Over the past few months, I have been getting more general questions about WordPress from readers. Needless to say, this is great! Thanks Business Blogging 101 users!
I’m not sure where to put answers to these questions, since I’m not always going to be able to make a video tutorial about them. So, for the time being, I will put them here.
Got a question about WordPress that is not necessarily related to one of the Business Blogging 101 video tutorials? You can ask it here. And if you have a general comment about the Business Blogging 101 website and the tutorials available, you can make that here, as well.
Thanks, folks! You rock!
Mark McLaren
Filed under: WordPress |
Free WordPress Tutorials - Business Blogging 101 
Hello
I was wondering if anybody could help me out with a theme I´ve chosen for my blog. It´s Cordobo-Green-Park. At the moment of activating the theme I keep on getting the same error:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function get_search_form() in /www/cgjvirtual-assist.com.ar/htdocs/blog/wp-content/themes/cordobo-green-park-2/header.php on line 57
I´m a self-hosted user and have downloaded WP version 2.6.3.
Can anyone help? Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
@Carolina
Is there a reason you are using WordPress version 2.6.3? I suggest deleting 2.6.3 and starting with a clean installation of version 2.7.1. Then see if the Cordobo theme works. You may want to see if Cordobo documentation says it’s compatible with 2.7 first.
If Cordobo is giving you trouble this early on, maybe you should look at some of the more recent themes. For $50 to $79 or so you can get some fine themes these days, like those by WPRemix.com, StudioPress.com or WooThemes.com. And there are some decent free ones available, as well.
Thanks for your reply. Ok. I´lll see what I do. If I change theme, I´ll check out those sites you mention, or download 2.7.1. No reason why really for dowloading 2.6.3. I didn´t know there was a new version.
Hello Mark,
Ok. I´ve downloaded WP 2.7 and everything works fine so far. Except…. customizing the header. But, I think I´m a little messed up here, what I really want to change is the title of the Blog, which has nothing to do with the Header, right?. Could you tell me looking at the blog if that´s so?. http://www.cgjvirtual-assist.com.ar/blog.
Is there any way I could customize the title?
(Please tell me if questions here should be more general and not so specific. )
Thank you!
Hi Carolina,
Right now, the title of your blog is “CGJ Virtual-Assit” and the tagline is “Blog para Profesionales Independientes y Emprendedores”. In the Dashboard, under Settings > General you will find the fields to use to change these. Is this what you have in mind when you say “title” of your blog?
Mark,
Under settings General, you can modify your title and tag line. I want to maintain it but with different font and color. Is that possible?
@Carolina
To answer your question about maintaining your site’s title and tagline with a different font and color…
In the Dashboard under Appearance look for “Custom Header”. If that button is there, you may be able to change the font & color of the title, but I doubt it’s there on this theme. If there is no Custom Header button, or you can edit the Header but you cannot change the font or font color, you would need to modify the “#branding h1 a” style in the style.css file that goes with the theme. I can help with this, but not right away. Sorry! Too much to do this week.
Hi Mark,
Excellent site – especially the tutorials!
I have a question regarding tracking referrals or “click throughs” to other businesses/sites. I am creating a travel related website that profiles various surfing destinations. I intend to have links or contacts to local surf shops and equipment providers in a particular destination. For example if one of my pages is all about surfing in Costa Rica, then I may link to some local surf shops who can help the web visitor with inquiries or even purchases.
My question is, how can I make it so the local surf shop website will know that a person originally came from my website? (an therefore seeing the advantage of being listed on my website). Is there a way to track when visitors have clicked through from another site?
Alternatively, If one of my website visitors has a question or wants to make contact with a local provider is there a way for my visitor to contact them in such a way that the provider will know it came from my website?
@tripquiver
Thanks for your kind words and the excellent questions.
If you want to track click-throughs for links on your site to another website, the easiest way I know of would be to use the WordPress Stats Plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/ (Assuming your site is hosted on a third-party host and not WordPress.com) Note that you can install this plugin through the WordPress Dashboard – a new feature of WordPress version 2.7.
The stats you get with this plugin are fairly limited. If you want more comprehensive information about traffic on your site, you can use Google Analytics: http://www.google.com/analytics/ Installing Google Analytics is fairly easy. Let me know if you need help with that.
Both of these stats programs will show you which links to other sites are being clicked and how frequently.
If the sites you are linking to have a stats program setup (most do automatically, but the site owner may not be aware of it), then they can check these to see if people are coming to them from your links. And they would also be able to tell if those visitors actually buy something or sign up for a newsletter or “convert” in some other way.
All that has to happen on their end, though. You can’t really do anything about that other than suggest that the site owners check their stats – or install Google Analytics and check those stats – to see how much traffic you are sending their way and whether that traffic turns into new business.
Thanks Mark! One or both of those solutions should get me started. It looks like Google analytics is the way to go.
One more followup question if please…
Following the Craigslist (CL) contact model, when a CL “customer” wants to contact a CL listing they utilize the unique CL generated contact link that obscures the listing party’s actual email address, yet forwards the inquiry on as a modified email. The listing party receives the modified email communication from the customer while knowing the inquiry came from a CL site visitor. From that point onward communications exchange unaltered betwen the two parties using traditional email. It’s a simple and effective way to know the value of listing an ad on CL.
Is there anything like this third party email system available for the average guy?
Thanks again,
Bill
@tripquiver
If I understand you correctly, you want people to be able to contact you via email and then you respond to them from an email address that is not your primary email address. Is the main goal to hide your actual email address?
The Craigslist system is very slick. I don’t know if it’s available for public use. You could try contacting them directly. They may be able to tell you how to get it.
The other thing you can do is set up an email “alias” that you use when replying to people you don’t know well using email. You can’t really do this with Gmail. Gmail always displays the actual address you are sending from. But the email that comes with most third-party web hosts can be configured so that the sender / reply-to address is not your primary email address, but you can send that email from your primary account. If you have third-party web hosting, you can ask your provider about it.
Actually i was wanting My website visitors to be able to contact my affiliates who are listed on my site. However instead of directly using the affiliate’s actual email address I wanted some system – like maybe a contact form – that would forward the email but also include a tag like “Customer inquiry from Tripquiver.com “.
This way the affiliate knows the inquiry came from a visitor of my site. A system just like the Craigslists contact system.
Sounds like a good idea. I have not seen it done. But there are lots of great developers out there that may have done something like this.
Check out the WordPress.org site plugins and search for things like “email” http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=email
You can also Google “wordpress plugins email [additional keywords]” of course to see what you find there. Developers like Austin Matzko http://www.ilfilosofo.com/ and Matt @ Dagon Design http://www.dagondesign.com/ are very cool and will respond if they are not too busy and you write and tell them what you are looking for.
Hi, Mark. I followed along with your video tutorial on how to make a double homepage disappear. The problem I’m running into is that I’ve got this page called “Blog” at the top of my navigation that won’t go away, even after I’ve set the new Home as the static page and told the posts to go to my News page. Any ideas? Is it the theme I’m using and can only be solved by manipulating the custom CSS?
Here’s the link to the site I”m working on: http://northlandcollegeoutdoored.wordpress.com
@northlandcollegeoe
Thanks for your question! I looked at the theme you are using on WordPress.com. Looks like the “Blog” link can’t be removed. If you host the site yourself (on a third party host like BlueHost.com) then you would be able to remove it from the header.php file in the theme. But since it’s hosted on WordPress.com, you can’t change that part of the theme. It’s not something you can change using CSS.
Check out the website for the theme: http://getk2.com/
and the support forums http://groups.google.com/group/k2-support/
Maybe there is a way to remove the “Blog” link discussed there.
This is not related to your “Blog” link question, but it looks like the custom image you have inserted in the banner makes it hard to see some of the links in the main navigation (in Firefox 3 and IE 7). And you have more pages than the top navigation can fit on one line, so the “Partnerships” link is pushed to a second line.
Here’s a page I found which seems to imply that you CAN remove that tab with the CSS: http://groups.google.com/group/k2-support/browse_thread/thread/e9bd13b799753c/c5d66b7418436dd3?lnk=gst&q=edit+blog+tab#c5d66b7418436dd3
Hello there. I’ve been watching some of your Worpress videos and I was wondering if you could help me with something. ok, here’s the problem. I made a server with XAMPP and put my wordpress blog in the following directory: C:/x/htdocs/xampp/blog/wordpress This means that to see my blog I have to go to: http://localhost/xampp/blog/wordpress If I type in just localhost I get my server configuration which I do infact know how to get rid of. To get to the page I designed I have to type http://localhost/index.html SO HERE’S THE QUESTION: How would I make my WordPress blog my homepage?
@dezzick325
This is a technical question about server configuration, which is not my specialty. I will run it by some friends with more XAMPP chops. In the meantime, though, here is my educated guess. As long as WordPress is installed in a subdirectory of the “default” site – i.e. the site whose home page is http://localhost/index.html, there is no way to make the WordPress blog your home page.
Either you need to install WordPress in the current root directory – the same directory that index.html is in – and then use a .htaccess file to make the server use index.php (the WordPress main page) and not index.html as the home page. Or you need to make http://localhost/xampp/blog/wordpress the default or root directory for the site.
On the Linux/Apache servers I use through my web host, I can install a website – using PHP/MySQL or HTML or whatever – in any directory I want. Then I use domain mapping to make that directory the root for the domain I’m using for the site. But I have to be sure that the index.php file is indicated as the home page – or else make sure that there’s no other option in the root directory, like an index.html file, or index.htm or whatever.
Before you make any changes, what do you see right now if you go to http://localhost/index.php ? Does the server find the WordPress home page? If so, you can use .htaccess to point to index.php. If not, you need to do one of the two things I suggest above.
Does that help?
As an update to my reply, here’s a tutorial about XAMPP that helped me understand why your site’s home page is in one directory while WordPress (and its default home page) is located in the http://localhost/xampp/blog/wordpress subdirectory:
The YouTube XAMPP tutorial leads me to believe that, if you want the WordPress index.php file to be your home page, you need to install WordPress in the C:/x/htdocs/ directory. And you will need to delete or move the index.html file from that directory. If that does not work, try installing in the C:/x/htdocs/xampp/ directory. But try the C:/x/htdocs/ directory first.
How exactly would I write an htacces file? I’m not really a programmer…at all.
As long as you are using Apache (as part of XAMPP), the .htaccess file is a great thing to learn about. Here’s one good resource, with other good resources listed at the end of the post: 5 htaccess Tricks Every Webmaster Should Know.
You can make an .htaccess file by opening a new document in a text editor like Notepad or WordPad on the PC (or TextEdit on a Mac). Save it as a text file. To do this you have to be able to see the file extension. Here’s how to make sure you can do that on a Windows PC: http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/security/trojanext.html
You can actually save the file as a text file with the file name htaccess.txt But, before you put it in your website root directory, you need to change the file name to .htaccess (Be sure to include the period at the beginning of the file name, and be sure there is no file extension like .txt at the end.)
So, you have a blank text file called .htaccess
Into this text file, paste the following two lines. (This must be on two separate lines as shown here.)
# Tell the server which home page to look for first
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.htm home.html
The line with the # mark is just a comment so you can remember what the next line does. This tells the server to look for index.php and, if it’s there in the same directory as the .htaccess file, the server will display it as the home page for your site – or, if index.php and .htaccess are in a subdirectory, the server will display index.php as the default page for that directory. If index.php is not there, then the server will look for index.html. If index.html is not there, it will look for index.htm and so on.
If there is already an .htaccess file in your root directory, you can open it in a text editor and paste the two lines in at the bottom.
Hi Mark. I am having difficulty putting up a static squeeze page that has images and an optin form on wordpress. Any way you can help me out on that? Much appreciate it. here is the Page I want to put up: http://www.angeloffortune.com/
Regards,
Byron
You might check out http://www.flexibilitytheme.com/flexsqueeze/
For the opt-in form, you can follow my text widget tutorial and paste in code for a sign-up form.
What are you using to collect sign-up information? AWeber? Constant Contact?
This will have to be a self-hosted site rather than a site hosted on WordPress.com.
Hi Mark,
Thanks to your clear tutorial I am now OK with wrapping text around images in the main blog roll. Can you explain to me how I go about doing that in a side bar?
Cheers /John
Mark,
The tutorial on a Static Home Page is great. I have a question, is it possible to embed the blog into a static home page?
Thanks for your help
Alex Cole
YoYoYogi.com
@Alex
It is possible. You need to create a custom page template based on the index.php file in your theme files. It will have blog entries on the bottom with space at the top for your static content. You can see an example on my business site: http://www.mcbuzz.com/ It’s an advanced topic since you have to create a new file using a text editor. Sorry I don’t have a tutorial for it.
As a temporary solution, you might try the “Sticky Post” feature in WordPress that lets you keep a specific post at the top of your blog page. Create the post you want to use for this purpose and then – in the main list of posts that you see when you click on “Posts” in the left sidebar of the Dashboard – roll over the name of that post so that you can see the “Quick Edit” link (next to the “Edit” link). Click on that, and at the far right of the Quick Edit panel, you will see a checkbox that says “Make this post sticky”. Check that box and click the “Update Post” button.
Hey, hopefully you can help me with this, my names josh and thanks for posting the vids that you do.
I just ran across a website that has an icon that sits to the right of the page. Whenever you scroll down the icon follows down also, almost being animated. Do you know how I can insert that into a worpress theme? Or maybe a tutorial for it?
The site i saw was http://www.nue-media.com
Thanks!
@joshuadixonmedia
Thanks for your question! The floating icon or button – which in this case is a “back to top” link – is a snappy piece of JavaScript + CSS. If you have a third-party hosted WordPress site (aka full version of WordPress as opposed to a WordPress.com site), you can put something like this into your pages.
Matt Thompson at NUE(ME)DIA is obviously a mighty fine designer/developer. Did you try clicking the colored buttons at the top right of the page?
To make a floating button, you need to put together the necessary JavaScript, CSS and HTML for the button and then add it to your WordPress theme. This would be an advanced topic, for sure, but definitely worth a try!
Sorry I don’t have time to do this for free at the moment. (Believe me, I wish I did.) I’m guessing you are not considering paying someone to do the work, but if you are, let me know!
Hi Mark can you tell me how I can turn the date and time off from my WordPress blog posts. I have heard you can do it easily is that true??
@goldyuk
Thanks for your question. In most WordPress themes, it is fairly easy to remove the date and time from blog posts. You need to be able to edit the theme files, which is something you can do only if your site is hosted on a third-party hosting service, not on WordPress.com.
You edit theme files using FTP software and a text editor, or you can edit them directly using the WordPress Dashboard. In either case, be sure to make a backup copy of the files you are working on. I prefer FTP and a text editor because it is too easy to break something when editing using the Dashboard.
To see how use FTP and a text editor to edit a theme file, check out How to Make Changes to a WordPress Theme Sidebar Using a Text Editor. The tutorial uses an older version of WordPress, but the technique is still the same.
To remove the date and time, you need to open the file WordPress uses for the blog page. Normally, this is the index.php file. In this file, you will find PHP code that looks something like this:
Posted by <?php the_author(); ?> on <?php the_time('F j, Y'); ?>.Filed under: <?php the_category(', ') ?>
To remove the date and time, delete the section containing the the_time(); like so:
Posted by <?php the_author(); ?>.Filed under: <?php the_category(', ') ?>
Some themes may have slightly different formats for the date and time, like (‘F jS, Y’) or (‘F, Y’), but since you want to remove the whole thing, it doesn’t really matter.
After you delete the code, save the index.php file and upload it to the server, replacing the existing index.php.
Be sure to remove only that piece of code. If you take out an adjacent < or >, it may break the formatting of the whole page. That’s why it’s important to keep a copy of the original index.php file so that you can put that back if something goes wrong. (Save it with a different name, like index-original.php)
WoW! thanks for reply. Just to clarify, are you saying that if I add a blog to a site using Fantastico (I think) I will be able to edit the code to remove the dates etc????
@goldyuk
That’s correct.
Mark, thanks for all your videos, I’m watching…
my questions:
How can I have my customers sign up for an email that would tell them I have just posted a new post?
thanks,
sue
Sue,
Thanks for your question. The quickest way to do this would be to use FeedBurner for your RSS feed. Once you create a FeedBurner account (using a Google account since Google owns FeedBurner), you can “burn a feed” and use that to set up a FeedBurner email subscription service. FeedBurner will supply you with the code you need to put into a WordPress text widget to create a signup form.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any tutorials on how to do this. Google does not do a very good job of explaining what FeedBurner is or how it can be used. Nor do they offer very clear instructions on how to set it up. Nevertheless, the service is very good once you learn how to use it. See if you can figure it out, and let me know if you have trouble.
Hi Mark,
Help! I’m just starting a personal blog for my family to follow, but I can’t seem to figure something out.
On my blog I’ve set up multiple pages. I’m going to set up a static page as a basic intro to my blog, rather than having all my posts show up chronologically on the “homepage.”
Instead, I’d like to have a “Recent News” page to hold the latest posts.
But my question is: Is there a way to file OLD posts into separate pages, categorically? I’m thinking of my pages as drawers or bins of sorts, whereby I can send older posts that aren’t so relevant anymore out of “Recent News” (which is my blog featuring my most up-to-date posts of, say, the past week) to then be stored in its respective page?
If it’s still confusing, here’s an example: Say I’ve created three pages: Birds, Dogs, Trees. They can be accessed by the navigation bar at the top of my page. Say throughout the week I’ve filed 3 posts about birds, 2 about dogs, 5 about trees in “Recent News,” my blog.
On week 2, I’d like to refresh “Recent News” with, well, the recent stuff, and want to send those 3 bird posts, 2 dog posts, and 5 tree posts to their respective pages.
Can I do that in WordPress?
@homarlin
Thanks for your question – a good one!
WordPress is very well suited to do the kinds of thing you describe, but you need to use a custom theme or be able to make some modifications to an existing theme. Either way, you need to have the “full” version (aka “third-party hosted” version) of WordPress for this, not the version you get on WordPress.com.
Since, as you told me by email, your site is currently hosted on WordPress.com, you are out of luck.
One option might be to create a static home page with a link to Recent News. That could either be your whole blog, as you suggest, or just posts assigned to the category “Recent News”. You could have links to the other categories, as well, but if people want to see Recent News, they would click on that link.
Many premium themes (StudioPress.com themes, for example) have links to categories in the top horizontal navigation. This would work well for you, I’m guessing, but I don’t see any themes that come with WordPress.com that have the same sort of feature. They may be there, though. If you find some, let me know.
If you decide to host your site somewhere other than on WordPress.com, let me know and we can talk about ways to exclude posts from your blog page based on their category and the date they were published.
Hi Mark
I have downloaded,installed & created a wordpress blog in my Yahoo hosted website at http://www.computerspecialistonline.com after reading your tutorial.Thanks a lot for your help.
I created my first blog & published it too.If I browse to the URL http://www.computerspecialistonline.com/wordpress I can read the blog,that’s fine.
My doubt is why the same blog does not appear in any of my web pages at http://www.computerspecialistonline.com ???did I do anything wrong or is it the way it is supposed to work??What should I do to make that blog appear in any of my web page,please help me.
The reason I am asking this is under the current status unless someone knows the URL of my blog they can never reach it,right??
Thanks
Hi Ramanath,
When you install WordPress on Yahoo hosting, by default it will install into a directory called “wordpress”. You are right. No one will know that it is at http://www.computerspecialistonline.com/wordpress unless you tell them.
If you want to integrate the blog into your existing website, then, at the very least, you need to link to http://www.computerspecialistonline.com/wordpress from your home page. Right now, you have a page called “Blog” that you link to from the navigation in the left sidebar.
If you have the ability to do so, you could change the URL of the “Blog” link from http://www.computerspecialistonline.com/blog to http://www.computerspecialistonline.com/wordpress. You should also add a link on the blog somewhere so that users can return to your main home page.
But my guess is that you don’t have the ability to change the link. So you need to find a way to link to your blog at http://www.computerspecialistonline.com/wordpress from somewhere on your site. You should also probably remove the page called “Blog” so that it’s not confusing.
In the long run, my suggestion would be to transfer the static pages on your current site into your new WordPress site. You’ll need a better theme than the default to really make that work well. See the themes listed here: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ and on the Business Blogging 101 Resources Page.
If you want to transfer your static pages, you have two options:
1. Make sure you have the content from your current site saved in Microsoft Word documents. Then, before you transfer the static pages, you can install WordPress again into your site’s main directory. When you install WordPress, note that the installer will ask if you want to install files into a directory with the name “wordpress” – or, since you already did that, maybe now “wordpress2”. Or you have the option to remove the name of the directory. That will tell the installer to put WordPress into your “root” directory. Then people will see it when they go to http://www.computerspecialistonline.com. You will have to check with Yahoo customer support to see if you need to do anything else to make the WordPress home page (index.php) your default home page.
2. There is an easier option, and one I think is better in terms of keeping files on the server organized in case you decide you want to host another site/domain using the same Yahoo account.
This option uses something called “domain mapping”. You can “map” (i.e. point) your computerspecialistonline.com domain to the directory http://www.computerspecialistonline.com/wordpress
By doing so, you will make the “wordpress” directory the root directory of your site. Anyone going to http://www.computerspecialistonline.com will see the website that is in the wordpress directory as if it were in the main directory of your site.
You can transfer the contents of your existing site into your new WordPress site before you do the remap.
Different hosts handle domain mapping differently. I’m not familiar with Yahoo on this point. But you should be able to change this yourself using your control panel and the online Help, or you can call customer support and tell them you want to map your computerspecialistonline.com domain to http://www.computerspecialistonline.com/wordpress. They should be able to help. If they can’t, you can call back until you get someone that knows about it, because I guarantee it can be done!
Thanks a lot Mark. I appreciate your help & good tutorial provided.
I will follow your instructions & impliment the same on my website.I will keep you informed about the progress & contact you if I need any more help.
Hi,
I just wondering how can I hide the page title ? like the words home in wp-admin/page/home.
Thanks
@velee81
In most cases, you need to edit the page.php file in the files for your theme. Some themes also have a home.php file for the home page, but most free themes do not.
You can edit the file using a text editor and FTP software, or you can do it using Appearance > Editor in the WordPress Dashboard. Either way, you should keep a copy of the original file in case something goes wrong.
Open the page.php file and find the code that looks something like:
<h1><?php the_title(); ?></h1>
or
<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
Modify it so that it looks like this:
<!-- h1><?php the_title(); ?></h1 -->
or
<!-- h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2 -->
On the left side, you are replacing the < with < an exclamation point, two dashes and a space. On the right side, you are replacing the > with a space, two dashes and a >
Be sure to click the Update/Save button to save the changes.
If you are using a text editor and FTP software, upload the file to the server after saving the changes.
Now the header, such as “Home” on the Home page (the title of the page), will not show up in a browser when you view the page. This applies to every page on your site. To correct this on pages where you want the header to show up, you can add it using the HTML editing window in the Dashboard.
For example, to put “Home” back on the Home page, click on the HTML editing tab in the Dashboard when editing the Home page and insert
<h1>Home</h1>
at the top of the page.
You can also create a page template that has no header and select that for your Home page. This is more complicated. If I have time, maybe I will make a video tutorial to show how to do that. Or let me know if you would like me to help you with that on a consulting basis. It would not take very long to do.
Thanks Mark, can do it already.
All done …
Thanks a lot Mark …
http://www.yellowbali.com alread finish … thanks Mark
@velee81
Nice work!
I see that you now have <!-- ?php the_title(); ? --> in the page.php file where the header was. You can remove that if you want. It is now a “comment”.
You can see it in the HTML of the PHP file, but it does not show in the browser. Anything you put between <!-- and --> becomes a comment.
On either side of that code you’ll find <h2> and </h2> tags. These are the tags I was referring to. You can comment this whole thing out if you want to (everything between the <h2> and </h2> tags). However, this might change the vertical spacing on the page.
By leaving that piece of code in the page, you can remember where it was in case you want to put it back in later. You can also just refer to the original, unedited page.php file in the theme.
By the way, that is some beautiful photography on your website!
Hi Mark,
I’ve trying to play with WP all day, seems to be very interesting and very user friendly. Also try artisteer for design. But still have one problem, I already apply the themes, but Ijust want to show comments only without the tags on the blog post. How can I erase it ?
Thanks a lot Mark …
Greetings!
I know most of your folks are on WordPress.org, but since I don’t have that capability, I still use the .com version. It looks like they have changed it up so that you can only link or embed videos if you pay an “upgrade” fee now, of some $50 per year. The result is tat now whenever I try to link to a youtube video on my WordPress.com blog, it doesn’t connect. Is this right, or am I missing something?
THX!
Lisa
Hi Lisa,
The Business Blogging 101 site uses WordPress.com. I just did a test embed of a YouTube video, and it works fine. I can’t say more right now. Have to run! But check it out and let me know if you’re still stuck.
I just tried to “add Video” and “Add Media” on my WP.com blog and this is what it told me…
Upload Cancel
You are using the Browser uploader. Try the Flash uploader instead.
You can upload videos and embed them directly on your blog with a Video Upgrade.Add media files from your computer
Allowed file types: jpg, jpeg, png, gif, pdf, doc, ppt, odt, pptx, docx.
Ahhhh, now I get it, I copied the embed code of my youtube video and pasted it into a post and voila, it worked.
Now, my question is, does this video now become a “video podcast?” Do aggregators pick it up, like they pick up my audio files as podcasted feeds?
Whoo-hoo, thx!
Lisa
Here’s how to add a YouTube video to your WordPress blog:
[UPDATE]
@Lisa
Glad that worked! To answer your question, No, you are embedding a video player in your WordPress page. That’s not the same as adding a video to an RSS feed or video podcast. To create a video podcast, you need to use something like FeedBurner.
Please Help!!!!!!
Hi. Im new user of blogs. Im from Puerto Rico. I wanted to know if you can help me in some doubts. Can i change the color of the background theme im using? Can i change the color of the letters of the top of the wdgets or the color of the letters in the pages tabs, the colors of the title of the posts? Really dont know how to use this. If someone wants to help please contact me at lisney.gregori {at} gmail {.} com. I’m using mistylook, I want to personalize a little more my blog, love the style but not the colors!!
Hi Mark – I watched your tutorial about creating a static home page and hiding a double home page link, but I still have a problem. When I go into my pages there is only one “home” page listed, but there are two links in my navigation tabs. Both links connect the user to the actual home page, but I would prefer to have only one tab for obvious reasons.
Thanks for all the great work – Sean
Hi Mark,
Can you help me how to make an archive only for the blog page ?
So it won’t show up on the other pages.
Thanks
Veli
Hi Veli,
I’m not sure what you want to do exactly. Can you send me some examples or draw me a picture and post it somewhere where I can look at it?
You can email it to me using the link on http://mcbuzz.com at the top of the page.
Hi Mark, thanks for reply.
here is my website http://www.yellowbali.com/blog
and I wanna put archieves on my blog like this website http://www.aperturaphoto.com/blog/
but can add archieves menu only on my blog page ? will it show up also in the other pages ?
Thanks
Veli
Hi Veli,
I looked at the link you sent for http://www.aperturaphoto.com/blog/
but I’m not sure I understand yet exactly what you want to do.
On the apertura site, they have a dropdown menu in the top navigation called “Categories” and when you roll over that you see the various categories: “Weddings”, “Engagements”, etc.
Is that what you mean by “Archives”? Or do you mean something else?
If you are using Artisteer, you can probably create a dropdown menu that will appear when you roll over “Blog” to reveal a menu of your categories. If you assign categories like “Weddings”, “Engagements”, etc. to your posts, then those posts would appear under a URL like: http://yellowbali.com/blog/category/weddings/ or http://yellowbali.com/blog/category/engagements/ and so on. You could put those links into your Artisteer dropdown menu.
Hi Mark,
I mean that I need to archive my blog per month, and since I design it without any archive option, so I need to add it on my blog pages on the bottom.
You can try to look at http://www.aperturaphoto.com then go to their blog, you can on the bottom they have archive option per month. That’s what I want to add on my blog page. 😀 …
Thanks Mark 🙂
Veli,
The easiest way to do this would be to use the Archives sidebar widget. Do you have a way of adding this widget to your blog?
If you want to add an Archives list to every page on the entire website (not just the blog), you would have to add it using HTML. Not very practical.
If you want to add a list of Archives at the bottom of the blog page, you could use the PHP code discussed here:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_get_archives
I put on index.php
it works, but need to know how to align it …
http://yellowbali.com/blog/
When I click on the archive, for ex. February, then the archive option won’t show up again on the same place.
How to make it show up in every blog pages ?
Thanks
Veli,
Now it gets a little complicated.
You need to add a <div><ul> before the wp_get_archives code and </ul></div> after it. And then you can use CSS to format and position the list.
You could take a look at w3schools CSS tutorials:
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_examples.asp
Or you could hire me to do it. 😉
OMG … need to start all over again with those scripting 😦 …
I think hiring you will be the best solution. 😀 …
Try to find away out …
Thanks a lot Mark
Regards
Veli
Hi Mark,
I’m a wordpress novice and I’d like to find out the best way to designate posts to different pages? I tried setting up categories with the dashboard, however, I’m unable to direct the posts to a different page. Will I have to modify one of the php files?
Thanks for your help and this website is a great resource for beginners like me!
– Ryan
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for your question. If you can, let me know the URL for your site.
I’m not sure how what you are trying to do differs from the “page” of results you get when you click on one of the categories in your sidebar (assuming you have Categories as one of the widgets in your sidebar).
When you do that, you get a page with all the posts in that category. Depending on your theme, these may be full posts, or they might be only an excerpt with a “Read more…” link for each post. If you prefer one or the other, you might need to tweak one of the theme files – usually the archive.php file.
You can put the link for the category page wherever you want. Just right click on the category name in the sidebar, and select “Copy Shortcut” or “Copy Link Location”, and then paste the link where you want it. Some themes automatically put links to categories in the top/main navigation.
I’m frustrated with the WP editor. I’m used to Dreamweaver and having lots of html coding available to me, along with design view. I find that the html view of WP jumps around, doesn’t take me to where I was in the design view, is limiting on features, increases or decreases spacing between lines on me once posted, and is generally frustrating. It won’t even underline properly.
Do you have any suggestions about an outside editor for WP??
@energeticnutrition
Thanks for your question. It’s something that I’m hearing more often these days. I wrote a rather long answer, so I’m going to turn it into a blog post rather than keep maxing out this one “General Questions” page. Here’s a link to the post: WordPress HTML Editing Window – Can I Have More Control Over My Pages and Posts?.
Hi Mark!
Awesome website. I had a static site recreated as WordPress overseas a couple months ago – http://www.copperwest.ca. Unfortunately, it was designed without the “older posts/entries” link OR the newer/older post when single posts are open. Luck has it that I am no longer able to reach the designer.
Are you aware of any plugin’s that can be used to insert these features? Thanks for your help Mark!!
Happy New Year!
Robyn
Hi Robyn,
Glad you like the site!
I don’t know of any plugins that do that off the top of my head. They may be available somewhere, though. Search via Google is your best best.
Those are fairly standard links, so depending on how comfortable you are editing your theme files, you could add them yourself.
If you open the single.php file in the Default theme that comes with WordPress, you’ll see
<div class=”navigation”>
<div class=”alignleft”><?php next_posts_link(‘« Older Entries’) ?></div>
<div class=”alignright”><?php previous_posts_link(‘Newer Entries »’) ?></div>
</div>
near the top of the file. This is what you need to paste into your theme’s single.php file to create the newer/older post links.
For the “Older Entries” link, you can paste this into the index.php file:
<div class=”navigation”>
<div class=”alignleft”><?php next_posts_link(‘« Older Entries’) ?></div>
</div>
Be sure to keep copies of the original theme files in case something breaks.
If you have never used FTP or edited HTML or PHP files before, this may sound a bit daunting. If so, maybe you have a web developer friend who can help. Otherwise, let me know.
Thank you SO much Mark!! This was very helpful. Unfortunately my design is really messed up. Despite putting the code in without error – it still won’t show up. Guess I’ll be hiring someone to fix. Do you hire out for this type of project?
Sorry that didn’t work. I’ll send you an email.
Hello everybody,
Does anybody know how I can add a widget to my sidebar? When using the default theme, I have the “Search” widget there; but when I change the theme, I find a Search widget, but when draggig to the sidebar I see no options for that widget and cannot see on my blog either.
Thanks,
Marco
Hi Marco,
Can you tell me your domain / URL? The Search widget does not have any options. Is yours a WordPress.com site or self-hosted?
Hi Mark,
http://www.comprenchina.com is my url, and it is hosted on my Hostgator account. At least the “name” option appears with the default theme.
Thanks
Marco,
Thanks. Looks like you solved the problem. Let me know if not.
Mark
No yet. Mark. Still cannot make the search widget to work. It is now there on my wp-admin back office, but cannot be showed when opening the site.
Thanks for your help,
Marco
Hmm. I will take a closer look, but may not have time today.
You can try a few tests.
1. Try changing themes. Try several different ones.
2. Try dragging more than one instance of the Search widget into the sidebar.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for your help. What I did is add another search widget.
Downloaded from http://www.briandgoad.com/blog/customizable-search-widget
And this one is working perfectly.
Marco
Cool. Thanks for letting us know about the plugin.
Hi Mark again.
I have another issue now. Let me explain:
1. I have a main domain name http://www.aronsearch.com hosted on Hostgator
2. I have another domain name: http://www.comprenchina.com where I installed WP, and beneath this, created another folder called /spanish and installed another WP instance with another database (this one was made for testing purposes only)
3. I have another domain: http://www.acme-people-search-guide.com, the same as 2, I installed one instance of WP at the root, and another one beneath /spanish folder.
The problem I am facing now is, when I write on my
browser http://www.acme-people-search-guide.com/spanish/wp-admin, it is being redirected to http://www.comprenchina.com/spanish/wp-admin
Any ideas how I can avoid the redirection, please let me know.
Thanks,
Marco
@Marco
That is one of those odd and especially frustrating things that can happen with multiple installations of WordPress – but I have not heard of this specific issue before.
The first thing I would do is contact Hostgator support. This sounds like a server issue more than a WordPress issue – to me, anyway.
If they won’t help you – I’d be pretty surprised if they won’t – then give the WordPress forums a good searching through: http://wordpress.org/support/
If that doesn’t help, let me know. I’m busy this weekend, but I’ll try to look into it when I can.
how can i use related post in my blog?
@नेपाली मुटु
Thanks for your question. The Related Posts feature is very different on a WordPress.com-hosted site versus a self-hosted site. On a self-hosted site, I use the Yet Another Related Posts (YARP) WordPress plugin. But on a WordPress.com-hosted site like nepaliheart.wordpress.com you only have the option of turning off “Related Links” (under Appearance > Extras). In other words, Related Links appear by default. However, it looks like at the moment they may only appear on English language blogs. So that might be the issue on your site.
You are obviously investing a lot of time and effort into your blog, so you may want to consider moving to self-hosted WordPress. You can still use WordPress.com domain mapping to bring traffic from the wordpress.com address so that you don’t lose those links. At the very least, I would recommend registering your own domain name and using that for your site. That way, moving to self-hosted WordPress will be easier if you decide to do so.