Ask WordPress Max Questions About WordPress
As this blog and the WordPress Blog Installation business grows with more and more customers asking me general questions about their new blog. I thought it would be helpful, and a great way to get ideas to add more content to this blog, to answer as many of those questions here. You may be thinking, “sure he just wants us to help him come up with content on his blog”. Well yeah, I admit it, I’m lazy!
So if you have a question about WordPress or blogging and need help and can’t find the answers you are looking for ask them here. If your question turns into a post then a link to your blog will be featured within that post.
Wait! Before you ask how to get each post to use a different template theme, and complex PHP coding questions remember this site’s Tagline is “WordPress Guides For The Geek Impaired”! So go easy on me, I too am somewhat geek impaired! Please don’t post a comment like “My blog don’t work right, HELP me!” it will be deleted. This is intended to help with general “how-to” questions and not a troubleshooting forum for highly technical issues. I try to help with all questions or point you in the right direction to find your answers. If you want help with a very specific issue you want me to try to fix or want your blog optimized or theme customized email me. I can do that for a small fee.
When you ask a question and want notified of the answer make sure you use a good email address and check the box next to: Notify me of followup comments via e-mail If you have a specific problem with your blog please provide a link to it so it can be checked out.
Thanks, Jeff
WordPress
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Hi Jeff,
I think this is a great idea, the ask a question section. I know I need some help.
My question is in my side bar area there are two sections that show up outsied the border area, this happened after I put a one of the other themes in use. How can I move these over? It just looks a little sloppy.
Thank you
Herb Davies
Herb,
It looks like you placed The BlogSkinny and Technorati widgets directly into the sidebar template in the wrong place. Or you didn’t close a tag in the code somewhere.
This can happen even if you place a script, or any type of code into the themes template or even a sidebar widget. If there is an open code tag it will mess up the look of the whole page.
With sidebar widgets there is really no need to add anything directly into your themes sidebar template. If you need more help email me your blog’s login info.
Post on this topic to come…
Hi Jeff,
Congratulations for the ASK WORDPRESS MAX area. It is a very good idea.
I would like to know, step by step, how to create a new area on my blog. I intend to make my post in English and in Portuguese.
Take care!
Wolney, Wow you came up with one here didn’t you? Some preliminary research shows it is possible and I may do a step by step guide in the future when I have time to determine what method is the easiest. Sorry but from what I have found so far this isn’t a topic that can be covered very quick. For now check out these.
I found a plugin that does what I think you are looking for. See it in action on this site: Anaconda Theme The plugin is called Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Pro For WordPress 2.x.y Blogs. This looks like the easiest solution but this is not a free plugin, it costs $30. I didn’t test this one.
Other language plugins can be found here: Translation and Languages plugins. And here is a link to WordPress In Your Language.
I tried the Gengo plugin and it made the whole test blog go blank, I had to login to the hosting account and delete the plugin to get the blog back, so you have been warned.
Another free plugin Polyglot, requires a good bit of coding changes to the theme to work and I haven’t tested that yet.
oK Jeff, I will wait your post.
For the moment, how do I increase the number of the TEXT at my sidebar. Is that possible? I have 9 at this moment.
Thank you.
Wolney, There is no way(that I know of) to add more text widgets, but you can place more than one item into a text widget. Consider grouping like items into one widget to free up more text widgets.
This post explains how to do this toward the end of the post:
Working With WordPress Text Widgets
Hi.again..Question ..how to get my url to be www.something.com and not www.something.com/wordpress Tanks
Chris you would need to install the blog into the root of a domain to do that. If there is a trailing name after the main domain name that is because the blog is installed in a folder or directory within a domain.
Blogs were usually used to be an addition to a main website but more and more people are using them as the main website. This site is an example of using a WordPress blog as the entire website. That is why the URL looks as it does.
Jeff
How do plugins - WordPress or otherwise - help your blog rise in search engine ranking?
Carl Hendricks
Home Based Business Prosperity
Once traffic is attracted to your blog beside having relevant ads is there another key to getting adsense ads clicked?
Carl Hendricks,
http://www.cehmagic.com/blog
Hi there Jeff! I’m having a somewhat esoteric problem and can’t seem to find a solution anywhere else.
I’ve developed a custom theme for my blog to match the look of the rest of my site. It worked fine when I tested it locally on my laptop.
When I uploaded the theme to my web server and selected it in the presentations panel, the main page looks fine. However, whenever I click on anything else–the archive pages, for example–the resulting page loses all its formatting. For some reason, nothing but the main page is calling the stylesheet. I’ve tried everything I can think of–header.php must be working fine because it works for the main page. I’ve put the stylesheet in both the theme folder and the main wordpress folder (because that seemed to fix a similar problem I had when testing on my laptop).
I’ve searched the Wordpress forums and codex to see if there is any special place the stylesheet should reside and can’t find any info; nor can I find anyone else who is having this problem. Do you have any idea why the main page would look excellent but subpages would not show formatting, only content? Any help would be most appreciated.
Amy from what you are describing, it looks fine when on your laptop but not online, maybe some of the images are not uploaded to the website. Or your theme is pointing to images that are on your laptop instead of pointing to images in the themes images folder on the web server.
If that isn’t the case make a copy of your single page template (single.php) as a backup. Then copy the main index file and paste it into single.php to see if the formatting is working when you open a single post. This would be the first step in troubleshooting I would take.
That is my best guess since you didn’t post a link to the blog I can’t look at it.
Hi, thanks for your reply. I went into the header.php and specified the full pathname for the style sheet, and it worked fine. I don’t know if that will break something else in the long run, but there you are.
My newest problem is that I had my blog, which I was hand coding in HTML, in the blog subfolder, and the wordpress blog in wpblog while I was tweaking it. Silly me, I thought I could rename “blog” to “oldblog” and “wpblog” to “blog” and voila, the new wordpress blog would show up in place of the old hand-coded HTML one. No such luck, unfortunately–main page worked fine, but all the category and archive pages wanted to find their content in “wpblog.” So I’m now working on sorting that out. I’m to embarrassed for anyone to see my mess to post a link. But thanks so much for being here.
Hi Jeff,
I came across your site and need some help with adding a category to my blog.
I have put in my blog at least but am having trouble configuring it. I can’t see how to add a category. I’ve tried so many times with no luck and it still remains uncategorized. I want to be able to add sections for beef, chicken etc but when I go into http://superrecipesecrets.com/blog/ nothing has been changed.
I dont know how much help I’ll need, but it would be handy to have it configured properly.
You could advise me the next step please
Stuart
Stuart here is a post explaining how to add and edit categories.
Adding Subcategories To Your WordPress Blog
Hi,
I’m trying to add an affiliate link in my blogroll.
WP asks for a URL but the text I’ve been given by the affiliate site is an “a href” etc.
So is there any way to put the link in the blogroll but keep it as an affiliate link?
Thanks.
Wakar
Wakar
The “a href” you are referring to is the HTML to embed the link into a website. The http://www.URL.com/AffiliateIDNumber part is what you need to place in Blogroll of your blog.
Yes, that worked! I just removed the a href tags and used just the URL that was between them and it’s fine.
Thank you. I’m so glad I found your site. Something like that could have taken forever to find/get an answer for in forums and such.
Hello,
I am just starting a wordpress site, and trying to use this theme: http://themes.wordpress.net/columns/3-columns/2479/jd-nebula-3c-10/. When I try to customize the sidebars, nothing changes! No matter how I drag and drop widgets on them, they always look the same with same default categories & archives on the left and calendar blogroll, and meta on the left. Any idea why that is? Thanks.
Nova, I just posted a fix your themes problems. read it here:
Fix WordPress Sidebar Widgets That Don’t Work
Hi,
I have a question about FeedBurner. I’m not sure I understand what it does. If I sign up with FeedBurner, do I get a box on my blog like the one you have? Do they give me the code/markup and explain how to install it? I’ve watched their video about signing up but it doesn’t explain much.
Thanks.
Wakar, FeedBurner just uses your current feed and gives different subscriber options. The one I really like is the “Updates by email” FeedBurner provides.
And yes if you sign up for a FeedBurner feed you can get the code for a few different subscriber buttons and the email updates box to place on your sidebar.
I did a video post about this on my Work At Home Business Blog a while ago here is the link:
http://www.esmartjob.com/blog/wordpress-blog/feedburner-widgets-wordpress-blog
My old blog is at http://cyanidehole.blogspot.com
My new blog is http://cyanidehole.com
If you go to the old blog, you notice the sidebar has a header: “Good Reading”.
Now I’ve bought myself a domain name (cyanidehole.com), hired a host (bluehost), and installed WordPress. I want my WordPress sidebar to show the “Good Reading” header and content, but I can’t figure out how to change the sidebar.
I’ve looked at the documentation. I’ve tried to edit my sidebar files. There’s no way I’ll ever figure it out on my own. Can you help me with that?
Jimmy, After looking at the content of your blog my first thought was to just delete your question. While I in no way believe any of what you or people like you have to say, I believe you have a right to say it.
So here is a post that may help you: Working With WordPress Text Widgets
I have no sidebar on my coments page or if I access an article directly with its full path. Not being a programmer, I can’t figure out which php file needs to be modified or how to cause the sidebar to show up in those cases.
Example of failure to show sidebar is at
http://www.qvmgroup.com/invest/archives/116
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Richard that is an easy fix. It looks like you are using a modified version of the default theme.
There are two posts on this site that walk you through this process. If you need additional help let me know and we can work something out, my fees are real cheap!
Adding The Sidebar To The WordPress Page Or Single Post Template
Add Background Color To Single Page Sidebar On Default WordPress Theme
Jeff, I am “geek impaired” and would prefer to hire you to fix my problem than try to raise my geekness to the necessary level. We all have our gifts and specialties. Yours is tech and mine is not. Please contact me and tell about what it would cost to put the sidebar on all viewed content.
No Problem Richard, I sent you an email regarding this and other possible tweaks for your blog.
Jeff
hi there , l made a banner logo for my wordpress
so that others can put it on their site.
however i need to post the link ”code” in order so they can copy and paste it onto their page.
so
my question is how do l post the link of my banner logo
without it turning into the banner logo
so it just stays text that others can copy paste?
if u could help me l would rly apreciate it
the link is
so if u could adjust it already so i could copy and paste it
and its all good , that would help alot!
but if u can tell me how to do it , its good aswel
already many thanks
cheers
johnny
Is is possible to have some blog posts require registration to be read, while others are open to anonymous visitors? — either to provide more in-depth content, or to require registration to continue reading an article?
Richard, it is possible to password protect posts or pages. I suggest you use a page to this so the password protected posts don’t appear in the “Loop” of the blog. Unless you want people to see that there are protected posts to give them an incentive to gain access. Also keep in mind that password protected posts show “Password Protected” in the description on search engine results. Whether or not this hinders page rankings, I don’t know.
The logistical issue is how to give out the password to gain access. A simple method that comes off the top of my head: You could use the same password for every protected post/page and give it out with a subscription to a newsletter that is tied to an autoresponder. Then when a visitor opts-in to your newsletter it will automatically send a welcome email with the password. You could also tie your RSS feed to the autoresponder that notifies your list of new blog posts.
There may be plugins available that does this… perhaps you gave me yet another topic to research and post about…
To protect a post or page when creating it look to the right and simply put a password in the the Page or Post Password box.
Johnny if you paste the code into a post using the visual editor then it should show as raw code on the blog.
If that doesn’t work, open an HTML editor like Frontpage or NVU and paste the code into the visual editor, switch to HTML view and copy that code and paste it into a blog post.
Hi Jeff,
I noticed your reply in DP to one of my questions and I followed your link towards here.
I wanted to post it in DP but maybe you can help me with the next problem;).
I’m hosting several blogs at Bluehost and one of these blogs has since last night an error message
Warning: Unknown: open(/tmp/sess_a7501ec91ec3a3c590fecbc4701e595e, O_RDWR) failed: Permission denied (13) in Unknown on line 0
Warning: Unknown: Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct () in Unknown on line 0
At first I thought that it had something to do with my Cache but when I looked at the server status at Bluehost cPanel than I noticed that “Disk /dev/sdd1 (/backup) 84 %” is blinking.
Here’s a screenshot
http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/2529/screenshoterrordatabaseze1.jpg
I have no idea what’s the next proper step. Maybe you can point me in the right direction.
Cheers
Vincent
Vincent, The first place to find your solution is with the hosting account. Tell them the error message. My first guess is there is a problem writing to the tmp folder on the server, based on this first warning:
Warning: Unknown: open(/tmp/sess_a7501ec91ec3a3c590fecbc4701e595e, O_RDWR) failed: Permission denied (13) in Unknown on line 0
There is one hosting account that I need to contact for every blog I install on to allow the proper permissions on the tmp folder.
Is there a new plugin or script you installed or activated that started this? Try deactivating it or one plugin at a time to identify it if you suspect that.
But based on a a brief search of your errors it looks like a server side issue that the hosting account should know about. Please if you get a solution post it here for others to learn.
Jeff, I had several chat sessions with the support dep. of Bluehost and they first told me that it was a problem caused by the writers of WP2.3. For me an answer with no meaning at all. Then I disabled all my plugins again and tested them one by one. It seems that the WP error was caused by the plugin stattraq. Now that I disabled him the error is gone. I still think it’s strange that I missed this it first time.
Than I checked my Bluehost cPanel again and now there where 2 lights blinking yellow/red. I called them and now they told me that it was just a notification that the back-up servers are almost full. They say that this blinking can go on for months till they work on the servers. Quite unbelievable
I’m going to find out what the error is causing at the designer. Still think it’s strange do, that my other blogs don’t have this same problem. They are using the same plugins.
Anyway, thanks for your reply.
Cheers
Vincent
But are they all using the same version of WordPress?
Or are you using the same list and versions of plugins?
Some plugins don’t work well together either. And some don’t work in the latest version of WP yet.
I have one this particular blog one additional plugin but I don’t think this is the cause of the error.
I upgraded the blogs to 2.3 a couple of days before but they all worked fine. I checked the developer’s site and it seems that someone else also had a problem sort of like this. He changed a php file and I’m trying it later today. Ill let you know if this worked.
All the same theme’s and version’s btw
Hi Max !
Glad I found your blog, I’ve been browing a bit and I feel like trying some of your tips.
But… but… Yeah, I have a question for you.
I have a really big problem with encoding - and I’m not the only one out there, I found a lot of people stuck where I am, looking for a solution !
The basic problem is :
A few of us have posts in English (or whatever Western European language) AND posts in other, more “complicated”, languages. In my case, it’s Chinese.
My posts showed up just fine when I was on Blogger, but all my Chinese posts are now a bunch of “?????” since I moved to Blogger.
I’ve already researched my issue quite a bit and you may not be the right person to ask since you seem to be English-only (not that there’s anything wrong with that :lol:) but I thought I’d give it a try.
Instead of starting from the scratch, please allow me to paste this link to the WordPress forum where I talked about my problem, with no answers so far :
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/138677
If you have any idea, I’ll appreciate ! But I DO understand this is quite technical
Zhu, Sorry but this one is beyond my knowledge, but I am sure there is a plugin or solution to your problem. If you search the WordPress forum you may find it there. In fact here is a thread on the forum that might help:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/100163
That’s okay, I know it’s very technical and frankly waaaay beyond my knowledge as well !
I appreciate you had a look at it anyway.
Your blog is bookmarked and I’ll be back. Often. More than you wish
;-)
Hi Jeff!
First of all - thanks for the first answer in my search for how-to-do designing wordpress. I’ve found it here 15 minutes ago.
Here’s another which I didn’t find the answer to - yet:
I’m working on www.aicc.dk
I have installed Wordpress 2.something including widgets.
I have added the widget “pages”.
But now - in my sidebar - it says “Pages” on top of my list of topics. I’d rather have no title on that list.
I tried removing it or changing it in the sidebar.php, but nothing happened. My guess is, that the change has to be made in the widget - whereever that is.
How do I customize the widget Pages?
Chresten
Sorry! You’re way ahead and have allready answered me here:
http://www.wordpressmax.com/customize-wordpress/text-widgets
Thanx
Jeff,
trying to set up a widget or two in my wifes wordpress blog. Keen to put in mybloglog. When installed in sidebar it appends itself to a category header panel (which is not there until this widget is installed). This then pushes mybloglog out into a new column. Ugly look. I don’t know which piece of code needs amending. Any clues?
thanks, Geoff
Geoff, I am not sure what is wrong because I don’t know the exact steps you took. But it sounds like you placed the MyBlogLog code in the Blogroll.
There is a plugin for MyBlogLog that adds an available widget that must be dragged into your sidebar and configures.
This post is about MyBlogLog:
http://www.wordpressmax.com/wordpress-guide/mybloglog
See these for more about widgets:
http://www.wordpressmax.com/customize-wordpress/fix-widgets
http://www.wordpressmax.com/customize-wordpress/text-widgets
Jeff,
Is it possible to move an existing WP blog from a subpage to the root directory and do you think that is a good or workable solution for a blog.
I do not have anything of value on my main page at this time.
Morris
Morris, quite a coincidence you ask to move a blog from a subdirectory to the root. Someone else has just asked me to do just that. While I am pretty sure it can be done, I will outline the steps in a post as I do it. Stay tuned….
Jeff
Hey, Max..
Do you know if Google can read wordpress text widgets? Also, if I use them extensively, and they appear in the sidebar along with each page, will Google think it is seeing duplicate content?
Thanks
Kermit, I am far from a Google expert, I would think that the Google bots see/index all the text on your pages. However if the rest of your posts or pages are different than the others I don’t think you are going to get hit for duplicate content.
I just looked at a few posts on here from September and they have a page rank of 2, and these are by no means any great posts that have a bunch of outside links pointing to them.
Think about it for a minute, almost every website online has the same sidebar items on them. The title, description, keywords and the main content are what matters.
Hi Jeff,
You hav ebeen such a great help in the past I am hoping you can answer another simle question for me.
I created several pages on a blog I am setting up. I want to use these as catogories for different topics. Can I do this and if so how do I get the new posts into a specific page?
Thanks
Herb D
Jeff…
I have a website that is doing reasonably well on Google. Would there be any benefit to creating a google xml sitemap? Would I want to notify Google about it? If I sent the site link to Google would that aggravate them, ie. duplication, they think I am spamming, whatever.
Would it be enough to just add a link to to the xml sitemap in the footer if the site is already indexed by Google?
I see some sites (like Chris Pearson’s) that has both sitemaps in the footer. What do you think of that?
Kermit I am not an SEO or Google expert this site is about WordPress.
I don’t think creating a sitemap will hurt at all. All of my blogs and sites have a sitemap. If your site is indexed by Google and comes up in searches then that is all that probably really matters. But again I am not an SEO/Google expert so maybe ask your question on a forum somewhere where you will get more than one opinion.
Herb, wow you are throwing me a tough one there. I don’t think you can change the link of a category to point to a specific page. Now there may be a way to show all the posts from a specific category on a page, or any webpage using the RSS feed for that category. Your blogs categories have their own feed. Just click a category on your sidebar and then place /feed on the end of the URL to see it.
But WordPress kind of already does what you want because categories already have their own page and when you click on a category it will show the latests posts that were made in that specific category. So why do it twice?
Jeff,
I once knew which PHP page to edit for links on my sidebar, but after a long time looking I can’t find it. There is a bad link that needs to be fixed if only I could figure out what file to edit. Can you tell me which file that is?
Thanks very much.
Richard, It should be the sidebar.php file. But some themes may call it something else. But before you edit the file most items on the sidebar can be edited in the sidebar widget.
Check out this post about widgets: http://www.wordpressmax.com/customize-wordpress/text-widgets
Or if it is a blogroll link that can be edited right from the dashboard.
Hi
I have a wordpress blog that i’ve had now for two weeks, and I am hopeless at figuring out how to get the actual wordpress loaded onto my computer
i don’t know if i need it, to install plugins or if I am able to install plugins without signing up for additional wordpress services.
i would like to have a paypal “buy me a beer” donation button, and a google adsense that is appropriate for my site installed.
i would also like to be able to have the links that I put into my articles on wordpress to be clickable, and I don’t know how to do that, right now, some you have to highlight and cut and past.
i would like part of the background color of my outer website page to be changed from black to silvery darkish green high tech looking color, like a tinsel type foil color.
i can’t see the graphics on my site, so I don’t know what I need to download to get the graphics.
I would also like the best statistics counter that you could put on my site as a plug in.
I do not know if my site’s statistics are working or not properly. I think I have far more readers than it is showing.
Could you tell me if my statistics are working, and how to optimize them so I can make money off of my site?
my site is at
conservativedispatch.wordpress.com
Best Wishes
Titania Jones
bubbamail@operamail.cm
Titania, Your blog is hosted on WordPress.com not your own domain so commercializing or making money with it is very limited.
I do not do any work on free hosted blogs because the customization and plugin availability/usage is limited. You may want to look into getting your own domain name and hosting before you get too much on your blog to move.
I recommend BlueHost for hosting and I believe you can get a domain name with the purchase of some hosting packages. There is a small banner for BlueHost on the sidebar here on my site.
Jeff
Hi Jeff
I have a wordpress blog ( http://blog.xvzx.net ) setup as a subdomain of my main site ( http://xvzx.net ). I’ve grown so fond of wordpress and its ease of use (esp editing pages and posts) that I’ve neglected my main domain since long - because it has static template based php pages.
I now want to convert my main site into a wordpress blog with static pages (which I can edit/modify later on) but want each page to have its own custom header image. Is that possible using wordpress?
vishwas, Yes it is possible to have a different header fpr each static page. The only way I know how is to create a different page template for each page, specifying the header information for each. To start here is a post to create a custom page template, but doesn’t get into using different headers.: http://www.wordpressmax.com/customize-wordpress/custom-page
There may be a different way to do it if you search the WordPress forums here:
http://wordpress.org/support/
Hello,
I have a question about blogging by email. I have it setup so that when I send an email, it properly posts it to my WP blog (from wordpress.org). Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get it to include any pictures that may be attached. Also, I can’t find any real solutions out there and wondered if you had any suggestions.
Thanks,
Norman
Norman, Sorry but that is one I haven’t much experience with. I do all my post right from the dashboard and often wonder why if one had email access why not just login to the dashboard and post?
Anyway best I can offer is the WordPress Codex:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Blog_by_Email
Jeff
Jeff,
Thanks for the response. You are correct, initially, in thinking that if one has access to email, why not use the dashboard… However, I have an iPhone and would like to snap (crap cam) photos and post them with commentary using the iPhone email client in one fell swoop… This would, in theory, allow me to upload photos and posts without having to FTP it from my phone…
Well, maybe someone will come up with something.
Thanks,
Norman
Well Norman that explains why one would post without logging on to the WP dashboard, using an iPhone.
Hi
I have 2 static pages set in my wordpress.
My question here is:
Is there anyway I can set a subdomain for each static page?
I tried to go to my cpanel to do redirects for the subdomains.. but it doesn’t work.. since the subdomains are linked to a folder in the home folder on the webserver.
Appreciate your help.
Geekz, Subdomains will always appear as a folder in your hosting account, that is normal.
But you should be able to redirect any URL on your domain to a subdomain or any other URL of your choosing. Have you contacted your hosting account regarding this? It may be a MySQL or PHP permission restriction .
There is a plugin to turn categories into subdomains, it may be modified for pages: http://www.gregboser.com/wordpress-subdomain-plugin/
Sorry I can’t give direct help.
I did a quick search on the WordPress.org forum and found some other asking the same here: http://wordpress.org/support/
I’m new to blogging. I had wordpress do the free install for me. I recently learned to use FTP (Fubu for my Mac). I have tried uploading both plugins and themes, but after i upload I do not see any type of change on my dashboard. They simply don’t show up. I believe I’m doing everything wrong and cannot discover the problem. If you think there is something simple I may be doing wrong I’d love the feedback.
Adam, Plugins get uploaded into the plugins folder within the wp-content folder: wp-content/plugins. Themes go in the themes folder: wp-content/themes.
In the WordPress dashboard go to Presentation and activate the new theme by clicking on it. For plugins click plugins and scroll down to find the new plugin to activate it.
Hey Max - My issue has to do with the DiggIt plugin. I downloaded it and installed it, etc., and it works; the only thing is I’m getting a runtime error for an unterminated string constant. It’s definitely the DiggIt code (copied from the instructions here http://tuggo.org/projects/diggit/#integrate) ’cause it goes away when I remove it. The only argument I’m passing is ‘compact’ in the second set of quotes. Here’s what I’ve got in there: Any idea what it is?
Thanks!
Patty
Sorry Patty, That is one for the plugins author. I suggest you try a different plugin like Gregarious:http://lipidity.com/web/wordpress/wp-plugin-gregarious/
Hi Jeff,
How do I put Adsense to the side of the post and after comments?
My Adsense-Deluxe+ Widget is not activated. What is it?
If you look at my site www.tikidum.com you will see “Work At Home Online” above and “Work At Home Online|Opening A Small Business” as Weblog title. How do I fix it to be the same?
Take care,
Wolney
Wolney, Login to the dashboard, click options and change the Weblog title.
To learn how to use AdSense Deluxe read this: How To Use AdSense Deluxe Plugin
Which is on this page with all the instructions. WordPress Optimization Guide
To place AdSense after comments you need to place the code into the themes template files.
Placing it into the wrong place can render your blog useless.
I may do a post on it later and it is too long to explain now.
Jeff
Jeff,
Thanks for this great resource. I’ve just put together http://davisdentalgroup.com, and it is showing up fine in all browsers except MSIE 6 & 7. Problem screenshots: http://davisdentalgroup.com/screenshots.
Any ideas for how to fix either of these issues?
Thank you,
Jonathan Stotts
Jonathon, in my IE7 browser it looks like the “Request An Appointment” box is the first place to look. Because it is wider than the sidebar and is into the content area. It is either too big for the sidebar or you have an open tag in it.
Try removing it and see if that fixes your problem. If so resize it or check for open HTML or script tags.
Here is a post explaining more: My WordPress Blog is Broken and I Don’t Know What to Do
Jeff,
This is not exactly a wordpress issue, but after I publish a post who do I submit it to?
Sorry if this sounds really naive.
Barb there are numerous sites to submit to. The first place to start is onlywire.com. Which is actually one site that submits to a group all at once. There are links to others at the bottom of your blog posts too.
If you read the Authority Black Book you will understand much more about it. I encourage all my clients at least twice to download and read this great free resource. I have a link to it here: http://www.wordpressmax.com/thanks
Hello Jeff,
I have a new WP and get an error message just below the html editor reading: “Not Acceptable
An appropriate representation of the requested resource /businessblog/wp-admin/upload.php could not be found on this server”.
Can you help? Many thanks.
Gerda
Gerda, you need to add the following to your .htaccess file:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
You may still have issues uploading after that due to restrictions on the account by Host4Profit. I have done enough blogs for PIPS members to know how to get it all fixed but it is a little more complex than I can explain in a comment.
Hello Jeff, thanks a lot for your immediate reply. I appreciate your help.
Kindest regards
Gerda
Jeff, the htaccess file already has this text in. What do i next, since i understand this problem is too complex to be handled here.
Thanks again and have a nice evening.
Gerda
Gerda try this in the .htaccess file too:
<IfModule mod_security.c>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</IfModule>
Gerda, contact your hosting provider, I assume is Host4Profit, and tell them you need access to the tmp folder to run WordPress. Then test it again, if it still isn’t working contact them again.
Hello jeff,
Could you please tell me why the visual editor on my blog is black?
Also I activated simple tags, added the tags in the relevant place beneath a post but, the tags do not appear when published?
Thankyou,
Barb
When asking a question about problem with your blog please leave a link to the blog in the comment.
Barb the theme you are using is bleeding into the Visual editor. Try switching themes and I bet you will get a white visual editor. If so try the themes authors website for a solution or a different theme. Sorry I can’t fix a theme I didn’t create.
The simple tags are to be placed at the bottom of the actual write post box or within the post itself, not in the tag area below it. The tag area below the write post box is the WordPress built-in tagging system you should add the same tags in it as you do within the post. Do not use the brackets in this area like you do with simple tags within the post.
I added Simple tags but didn’t activate it because I don’t have a guide for it so can’t offer much help at this time.
The Simple tags site has instructions here: http://www.broobles.com/scripts/simpletags/
Jeff,
Changed my link to my blog as requested.
Many thanks for your answers.
Reagrds
Barb.
Jeff,
Never having done this before, can you please tell me how to upload images “.gif” files from a folder to my website?
I haven’t got a clue, or perhaps you can point me to some instructions.
Thanks in advance.
Barb
Barb, to add an image to a WordPress post scroll down under the write post box and click the browse button in the upload area.
If you are asking how to upload files to your hosting account you can do so with an FTP client or the file manager in your hosting accounts control panel.
Hi, Jeff, after you were of great help with solving my first problem with my WP blog i wrote my first post and already have a new problem. When i click on my links “category” , “recent posts” or “archive” it always shows my PIPS site instead of the post. What am i missing? Many thanks.
Gerda
Gerda you may be sharing the data base with another blog or your Permalinks are not set correctly. I couldn’t tell unless I login to the blog and hosting account to look.
Jeff,
Can you tell me how I can tag my main keywords in my post to the same post. I have seen many experienced bloggers (e.g. Jeff Schuman) put such tags at the end of the blog posts. I heard it’s good for SEO.
How do I tag keywords in my blog post to Technorati and displaying the tags at the end of my blog post. At the moment, I do individual tagging [tag-tec] on each and every keyword phrase at the end of my post and it works. But is there a better way of doing this?
Peter Lee
Work From Home Business Blog
Peter, your blog has two tagging plugins in place and Ultimate Tag Warrior shows your tags at the bottom of each post.
You don’t need to add the Technorati tags at the end of each post by hand. You can [tag-tec] and [tag-ice] throughout the post to make it look natural.
Besides any tags you add in the Tags area below will automatically ping Technorati and IceRocket.
So to answer your question, yes there is an easier way to add the tags at the bottom of the post [tag-tec] just don’t bother. Put them in the Tags area below the post box.
Jeff…
I have a Minneapolis real estate website at http://realestatetwincities.net. The site ranks well for “minneapolis real estate” in Google. I also have 50 other pages for 50 other cities surrounding Minneapolis. I would like to rank well for them also. They are listed at http://realestatetwincities.net/featured-communites. I don’t want to add too many city links in the sidebar. I don’t want to clutter up the site.
I tried adding a few city links in the footer. Is there a maximum number of links I could add here without hurting my ranking for “minneapolis real estate?”
Kermit, I am not an SEO expert and your question is really not WordPress related but about SEO in general. I do know that inbound links are better than outbound links, but at what point do they diminish your rankings I have no idea and only the geeks at Google could answer that for you.
But my guess is that your ranking for Minneapolis real estate has nothing to do with the number of outbound links you have, and ranking for others depends on how many posts about those terms you have and the number of links you have on other sites with those terms as the anchor text point back to your site.
Jeff,
I have 2 questions:
1. How can I find out how many RSS(Feedburner) subscribers I have.
2, I read that some wordpress blogs are set to auto ping with each blog post that is “published” and if not setup correctly, any subsequent edits (and “saved”) on the same blog post provides another ping which can get you into trouble with Google. I know my blog has auto pinging whenever I publish a post. But I like to find out if the auto pinging is only for the very first publishing and that it won’t hurt me whenever I make changes to my blog posts.
Thanks
Peter Lee
Work From Home Business Blog
Peter, login to your FeedBurner account to see your subscribers.
The plugin that automatically pings for you will not ping when you edit a post, just when a new post is published.
Peter after this I will delete all your questions. Its time you take control of your site and learn how to use Google.
Jeff,
Could you tell us the advantages of using the Smart Update Pinger plugin versus using the built in wordpress “update services”?
Also, is there any truth that adding too many plugins will slow down the loading of the blog?
Thanks,
Alex
Alex Smart Update Pinger can be turned off so no pings are not sent. This is an option you may want if you make a bunch of posts in one day and don’t want the sites to get all those pings that could flag your blog as spamming. Or if you are testing something. It also doesn’t ping an already published post after you edit it.
A lot of plugins can slow down a blog yes but it depends on what the plugin does. These types of plugins are generally those that depend on another site to work or to generate a visual effect on the blog, similarly like using a lot of banner ads hosted on another site. Also a lot of graphics can slow it down too.
Hi Jeff,
Hoping you can help. I recently went to a self hosted wordpress blog and had someone help with the install because it kept showing a messge that I needed to update. In any case, I thought we had it going, then one day I made a post and for some unknown reason the “front” page posts near the bottom (older posts) showed up in huge font size. I’m unable to change it and it only seems to be on the front page. Also, I was told that it displays fine in Firefox - I use IE. My blog URL is http://www.TheBuzzAboutMyBiz.com
Thanks in advance!
Always Grateul,
Andrea
Andrea , another reason to not upgrade WordPress until it is absolutely necessary! The bold text might be coming from an open tag <b> somewhere in the theme or in a post or the sidebar. If you copied and pasted a post from MS Word or another website this may the cause.
I haven’t messed with version 2.5 much yet but I had issues on a test blog with Simple Tags plugin causing strange things too. Resetting the Simple Tags plugin fixed it.
So 1st reset Simple Tags if you have it,
2nd pull off sidebar widgets one at a time to see it it is code in one of them,
3rd look for and clean up code in the latests posts,
4th look for bad code or a missing </div> in the themes index.php file.
Jeff,
Thanks for all you do for us.
I just did a new install of 2.5, so you may not be able to help btu I’d rather start with you and get an answer than go to the WP forum and either get no answer or a load of crap.
after I login, go to write, click on the add image icon and have the new image manager loaded
Jeff,
I don’t know what happened on my just submitted message, it didn’t come out what I thought I wrote. I’ll re-write it and send again.
Michael
Jeff,
Thanks for all you do for us.
I just did a new install of 2.5, so you may not be able to help but I’d rather start with you and get a “can’t help” answer than go to the wp forum and either get “no answer” or a load of crap.
I did a new install of 2.5 and all went very well. This is about my 10th install so I have that part down. My problem is when I launch the new image manager and try to upload a picture (one that I had previously uploaded on another wp blog, v2.3.3. I get a big red message “that the image didn’t pass the upload test”. I ftped into the site and the image is there in the newly created uploads folder. The image is listed on both the upload tab and the gallery tab and has the “show” link. But clicking on the link did nada. I tried this with several other images and same problem.
Not knowing what the new “normal standards” are for 2.5, I decided to upgrade a different blog, v2.3.3, on the same server but in a different domain. Using the same downloaded 2.5 zip files, the upgrade was a success although when I went to the upload manager, I found I had the exact same problem.
I then downloaded a new 2.5 zip and going back to the first site, the one I did the new install on, I deleted all the files. Then I dropped all the tables from the database and started all over again. Same exact results.
I went to the wp forums and there are lots of 2.5 issues but not this one.
Thoughts???
Michael
Michael try to change the permissions on the uploads folder and all file and folders within it to 777 (writable) .
Jeff,
They were and are set to 777. That is one of the first things I checked and I just checked again. In fact, with 2.5 on a new installation or upgrade where there was no previous “uploads” folder, if the permissions are not set or correct, it will not create the new “uploads” folder on the first upload attempt, just give a “no permissions error”. I know because that is what happened on the first new install I tried. So on the 2nd attempt, the upgrade on the 2nd site, and the 3rd attempt, the delete and new install back on the first site, I made sure the /wp-content/ and it’s parent /blog/ were both permissioned to 777. Also, after the system created the new /uploads/ folder I checked and it also was 777.
Michael
Mike I have very little experience with 2.5 so far but I did have a similar issue with my site when I originally installed WP over a year ago…
First try this code in your .htaccess file:
<IfModule mod_security.c>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</IfModule>
but don’t copy it from this comment area get it from this text link: :
htaccess.txt
If that doesn’t do it it may be a setting in the hosting account that you may need to contact them about. Tell them what is going on, they may need to set the proper permissions in the tmp folder or tell you how.
I have a hosting account that I install a lot of blog on and it will not allow any uploads until I contact them and ask for them to do it.
Don’t ask me what the tmp folder does or what is involved all I know is that they set it correctly when I tell them that WordPress needs permission to upload. It may not even be your problem but that is all I know about it. I would be interested if this fixes it or if you do find the fix.
Jeff
Jeff,
I found this article: 2.5 Image/Media Uploader problems
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/164999?replies=1
It has a list of all sorts of things to try. I did try adding the .htaccess file but it didn’t do anything by itself. The article says there is a bug in IE and there are two wp php files that can be downloaded from
http://trac.wordpress.org/changeset/7573?format=zip&new=7573
which when uploaded changed the look of my photo uploader page. Now everything works wonderful.
Oh yeah, one of the items was to upgrade my flash player which I did, but don’t know if it helped my problem or not.
Thanks again,
Michael
Max,
I went back to both of my 2.5 sites and found that in both cases the .htaccess file was gone. I uploaded it again and it disappeared again. So I guess it isn’t suppose to be there. Doesn’t matter, the upload still works fine on both sites without it. Seems it was the 2 new “IEFix files” that did the trick. BTW, the reason for upgrading to the latest flash player is that one of the files is “/swfuploads/header.php” file, so must be a connection.
Next problem: after uploading an image on one of the sites (A), it won’t let me insert the image into the post. Media page just goes white and does nothing. On the other site (B), the insert in post works fine. I’m going to copy all the files from A and replace all of B. With the templates identical, lets see what happens.
I’ll report on how it goes.
Michael
Hi Jeff
Thanks to your help my blog seems to work fine so far. However, today i generated a google sitemap for my main site and i wonder why my blog shows up with HTTP error 403. When i click that link the blog is coming up like normal. Do you have any idea? 1000 thanks.
Gerda
Gerda your blog has its own sitemap, but I don’t really understand where you see the 403 error.
Hello Jeff,
If you generate a google xml sitemap with xml-sitemaps.com for http://www.homebizground.com you will see that it says “businessblog/1page HTTP error 403. That is irritating me.
Peter sorry I do not know why it is getting this error or if it even makes a difference.
You can try another this is a more detailed generator:
http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp
Hi Jeff,
Many thanks for your reply. I will try auditmypc. Have a nice weekend.
Gerda
I’ve written an email to the support address about 3 days ago and did not get an answer.
My problem is this:
“I’ve set up my new blog and things are looking ok in Firefox but not in Explorer. I also have another problem. When a person tries to comment, it won’t go through. It just freezes there.
I would be ready to hire your services to look into these problems if need be
I also want to have a category dealing with having a home business. Right now my categories are getting too big. I only want 2. One for weight loss and the other for home business . But I only want certain posts
to go on certain pages and I am getting confused.
I also have a static home page as you will see which I want to keep. I have read your information on categories
and am afraid it doesn’t compute at this moment.
Also cannot get the rss feed to work and don’t know how to add a clickable link in a text widget. am ok with the post area up to now.
I am open to any improvements you might suggest and would consider hiring your help..
Thanks.
Marie (aka The Stressbuster) who’s not doing that great of a job staying stress
free at the moment. “
Marie, I replied to your email the day I got it and it bounced back with an error message “no such host found”.
Hello Jeff,
I am just signing up to feedburner and I get this message:-
http://www.privy2profit.com/blog
FeedBurner discovered more than one feed at that address. Please select one to use as your source:
RSS 2.0: http://www.privy2profit.com/blog/feed
RSS .92: http://www.privy2profit.com/blog/feed/rss
Atom 0.3: http://www.privy2profit.com/blog/feed/atom
I don’t know which one to select, you did install my blog for me.
Thanks,
Barb.
Barb use this one:
RSS 2.0: http://www.privy2profit.com/blog/feed
Hi Jeff, I am pretty sure this will be a simple one.
I added a Digg button to all of my posts. Added the code to my index.php and my single.php.
all seemed to be working fine.
I have noticed that on the front page of the blog……if one story gets Dugg, they all now show the same badge and all go to the same story that got dugg.
If you look at a post as a single post it all looks and works correct but it is just on the main page.
any thoughts?
Cuzzy, it looks like you just pasted the code from the one specific post ‘Not for those afraid of heights’ into the theme. And honestly in my browser it doesn’t look too great in the area it is in. Either get the correct code or look for a Digg WordPress Plugin.
You already have Digg as part of the Add This plugin.
Jeff,
I don’t seem to be able to copy the code from the text widgets. Is there a reason for this or am I doing something wrong.
Thanks
Barb.
Barb I have no idea what you mean.????
Jeff,
Sorry, my question wasn’t very clear.
I need to highlight and copy the code for my newsletter on my website from the code in a text widget on my blog, but I cannot highlight it to copy it.
Barb
Barb, You need to copy it from the WordPress dashboard. Go to Presentation, Widgets, Click the little box on on the Text 1 Widget. place the mouse in the code area and press ctrl and a at the same time on the keyboard then right click and copy it.
I’ve got a WP 2.5 question that I hope you can answer. Since upgrading, when I insert HTML code into a text widget nothing appears after clicking on “Save”. Before WP 2.5, this was not a problem. I am doing something wrong, or need to tweak something?
Thanks.
Mark I have limited knowledge of issues with 2.5 but did you click the Change button on the bottom left of the widget before you click Save Changes?
I just posted a video on this very subject. WordPress Widgets Instruction Video Version 2.5
Jeff,
Excellent video - learned a lot about how to use the widgets, especially the text widget trick.
I tried your solution to the image problem but they still won’t appear even though the widget is in the sidebar. Perhaps I need to reinstall WP 2.5.
Hi Jeff,
Appears you’ve added an informative new blog. A lot has changed since I was last here. Could wordpress work for my new site?
Carl WordPress can run just about any website.
Hi Jeff,
Thank you for such a great assistance to geek impaired people for free!
Here’s my question
I upgraded from 2.0.2 to the latest 2.5.1 version “I used the WP Upgrade Plug-in from Techie-buzz”
After finishing the upgrade everything is OK except that pages take ages to load and sometimes even timed out
Any Idea!
Firas, sorry no idea why pages load slow, it could be an image or banner. If it is the link on your name above the permalinks are not redirecting properly. May want to check your Permalinks.
A suggestion is dump 2.5.x and go back to 2.3.3
Hi Jeff,
I was “trying” to activate some plugins and now have no access to my site. Can’t seem to login to undo whatever I did. I get this error message across my header. Any suggestions?http://www.TheBuzzAboutMyBiz.com and you should be able to see what I’m speaking about.
Always Grateful,
Andrea
Andrea login to your hosting account and delete the BAStats plugin. The error message on your site tells the name of the offending plugin.
Hey Jeff,
What sounds so easy to fix can be frustrating for the technically challenged. I searched in my Cpanel within the blog folder for the BAstats plugin and can not seem to find it. Could you be more specific as to where it may be located.
Thanks.
Always Grateful,
Andrea
Andrea, the location of the plugin was shown in the error message. I don’t see the error any more so perhaps you figured it out.
Some plugins are a single file and some are an entire folder or directory. I don’t know the actual name of the file or folder to delete but it should be something like BAStats.
Plugins are in your blogs plugins directory within the wp-content directory.
Hey Jeff,
I was wondering if it’s possiable to add a squeeze page to my site and if so how?
John adding an a squeeze page to your site even if it is running on WordPress is the same as if it was a static HTML site. I assume you don’t want the page to look like the WordPress theme. I suggest creating a new directory in your hosting account. And then create your new HTML squeeze page and upload it to the new directory and call the squeeze page index.html.
For example if call your new directory squeeze and place your new page in it and call the file index.hrml the URL for the new squeeze page would be http://www.homeaffilate.com/squeeze.
Its very important to make sure you don’t put a file into the main directory called index.html! If you want to put the new file in the main directory call it something different. The reason I suggest using a new directory is to keep your files organized and the file extension will not show on the URL.
I have instructions to use NVU to edit a static site here:How To Edit A Webpage With Nvu
Hi Jeff,
I looking to change the theme of my blog and was told to:
“download your theme folder and place it onto your computer somewhere where you will not touch it, just use it for a backup.”
My problem, I can’t seem to figure out how to download it.
Simple yet detailed advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Always Grateful,
Andrea
Andrea, you need to connect to your hosting account with an FTP client. Then browse to your themes folder and download it. Your theme is in the themes folder that is in the wp-content folder. wp-content/themes/yourtheme.
If you haven’t modified the theme in any way then it really isn’t necessary as long as you have the original.
Jeff,
I have been trying to get my recent comments widget to work the way I want it, but it just keeps bundling all the names and links together. It makes it look like a paragraph in my sidebar. Your Recent Comments area looks exactly like how I want mine. How did you do it?
Thanks,
Kyle Judkins
Kyle, my recent comments is the default from the theme. I did nothing special to it. Your theme’s css for the the recent comments must need some tweaking. Look for it in the themes style.css file.
Jeff,
I’m not that great at editing the css. Do you have any tips on what I should be looking for or how I should change it?
Thanks,
Kyle
Kyle, all themes are coded differently, I couldn’t start to explain all the possibilities. You may want to take your question to a forum and be prepared to show the code of your style.css file.
Digital Point is a good place to start. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=40
Hi Jeff,
Well I was able to change my theme with the old one safe and sound on my HD. Thanks!
I wanted to change the background color of my header and it seems what ever i do it remains the same. I went into the theme editor where I cahnged the color code but nothing happens. it worked for the Post titles and Header name, but doesn’t seem to change the header background color.