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

1:10 AM

#15

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

Mark McLaren

2:01 AM

#16

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.

Dr. Dan

2:52 AM

#17

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

Mark McLaren

5:42 PM

#18

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.

Dr. Dan

6:18 PM

#19

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

Mark McLaren

6:46 PM

#20

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.

Jennifer

4:53 PM

#21

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…..

Mark McLaren

6:56 PM

#22

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.

Jennifer

7:29 PM

#23

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!

Mark McLaren

9:30 PM

#24

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

Jennifer

9:34 PM

#25

Yes indeed, I found them! TYVM

Dr. Dan

Apr 7, 2010

12:40 AM

#26

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

Mark McLaren

4:43 AM

#27

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.

Denise Faucher

12:46 PM

#28

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.

Mark McLaren

6:03 PM

#29

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.

Julie

9:38 PM

#30

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!

Mark McLaren

9:53 PM

#31

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?

Julie

10:24 PM

#32

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!

Mark McLaren

10:59 PM

#33

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?

Julie

11:04 PM

#34

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!

Mark McLaren

11:11 PM

#35

@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.

Dr. Dan

Apr 10, 2010

8:38 PM

#36

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

Mark McLaren

Apr 10, 2010

9:52 PM

#37

@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.

Dr. Dan

Apr 10, 2010

11:00 PM

#38

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

Dr. Dan

Apr 11, 2010

12:49 AM

#39

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

Ollie

Apr 12, 2010

10:14 PM

#40

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

Mark McLaren

Apr 12, 2010

10:26 PM

#41

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.

Dr. Dan

Apr 13, 2010

1:49 AM

#42

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

7:02 PM

#46

@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.

Susie @newdaynewlesson

http://www.newdaynewlesson.com/

11:00 PM

#47

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.

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

Thanks,
Susie

Mark McLaren

11:17 PM

#48

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/

Dr. Dan

11:46 PM

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.

Anita

4:38 PM

#55

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

7:24 PM

#56

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.

Mark McLaren

8:00 PM

#57

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.

Mark McLaren

8:06 PM

#58

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”).

Beanwashed

Apr 20, 2010

12:30 AM

#59

Thanks a bunch! Very helpful.

charles

Apr 21, 2010

7:06 PM

#60

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.

Mark McLaren

Apr 21, 2010

7:22 PM

#61

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.

Mark McLaren

Apr 21, 2010

9:36 PM

#62

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.

charles

12:09 AM

#63

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.

Mark McLaren

12:19 AM

#64

@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.)

charles

12:29 AM

#65

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.

Mark McLaren

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

12:32 AM

#66

@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?

eric kindley

Apr 24, 2010

5:47 PM

#67

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.

eric kindley

Apr 24, 2010

5:48 PM

#68

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

Mark McLaren

Apr 24, 2010

8:57 PM

#69

@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.

eric kindley

Apr 25, 2010

3:55 AM

#70

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

Mark McLaren

Apr 25, 2010

5:00 PM

#71

@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

Vegemitevix

Apr 26, 2010

12:51 PM

#72

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

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.

Mark McLaren

Apr 26, 2010

4:14 PM

#73

@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.

Vegemitevix

Apr 26, 2010

9:40 PM

#74

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!

Peter

Apr 27, 2010

12:49 PM

#75

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

Mark McLaren

Apr 27, 2010

3:45 PM

#76

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.

Beanwashed

Apr 28, 2010

5:42 PM

#77

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.

Mark McLaren

Apr 28, 2010

7:19 PM

#78

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.

Jasbinder

May 4, 2010

6:29 AM

#79

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

Mark McLaren

May 4, 2010

4:52 PM

#80

@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.

Clarice Dankers

May 7, 2010

6:02 PM

#81

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

Search engine optimization agency

May 17, 2010

5:09 PM

#82

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

Colin

May 18, 2010

6:15 PM

#83

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

Mark McLaren

May 18, 2010

6:36 PM

#84

@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!

Kirti Abraham

May 23, 2010

9:09 AM

#85

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

Mark McLaren

May 24, 2010

7:39 AM

#86

@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.

Kirti Abraham

May 25, 2010

7:40 AM

#87

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.

May 26, 2010

5:58 PM

#91

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

Hi Mark

May 28, 2010

8:20 PM

#92

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

Mark McLaren

May 29, 2010

1:16 AM

#93

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.

Federico

May 31, 2010

2:53 AM

#94

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

Mark McLaren

Jun 1, 2010

6:14 AM

#95

@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.

Federico

Jun 2, 2010

12:15 AM

#96

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

Sue

2:30 PM

#97

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

Mark McLaren

3:03 PM

#98

@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!

charles

3:08 PM

#99

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.

Mark McLaren

3:14 PM

#100

@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.

Sue

3:58 PM

#101

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.

Mark McLaren