Dan
To set the order of page links in your navigation, use the Page Order feature located on the right side of the editing panel (click for screen shot). In this example, the page order is set to 3. Normally your pages would be in alphabetical order. Try adding these page order values – or changing them if they are already there.

Thank You Mark…

I tried what you suggested…but it isn’t working…so I’m obviously not doing something right. Including the “Home” page…I’ve added 3 new pages the contact, about and let’s party pages…so I set the number to “4”… for each page but the order didn’t change…?

I have to go to each one of the pages seperately to make the changes…The “Pages” tab from the Dashboard…isn’t giving the option to change anything.

Since I have 4 pages…do I need to set each page to 5…? Or do I need to set each page in chronological order…?

Thank You Again Mark…

Regards,
Dan

Hi Again Mark…

Never mind…!!! After re-reading your suggestion…numbering the pages in chronological order did the trick. Than you very much for your help.

All the Best.,
Dan

Hello Mark, I want to learn how to build mini niche sites using wordpress. I know how to do the keyword research and everything else but don’t where to start learn how to build them. Hope you can help me get started or maybe point me in the right directions with someone that does know! Man, this a Great forum! I just became a subscriber and a friend on you tube channel thanks for any help!

Ollie

Hi Ollie,
Building mini niche sites is a hot topic these days, and WordPress is probably one of the best ways to do it. Thanks for your comments!

Check out some of the Premium Themes on this WordPress Resources page, especially the Affiliate and Flexibility themes.

I recommend joining LinkedIn so that you can join the WordPress group there. There’s tons of good info on that group and you can ask questions, too.

Beyond that, let me know what you find out and I will gladly post it here. I’m sure others would like to know about this, too. You can gain some good visibility for your own blog by writing about the topic!

If you are in Seattle, check out our Business WordPress 3.0 and Search Engine Optimization event in May.

Hello Mark…

Thanks again for your help…and for this forum…your help and advice have made my experience with WordPress a great pleasure.

I have a couple questions…1) On my “About” page I ask visitors to go to the “Let’s Party” page. How can I create a hyperlink to that page instead of visitors having to scroll all the back to the tabs at the top of the page…?

2) How can I add color to some of my text…?

Thanks Again Mark…Continued Success…

Regards,
Dan

I am using the same theme for my blog as you’ve used for “Business Blogging 101.” I like the easy navigation tabs at the top and want to add more. The only ones I have now are :Home” and “About.” How do I add new tabs? When I add a page, I just get another page navigation link.

Jack

Hi Jack,
Looking at your site, my guess is that you mean that when you add a new post you get another navigation link to that post, which appears under “Recent Posts” in the left sidebar. Am I right about that, or did I miss something?

To get another page to appear in the navigation links at the top of your site, you need to create a new page. Use the menu for “Pages > Add New” in the Dashboard.

Let me know if that’s not helpful!

@Dan
I really need to switch these comments to the “threaded” format so that I can reply to specific comments. Until then, my apologies.

In response to your question about making text a link, see this text link tutorial.

As for adding color to text in WordPress (click here for screen shot), find the extended editing options button (circled in red) and click on that if you can’t see the COLOR dropdown menu (also circled). This works just like the standard Microsoft Word-style color select menu.

@Ollie
Here’s another web marketing resource for you in your quest to build mini niche sites – called Builder for WordPress. It’s not free, but you will be able to build and customize sites quickly. The WordPress designer, Cory Miller, is an overall great resource.

Hi Mark,

Is there a way to hide a post on wordpress self hosted so that if you call up a category it is still there but it is not on main page of blog?

Am using coverwp theme.

http://www.newdaynewlesson.com/

Want to only see it if click on the category or badge linking to that category

Thanks,
Susie

Hi Susie,
You might give this plugin a try:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/advanced-category-excluder/

Something like this will also work – although I haven’t tried this solution myself:
http://blogulate.com/content/exclude-categories-from-wordpress-frontpage/

Be sure to keep a copy of your original index.php and home.php files just in case.

Here’s another way to solve the problem. Again, save a copy of the original functions.php file.
http://blogmum.com/2009/04/how-to-exclude-categories-from-the-home-page-of-your-wordpress-blog/

Thank You Very Much Mark…

As always…your help and tutorials…work like magic. Adding color was an oversight on my part…I didn’t even see the option on the toolbar. And I was able to add the link with no problem thanks to your tutorial.

I appreciate very much your patients, time, and help…

All the Best,
Dr. Dan

can you please tell me how to insert a “leave a comment” form like this one on my WordPress blog? The one that is there now is plain and uninteresting – thanks.

@Wise
You can change the look and feel of your comment form by modifying the style.css or other CSS files that are part of your WordPress theme. I don’t know of a plugin that will do that for you. If you know a little CSS, you can pick up the CSS from a site that you like and use that to replace or modify your own site’s CSS.

This may be way more information than you were looking for. Some things are easy to customize when it comes to WordPress themes. Other things are difficult. But – you probably know this already – it’s kind of like owning a car. If you want to customize it, either you can figure it out yourself, or find a friend who’s willing to help, or you can pay someone else to do it. When it comes to me and cars, there’s no way I’m going to try to do it myself because it will take way too long and the final result won’t look that great! WordPress websites, on the other hand… :)

Thanks – I’m glad I found your site and I’ll be back – I see you are a WordPress person “for hire” – it seems you really know what you are doing too – I’ll try the CSS – if it doesn’t work, I guess I’ll have to get you to do it for me – thanks.

My site has three parts: a main site, a blog that uses WP, and a forum that uses bbpress. I need to replace the CMS on the main site, and since I already use WP for the other two parts, I figure to minimize bugs I should use WP as the CMS on the main site. However, all the tutorials I’ve seen for installing WP as a CMS do not involve integrating it with a blog or bbpress.

Do I have to download and install WP again as a CMS? How do I make all three parts work together? Also stickifying the situation is that there are shared components across the three parts (a common login and theme, etc.).
Someone suggested I simply create new pages in WP, but when I do that the name of the blog shows up in the default URL, which I don’t want. WP also makes me attribute each page to an author, which is fine for the blog, but I don’t want to do that for the main site.

@jkidd
Great questions! There are several ways to handle this, as you already mention. First of all, I would say you are right to take a bit of time to think about this so that you don’t wind up regretting the solution you chose six months from now. Ask as many people as you can who are knowledgeable in this area. Someone with mad database and PHP skills (not me) might know of a simpler way to take all your current data and port it into a new configuration using WordPress and whatever else. But I think there is a fairly straight-forward way to handle it without having to know PHP/MySQL.

First off, you don’t mention why you want to get rid of the current CMS. Why not continue with things as they are? Changing things will be a minor pain in the rear – or a major pain, depending on how much experience you have with WordPress.

If you want a site that has both the main site and blog running on WordPress, then, yes, it makes sense to create a new WordPress installation that will be located in the root directory at publicsquare.net. You can easily export the current blog and import it into the new WP installation. You could have the blog continue to run at http://publicsquare.net/bloggerheads/ or you could create a redirect to eliminate the /bloggerheads/ subdirectory without losing any SEO juice. I would opt for the latter.

As for the bbPress installation you have right now, I am assuming it would not be terribly hard to export it and import it into a new installation of bbPress. I took a quick look at the bbPress forums and it does look like ppPress is has an export/import feature.

How do you plan to import the pages from the current CMS into the new WordPress site? Also, be sure to take current URLs and new URLs into consideration so that you have 301 redirects in place when you make the switch.

If I were doing this, I would probably setup the new site in a new directory, get everything running there under a temporary URL, and then point the publicsquare.net domain to the new directory when everything was ready to go. Depending on your web host, you may have to work with the host to get that done. With hosts that allow you to handle your own “domain mapping”, you would be able to do it yourself.

I don’t recommend making new pages using the existing WordPress blog, although for a temporary solution that would work fine because you would be able to export those pages along with the blog posts, whereas (I’m guessing) you are not able to export pages from the current CMS and import them easily into WordPress.

Regarding attributing an author to WordPress pages, that’s just a matter of how the theme is set up. You can easily opt not to display author names on pages while showing them on posts. Pages on the http://www.mcbuzz.com site don’t display an author name – take this Search Engine Optimization (SEO) page, for example. :) There’s no author name visible.

Hi there,
Do you have any tutorials that make it simpler for a novice to migrate from a free wordpress.com blog to a self-hosted wordpress.org one? I looked around on your site but couldn’t find one.

Thanks!

Beanwashed

Apr 19, 2010

7:24 PM

Hi Mark-

Thank goodness for your online tutorials! I am currently in the process of putting together a wordpress.com page for my online portfolio. On many of the pages I am creating, I don’t want to leave an option for visitors to leave a reply because it doesn’t make sense to do so. How can I delete this option?

Much obliged.

Hi Anita,
I don’t have a tutorial specifically for this. Sorry! But you raise a very good question, and I am going to make a tutorial about this topic a top priority.

Still, moving your WordPress site from .com to self-hosted is not terribly difficult thanks to the Export/Import feature. I suggest getting a hosting account with BlueHost or one of the other hosts recommended by WordPress. Check out my How to Install WordPress on Bluehost tutorial.

The tricky part might be finding and installing the same theme you are using now. Some themes are only available on WordPress.com, but older ones you can find and download. Try googling the name of the theme. You can (almost always) upload a theme from within the WordPress Dashboard, so that part’s not too bad.

Then, once you have WordPress and your theme installed, you can export your WordPress.com site, and import it into your new self-hosted site. You’ll have to tweak a few things, and the widgets will not be exported/imported. That’s why it’s important to keep your .com site online. You can create widgets on the new site by copying and pasting (or just copying the settings) from the existing widgets on the .com site. (Whenever I say “.com”, I mean “WordPress.com”.)

As long as you don’t get rid of your .com site, you can always start over if you decide the new installation is not working right. After the new site is set to go, you may want to put a notice of some kind on the .com site sending people to the new site. It’s also possible to pay $10 or $15 a year to use domain forwarding (technically “domain mapping”) to send anyone who tries to go to the .com site directly to the same page on your new site.

Hi Beanwashed,
In the editing window for pages and posts, scroll down until you see the “Discussion” settings box. Uncheck “Allow comments”. Some themes do this automatically on Pages. Don’t worry about the pingbacks and trackbacks setting. It’s best to leave this checked unless you are hiding from search engines.

You can also set this comments setting “globally” (for all posts and pages) under Setttings > Discussion > Default article settings (“Allow people to post comments on new articles”).

Thanks a bunch! Very helpful.

Hi Folks,

I apologize in advance if I’m not posting this correctly or violating any procedures as I’m brand, spanking new to WordPress.

I’m having a problem with the item-list (bullets). They appear in the edting box but when I click Publish the text to the right of them appears on the Web site but not the bullets.

Here’s what I was instructed to do and unfortunately does not work on my WordPress version 2.9.2. using the Atahualpa theme.

1) edit a post and select the visual editor
2) click the unordered list icon (note: this is an on/off button – it will remain on till you shut it off)
3) enter text for point 1 – hit ‘return’
4) enter text for point 2 – hit ‘return’
5) enter text for point 3 – Now, because we want text under point 3, Hold down ‘control’ and hit
‘return’
enter the text that comes under point 3 – then hit ‘return’ to go to point 4 etc, etc

It was also suggested that we I may need a Text Editor with FTP capability?

I found one at chami.com called html-kit.

Apparently, one has to download this kit and then configure it so that you can edit files or edit content on the server.

That seems like a lot just to add bullet points to the text of your content.

Is it that complicated or am I missing a step?

A friend found this …
http://www.arcanepalette.com/tips-and-tricks/fixing-bullet-points-list-items-wordpress/

but that explanation loses me after “The…” Complicated to say the least.

There was also a suggestion of using something called html tags but I’m not sure exactly how to use html tags in WordPress or the Atahualpa theme.

Is there any easy way to insert a “list-item” (bullet) in the Atahualpa theme?

Thank you all so much for your understanding and help.

Hi Charles,
Can you provide the URL for your site so I can look at it? If you don’t want to show it here, you can email it to me or use the Contact Us form. I’m not that familiar with Atahualpa. I may need to install a copy to test.

Charles,
I installed Atahualpa on a test site and bullets work fine. I think you may be using the wrong steps to make a list. Here’s a quick summary of correct steps.

I’m wondering…if the challenge I’m experiencing in publishing bullets to the site is that I;m not actually using a list for the bullets. I’m just typing text and then wanting to create bullets for that text but not necessarily creating a list per se (e.g. Item 1, item 2, item 3)

I am able to code html tags in the HTML Editor (Not the Virtual Editor) which creates a small bullet which does publish. I just cna;t get the bullets created in the Visual Editor (which I see in that Editor) to publish.

Would anyone know if and how I would publish a graphic of a bullet? Say, I found a bullet in another program (e.g Open Office) could I copy and paste that into the Visual Editor and then publish that?

The HTML bullets are limited and small so it wold be nice to have larger bullets.

Thanks so much.

@charles
Did you provide the URL for your site? I may have missed it.

Have you tried switching themes? What happens when you use the default theme? (Again, don’t do this if you have lots of content on your site.)

I was curious…if I do change themes do I lose all the text and everything I have in the current theme?

I was on the Atahualpa theme but I couldn’t delete the photo in it. Anyone know how to do that?

So, I switched to Inspiration which had no photo but won’t seem to publish bullets in the Visual Editor.

Thank you.

@charles
Changing themes won’t make you lose content. It can mess up your widgets if you have two sidebars and then switch to a theme with one sidebar, for example.

What browser and what kind of computer are you using? Have you tried using a different browser – like Firefox?

Mark

I loved the tutorial on the static page. I wondered if I could have my cake and eat it also. I want static content at the top of my “loop” and then my recent posts below it or even better yet only the last 3 posts. Is there a simple way to do this or a plugin I can use? Thank you.

The URL for my site is http://www.sierranevadaadventures.com

@Eric K
Glad you like the tutorial. Thanks for your questions. There’s an easy way to do what you want, or you might want to try something a little more “formal” or professional looking. The nice thing about the easy way is that you can do it on WordPress.com as well as self-hosted sites.

It’s possible to make any blog post “sticky”, so that it will stay at the top of your blog page. If your blog page is your home page, as it is on your site, then you can use the sticky post as a kind of static home page: a way to introduce your business, link to internal pages with more information or a contact page, etc. I use a sticky post on my Business Blogging 101 WordPress Tutorials site to act as an introduction for people who haven’t been to the site before.

In the Dashboard, open (or create for the first time) the post that you want to be sticky. Find the “Publish” feature box on the right side. Next to “Visibility”, click on Edit. Now you will see a box for “Stick this post to the front page“. Put a check there and click Okay. Now that post will stay at the top of your blog/home page as long as you leave that box checked.

To answer the second part of your question, in the Dashboard navigation under Settings > Reading (Reading Settings) find the box next to “Blog pages show at most” and change that number to 4. Click the Save Changes button. Now you have a fixed piece of content on the home page and the 3 most recent blog posts below it.

The downside of this method, is that your sticky post is still a post, so shows the “post meta data” (date the post was created, the author) and the category. It looks like a blog post, in other words. But on some sites, this is not going to make enough of a difference to readers to warrant doing it another way.

Let me know if that works for you.

Is there a way to remove the meta data from the sticky post?

@eric kindley
I’m sure there is. I’ll have to look into it. That would be a nice way to solve this. Won’t have time today, but I will take a look.
Mark

Hi there, I’ve been sent here by Susie at Newdaynewlesson… I have a complicated question about my feeds… My feedburner feed is working fine.
My website feed validates ok. But when I type in my url + feed into
the status bar I get a 404 page not found AND in the status bar I get
both my website feed url and my feedburner feed.

So I type in this:

http://www.vegemitevix.com/feed/ which is the site feed

and get

404 page not found and in the top status bar it reads

http://www.vegemitevix.com/feed/http://feeds.feedburner.com/vegemitev

the latter part is my correct feedburner address.

Obviously in WordPress I have entered in the wrong details. But where?
Please please help, I write a cool blog but it’s difficult to promote
when I’m having ‘feed issues’. Thanks in advance.

@Vegemitevix
Thanks for your question! RSS is tricky. See comment #8 on this WordPress Help page – that is, comment #8 above.

If you look at your home page or any other page in a browser and select View > View Source / View Page Source, and then search using CTRL + F (or Edit > Find) and look for “rss” you’ll see that you have the old RSS feed in a couple of places on the page and your FeedBurner feed everywhere else. You should remove the old feed or replace it with the FeedBurner feed. (If you know how to edit your theme files, this is not hard, but if you don’t know how to do this, it’s tricky.) You can also burn a FeedBurner feed for your comments. (http://www.vegemitevix.com/comments/feed/) Right now the old comments feed is still there, as well.

How are you adding the FeedBurner feed to the page? If you are using a plugin, it may be messing things up, too. To debug, you need to deactivate the plugin. Then do the View > Source again and see which RSS feeds show up in your page.

Switching RSS feeds to FeedBurner feeds is an example of where things can get difficult with WordPress, and if you are not HTML and PHP savvy, it will be a headache to fix it yourself. Some plugins/themes do a good job of replacing the old feed(s), some don’t. I don’t have a tutorial that shows how to clean all this up. Sorry! I will try to get to this when I have time.

Thank you so much! I’ll add your site in as a reference site in a post I’m writing for technophobes’ club on how to ‘Feed the RSS Monster’. I’ve deleted the plugin I had and tried a new plugin and it appears to have helped the situation. I can see the social media button plugins are sending out wrong url too, so have edited the plugin settings as well. Thank you!

Do you have a tutorial that shows how to add a “Find us on Facebook” icon to a wordpress sidebar that links to a fanpage I have created? I have downloaded the badge, gotten a FB API key, found my fanpage ID, downloaded an application that was supposed to do this (Simple Facebook Connect), but so far, no luck.

I have followed your tutorials for adding a PDF download link and for an e-mail link with easy, immediate success – so thanks for that!

Peter Olsen

Hi Peter,
If your site is self-hosted, there are lots of ways to do this. Some are more complicated that others. Some badges can be inserted using a plugin (though I haven’t tried those); some can be inserted using a WordPress text widget and a code snippet provided by Facebook; some can be inserted using simply a text widget and some basic HTML.

In the right sidebar of my Business Blogging 101 site, I used a text widget and HTML. Here’s the HTML:
<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>

If you use my tutorial on How to Use a Text Widget to Customize a WordPress Sidebar as a guide, you’ll see how to insert that code. You can keep the same code for the badge .gif file, or use a different one. Change the Facebook URL to your own page’s URL.

You can also insert a badge using code provided by Facebook. Copy the code from Facebook and paste it into a text widget. To my knowledge, you don’t need an API key for that. It should be included in the code they give you. The API key is for, among other things, developers to create their own custom Facebook widgets. You don’t need to do that.

In the right sidebar at the bottom of this page http://ppxv.org you can see a Facebook badge that doesn’t require an API key. This is an HTML page, not WordPress, but the code is the same in either case.

Hi Mark-

For some very odd reason I suddenly have another home page on my top nav bar that is entitled “Front Page”. I can’t access it from my “Edit Pages” section (it doesn’t appear in the list of pages I have) and it has the exact same web address as my “real” home page, which is entitle Summary Profile.

What went wrong and how can I get rid of the “Front Page” link?

Thanks a bunch. Your tutorials have been a gift from the heavens.

Hi Behnosh,
This is the classic “double home page link problem“. If you haven’t seen that tutorial, check it out. This is dependent on the theme.

The theme you have now has a hard coded “FRONT PAGE” link in the header navigation. If your site were self-hosted, you could remove it by removing the code, or by using a plugin mentioned on the tutorial page. But since yours is hosted on WordPress.com, I think the best you can do is hide the “SUMMARY PROFILE” link instead. For that, see the video tutorial. The other option is to choose a theme that does not have a hard-coded Home/Front Page link.

Hi Mark,

I want to make the index page or home page of my website redirect to the home page made on the wordpress blog, how can I do that?

Thanks.
Jazz

@Jazz
I’m guessing that you want http://jasbindergulati.com/blog/ to be relocated to http://jasbindergulati.com Have I got that right? In other words, when someone goes to http://jasbindergulati.com you want them to see the “front page” or home page of your WordPress site.

Who is your web host? The best way to solve this problem is to have your host “map” your domain “jasbindergulati.com” to the directory where your WordPress blog is installed (“jasbindergulati.com/blog”). Before trying anything else, I would call and ask your host if they know how to do this. Some hosts aren’t able to do it, or they do it using the .htaccess file, which is not a good solution. Let me know who your host is and what you find out.

I am in the process of teaching myself how to create a full-fledged website in WordPress. Creating a static page is easy. The next steps,however, are what are stumping me.

How do you create a template—and modify it—so that the home page layout is somewhat different from the blog layout? How do you create subpages in the hierarchy and have them show up under a main heading in the navigation bar? How do you replace the heading (which links automatically to the navigation bar) with an H1 heading at the top of the page—and still keep the overall name of the page in the navigation bar?

If you could help me with this, I would really appreciate it!

Clarice

Excellent posting! I’m taken aback I was capable of view this in the google android cellphone! Thanks again.

Hi there, I’m working on my first “advanced” WordPress site that will have a magazine-style layout for the home page. I’m coming from a Joomla background, so I don’t always know the right plugins or edit areas for full customization.

My latest difficulty is in trying to create excerpts from groups of posts (by category, recent or featured) that have a tiny thumbnail by them. In essence, I want to recreate the “tutorials, articles” functionality in the middle of this theme – http://www.solostream.com/demo/wp-clear.html .

Is there a really simple way to accomplish this that I just keep missing? Thanks!

Colin

@Colin
Excellent question. This has become a standard magazine-style theme feature. It is built into themes like Church and others from StudioPress and it looks like Solostream uses similar code – with a custom variable for the thumbnail. Purchasing one of these themes and using the code would be the quickest way to solve the problem. There may be free magazine-style themes out there that have the same feature – possibly from StudioPress or Solostream – but I’m not aware of any. Let me know what you find out!

hi!
i would like to have excerpts of posts on my homepage. but when i click the ‘more’ tag in the excerpt, it leads to a 404 error page. i have tried using excerpt plugins as well as just the more button on the page post but nothing seems to be working.

i wonder if it has anything to do with using a plugin to change my permalinks. now the permalinks look like: http://websitename.com/name-of-post
and the post url is: : http://websitename.com/category/name-of-post
could this be creating a problem? i’m not too wordpress savvy.

i have tried unsuccessfully to find a solution to my problem on many forums and am hoping you can help.

thanks.
kirti

@Kirti
Thanks for your question. Right now, I can’t see any pages at either http://websitename.com/name-of-post or http://websitename.com/category/name-of-post . In my experience, it’s best to keep at least the year in the post URL, like http://websitename.com/2010/name-of-post So set your permalinks to Custom Structure with /%year%/%postname%/ in the box. Leave the optional “Category base” and “Tag base” boxes empty. Try to avoid using excerpt plugins.

You might also try turning permalinks OFF to see if that fixes the 404 Error problem. You can also deactivate all your plugins (except Akismet) to see if that fixes it. Then – if it does fix it – turn on permalinks. If things still work properly, try activating plugins on at a time.

Hi Mark,
I tried deactivating Dean’s permalink plugin and the Zemanta plugin and unfortunately it made no difference. The ‘more’ tag still leads to an error page.

In my earlier mail, I had just given an example of the difference I have between permalink and url post. Here’s what happens on the site: My post on beach destinations has a url: http://holidaytravelhelp.com/category/beach-destinations while its permalink appears as http://holidaytravelhelp.com/beach-destinations.

And I was wondering if this difference was one of the causes for the error page appearing after clicking on the more tag.

When I click ‘view post’ from my Edit Post section (where i have written the post), that too leads to an error page.

I have not installed Akismet. Should I do that?

Many thanks for trying to help me out. I would really appreciate your help in resolving this problem.

Regards,
Kirti

@Kirti
It’s a good idea to activate Akismet if you are using the blog.

Regarding the 404 error. This is odd. I think you are right: the permalink settings are probably responsible for the 404. In the Dashboard, when you look at Settings > Permalinks, what do you see there? Which radio button is selected? If it’s “Custom Structure”, what is the structure you chose? Is a plugin handling this? Try deactivating any permalink plugins before you look at this.

On the same Settings > Permalinks page, are you using custom structures for “Category base”? If so, what is it?

Hi mark,
Can’t thank you enough for trying to help me.

so here goes:
i have activated akismet.
and have deactivated permalink plugin.
on the permalink dashboard, the custom structure is clicked and appears as %postname%

the category base has been left empty. you can refer to the attached screen shot for greater clarity.

if i deactivate the permalink plugin, what happens to all the links that have already gone out. will they get affected? as you can see, i’m a bit new to all this technical stuff.

thanks and regards,
kirti

@Kirti
Note that you need an API key to finish activating Aksimet. Do you have a WordPress.com account? If you do, you’ll find the API key in your user profile. If you don’t, just create one at WordPress.com. It takes only a few minutes. When you do so, you can select “Just give me a username”. You don’t need another blog.

As for the plugin, thanks for the screen shot. Is there a reason you are using Dean’s permalink plugin? The first thing I would try, once the plugin is deactivated, is to switch permalinks back to the default. See if this solves the 404 error problem.

I’m not familiar with Dean’s permalink plugin but it looks like the main reason to use it is to redirect old permalinks to URLS with a different structure. That seems a bit too advanced for what you need. Or maybe completely unnecessary. Correct me if I’m wrong. Are you concerned about an old permalink structure?

I don’t know how the /category/ is being inserted into your URLs. Do you have any idea why that’s there?

If you deactivate Dean’s plugin and set permalinks back to the default, my guess is that the problems will go away. Let me know.

Hi Mark,
Did exactly what you told me to do and voila! all problems are solved.
Really can’t thank you enough for taking the trouble to go through all my queries. The permalinks and excerpts work just fine on the homepage. Have also activated Akismet.

Many thanks once again and promise to troble you with more queries if the the need arises : )

Cheers,
Kirti

Can you advise me on how to get a fundraising sign up function as on this http://www.eatsotheycan.org/sign-up
There you are able to sign up and then an account is created for you and funds can be donated toward your account.
Thank you

Greetings Hi Mark :)
The form on that page is a traditional HTML and (I think) PHP-generated form. I don’t know of any WordPress plugins that are this powerful. It’s more like a shopping cart than anything since it allows you to donate funds. You might look at http://paypal.com They offer donation interfaces and buttons that you can insert into a web page. I think they may have lower rates for nonprofits. Sorry I can’t be of more help. Let me know what you find out.

Hi Mark

Is there any way I can duplicate my blog so I can see how changes look before publishing and letting everyone see what I am doing? It would be particularly useful when trying out new themes…

Thanks
Federico

@Federico
I commend you for thinking this way. Many folks, me included, just test stuff on the fly on their live site – not exactly best practices! You can always create a separate WordPress installation, either on another domain or in a subdirectory of your main site, and activate an exact copy of your theme there to test things. To keep spiders from accessing the site, you can password protect the domain root or subdirectory.

But before you try any of this, check out this theme preview plugin for WordPress. This might be just what you need.

Hi Mark

Thanks for the feedback. I never thought that such a plugin could exist. I have installed it but don’t really understand the instructions on how to use it (particularly about the url ending) so i might check on others there might be.

thanks again!
maitravelsite.com

Federico

Firstly many thanks for all your tutorials – I have looked at loads and yours have really the addressed the issues facing someone starting off – have learnt lots. I am a complete beginer and have gone from nothing to alpinebliss.co.uk – bst ones -using widget on the side bar and images and the html code has really helped for inserting links to specific places on pages. Next I would love to jazz up my home page by adding a floating text box so I can put in some bullet points to get over our service (we are setting up a chalet in the French Alps) Is there some code I can use and do I have to change my style sheet (I used artisteer for the template) There are a number of other things and I may do this separately and pay as it seems unrealistic for you to give all this advise for free!- Will come back with a list! thanks Sue

@Sue
I’m very glad you like the tutorials. You’ve got a beautiful site. Excellent work! I would be happy to help as much as my schedule allows; it’s rather busy until the end of June. If you are willing to pay for additional work, then let’s talk about a schedule.

Regarding the floating text box, please send me some links to samples of what you would like. You can do so via the Contact Form or here in the comments. Other readers would probably like to see examples, too.

Thanks again!

Hi Folks,

Does anyone use a *free* web host for their audio recordings that they then link to from their own Web site?

I’ve been having a hard time of it with bliptv.

I will have (with any luck) too many audio recordings to load on to my own Web server so the design is to upload those audio recordings on to a *free* web host and then link to that host.

Thanks so much,

Charles.

@Charles
Audio is not my area of expertise, but I’ve always heard that iTunes is a good option. You probably know more about it than me, but have you looked at their service? Sounds like it is good for search visibility, too.

Hopefully other readers will chime in.

Thanks Mark. Re the floating box see http://www.vip-chalets.com/ Its not quite what I mean but I need the ability to just draw a box so I can put some txt in to break up the page a bit- I suppose another solution would be to design another page template for the home page and use that- perhaps 3 columns and no sidebar but dont think Im ready for that yet. Have just used your advice to add a google map using mappress -excellent thx. Re extra work – How much SEO work could you do for 2 hours?? We need to get up the rankings fast to secure this years bookings.

@Sue
You can break up the page using

tags in the HTML editing window, but that can get a bit messy if you need to do frequent updates. I’m sorry I’m too busy to look for a plugin that would help. I know there are some out there like the “Magic Fields” plugin, but documentation looks weak for that one.

SEO-wise, you might try the free site evaluations from http://optify.net or http://hubspot.com if you want some quick pointers. I could do the keyword research. These tools also offer some keyword suggestions, but I could probably do a better job of that in 2 hours. You would need another hour or two for me to show you what to do with the keywords, or you could use the reports from Optify and Hubspot to learn about that.

Hi!
I am asking for you to come to my rescue again. I need an EFFECTIVE way to collect emails for newsletter subscription. I’ve tried a couple plug ins, and they dont’ work well. The one I’m currently using sends people an error message when they try to confirm their subscription. I”m not “great” at picking out the widgets that work best.
Any suggestions, oh wisest one?
t.

@Hockey Mom in Canada
This is a great question and one I’m not very up to speed on, I’m afraid. Which ones have you tried? What went wrong with them?

The free email service that comes to mind is Mail Chimp, which has a free membership for mailing lists under 500 recipients. There’s a WordPress plugin that creates a signup form for your list. Sounds great, eh? (Notice my skill with the “eh?” usage.) Whether it really is or not, I don’t know. Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

I asked you a few questions already today and forgot to ask this one and it’s driving me crazy. In the top navigation bar I’ve got the About link or icon that came with the theme. When you click on it it gives you a short description and says to change it and put something about yourself on the page. How do you do it. When I go to the Pages menu there’s no About page there. I don’t know where it is. How can I edit it if I can’t find it.

Hi Mark, thanks for all the help!! I have a small problem with a text link which has “mysteriously” appeared in the sidebar of my wordpress theme. It seems to be an old post that I had deleted before. I used your video on how to put text in the sidebar before this happened and was able to access the code and put the text widget in successfully however I cannot get into the sidebar code now to see if I can delete the link. I downloaded the sidebar.php file but there doesn’t seem to be and editable content?
I will greatly appreciate your help Regards, Stephen Strydom

@Mike
Regarding the “About” link, some themes include a custom section for this kind of information. It’s not a page. Look in the Dashboard under Appearance to see if there is a section for your Theme, or possibly under Settings.

@stephen strydom
This is a little tricky because it depends on the theme you are using. Looking at the home business essentials site, the only links I see in the sidebar appear to be working properly. Did you get the problem resolved?

@stephen strydom
Now I see. I took a look at your source code. Looks like the RSS widget you are using is responsible for this. It’s including the two posts as part of what the widget displays in the right sidebar.

This RSS widget is for displaying feeds from other places, not your site. It’s not for “Subscribe to our RSS feed” purposes. It’s showing those posts because they are part of your RSS feed. Go ahead and remove the RSS widget. Get your FeedBurner code and paste that into a Text widget, not an RSS widget. See FeedBurner help for more on how to put your FeedBurner feed into a sidebar widget.

WordPress Questions?Hi there! There are over 100 questions and replies on this post. If you don’t see an answer to your question here, come on over to the next installation of Questions About WordPress? / WordPress Help and post your question there. Thanks! – Mark McLaren

P.S. If you’re into WordPress, follow Mark McLaren on Twitter for free tips and howto’s.

Hi Mark,

Ive uploaded all the wordpress files onto my home part of my website but the layout is the same as it was before. My website is: http://www.irishfeministnetwork.com . I cant seem to get rid of the old structure and replace it with wordpress.

Im not very computer literate (as you may be able to tell with my vague understanding of what I have done to my website so far) so appreciate all the help you can give me.

Thanks heaps!

Hi!
I want to sell an ebook through paypal, with the link back to my site to click and download/save purchased ebook. But… when I put the product on a page and “unpublish” it so that it’s not part of my seen site pages, the link won’t open. So where and how do I make a page that is not seen by public with a product on it that’s been purchased for the buyer to get to?

Thanks!!
Kim – hope you had a nice 4th weekend!

@IFN
Depending on your web host, you have different options for installing WordPress. Did you look at http://codex.wordpress.org/Getting_Started_with_WordPress and http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress ? Some hosts make this easier than others. See “Install WordPress with BlueHost“, for example.

In addition to uploading WordPress files, you need to create a database and a wp-config.php file.

@Kim Wolinski
There are a number of ways to do this. Sounds like you may need an e-Commerce plugin like WP e-Commerce. You can make a page that is not seen, but people might still be able to find it unless the only way to see it is if you have made a transaction. To my knowledge, you need an e-Commerce plugin to do that on WordPress if you don’t know how to write the transaction code yourself.

Hi Mark, Do you have a video about how to point to a page on my blog from a blog post? Hope I am asking the question right. If I had a page called about me and I had a post where I wanted to refer back to that page how would I do that?

@Nicole Rushin
Hi Nicole. Thanks for your question. This tutorial shows how to make a text link in WordPress. The other thing you need to know is where to get the address or “URL” of the page or post you want to link to.

The URL of a page is located in your web browser’s “address window” when you are viewing the page in your browser. You might know this already, but, just for example, if you are looking at your own “My Story” page on the nicolerushin.com site, the URL for that page is http://www.nicolerushin.com/a-little-bit-about-me/ So if you want to make a link to that page in the body of a page or post on your site, use the technique in the “how to make a text link” tutorial, copy that URL (http://www.nicolerushin.com/a-little-bit-about-me/) from the address window, and paste it into the “Insert a link” dialog box.

After you master that technique, you might also like to know how to link to a specific place on a WordPress page. Or How to Make a “Back to Top” of Page Link. Or the Advanced “Back to Top” of Page Link technique. These are not essential things to know about WordPress, but they come in handy sometimes if you have a very long page – so that people don’t have to scroll up and down a lot.

Hi Mark: Just found your site last week- looks great! a quick question. I ‘m getting a 404 error when I had set up a custom redirect thank you page and a confirmation page on my blog. Both these pages where made for subscribers to see when they opted in to my list. When I do a test subscribe from the email sign up form I get a 404 error on the page that should be showing.The page was set as a private page so it will not show on the nav bar. For grins I made it a public page and tried to get it to load by copying the permalink on the page and putting into a new browser window. That work fine and when I put it back into private mode -it still loaded fine. But the thank you page would not load coming from the autorepsonder service when I did a test sign up(name withheld)….
In fact I think the page loaded once when I tested it when It was a private page by copying the permalink next to the editor in WP and putting into a new browser window.
3 things:
Can I have a page not show on the nav bar but still be a public page(like HTML site?)
Are there known issue(s) with some of the auto responder services when operating with a wordpress platform?
Will wordpress generate the proper permalink structure from the start and people should not edit that link- is that where the problems could start?
and they say wrodpress is ‘easy’…….. in some way yes- in others….well
thank for any and all help
peace
Robert

Thanks for any and all help

@Robert
Yes. You can have a page not show on the nav bar but still be a public page. You need to exclude the page from your navigation rather than make it private. Private pages will yield a 404 error unless you are logged in to the WordPress site.

The new WordPress version 3.0 navigation makes it easy to exclude pages from the main nav as long as you have a compatible theme like the default Twenty Ten theme. Otherwise, the best solution is the Exclude Pages plugin for WordPress. You can find a link to that on the Business Blogging 101 WordPress Resources page under WordPress Plugins.

Hi,
I am wanting to build a website,,,,,,,NOT a blog. I am not interested in people posting anything on my website. How do I do this? Is it a particular theme??? or can I delete the “Leave a Comment” part of the theme I have selected? I am using the wordpress theme, 2010 Weaver 1.2.1 by Bruce Wampler.
Thanks,
Helen

@Helen
Twenty Ten is like many standard WordPress themes in that comments appear on Pages and Posts by default. Some premium themes allow you to turn off comments on Pages (removing the comment form) while leaving them “on” on Posts. Twenty Ten does not include this feature. There may be a plugin for this, but I haven’t seen one.

When you edit a Page or Post, find the dialog box “Discussion” below the editing window. (By default, the “Discussion” box is below “Excerpt”, “Send Trackbacks” and “Custom Fields”, but you can click and hold down on the gray along the top of the box and drag it to a different position – above the others – if you want.) In the “Discussion” dialog box, you can uncheck the box next to “Allow comments.” This removes the comment box from the Page or Post. This will solve your problem.

If you don’t want to have to uncheck that box every time you make a new Page or Post, under Settings > Discussion, find “Default article settings”. You can uncheck the box next to “Allow people to post comments on new articles”. This will automatically uncheck the “Allow comments” box on any new Page or Post. You can put a check in the box on individual Pages or Posts to override this. Since you don’t plan to use a blog, you won’t need to worry about it.

Hi again,
Thank you for your recent assistance. I did what you said and it worked beautifully. Now I need to know how to clear out an extra “Home” page on my navigation bar? I have deleted it and yet it still shows up on the nav bar. my website is http://www.myhot-roses.com
Thanks,
Helen

@Helen
If your site is self-hosted (as opposed to being hosted on WordPress.com), you can use the Exclude Pages Plugin for WordPress. This should help: How to Make a Static Page Your Home Page & Hide a Double Home Page Link.

But wait, are you using the Twenty Ten theme on this site? In that case, look under Appearance > Menus. You can remove the Home link here. I don’t have a tutorial on this yet. Sorry. If you can’t see how to do it, let me know.

Hi Mark,

I am using the Atahualpa theme on WordPress. I have all of the links from the website set to open in a new window and up until recently they all worked. Now, the links still work but they are opening in the same window. They all have the target”_blank” tag but it doesn’t seem to be doing anything and I don’t know what has caused it to change. I have looked around a lot and can’t seem to find anyone else having the same issue. Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

Oh yeah, the website is http://blooms.uwcfl.org. Thanks!

@Erika – I need the URL for your site to see if there’s a problem with HTML code. If target=”_blank” is part of the <a…> tag and there’s space on either side of it (so it’s not touching the <a or href=”…” for example) then I would try viewing the site in different browsers to see if that makes a difference. Is the new window actually a tab in the browser?

@Erika – That’s odd. My first guess is that the class=”extlink” that is included with each <a…> is negating the effect of the target=”_blank” See this discussion of extlink. Did you try removing the “open in new window” from a link?

After trying a lot of different things I finally found that the WP SlimStat plugin was causing the links to open in the same window. As soon as I deactivated it all my links are back to normal! Thank you for your time and help!

HI Mark,
I am using the following theme: Graphene 1.0.7 by Syahir Hakim. I have been trying to change the template from one with a sidebar to one column without a sidebar. I’m not sure what steps to take but this is what I did.
1. Went to Theme Editor
2. Selected Graphene Theme
3. Selected One Column no sidebar template from the list
4. Clicked Update.
Yet when I went back to my website it had not changed templates. What am I doing wrong? I am limited in my computer skills, so I greatly appreciate any help you can give me.

is it possible to set up a word press blog site in order to post a 55 page canoe trip journal(5541 kb) and a nine page rim to rim grand canyon hike story?

@richard – Sure. WordPress can handle large websites, sites with lots of images, site with lots of pages. All good. I recommend that you register and use your own domain name if you are using WordPress.com so that it’s easy to move to self-hosted if you decide to do that later.

Check out the new default theme, Twenty Ten, and related themes that are compatible with menus in WordPress version 3.0 like Woothemes and StudioPress. That will make it easier to organize your pages and navigation.

I’ve just changed my theme to Vigilance by The Theme Foundry, and when i post the emails are coming out from “wordpress” rather than “marketingtomilk” as before. how can i change this?

thanks

@hpretty Since Vigilance is a premium theme, try contacting the theme developer. You are right to suspect it’s the new theme that caused the switch, but I can’t say for sure without looking at files for the theme. When you write a new post, is the author “wordpress” or “marketingtomilk”? Check the profiles under Users in the Dashboard to see if there’s a “wordpress” name or ID in a profile that can be changed to “marketingtomilk”.

Hi Mark, your tutorials are just great! I have desperatley been trying to find an easy way to make a parent page non clickable. Not sure it makes a differens but I use Builder. Couldn’t find a tutorail among yours. Did I miss it?
Thanks, Anna

@Anna – You can use Mark Jaquith’s “Page Links To” plugin for WordPress. Note in the FAQ on his plugin page:

Q. How do I make it so that a page doesn’t link to anything? I’d like to use it as a dummy container.
A. Just use “#” at the link. That won’t go anywhere.

smitty72.com/blog looks like this

but

smitty72.com looks like this.

Help :)

@Randolph Smith – On whois for smitty72.com it looks like you are hosting with Bluehost. Your site is installed in the default directory called “blog”. There’s nothing in the “root” directory, i.e. smitty72.com I recommend installing WordPress again, but be careful to remove any directory name like “blog” or “blog2” or whatever. You want to install in the root directory. This WordPress installation tutorial for Bluehost shows how to do it.

I am trying to figure out how to use wordpress. I have my widgets on my sidebar set. I have two questions: First, is there a way to configure it so that when they click on a widget and post a comment, that you are the only one who views it and not everyone else who looks at my blog. And second, if you want to contact that person through e-mail, how can you know what their e-mail address is? I am just having a little trouble getting my widgets organized. Thank you.

@addyson – Welcome to WordPress! Send me your web address so I can see what you are referring to. You have different options depending on whether you use WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress.

Mark,

Thank you for public-spiritedness in helping those of us who are on a sometimes difficult learning curve. I have discovered some of your video tutorials on YouTube and found them to be very helpful.

I have what I think is a very simple problem but I haven’t been able to find a solution. Before I get to that however, it may be pertinent if I mention that I am a ‘greenhorn’ novice at this WordPress/code gig (I am in my 60s). I am in the process of establishing an SMB sole proprietorship consultancy with a primary focus on helping SMBs to become investment ready and raise equity capital for expansion purposes. I am trying to develop a website based initially on some static pages to give me some online credibility. I will start a blog later, but right now my priority is that I just need something for people to look at to see who I am and what I do.

My site is at http://www.chironthebusinessdoctor.itsonline.com.au

In my site, I have a number of pages relating to all aspects of raising equity capital and the legal framework that surrounds it. When a site visitor reaches a decision that they want to investigate raising equity capital in more detail, I want them to initially send me an Application Information Form that will be divided into five sections with about five to ten questions in each section. Only brief answers will be required, as this is a ‘break-the-ice’ form. The information however can be classified as sensitive and confidential. For that reason, in my webpage I want to tell visitors that I want them to use an email-based form which I think will be more secure than a webpage-based form (but I may be wrong about that).

I have tried in vain to work out or find out how to create an email template that includes my questions that I can store in my site. When required, the visitor can open the email questionnaire from the appropriate webpage, fill it in and send it to me.

Can you advise me as to how to do this, or is there an alternative way of doing what I want to do? Am I on the wrong tram, here? I would like to be able to stress to site visitors (as a PR thing) that the visitor’s information will be secure at all stages of compilation and transmission, although I may be stretching credibility with such a statement, so may have to ignore that commitment.

Sincerely,

Graham Segal

@Graham Segal – Thank you for you questions. Two thoughts: 1. I don’t think there is a way to set up an email-based form, at least not an easy way. 2. I would suggest checking out Constant Contact or Vertical Response. These are email-based customer relationship management services that make it easy for you to offer things like white papers in exchange for an email address and other information from your site visitors. In my opinion, it’s a good idea to make your first interaction with visitors as simple and undemanding as possible. Get them to signup to download a white paper or subscribe to an e-newsletter by giving you their email address and nothing more. Then deliver on your promise by providing excellent advice and useful resources and other information for free.

There are so many sources of information available today that if you try to extract information from visitors beyond a name and email address, they will simply look elsewhere. Use your website, white papers and e-newsletter to show exactly what you do, why you are different from competitors and what the benefits are that visitors will get from you – either from these communications or by becoming a customer.

Mark,

Thanks for your prompt reply. I fear I may have misled you a little in my earlier question by not giving you enough information. The form that I want a site visitor to complete and send to me will come at the end of (hopefully) structured educational process. On my site, I have pages containing significant content under titles like: Equity Fund Raising; The Equity Raising Process, Using Equity – the Pros & Cons, Mistakes Not To Make in Dealing With Investors, Become Investor Friendly, etc (see my website).

So my call to action (viz, filling in the form as the first step in engaging me to help the visitor to implement an equity raising program) comes at the end of the situation where the visitor should have absorbed a lot of information. During this period, the visitor will have access to some eBooks & materials that I have prepared. and will include in the site as I continue with the development. .

Does this additional material change your earlier advice?

Graham

Mark,

I have a fairly straight forward question that you can most probably answer with a YES or a NO.

I want to have three blogs. One will be based on venture capital raising. The second will deal with Australian industrial relations (often called a minefield – I have particular expertise in this area) and the third will be a blog devoted to getting rid of the crooks, scammers and swindlers who operate on the fringes of the venture capital industry and rip off thousand of dollars from largely unsuspecting businesspersons.

My question is: Can I run the three blogs from my site that I am now developing (it’s WordPress 3.0-based) or do I have to first activate the mult-blog program and go down this more involved path?.

Graham

Goodnight Mr. Mark McLaren,

I don’t know if you can help me..
I’m from Portugal and i have a blog on wordpress http://www.liveloveandcare.org but i’m having issues with static pages.
I added the “About me” with no problem but everytime i try to add a new one, it doesn’t appear on top. Any idea why it doesn’t work?
Thank you for any tip you can give me.

Sincerely,
Marta Pereira

@Marta Pereira – Sounds like you need to create a custom menu. See the custom menu tutorial on WordPress 101. (These tutorials are free if you sign up. Be sure to make a donation if you can.)

I’ve been asked to redesign our center’s website and discovered that creating it using WordPress would give me the features desired. I don’t have access to the hosting control panel but do have ftp access. I know that the web host has the necessary WP requirements but can I proceed without going into the control panel? Also, I need to build the new website without disturbing the original site until it’s ready to launch. Is this just like when I use Dreamweaver and upload it to a hidden folder? Sorry, but I’m really challenged at the moment. Help!

@Jes Porro – Either the host will need to install WordPress for you (the easiest option) or you will need access to the hosting Control Panel so that you can use something like Fantastico or Simple Scripts to do the installation. If those aren’t available, you will need to create a MySQL database. Or, another option would be for the host to create the database and give you the database information you need to put into the wp-config.php file. WordPress installation instructions are here. You can probably find a video showing how to do it, as well.

As for where to put the installation so that the current site stays live and is not disturbed while you build the new site, frankly, for me this has always been one of the most tedious parts of installing and building a WordPress site. In terms of installation, the easiest way is to put the beta site into a subdirectory, like you suggest. When the site is ready to go live, some hosts can do something called domain mapping, whereby they point your top level domain at the subdirectory. You then change the site address and blog address to the top level domain using the WordPress dashboard (Settings > General). You still have to change any “hard coded” URLs in the beta site to remove the subdirectory name from the URL. So, for example, if you have added a link from one page to another, you need to change the link from http://example.com/beta/mypage/ to http://example.com/mypage/ WordPress can’t do that for you. But it will change the links in your main navigation and all the links to posts. It’s also my understanding that WordPress version 3.1 (not yet released) will have features that make this process easier.

If your host can’t do domain mapping to the subdirectory, then you need to put up a temporary home page file index.html while you install WordPress in the root directory (example.com – say), and then you need to move the beta site to the root. The way I usually do this is by using the Dashboard Tools > Export from the beta site, and then Tools > Import to the root site installation. This will bring over all the images and other assets. You will also need to upload and activate your theme. And, of course, you will need to change all hard coded URLs to remove the subdirectory name.

Every time I think about all this, it gives me a headache. If it’s giving you a headache, too, I understand!

Now, I have heard there are easier ways to do this so that you don’t have to change hard coded URLs. But I have never actually seen instructions anywhere. That’s not much help! As I said, WordPress version 3.1 may help to address this. But what I have read does not say so definitively.

Sidebar Widgets Not Rendering Properly on Headlines (Woo) Theme

Hi,

I am facing some problems with my theme which is a Headlines Theme from Woo Themes. I have added some of the social media widgets (fanpage, recent visitors, networked blogs etc) on the sidebar using the provided codes by the corresponding websites but these widgets are not rendering properly and they are cut in slices or going outside the area, I have tried adjusting the width attribute of each widget but it is not working out.
here is the link to my blog : http://webmarketinginnercircle.com/blog/

any suggestions?

thanks.

How can I display on user dashboard a especific content?
Each user one especific content. A school bulletin, for sample.

Help me, please.

@Social Media Guru – I recommend you use Firefox and get the Add-on called Firebug. If you can’t figure out how it works right away, let me know. It’s indispensable imo. It will show you quickly why things like images don’t fit in a widget, for example, and it’s a great way to learn CSS and HTML. The images in your widget are in a table layout code provided by the social media site. You need to tweak the table layout or remove it. See this tutorial on Text Widgets. You can probably adapt the HTML used in the tutorial for your purposes. Use View Source to copy and paste the link tags and image tags provided by the social media site without all the other code they use. Put those into a text widget yourself. Once you do it a few times, you’ll see it’s not that hard.

David Gruenwald

Feb 21, 2011

10:44 PM

creating a blog using wordpress.com. I am trying to upload a doc into a posting and all I am getting is a link. Does it not have the capabilities to up load it into the posting where I can modify? Or am I stuck cutting and pasting

@David Gruenwald – When you upload and “insert” the doc into a post, you get a link to the doc in your editor/page/post. If you publish the page/post, readers can click the link to download the doc or – if it’s a PDF – view it in their browser. You can create an image of the doc’s cover if you want, or use a PDF icon or Word doc icon to represent the doc in your page/post. To do so, insert the image in your post and change the link for the image to the link for the doc.

You have to create an image (like a thumbnail of the doc cover) for that purpose or use an icon like these. Otherwise, all you have to work with is the link to the doc. There is nothing else to load into the post. Does that help?

Hi!
How can I add my own logo to my home page (header)?

I’m only finding some very confusing information and hope you can help me.
Thanks!
t.

@HockeyMominCanada – Procedure for this varies greatly depending on your WordPress theme. Some themes have built in support for a custom logo so that you can add your own logo using the WordPress dashboard. Look under Appearance or Settings for anything like Theme Options that might let you do this. It will save you a lot of work.

By the way, before saying anything else about themes, be sure to check out this post about the hazards of using free WordPress themes. I don’t know if your theme qualifies. It might be perfectly safe , but it’s worth checking out using the TAC plugin mentioned in the post.

If you are satisfied that your theme is safe and you want to spend the time inserting a logo, here’s what I recommend. If you look in the style.css file for your theme, you’ll find (at about line 92)

#header {
background: url(“images/img03.jpg”) no-repeat scroll left top transparent;
height: 204px;
margin: 0 auto;
width: 1000px;
}
View the image here http://hockeymomincanada.net/wp-content/themes/abundant/images/img03.jpg and you can see it’s the background for the top of your page. You need to use image editing software like Photoshop or GIMP or something similar to add your logo over the top of the background. You might have to play around a bit to get the size and position right. Keep a copy of the original img03.jpg file. Then you can save your new background with the same file name. Upload that to your theme/images/ folder using FTP and save over the original.

Alternatively, you can upload your new background image with any file name you want (save it as a jpg) using Media > Add New in the WordPress dashboard. Then grab the image URL by using “Show” image in the media library (you can also see it already before you click “Save Changes” when you upload the image). Paste that new image URL into the CSS in style.css you see above so you have

#header {
background: url(“http://hockeymomincanada.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/your-new-file-name.jpg”) no-repeat scroll left top transparent;
height: 204px;
margin: 0 auto;
width: 1000px;
}

You can do that using FTP or using Tools > Editor in the dashboard.

I am new to wordpress.org. I have just starting using it. I have activated a number of plugins but I do not see them on the site. What have I done wrong? i look forward to your response at your earliest convenience. Thanks for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Dr. Vibe

@Dr. Vibe – Please tell me your web address and the names of the plugins.

Thanks for your reply. My site address is http://www.vibeandvegasshow.com/. The names of the plugins are:

Contact Form 7
Digg Digg
Do Follow
Google Analytics For WordPress
Gravity Forms + Constant Contact
JetPack By WordPress.com
ReplyMe
Thank Me Later
Twitter Fans
Twitterlink Comments
Widget Context
Wordpress Editorial Calendar
WP Super Cache
WP-Super Navi

In my Dashboard panel, it says that these plugins are activated but I do not see them on my site page.

I look forward to your response at your earliest convenience. Thanks for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Dr. Vibe

Hi Mark,

A few questions please:

1. I’m creating my very 1st wordpress website. I’m still trying to get all the components working properly and notice the site is live. Is there a way to turn that off?
2. The theme I have chosen has ‘leave a reply’ fields at the bottom of each page (except the homepage). Is there a way I can remove that?
3. When I navigate to my different pages, the name of each page appears at the top of the content eg when I navigate to the page ‘Services’ … the word ‘services’ appears at the top of the page. is there a way to delete that?

Help much appreciated.

@Kash – 1. If no one knows about your site, you can leave it live and keep it out of search engine results by going to Settings > Privacy and selecting “I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors”. Those “normal visitors” won’t find it unless you tell them the address. That’s the easiest solution. But there is another way to go, namely, an “under development” plugin for WordPress. There are several of these. I haven’t tried any of them. This one looks pretty good: http://modernoptimist.com/2010/09/hide-your-wordpress-site-during-development/

2 and 3. Send me a link to the page where you downloaded your theme so I can look at the code.

@Kash – To remove the “Home” heading from your home page, use the dashboard to edit the Home page. Change the title of that page to whatever you want, in this case you can use “Yes! You Can Buy Property in the US” (without the quotation marks). Now go to Appearance > Menus and create a menu for your main navigation. Add all the pages you have in the current main navigation: Home (which for the moment is called “Yes! You Can Buy Property in the US”), Our Services, Properties, Why USA?, etc. Everything should be the same as the navigation you have now. Once you have created this menu, you can change the menu item “Yes! You Can Buy Property in the US” to “Home”. Open the “Yes! You Can Buy Property in the US” nav button in Menus and change the Navigation Label to “Home” (without quotes – click here to view screen shot).

I don’t have a tutorial for menus yet. Here’s one of the best tutorials for WordPress menus. You can sign up for these tutorials for whatever you think is a reasonable amount. I don’t get a kickback for recommending these wp101 WordPress tutorials. They are just some of the best I have found. Otherwise you can google “wordpress menu tutorial” and see what’s available.

As for removing the “Leave a Reply” (comments) from your pages, there are a number of ways to do this. For now, try going to Settings > Discussion and unchecking the “Allow people to post comments on new articles” box.

Thanks Mark,

The “Allow people to post comments on new articles” box wasn’t checked.

Suggestions on another way?

@Kash – What’s the site URL? I don’t see comment boxes on this site http://usinvestmentsaustralia.com.au/

sorry mark, comment boxes are gone now as i’ve changed the theme. thanks anyway.

Mark – Whoops!

My website is hosted with Go Daddy and I inadvertently deleted the database. I have since created a new one but I can’t see my website or my wordpress admin. Do you think I’ve lost everything or is there something I need to do?

@Kash – That’s serious. I suggest you call GoDaddy tech support asap to see if they can help. They probably have a backup of the database. (You may have to pay them for it.) Once that’s sorted out, find out how to backup the database yourself via the GoDaddy control panel or use a WordPress database backup plugin.

I created a site for myself for my grad school course in web studio. Our professor told us after the class we can scrap the one we made and go with what ever theme we choose. I believe that i deleted some files that i shouldn’t have and now any theme i load, things don’t see to work properly, plugins, widgets etc. I their anyway to scrap what I have and start anew? I’m a journalism student and hope to use my site for photojournalism and multimedia.

@Randy – If the site is a WordPress site, I suggest that you export the current site and import it into a new installation of WordPress. See the explanation of exporting and importing a WordPress website here. The site has to be WordPress for this to work. If it’s not, or if the directions don’t make sense, let me know.

I have really benefited from your tutorials. It was very kind of you to make some available at no cost, thank you.
Can you help me? I am using WP theme called “Mystique”…I like it and want to stay with it, however , it has comment windows on every page, even the static home page. My site has about nine pages and I only want two of those pages to have blog capability. How do I edit out all those blog windows on the pages I do not want to have any blogs???

Thanks Tim

@Tim – You need to modify your theme files. Specifically, you need to open the page.php file in your theme and find the line that looks like this:

<?php comments_template(); ?>

In the dashboard, click on Appearance. Under Appearance, click on Editor. Then look at the list of files on the right side of the Editor and find the one called page.php. Click on page.php, and then in the editing window find the line shown above. It’s on about line 53, so you might have to scroll to see it.

You can remove this line if you want to by deleting it. Just highlight it and hit the Backspace key on your keyboard, or, rather than delete it, you can simply turn it into inactive code by inserting two forward slashes like so:

<?php // comments_template(); ?>

The advantage of making it inactive instead of deleting it completely is that, if you ever decide you want to restore the code, you only need to find it again and remove the two forward slashes.

Then be sure to click the Update / Save Changes button. That should take care of it!

Note that when you use the Editor you are editing live files on the web hosting server, so it’s always a good idea to copy and paste a copy of the file into a text editor so you can save it to your computer as a backup before you make any changes. If something breaks, you can copy and paste the original file back into page.php and click Update / Save Changes.

It’s also a good idea to backup your WordPress site on a regular basis.

Hello Mark: Thanks again for your invaluable blog and support! I have the Optimize Press theme and I getting this error while clicking on the pages links inside wp-admin:( two lines of code it’s referring to>)
Warning: preg_match() [function.preg-match]: Compilation failed: nothing to repeat at offset 1 in /home/alpine1/public_html/BinaryTradingRoom.com/wp-includes/class-wp.php on line 198

Warning: preg_match() [function.preg-match]: Compilation failed: nothing to repeat at offset 1 in /home/alpine1/public_html/BinaryTradingRoom.com/wp-includes/class-wp.php on line 199

I contacted my host and they told me to update the .htaccess file in that particular directory for that site- which I did. Still no change from before. This theme requires the 5.3 PHP version to run apparently.What is this error message and how to fix? thanks .
PS tried deleting the theme and reloading it…maybe it’s a corrupted zip file download???? very frustrating

Little help, a little help now. I am at the stage of putting product from companies on my WP site. I want to set it up so I receive a commission from the companies to which my visitors buy from. Is there an experienced, air-tight way to do this? Is there a stellar plug-in that someone can suggest?

Dashboard foot line, which reads, “Thank you for creating with WordPress. • Documentation • Freedoms • Feedback • Credits “, messes up theme options MORE IMPORTENTLY , the instillation of a commission junction plugin called, “ CJNIche”. I really want this cool plugin, however the foot line words overlap the “save settings” button and I can’t get it to work. Is there anyway to remove this dashboard foot line. Do you know anyone who has a video on how to do this. I would pay money to find out.

I’m wondering how to enable drop down menus on my website.
Along the top, I have defined page names. And now I would like to click on the a page name for a dropdown menu
EG, I have Training as the page name, and now I need course details and course pricing under the same dropdown.

I can define menu items under Appearance> Menu but it does not display as a dropdown on my website. Only on the sidebar

@Anna – Some WordPress themes do not generate those popup menus. If you switch to the default theme, you can check to see that the menus are working properly. This is something a developer would be able to add to your theme. If you are committed to sticking with your current theme, it might be worth a few hundred dollars to have someone add the menus. On the other hand, there are more powerful themes available, so before paying to get those menus, you might consider paying the same amount to have someone help you customize a more powerful theme. Here are some good premium theme shops:
http://www.woothemes.com/
http://ithemes.com/
http://www.studiopress.com/
http://www.press75.com/

I published a page under one of the categories on the main menu, It shows that the directory exists (http://www.riverkidsproject.org/donate/treeofhope/) but it doesn’t show when I mouse-over (http://www.riverkidsproject.org)

How do I make the sub-menu visible when I mouse-over?

Thanks!

@daisy – I see a Monthly Donations page http://www.riverkidsproject.org/donate/monthly-donations/ Looks like you figured it out. Nice site!

Hi Mark,

I have a problem with my header.

This morning I noticed that a small, black smiley face had appeared in my header. I did some googling and found out that it is a result of the stats plugin that I had installed via jetpack. I added that bit of code img#wpstats{width:0px;height:0px;overflo… which is supposed to make this smiley face disappear. It did, but my header is still messed up.

I ended up deleting the plugin, even resetting my theme and nothing has worked.
I don’t care about getting stats again because I’ll just use google analytics, but do you know what I have to do to get my header back to normal?

My site is epoxynet.com. (the black part of the header is supposed to come all the way down to that thin white line with the grey shadow, but that smiley face ruined it.

Hi, I have my own domain name but I really have no idea how to design my own site in CSS or HTML. I would love to use WordPress but can you use your own domain name on wordpress? And can you make wordpress sites not as a blog? But like a portfolio or something?

Thank you!

@Chloe – Yes. You can do all that – on WordPress.com or on a self-hosted WordPress site. See the tutorials at http://wp101.com You don’t have to use the blog. You can have a static page as your front page / home page. And there are hundreds of themes to choose from. Start on http://wordpress.com You can use the domain name you already registered. And you can find a theme that is great for a portfolio.

I need help with punctuation in blog titles. I need apostrophes, colons, dashes, etc. If an apostrophe doesn’t show up, it is misspelled. For instance, a review of the movie “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.” The apostrophe didn’t show up in “You’re,” and it looked like a typo. Please respond.

@Kit Gillson – If you use your keyboard to type the apostrophe or double quote marks, you should not have trouble with those in your titles. Sometimes if you paste in quotes from Microsoft Word or some other program, they will come in as “smartquotes” which require special HTML characters. It’s best to avoid using these in titles. Sometimes WordPress does not like them.

You can use the HTML editing window (click the tab next to Visual at the top of the editor in the dashboard) to insert those special characters if you want to use them in the body of your page or post. This should also work in the title window, but it can cause problems sometimes. You don’t need characters in titles other than single and double quote, hyphen/dash, maybe a percent sign. But if WordPress has trouble, just remove any special characters and save the post again.

It looks like that on your site the “Home”, “About”, “Shows”, “Links” etc. are not clickable. Are those broken? (I’m on a PC and I tried several browsers.)

Hi Mark,

Thank you for your reply. I don’t paste in a title from Word or any other source. I type it in separately. I tried your suggestion of typing the title in via HTML, but it didn’t print the apostrophe. For instance:
http://www.tvmoviesandbooks.com/2011/12/02/before-the-devil-knows-youre-dead/
You’ll see that “you’re” doesn’t come through with the apostrophe. As a result, the word is incorrect because it was the proper name of the movie. If I remove special characters and post again, it’s still incorrect.

I often want to refer to something like “Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove” or “Oprah’s Book Club.” When the apostrophe doesn’t work, it can be awkward to express.

Thank you for pointing out that my site doesn’t send you to “Home”, “About”, “Shows”, “Links” etc. (They used to.) I’ll be in touch with my publishing contacts for that.

Again, is there a way to fix the punctuation? As you can see, it’s needed. Thank you for your help and response.

Kit Gillson

@Kit Gillson – I’m not an expert on this, but I see what’s causing the problem. Your theme is using something called Cufon fonts. Here’s a nice post on the topic of Cufon for WordPress. http://richardshepherd.com/custom-fonts-in-wordpress-with-cufon/ Cufon fonts allow you to use fonts that aren’t installed on your visitors’ computers. They typically look great, and search engines can still read them, so they are SEO-friendly.

Your Cufon fonts don’t appear to include the characters for apostrophe and so forth. This is something you need to talk to your web designer about, or, if the theme came with Cufon fonts preinstalled (you or your web designer did not install them), then you will need to find a designer / developer who knows how to work with Cufon to fix the problem.

Thank you, Mark. The html “reserved characters” seem to solve my punctuation problem. Also, the “Home,” “About,” etc. links did click for me. It was a cursor problem.

Hi,

We get this error message after we log into our wordpress account. We cannot get to the dashboard. How or what do we need to do?

Fatal error: Call to undefined method WP_User::WP_User() in /home/content/68/6720868/html/wp-content/plugins/events-manager/classes/em-person.php on line 24

@Jo-Ann Use FTP to delete the Events Manager plugin from the wp-content/plugins/ directory. It may not be compatible with your version of WordPress.

When you get a Fatal error you can Google the error to see how others have fixed it. https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1TSNP_enUS462&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Fatal+error%3A+Call+to+undefined+method+WP_User%3A%3AWP_User()+in+%2Fhome%2Fcontent

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the reply but I’m a rookie at this and I’m not even sure how to us FTP to delete the error message or how to get to it.

@Jo-Ann I think FTP may be the only way to fix the problem. Who is hosting your site? If a standard host like Bluehost or GoDaddy, their tech support will help you if you call them. If a university (oh, I see that’s the case – just checked your URL) then you would need to contact your IT department. Whoever installed WordPress for you can help you with FTP and they will understand the instructions I gave above.

Mark,

Thanks, this will get me started in the right direction. We are hosted by GoDaddy and our web person that set us up just will not respond to us. I will take it to GoDaddy. I appreciate your assistance.

@Jo-Ann Sounds good! Note that GoDaddy support has gotten better lately about helping with WordPress. They used to say, “We don’t support WordPress.” But this is not a WordPress issue, strictly speaking. You are asking them to show you how to use FTP — in your GoDaddy control panel — to delete the Events Manager plugin files. That has nothing to do with WordPress. You simply need to delete files from the server, and they will show you how to do that.

Hello Mark,
I am having the most unbelievable problems, everyday it seems to be something new. My site has been hit very hard by Panda I am assuming and I have virtually no traffic any more.
One thing I noticed, when I do site:my site, everything look fine, when I click on a link, it says ‘sorry page you are looking for is not here’, but if I go into my categories, and find the post and click on it, it is there.
thanking you in advance.

@Pauline I have not seen the site:url with 404 “Not found” problem before. Terrible. Do you have a Webmaster Tools account for your domain? That’s the first place to check.

I would also recommend doing an Export of the site (Tools > Export) and importing onto a test installation of WordPress, either on your same domain in a subdirectory or on a different test domain to see what happens to those URLs.

Mark,

I’m not sure how to correct this error in our GoDaddy account, any assistance would be appreciated.

Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_get_current_user() in /home/content/68/6720868/html/wp-includes/class-wp.php on line 448

Thanks.

Jo-Ann

@Jo-Ann – Any time you get a fatal error message, you can google part or all of the message to see a lot of ideas for solutions. So if you do a Google search for “Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_get_current_user() in /home/content” you’ll see how people have solved the problem.

Most likely, you installed a plugin that is not compatible with the latest version of WordPress, or not compatible with your WordPress theme.

If you are able to login to your dashboard. Go to plugins and deactivate the most recent plugin(s) you installed. If you can’t login to your dashboard, you will need to use FTP to delete the plugin files from the wp-content/plugins directory. If you don’t know how to use FTP, your web hosting provider should be able to help.

HI I am trying to get started using wordpress (3.1) through xampp and htdocs. I have downloaded wordpress into htdocs and folloowed the instructions in the readme file. I have windows 7 64 bit. I don’t have a website yet as I can’t afford it I am one of Julia’s pensioners who received approx $200 pay rise, but the cost of living has gone up twofold.

I try to access wordpress through xampp but it won’t recognise it.

@Helen – XAMPP is a little tricky. Have you seen this http://www.microsoft.com/web/wordpress ? Or something like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uShBYyy0cbw ? Why not just create a site on http://wordpress.com ? Save yourself the heading of running a server. If you host on WordPress.com you can still use your own domain name (highly recommended).

I was updating some text on my website. I copied what was there and put it into a word document to work on, then copied the ediited version from word and pasted over the exact highlighted portions I copied originally. I assumed it would be fine so I updated (never do that again) and the backround photo was gone. I have tried to restore to an earlier version but it still will not bring the photo back. Please help. Thank you so much!

By the way… I have put that page on private for now so it is the Home page.

@Lisa Knipp – Be careful when using copy & paste. Links to photos will be broken. How did you add the background photo in the first place? You will probably need to repeat those steps again to put the background photo back where it was.

The guy who created the site for me added this photo. I can not seem to get ahold of him, so I thought I would try this… and if it were something simple, I would not have to bother him. Thank you so much anyhow Mark :)

@Lisa Knipp – See if you can find a link to your home page in Google search results. (Google your site name or domain name.) Then go to the cached version from the search results. If you can see a cached version, you can View Source and get the HTML code you need.

OK, I will try that. Thank you Mark!

Hello Mark, firstly, thak you for all your help. I’ve found your tutorials so helpful. I found your site while searching for help to place text on top of a graphic. Thanks for that.
I don’t know if it is possible, but what I would now like to do is place a .png file (instead of text) on top of a jpg file. I have a large graphic that I want to use on a lot of pages and I need to place some dots over the top of it. Each page will have the main jpeg with different .png files for each page placed over the top of it. I’m probably asking for something that can’t be done, but I thought it might worthwhile asking you.
If you can’t help, no worries, I’m grateful for what I’ve already learned from you.
Roger

Mark McLaren

Oct 4, 2012

11:11 PM

@roger – You can put the .png on top of a background image using the same technique. Just substitute a <img> tag for the <h1> and/or <p> tags.

Hi McBuzz Man

I’m trying to center an image used as a Header. Really just blows me away trying to work out how to do this.

I’m using Elegant Themes – LightBright template.

The header seems stuck to the right side of the screen.

BTW. Thankyou for your tutorial on ‘How to set ‘Pages’ to Home, Blog etc. Worked FIRST TIME no bother. Now trying out the tutorial about ‘Child/Sub’ pages.

Chris

Mark McLaren

Oct 10, 2012

10:12 PM

@Chris – Looks like the makers of that theme http://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/lightbright/ tout Unparalleled Support on their home page, so I would contact them and see if they can help.

Is it possible to change the background on individual pages with full screen image background theme?

Mark McLaren

Mar 15, 2013

7:04 PM

@Jerry – There may be other ways to do this, but one way is to assign a different CSS class to the <body> tag for each page. Some themes already have this page-specific class built in, which is very helpful. For example, if you view source code for pages on this site http://www.scontrino-powell.com/ you’ll see a unique class assigned to the <body> tag for each page, like page-id-1497 on this page http://www.scontrino-powell.com/about/

With that specific page-id-1497 you can specify a background image for the body of just that page in your custom CSS file.

body.page-id-1497 {
background-image: url(address of your image goes here);
}

Here’s more info about the background-image property: http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_background.asp

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