[Click here to ask a general question about WordPress]
(you will be taken to the mcbuzz.com website)
Or add your question to the comments on a specific post.
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The first installment of Business Blogging 101’s Answers to General Questions About WordPress has gotten rather long – 65+ entries and counting, including questions and replies – so here’s another post for Questions About WordPress. Keep ’em coming!
Filed under: WordPress | Tagged: free, help, howto, markmclaren, mcbuzz, questions, WordPress, WordPress Tutorials |
Free WordPress Tutorials - Business Blogging 101 
Good Morning Mark,
I must congratulate you on a great site – I came across it a while back when looking how to put .pdf files on my site – it was really useful.
I’m just wondering is there any way of being able to put an extract of a post on my homepage…. if you look at my site you’ll see at the end I have a “Golf Blog” and an extract from a recent post, now I’ve just copied an extract and updated it manually but I’m just wondering if you’ve come across anyway of getting it to feed/update manually (without using a sidebar widget)?
Regards,
Michael
@mickdan
Thanks! Glad you have found the site useful.
I checked out your Irish Golf Vacations website. Nice work!
So you have a static home page, and at the bottom of that page you want to include the first part of the latest blog post.
There are several ways to do this. I’m trying to think of the easiest way. As far as I know, no matter what, you will need to create a custom page template to be used for the home page. And that’s where it gets a little tricky, since you will need to edit the PHP code – or have someone do it for you.
Can you send me the file from your theme files called “page.php”? I may be able to tweak it for you, and we can see if that will work. If you don’t know how to send me that file, let me know and we’ll figure something else out. 😉
Hi Mr Mark McLaren.
I would like to ask about wordpress blog the free one. i know how to create page button, but how to change the page button link to another website for example link to google or yahoo.
I need your help
@ourglobal
If I understand you correctly, you are using a WordPress.com site and you want to change a link in the main navigation at the top of the page so that it links out to a different website.
Unfortunately, that’s not possible on WordPress.com.
You can create links to other sites using the Links widget in a sidebar.
If you have a self-hosted WordPress site, there’s a great plugin that will do exactly what you want: “Page Links To” WordPress plugin.
You can see an example here – the “MAIN WEB SITE” link in the top navigation links out to a different domain: Energetic Nutrition.
I am so happy to have found your site.
I am just now learning how to use WordPress.
I want to to build a small website. The kind that have a home page, an “About” section, a “Products” (or services) section, a Contact page and a blog/news page.
A big requirement in building this sites is that it doesn’t take too much time and that post-launch, the sites would be editable by somebody who’s not me.
Please see my site:
http://pucho.com/wordpress/
But how can the Front page be a static page instead of a post?
When the theme is installed, a HOME menu item is automatically created and creating a new page for HOME also creates a duplicate menu item on the NAVBAR.
So how can the HOME link ever be set properly without created a duplicate LINK in the NAVBAR?
Any clues appreciated. Thank you. Happy holidays. Take care.
@puchoweb
Thanks for your question. Looks like your site is self-hosted, possibly on GoDaddy? Depending on your theme, it’s usually possible to do what you want by selecting a static page as your Home page. You can see how to do this here: How to Make a Static Page Your Home Page & Hide a Double Home Page Link.
If there is a double Home page link after you make a static Home page, here’s an easier way to hide the link. Use the Exclude Pages Plugin for WordPress.
Good luck. Let me know how that works.
One other thing, you might want to ask your web host about domain mapping (they will know what this means) so that your WordPress site would appear at the http://pucho.com address rather than at http://pucho.com/wordpress (if that’s what you want it to do).
You are a genius. I am very impressed! I was able to install the Exclude page plugin to create a static home page.
Please see my updated site:
http://pucho.com/wordpress/
Domain mapping sounds is interesting but is it better to have the ISP simply re-install WordPress in the root directory of the web server instead of folder called “wordpress?”
I have not asked the ISP about domain mapping yet.
Which is ideal? When is domain mapping better than re-installing wordpress in the root directory of the site?
http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/
Thank you very much for your kind help. I really appreciate it.
@puchoweb
Thanks! Glad that was helpful.
You could copy all your WP files into the root. That would work. However, it’s usually best to keep your files in a subdirectory and map your domain to that directory.
Most web hosts allow you to host more than one site per account. For example, BlueHost lets you host many more sites at no extra cost. You can keep each site in its own subdirectory, and you can map a different domain to each subdirectory.
By keeping all your sites in subdirectories you avoid conflicts between things like having an .htaccess file (a file that gives instructions to the server – WordPress uses it to generate “permalinks”) in the root directory and a different .htaccess in a subdirectory.
In general, keeping all your sites in subdirectories – rather than having one in the root directory – makes all of them easier to manage.
Hi Mark,
This is a great website and has been very helpful in my attempts to understand the use of WordPress. I too am having a similar issue like puchoweb in that my company’s main website is in a parent directory (called html) and the blog site (and wordpress files) are in a sub-directory called Blog.
The site is being hosted by GoDaddy, so maybe my question should be to them, but thought I’d check with you first. Right now our main website (http://businessearth.com) is nothing more than a placeholder image housed in the html parent directory as index.html. I would like to use a page created using WordPress that is in the blog folder (http://businessearth.com/blog) as the main destination page for the businessearth.com website. The blog itself is still in the creation stage, so there are no entries.
Part two of my question relates to the page header. The website and blog were set up last year by someone else who is no longer with the company. I notice that when I try to add a new page, the image on the home page doesn’t appear on any new pages. How do I get that header to appear on every new page?
Would appreciate any pointers.
Candice
Hi Candice,
Thanks for your questions.
You are in the same situation as puchoweb. I recommend talking to GoDaddy about mapping your domain to the “blog” subdirectory. I have never gone through this with them, so I don’t know how they handle it, but in theory it’s possible. If they give you a hard time, tell them you know there are other hosting companies that let you do it – BlueHost.com and Pair.com, for example.
As for the problem with the header image, you need to open the header.php file for your theme and change the image URL to http://businessearth.com/blog/wp-content/themes/busearth1/images/logo.gif. Right now it’s just wp-content/themes/busearth1/images/logo.gif (You don’t really need to worry about this until you resolve the domain mapping issue.)
By the way, you didn’t ask about this, but just to be clear, the link that puchoweb cites above regarding Domain Mapping on WordPress.com ( http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/ ) is not the same as what I’m referring to with GoDaddy. It’s related, but it pertains only to sites hosted on WordPress.com. It’s not relevant to your situation.
Hi Mr.
I would like to ask you that how di you created link on the left sidebar in your blog? For Example: General Questions About WordPress, and Questions About Online Marketing, Websites, SEO, etc..
how can i create that link?
@ourglobal
Thanks for your question! You can see how to do this in How to Use a Text Widget to Customize a WordPress Sidebar. The version of WordPress is slightly older, so the widgets in the Dashboard look a little different, but the technique is the same. Instead of inserting an image or badge, you only need to insert the text and link.
Let me know if you have questions!
Hi,
I was wondering is it possible to have posts that is under a certain category appear in one page and posts under a different category appear in a separate page? For example, if I were blogging about restaurants, I would like those posts to appear in the Restaurants page. If I were blogging about recipes, I would like them to appear in the Recipes page.
@Kei
Thanks for your question!
If you don’t mind, let me know the URL for your blog so I can take a look.
Category pages do what you describe. If you create a category “Restaurants” then the link to that category will display only the posts in that category. For example, here is the page for the “WordPress” category on my mcbuzz.com website: http://www.mcbuzz.com/category/wordpress/
If your site is hosted on WordPress.com, however, your options are much more limited. In my opinion, one of the worst features of WordPress.com sites right now is the fact that Category links don’t lead to a page like the one shown above. Instead, they lead to a generic page of blogs on WordPress.com that use the same category name.
For example, on Business Blogging 101, if you click on the “WordPress” category link at the end of the WordPress Security post, that link takes you here: http://en.wordpress.com/tag/wordpress/ This makes very little sense. It should take you to a page on my blog full of posts that I have assigned to the “WordPress” category.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for sush great information. Love your site and teaching style.
I wonder if you could answer the following questions relating to a wordpress 2.9 blog:
1. how do I stream video like you do from youtube
2. how do I stream video from a server using a flv player. I have installed various wp plugins but non seem to work “out of the box”.
3. how do I get the [contact-form] to work? Is their a glitch with 2.9?
Also just out of interest what theme do you use?
Thanks Mark,
best regards,
Howard
Thanks for your questions, Howard.
For video, I just upload to YouTube and use the “Insert a Video” button in the WordPress editing interface. I like using YouTube because it’s easy, I don’t have to pay for storage or bandwidth to stream the video, and it’s excellent for search engine visibility.
As for embedding your own player, I’m not much of a Flash/Video whiz. You can certainly embed your own custom player. This is good when you need a slick, branded look-and-feel that you have total control over. But when I need this sort of thing, I have to hire someone. 🙂 PodPress is a good plugin for video and podcast embedding, however, I just checked and it looks like it may not work for recent versions of WordPress.
UPDATE: Here’s a nice plugin to import video from YouTube into your sidebar or a video gallery (called TubePress).
If you are on a Mac, check out Camtasia for Mac. The PC version, Camtasia Studio, is more expensive, but in my opinion, it’s well worth the price if you want to do video editing and embedding. It’s very powerful software and makes it easy to embed your own files. They have a lot of good tutorials, as well.
[contact-form] works only on WordPress.com sites.
There are some great plugins for contact forms on self-hosted WordPress. Try Contact Form 7 or the Secure Form Mailer for WordPress Contact Form from Dagon Design.
The theme of the Business Blogging 101 site is called “Digg 3 Columns”. It’s supplied by WordPress.com.
Hi.
I would like to ask you about how to find more traffic to our blog in few days or weeks? is there is any website you add our blog’s address to increase traffic?
tq
You can definitely increase traffic a lot in a few days or weeks. The problem is that whatever techniques you use to do so are probably short-sighted and fairly risky for the very same reasons that they are so fast and effective. These would be the “black hat” search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, like paying other websites to link to your site, or paying another company to generate those links.
The more reliable way to go is to buy a book like Search Engine Optimization for Dummies and do everything it says. Also check out SEOmoz, a fantastic resource, with both free and paid tools and content. Depending on how well your site is optimized now, you could see significant improvements in a matter of weeks. Over the long term, you need to concentrate on getting more links coming to your site from other sites, and on creating and presenting content that compels visitors to make a purchase or contact you or whatever it is you want them to do.
You can bring all kinds of traffic to your site, but if it is not qualified traffic, meaning visitors that are really looking for what you offer, then it’s worth very little.
The same applies to a blog. Think first about the people you want to connect with. What are their habits on the Web? Where do they tend to hang out? If it’s an older audience (age 50+), then you may want to create a nice-looking email newsletter that will bring people to your blog for more information or continued stories. If it’s a relatively younger audience (30-45), definitely get on Twitter and start connecting with people there. Don’t sell. Offer something people need, or make yourself useful by promoting someone else that’s offering great information or a great product or service.
Commenting on other blogs is another good way to increase visibility. Show people your personality and creativity. Show that you genuinely care about others. These things will set you apart and build a following over the long run. And, of course, you need to put valuable content on your blog, not just sales pitches.
Hi .
I have my own website on GDI webhosting company. so can I create a blog on my gdi website? and how?
To see if your host can host a WordPress site, refer to the following requirements: http://codex.wordpress.org/Hosting_WordPress. If they are unfamiliar with WordPress, you can send them this link.
Hello Mark,
I was wondering if you could explain to me how to make a sub-page that didnt take up so much room. I am trying to make a regular page that has over 50 codes but I don’t want it to show up on my blog. Can I do that with sub-pages?
@misschipz33
This sounds like a good use for a subpage. If you don’t have any pages on your blog, then you can’t create a subpage. But it sounds like that’s not really important. It sounds like you would not want a link to the subpage to show up in the blog navigation anyway. Am I right?
In that case, you can just create a page, put the content you want on that page, and then hide the link to the page using the Exclude Pages plugin. Where the link appears will depend on your WordPress theme. Once you hide it, the only way people will be able to get to your page will be through a link that you put in a blog post – or in a sidebar – or wherever you want. It’s up to you. Does that make sense. If you haven’t tried it before, it might be a little confusing.
Send me the URL to your blog, and let me know exactly where you want the link to the subpage to appear, and I’ll see if I can help.
Hi Mark,
Do you have any suggestions for adding e-commerce to a WordPress site? Do you have any expertise in this area?
Also, any way to add pages to a WP site that do not subsribe to the style of the site. See http://www.oodalink.com. I want to create some pages that are text only and stripped of all graphics so they use very low bandwidth to view.
Thanks for your help!
Hi Nancy,
I don’t have any experience installing or using an ecommerce plugin or template with WordPress.
This – I think – is the most popular plugin:
http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-e-commerce/
The basic plugin is free, and you can pay for premium upgrades that let you use different payment systems.
The complaint I hear most often is that, like WordPress itself about 3 years ago, you need to understand PHP and other aspects of a database-driven site to get the most from an ecommerce solution. It’s still very much “do it yourself”, in other words. Your other option, if that’s so, is to hire someone who knows this stuff to give you a hand. Again, I don’t have suggestions as to who might give you a hand. I will ask around.
As for your second question, there are a number of ways to do this. Let me give it some thought and see if I can come up with an easy way to implement it. Do you know how to use CSS so that you could modify or add to your theme’s style.css file?
Here’s an update to the WordPress eCommerce Q&A. There’s a WordPress group on LinkedIn created by Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress), and there is a good thread there talking about eCommerce options for WordPress.
Thanks for the info and links. I do know how to access and edit CSS … just enough to be dangerous.
A separate question:
Any idea why this post title would repeat itself?
http://oodalink.com/fema-preparedness-grants-fund-user-fees/
It doesn’t appear in the WP admin editing area. Baffling.
One way to have custom CSS formatting for selected pages is to modify the header.php file so that you can assign a custom class to the <body> tag. That turns out to be a little tricky. If you would like me to do it for you, let me know and I’ll give you a quote.
Regarding the double headline, here’s the code in the HTML when you View Source in a browser:
<h1><a href="http://oodalink.com/fema-preparedness-grants-fund-user-fees/" title="<span class="caps">FEMA</span> Grants can Fund Maintenance and User Fees"><span class="caps">FEMA</span> Grants can Fund Maintenance and User Fees</a></h1>Looks like you might have copied and pasted the headline from somewhere. The formatting matches that of the subheadline below it:
<h2>Did You Know that <span class="caps">FEMA</span> Grant Funds...in that it has the special <span class=”caps”>FEMA</span>
That’s what’s causing the headline to repeat. You may have tried this already, but clear the title field in the editing window of the Dashboard completely, put an ‘x’ in there or something and Update the post. Then go back and type in your headline manually without the <span class=”caps”>FEMA</span> and Update again.
Hi! I wondered if anyone could help. How do you switch the positions of your tabs on top of the blog page?
@newdaynewlesson
Thanks for your question! To put page navigation in a specific order, look at your list of pages in the Dashboard. Under the link to a page, you’ll see “Quick Edit”. Click on QuickEdit, and then find the “Order” text box (under the “Parent” dropdown menu). There should be a “0” there. Change the zero to the number for the order you want the page to appear in your navigation: 1, 2, 3, or whatever. Click the “Update Page” button to save the change. You will need to set the Order value for every page in your navigation.
You can also look in the page editing interface in the Dashboard on the right side under “Attributes”. There you will see “Parent”, and under that “Order”, where you can change the page order. Don’t forget to click the “Update Page” button to save the change.
Right now I see you are using the Mistylook theme, and it looks like you have run out of room for more navigation. Some themes have popup menus for subnavigation that would let you clean that up a bit by using subpages.
Thanks so much for taking the time to answer. It is 1:30am here and I have to get to bed, but I will read this tomorrow and play with it.
While i am asking questions and you are being so nice and helpful 🙂 ….
I am on a 13 inch mac and when I see the home page there is a search button that I didn’t put there (must be automotic wordpress one) that is covering part of my page buttons. Is there any way to get rid of that search thingee???
Thansk so much!
I see the problem with the Search box. That is part of your Mistylook theme. Since your site is hosted on WordPress.com, you would need to pay for an “upgrade” that would allow you to edit the style.css file for your theme. You could then use “display: none” to hide the Search box or (maybe) make the navigation wrap around it.
If you are going to continue blogging, i.e., your blog is not just a test-run for some other project, I strongly suggest that you register your own domain and use that on your site. I also suggest that you move your site to third-party hosting, but for now you can just register a domain with WordPress.com for about $15 a year and make that your primary domain. That way, if you ever move the site, your URLs will not be tied to WordPress.com.
This may sound like technobable, but believe me it’s inexpensive, relatively easy to do and well worth the trouble. It’s far better to lay claim to your own domain name sooner rather than later, for lots of reasons, the WordPress.com issue being just one.
Lol-does sound like technobabble. What is third party hosting and why is that better than doing it through wordpress? When you say domain name you mean like my name now minus the wordpress.com thingee at end? Why register through them as opposed to another domain site place?
Thanks!
🙂
Right. You could register newdaynewlesson.com and use the domain upgrade on WordPress.com to make that the domain for your blog. The old domain, newdaynewlesson.wordpress.com will still work. It will redirect to the new one.
You don’t have to register your domain with WordPress.com. You can use any registrar you want. I like Omnis.com Great prices (about $8 a year) and good customer service.
Okay-have yet another question.
Under a page called my favorties, I set up sub pages for blog and webpages. On each of those pages I wanted to put the links for those sites but am not figuring out how to put up a clickable link.
Can it be done on the theme I have?
It looks like the links work on the Favorites page. You can do the same thing with links to other sites on the subpages. (Maybe I’m missing the point.)
No you weren’t missing the point, when I posted it was not working. There was something funky going on with the link button, not working to I clicked the visual button and then the word link came up and that worked.
Thanks!
And yet another question. Seems I am now also having a problem with links within my blog posts. The link button is not highlighted and not clickable. It was in previous blog posts. Any ideas?
Hmm. Links seem to be working fine on the posts and pages I checked. You are on a Mac, right? What browser are you using? What happens if you use a different browser? Can you provide a link to a page or post with this problem?
I replied in the first post. The link button didn’t work, but when I moved to visual the word link was clickable.
Me again (getting sick of me yet? Lol)
Are the automatically generated possible related posts and links to them on the bottom of my posts something I can get rid of???
No worries! Thanks for your questions. Yes. You can turn off the Possibly Related Posts feature. Go to Appearance > Extras from the Dashboard and check the “Hide related links” box.
Me again. Starting to get sick of me? 🙂
Okay-wierd one. Was on a friend’s wordpress blog and on the bottom was a register link. registeres and got a code in email. Logged in and I was on her dashboard-but with limited actions available. Was able to get to mine as well, but seems my whole page is screwed up now-narrower than normal columns.
So what have I done and how do I undo it. HELPPPPP!
Thanks in advance!
Susie
Must have been a glitch in wordpress cause it is okay now. Still want to understand what i did and how I got to somebody else’s dashboard and how I prevent that at mine.
Thanks.
In a self-hosted installation of WordPress, in the Dashboard under Settings > General there is an option/check box that says “Anyone can register”. To my knowledge, your friend has a self-hosted site and she has this boxed checked. This allows you to register with whatever the default account level is – probably Subscriber or Contributor – which have limited privileges. More about WordPress User Roles and Capabilities here.
On a WordPress.com-hosted site, the “Anyone can register” option is not there (at least not on Business Blogging 101). On both self-hosted and WordPress.com sites, under Settings > Discussion there are a bunch of options you can set that control privileges for how people can comment on you blog. One option says “Comment author must fill out name and e-mail.” Another says “Users must be registered and logged in to comment”. If the latter is checked, people must create a WordPress.com account and be logged in in order to comment on your blog.
As far as what happened to the layout of your site, I haven’t seen that before. Maybe it’s not related to the fact that you were logged in to her blog. You should be able to login to both at the same time in the same browser, unless they are both WordPress.com-hosted sites.
Thanks-passed the info onto her and it helped her as well.
BTW-put a link to your website on my blog under the heading blogging help.
Thanks!
Hi there!
BASIC question for you….
I just started a blog thru WP.org (hosted thru yahoo which hosts my e-commerce website). I have gone thru your online tutorials looking for “editing” comments regarding the overall stylesheet in WP editor.
Question: Can I edit a font color, hover color, content/post title color thru the stylesheet in WP editor? I see how there are font-size, font-family, font-weight, etc, listed there but was wondering if I can just add a command for font-color or hover font color (for say, the header or post titles) and where that command would be inserted?? OR must I go thru the source code FTP to edit that type of action?
Yes, I have gone thru the support forums at WP to no avail.
The theme I am using is called “Minimalist” by Joey Robinson
My site is — http://23nine.com/blog
If you find that you have a minute or two to point me in the right direction I would be thrilled! If not I will still be a regular visitor to you site to learn more about the benefits of blogging!
BE WELL
BOBBY
@Bobby
Thanks for your question! Good one.
You can edit style.css using the Dashboard Editor, but be careful to select all, copy and save to a text file on your computer before doing so. You need it as a backup. If something goes wrong, you’ll need to copy and paste the original back into the style.css window. The Editor is one of the few ways you can seriously screw up your site because you’re editing live files on the server.
This is why it’s a better idea to use FTP. It’s easier to keep track of things and put them back to the way they were if something breaks. But maybe you like to live dangerously!
For CSS clues, look at the “Changing Fonts in WordPress” posts on Business Blogging 101. Also definitely check out w3schools CSS tutorials.
If you need more direction than that, let me know.
Hi Mark,
It’s me back again.
Wanted to know if in regular wordpress (not self hosted) whether you can make a badge that links to somehwere and if so how and what code to put in.
Thanks so much!
@newdaynewlesson
Glad to have you back. Did you try the Business Blogging 101 WordPress text widget tutorial? Also check out the Gravatar widget tutorial.
Mark
I did, but did not get it to work, maybe am just tired and cranky.
Getting closer to thinking about self hosting-anyone you recommend for the hosting?
Also if I use wordpress.org, do I need more skills than what I currently have using regular wordpress?
I like BlueHost. I have heard good things about Dreamhost. Both are listed here: http://wordpress.org/hosting/
That’s actually a very good question: Do you need to be more technically savvy to use self-hosted WordPress instead of WordPress.com?
Two main differences are that you need to backup your own data, and you need to do the software upgrades manually. Hosts that cater to WordPress users like BlueHost and Dreamhost make it pretty easy for you. For the most part, backups and upgrades can be done in the hosting control panel with just a few clicks.
You get so much more control over plugins, themes, Google Analytics, search optimization, JavaScript, contact forms and other stuff with self-hosting, I think it’s worth it. But if you have too many other things going on to have time for learning about hosting in addition to learning about WordPress itself, then it might be good to think twice about switching.
Seems like you are already learning a lot about WordPress. Learning about the basics of hosting is similar.
Incidentally, if you are on LinkedIn there is a group for WordPress users and developers that was started by Matt Mullenweg, one of the founders of WordPress. I highly recommend signing up for LinkedIn and joining this group. Lots of good discussion and a wide range of skills and experience levels.
I feel like I have just plunged into the depths of hell. Okay am exagerating a bit, but am getting close to pulling my hair out.
So signed up with bluehost. Got a domain name. Used their thingee to download the wordpress.org and transfer blog post stuff.
That only took a few minutes.
Then I realized that I have to search manually on wordpress for the theme I want, download, zip and upload. Did that. Widgets did not transfer and it seems i have to search for all widgets I want and do the same like the theme.
I am having a problem with all the plugins cause it keeps telling me am missing something or another-but have no idea where to find the code and add what they want (even if I knew what the heck to add to the code..)
So basically-help what are the basics i need to know to get my new sight looking like my old one.
Another thing-of course when I uploaded the wordpress.org the username stayed at admin and can’t be changed-is that okay or is there a way to erase it all and start from scratch?
http://www.newdaynewlesson.com/
http://www.newdaynewlesson.wordpress.com/
help me pretty please…
Sounds like things are going well. 😉
Yes. You will need to create add widgets in the new WordPress installation. Those are not created by the Import process unfortunately.
Just guessing but the thing you are missing where plugins are concerned is probably your WordPress.com API Key. You need this for the Akismet anti-spam plugin. Do you see “API Key” anywhere in the Akismet plugin display under Plugins in the Dashboard? To find your API Key, try this: http://en.support.wordpress.com/api-keys/
The admin username is not a problem. Create a new user with a different username. You may need to use a different email address than the one associated with the admin username. Or, you can probably change the email of the admin account (under Users > Your Profile) so that you can use your primary email address for the new account. Be sure to give the new account Administrator privileges. Once you have created the new account. Logout. Login with the new username and password, and you will be able to go to Authors & Users and delete the admin account.
ummm-but what do I do with the api when I have it? Have no idea where to put it.
In the Dashboard, under Plugins, find the Akismet plugin and click on it. There should be a notice of some kind saying “Akismet is almost active” or something like that. There is usually a link that will take you to the Akismet plugin page where you can insert the API Key. (This is in the Dashboard on your new site, mind you, not on the WordPress.com site.)
Also any idea how to get rid of that annoying search button on the top by the tabs?
And last question-is there a wat to put static badges on the space on the sides of the theme. (like on the right my friend put for me media buttons), can other badges be put there?
What happens to the stats from the old site when you do mapping?
Thanks.
To remove the search form from the header, you need to edit the header.php file for your theme. Be sure to keep a copy of the original header.php file. (You can always download the theme again if you need to.)
You can do this in two ways.
1. Use FTP software. Modify the header.php file and then upload the file to replace the existing header.php file.
2. Use the Editor in the WordPress Dashboard. (Under Appearance > Editor) Click on the header.php link in list of theme files on the right side of the Editor console to see that file. Make the following deletion (below) and then click “Update File”. If something goes wrong, you will need to replace the modified header.php file with the original.
In the header.php file, find the following code and delete it:
<li class="search"><form method="get" id="searchform" action="<?php bloginfo('home'); ?>"><input type="text" class="textbox" value="<?php echo wp_specialchars($s, 1); ?>" name="s" id="s" /><input type="submit" id="searchsubmit" value="<?php _e('Search','ml');?>" /></form></li>Save the file and upload to replace header.php on the server (Method 1). Or…
Click “Update File” in the Dashboard Editor console (Method 2).
For static badges, did you check the How to Use a Text Widget to Customize a WordPress Sidebar tutorial? The buttons that you have along the right side of the browser window (very snappy, by the way – I have those, on mcbuzz.com, too) are not part of your theme. You may be able to find other plugins or code that will put badges over there, but they are not really part of a WordPress site, per se. Does that make sense? You can have the buttons your friend installed on any web site, not just a WordPress site.
For stats, I recommend using Google Analytics. There are a number of plugins – like this Google Analytics WordPress plugin from Yoast – you can use that will install the code for you, or you can install it yourself. You can also get the simple WordPress stats plugin. You can use both. They don’t conflict. Some people find Google Analytics overwhelming.
Like widgets, stats are not brought over as part of the Export / Import process. Stats collected for the wordpress.com site are for that site only. You will be starting fresh with the newdaynewlesson.com site.
Thanks-will the stats start fresh even if I do the domain mapping?
Is it worth doing it? the mapping that is? Or just leave a note with a redirect on top?
If you think you are getting a ton of traffic from search engines and you want to be sure that those people are sent directly to your new site, then it may be worth it to set up domain mapping (technically a redirect from newdaynewlesson.wordpress.com to the new site at newdaynewlesson.com). But I have not tried this myself. I thought about it (moving mcbuzz.wordpress.com to mcbuzz.com), but I balked – mainly because it seemed like more trouble than it would be worth.
Here is the article on how to do the redirect:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/redirecting-your-blog/
I’m confident that it will work for you. But I’m reluctant to say “Do it, absolutely” because I haven’t done it myself.
If you decide not to do it, you could change the tagline of your blog to “NOTE: THIS BLOG HAS MOVED, SEE LINK IN SIDEBAR BELOW” or whatever (from the current “because every day of our life brings with it the opportunity to learn new lessons about life and ourselves”). The main reason I say this is that people will arrive on many different pages of your blog, not necessarily the home page, so they need to know that it has moved and they need to be able to see that no matter what page they are on.
and yet another question…
Is it possible with the self hosted mistylook theme to have a second post type page? Non static, where I can kind of do a second blog thing?
I’m not sure if I understand the question yet. You can have different sidebars on different pages. You can even have one kind of sidebar on a Categories page (the page that displays all the posts in a given category), another kind of sidebar on your home page and a third kind of sidebar on your blog page – for example. Can you point me to some examples of what you are looking for?
really? cause all my pages have the same sidebars.
Basically the same way right now the home page is dynamic and updated with the newest post first, i wanted maybe to have another page like that with different kind of content that also gets updated the same way. Kind of like 2 blogs in one?
Different themes handle sidebars differently. If your theme does not have more than one basic page template, then you or someone who is familiar with WordPress and PHP can make templates with different sidebars. It’s customization, for sure: not something that comes with most themes, but it’s not all that difficult. Still, on Business Blogging 101, I would call making new page templates and Advanced technique. I don’t have any tutorials on it yet.
For a separate “two blogs in one” kind of thing, you could use a specific category and assign that to all the posts you want to show up on your special page. You could then exclude that category from the main blog page.
sorry for being dense but just how exactly would you do that?
No problem. It requires modification of your theme files.
It’s a fairly advanced technique. Depending on how you want it to work, I should probably give you a quote. It would take an hour or two. I will send you an email.
I can make the separate page once you have your special category assigned to the posts you want to appear on that page.
Here are details: http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop#Exclude_Posts_From_Some_Category
Me again she says so sheepishly…
How do you get on wordpress.org the little pictures (like I have on here next to my name by the comments) . It was on refular wordpress but now disappeared.
Also on regular every different category of blogroll was in it’s own box, on .org it is all in one box with titles in it.
For pictures (Avatars), look under Settings > Discussion to see if “Display Avatars” is selected.
To put links in separate boxes, use a separate Links widget for each Links Category. Drag additional copies of the Links widget into your sidebar. Then set the Links Category on each one using the dropdown menu in the widget.
This will also get rid of the “WordPress Help” links if you omit that category.
there are no more link widgets to drag. There was only one and once I dragged it there were no more to take and drag. ???No what?
That does not sound right. There should always be a Links widget you can drag over, even if you already put one in the sidebar. You can have as many as you want in the same sidebar.
nope none there-only one in sidebar and no more to drag over…
Very odd. You have WordPress version 2.9.1 or 2.9.2, right? These allow for multiple Links widgets. What version of WordPress do you have installed?
Wait. You said only one in the sidebar. But where are you looking for the original Links widget? It will be on the left with all the others that are not being used (even though it is being used once already).
Short of that, I would try logging out and closing the browser. Open the browser, clear the browser cache http://mcbuzz.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-empty-your-cache-in-internet.html and login to WordPress again. If the Links widget is not there, I’m stumped.
I think I know the problem. Your theme does not support multiple Links widgets. 90% sure that’s what it is. Misty Look is a great theme – a classic – but it’s pretty old.
To test, you could create another installation of WordPress and see if the default theme lets you add multiple Links widgets. You could try switching your current site to the default theme, but I am always reluctant to do that with a live site.
the question I have, is in a wordpress blog (not one hosted on your own servers) is it at all possible to hide your metatags? I have a long string of tags and don’t like it appearing under ever single post I put on the wordpress.com .
@Corp Energy
Holy smokes! You win the prize for most tags I have ever seen on a single post. I can see why you want to hide those.
On WordPress.com you don’t have a way of removing tags from the “post meta data” section of the index.php file. If you were to host your site on a third-party service, you would be able to do so.
But my first question is really, What are you trying to accomplish with all those tags?
There is a lot of confusion about the term “tags”. It is used to mean many different things. The tags you are talking about are part of the WordPress “post meta data” like the time stamp and categories. Even within WordPress terminology “tags” is confusing because there are “template tags” as well as the “post meta data” classification / “folksonomy” tags you are using with your posts.
Many people who use WordPress are uncertain about the difference between categories and tags.
Then there are “HTML tags”, which is completely different from “post meta data” tags or “template tags”. And within HTML, there are specific tags called “meta tags”. These include the “description meta tag” and the “keywords meta tag”. You may be thinking of the keywords meta tag when you call your WordPress tags “metatags”.
For your purposes, I recommend using only 5 to 10 tags per post. In general, your tags should be keywords, the most important words about your topic that you use in the post itself. On WordPress.com, tags are treated differently than they are when you host your own site.
In some ways, what you are doing with tags is worth further investigation as an SEO technique. At the moment, for example, http://corpenergy.wordpress.com ranks #8 and #9 in Bing for “Benefits of Energy Brokers to the US Market”. And you do well for searches on other tags, even in Google.
Thank you for your reply to my comment, about categories Mark
I have now been able to sort this out.
Thank you again
Positioning an image and wraptextaround
hi Mark i seemed to master the left and right text wrap around
but on the center. It positions the picture alright
but i’d like to have text on both sides of the picture.
i haven’t seen anyone do this. but i’m sure it’s possible.
By the way i’m knew and I never edited the code under editor
and wonder how even to access it.
Thanks, Jon
@jonkirby2012 – You can’t access the Editor on a site hosted on WordPress.com. You need a self-hosted installation of WordPress for that. So if it’s the site at jonkirby2012.wordpress.com you are wondering about, you won’t be able to use Appearance > Editor. It’s not there in the dashboard.
As for wrapping text around both sides of an image, the last time I looked into it, it was not possible. You can do it in design software like Adobe Illustrator, InDesign or QuarkXPress, but that’s a different animal altogether, not subject to HTML and CSS restrictions.
good ansers thanks Mark
jon kirby