Help with WordPress

[DDolan1075]

After changing over to Wordpress from the original platform for your hosted blogs, I was won dering if there was a good place to try to get my blog to look similar to what it used to look like. I like the black background to show off my pictures, but the titles to recent posts and links are invisible on the page. Any help would be appreciated to get this straightened out.

Also, how do you get next page and previous page buttons set up on the page. I prefer this to looking at the side bar to get to the next page.

Thanks and Happy New Year.

Dave Dolan

[DDolan1075]

I had incorrectly changed the links color and got that straight. I was wondering if there is a way to upload plugins for my widgets. I am sure that there will be more questions. Sorry.

[admin]

Hi Dave, here are a couple of Surfbirds blogs using the black background and some different examples of font type and color to help with readability. Black is always good to show off photos but there is the challenge of making the font readable. These two sites seem to succeed at that:

http://www.surfbirds.com/community-blogs/DD/
http://www.surfbirds.com/community-blogs/feathersandink/

Alan Henry's Falkland blog has good examples of how to show off your photography using gallery and thumbnail options:
http://www.surfbirds.com/community-blogs/falklandbirder/

There are "previous" and "next" links with each entry:
http://www.surfbirds.com/community-blogs/DDolan1075/2011/12/17/first-christmas-bird-count-of-season/
but in "appearance" you can change the layout and get rid of the sidebar completely on your blog homepage, although the sidebar is useful if you have widgets.

In terms of widgets, Belvide blog shows off a few of the basic widgets most blogs have such as clustrmaps and top 100 badges etc. http://www.surfbirds.com/community-blogs/Belvide84/

Wordpress is a little more restrictive than the previous blogging system in that you can't add widgets that have javascript code. If you were previously using clustrmaps, you will need to modify your code. Select the simplest html version "B" see below and follow instructions:
http://blog.clustrmaps.com/html-setup/clustrmaps-on-wordpress/
going to "Appearance" "Widgets" and then selecting "Text" widget to add to your blog sidebar.

For weather, you need to use widgets that are plain html. Apparently wunderground and weatherbug have some. Again, you would use the "text" widget to add any code to the sidebar.

Wordpress is widely used, so with some googling, it should be possible to find tips and tricks and answers to many questions about style and widgets etc.

Admin has to install plugins. All plugins require constant monitoring for security upgrades, so it's better if admin controls what plugins are in operation so that they can be upgraded on a regular basis. if there are requests for a plugin and enough users want it, we should be able to install.

Would encourage all blog users to post questions/issues as well as helpful hints or new discoveries on the forum for others to benefit from.

[DDolan1075]

thank you. That helps alot. Especially about the Text Widget. Now I can play with it.

[DDolan1075]

I got a comment about the width of my pictures. I actually like the way the look when they are bigger, but if they are not doing well for those with different screen size, then I obviously need to change things:

Dave, your resolution and color are staggeringly beautiful. On my screen, however, the photos seem squeezed by the side margins so that the birds are all a bit elongated vertically. I think it’s a sizing error within WordPress. Possibly the template doesn’t allow pix at quite that size. I just wanted to give you a heads up.

[admin]

Yes, I don't see that on your latest postings I've looked at. They all look great. Will take a lot at your old posts in case it's an issue when your old posts were brought over.

[admin]

I'll post tips and tricks here as same questions do come up a lot and we encourage others to post here with tips and issues too:

* Clustrmaps. You need to make a slight change to the code your were using before. Select the simplest html version "B" see below and follow instructions:
http://blog.clustrmaps.com/html-setup/clustrmaps-on-wordpress/
going to "Appearance" "Widgets" and then selecting "Text" widget to add to your blog sidebar.

* Twitter feed. Wordpress doesn't allow the javascript code twitter uses for their widgets. We may install the twitter plugin by popular demand. However, you can still post a feed of your tweets using RSS. Here's how:
You can add your twitter feed by logging-in, going to appearance>widgets and dragging the RSS widget to your sidebar. Enter your twitter rss feed, which is:
https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=xxxx (where xxx is your screenname)
select number of items to display (5 or less seems popular), putting in the title of the feed eg my twitter feed and then click "save".

* Change background of my blog from black text on white to white text on black. Go to appearance > theme options, you can change it to a black background with white text. To change font color, when you are writing or editing a post there is a button at the far right of the row of buttons for bold, italic etc. Hover over that button and says "show/hide kitchen sink". Click that and you get more formatting options. Click on the "A" button and you get a choice of colours for your text.

[DDolan1075]

I seem to be having the same problem that Babbette metnioned on my last post. My landscape pictures are posting as portrait on my post. I have not published the post yet and may have really messed things up by trying to fix it. Would you take a look and either fix my settings or tell me what to do? thanks

[DDolan1075]

On my work computer with the large screen, everything looks ok, don't know if it is just the computer screen size.

Posting a video from YouTube does not seem to embed the video like they say that it should. Does that only happen after the post is published and not on preview? Here is the help page that I used:

http://en.support.wordpress.com/videos/youtube/

I tried posting like with a picture using Photobucket, I tried using the embed code, I tried just copying and pasting and unlinking as well as allowing the link and I do not get the video embedded. I don't want just a hyperlink.

Sorry to be such a pain...

[DDolan1075]

I posted this on my test blog. Here is the location for those who might have an idea for me. http://www.surfbirds.com/community-blogs/ddolantest/

http://www.surfbirds.com/community-blogs/ddolantest/

[DDolan1075]

It seems that the videos did show up once published on my test blog! But it did not post on my regular blog when published! Does it have anything to do with Akismet?

[admin]

Hi Dave,

1. I was able to embed the 2 Youtube videos on to your main blog. When on youtube.com, click "share" below the video and then click "embed". You will see an iframe piece of code that is highlighted. Copy and then go to your post, click "html" on top right and paste it in. Seemed to work fine and not sure how that compares to advice on the wiki you referred to and also no idea why you got it to work on your test blog and not your main blog.

2. For photos that you are embedding from another site (eg photobucket), I found I was able to keep the aspect ratio by clicking the "add image" icon next to Upload/Insert. This is above the text box, when you are in "edit post" mode. Then select "From URL" and enter your image details, url etc. Your White-tailed Hawk saved it's landscape ratio when I added it to a test post just now.

Let me know if you still have problems and keep the questions coming as it's helpful for others to see the solutions.

Thanks

[DDolan1075]

http://i317.photobucket.com/albums/mm392/ddolan1075/2012-01-25_22-28-10_355.jpg

Here is what is on my computer.

here is the html code from my blog:

<img src="http://i317.photobucket.com/albums/mm392/ddolan1075/High%20Island%202010/100219_39777Attwater2_filtered.jpg" alt="White-tailed Hawk on Windmill" width="1024" height="731" />


This is what it should look like:

http://i317.photobucket.com/albums/mm392/ddolan1075/High%20Island%202010/100219_39777Attwater2_filtered.jpg


The videos did work. Thanks

[DDolan1075]

BTW my pictures on My Favorite CBC look just fine on this computer.

[admin]

Hi Dave, I have been able to replicate the squished effect on your pics. Have you tried the method #2 above?


2. For photos that you are embedding from another site (eg photobucket), I found I was able to keep the aspect ratio by clicking the "add image" icon next to Upload/Insert. This is above the text box, when you are in "edit post" mode. Then select "From URL" and enter your image details, url etc. Your White-tailed Hawk saved it's landscape ratio when I added it to a test post just now.

[DDolan1075]

Sorry for the time away, I went down to the valley for some birding and did not have my computer with me...

I do in fact use photobucket, and that is how I post my pictures (using the icon above the text box. I started playing with the maximums on the blog setup folder from the side of the WordPress front page and forgot what the original size was... I believe that it has to do with the settings of the computer that is looking at the blog. My Aunt noticed it first when I didn't notice it and I brought it to your attention.

What did you do to replicate the problem, or more importantly, what did you do to fix it? Obviously, me asking you to fix everything is not a good idea, unless it is a different problem each time (giving a man a fish vs teaching a man to fish and he can feed himself...). I have worked a little with WordPress for the past year but still have some issues working with it. I definitely think that there are some quirks and inconsistencies with it, and maybe that has to do with the setups. I do like the look of the pictures though. Sorry I am rambling...

I appreciate all of your help, and I hope that I answered your question that yes I do post pictures the way that you suggested.

[DDolan1075]

I finally looked at my blog on my laptop and the last entry is still looking the way it did above. It looks great on my big screen monitor at work but still looks bad on the laptop. The rest of the entries look fine. I am working on my next entry now. I will let you know.

[admin]

Hi Dave, I adjusted the aspect ratio on all the photos in your latest published post.

To do this, while editing the post, I clicked on the photo. Two icons appear in the upper left of the photo. A delete icon and a picture icon. Click the picture icon. A box pops up to "edit image". Go ahead and click "link to image" button. This means your readers will be able to click on the picture to see the original image at its full size over at photobucket.

Then go ahead and click "advanced settings". Where it has the pixel size of the image, go ahead and delete those sizes so that the width and height boxes are empty. Then click "update". It will now scale your image to match the original aspect ratio of your source image.

Going forward, as you add photos to a post, do the following:

For photos that you are embedding from another site (eg photobucket), I found I was able to keep the aspect ratio by clicking the "add image" icon next to Upload/Insert. This is above the text box, when you are in "edit post" mode. Then select "From URL" and enter your image details, url etc.

Best, Admin

[DDolan1075]

Thanks, sorry that I have not responded, but you fixed my problem. Actually, I have been posting that way all along, so I am not sure what went wrong.

I have been playing with the menus lately and have put in lists and photo galleries. Unfortunately, I am having issues with the galleries. I tried to upload some pictures, but ran out of room, not sure what happened with my limits, so I have just been using photobucket. But I would really like to be able to have nice pages of thumbprints that can be clicked on. Is there a way to do that without uploading, or maybe getting more room? I may have done something wrong initially, but it seems that I ran out of space quite quickly. Have you increased the max upload since then?

Have a look at my menu bar and let me know what you think.

Also, How do you select pages for Smooth Slider and do you need to fill in all of the info or is that for tweaking to make it more your own style?

[admin]

Hi Dave, everyone has 300MB of space, so no issue there. Let us know what the error message says. Do note there is a 1MB limit per photo though.

Your menus look great and a great way to display lists!

We're still working on smooth slider but in meantime, if you'e interested in creating a homepage for your blog, with featured posts, there is a showcase template that has featured posts that rotate. See here for how to activate that:
http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/twentyeleven/

and here's an example of it in action:
http://www.surfbirds.com/community-blogs/labirding/

[DDolan1075]

So I have been working with the Word Press for awhile now, and I have several things that have been difficult to deal with. First posting pictures can be a real problem, especially if I post several in a row. Things will look good on the workspace, but as soon as I save my work, only the first picture will be there, with the titles of the following pictures being put on the same title line of the first picture. So now I will post a . or write something to seperate the pictures to get around it and maybe I will go back and delete the text later and possibly have it stick or maybe not. Just slows down the job and frustrates.
I am not able to post my slide shows. I have tried all four options with photobucket, but no such luck.
I am still having issues with video not posting. I am not sure why it works sometimes and others it just deletes the whole code put in.

I will continue to try, but to be honest with you, it is inconsistent at best. I guess I can try to do what I did when I used the other program and write it up and copy and paste on another program but that seems wrong to me.

Also, getting logged off while typing on post on this forum seems wrong too! Fortunately, I copied and pasted my post before having to log in.

[DDolan1075]

So I am trying to post a video and have tried to post via the HTML as described before and the best I can get is a shortcut to the YouTube site. Most of the time WordPress just deletes my code. Very Frustrating!

I have tried pasting this: <iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Aj_t4N_nfJE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I have tried clicking on the Upload/Insert add Video button using the save code and got this: http://www.surfbirds.com/community-blogs/ddolantest/2012/04/03/test5/

Most of the time everything is just deleted though.

[admin]

Hi Dave, I just posted your youtube video using the method described.

It's here:
http://www.surfbirds.com/community-blogs/DDolan1075/2012/04/04/surfbird-in-texas/

After clicking "share" and then "embed" on youtube, I took the same code you got: <iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Aj_t4N_nfJE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I then clicked the "html" tab in the edit post mode and pasted it in to the post and saved it.

What browser are you using again?

[DDolan1075]

I am using Internet Explorer 8 at work. Not sure about my laptop at home. Thank you for doing that, I am not sure what the deal is because I am having the same problem with 2 different computers. If I need to use a different browser, I will try that. I was able to post it on my other blog that I am a guest writer for. It uses Word Press also, but has different buttons. I guess there are differences between programs, or there are different levels. Obviously, I have an issue and I am not seeing anybody else complain about it, so what are the browsers that are used over there?

[DDolan1075]

I tried to copy and paste to the original post using firefox and had the same problem. Basically, I pasted what you had put into the new post under the html tab and then updated and the program deleted the pasted code. It also did not post on the original post but on a more recent post.

[DDolan1075]

I tried to put a title up on the post and it got rid of the video. I then tried to restore and it left code on the blog. I really have the midas touch don't I?