Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Mike1o1
Sep 5, 2004
Tiluvas

Kitsch! posted:

Can anyone recommend any paid Worpdress templates that offer decent support (forums or otherwise)? I've been using free themes so far but unfortunately, whenever something inevitably goes awry I've had to rely on my very limited CSS knowledge to try to fix things (which usually ends up making things worse and breaking the site).

I've been looking at Simple Themes (http://www.simplethemes.com/wordpress-themes/), but I'm kind of hesitant about purchasing one and wondering if it's even worth it. I basically need something for a blog format that's simple but somewhat customizable.

I've been using http://themeshaper.com/thematic/, it's free and has a ton of customization and flexibility for creating child themes. They have forums and a wiki as well, though the wiki is fairly incomplete.

I think the default Twenty Eleven is just as simple and flexible for creating child themes these days, though.

I also found that CSS is really easy to learn, all I've been doing is using the Inspect Element feature of Chrome and Firebug on existing sites to figure out what they're doing.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Kitsch!
Jul 27, 2006

God made Adam and Eve, not Fluffy and Eve.

Mike1o1 posted:

I've been using http://themeshaper.com/thematic/, it's free and has a ton of customization and flexibility for creating child themes. They have forums and a wiki as well, though the wiki is fairly incomplete.

I think the default Twenty Eleven is just as simple and flexible for creating child themes these days, though.

I also found that CSS is really easy to learn, all I've been doing is using the Inspect Element feature of Chrome and Firebug on existing sites to figure out what they're doing.

Thanks, I'll have to check that one out. I think the problem I've found with trying to fix a site (mostly appearance related) is that I'll try to change the CSS to include or remove something and it ends up not working or completely doing the opposite of what I intended (most likely from user error). Recently I tried to include a header on a theme that didn't originally have one and it was a failed attempt after many frustrating attempts.

I do need to read up more on Firebug. I was working on link hover features recently and while the Firebug screen was showing one thing (that I wanted to remove), my original CSS was not showing it at all.

I feel like a technology-ignorant elderly person :(

cocteau
Nov 28, 2005

The best Darcy.

Kitsch! posted:

Thanks, I'll have to check that one out. I think the problem I've found with trying to fix a site (mostly appearance related) is that I'll try to change the CSS to include or remove something and it ends up not working or completely doing the opposite of what I intended (most likely from user error). Recently I tried to include a header on a theme that didn't originally have one and it was a failed attempt after many frustrating attempts.

I do need to read up more on Firebug. I was working on link hover features recently and while the Firebug screen was showing one thing (that I wanted to remove), my original CSS was not showing it at all.

I feel like a technology-ignorant elderly person :(

You might also like Weaver, which is a pretty cool (free) framework built on Twenty Ten.

Find me on AIM if you have simple questions too, I don't mind helping if it doesn't take too long.

Ned
May 23, 2002

by Hand Knit

Kitsch! posted:

I do need to read up more on Firebug. I was working on link hover features recently and while the Firebug screen was showing one thing (that I wanted to remove), my original CSS was not showing it at all.

I feel like a technology-ignorant elderly person :(

It might have been put in there with javascript.

jackpot
Aug 31, 2004

First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<
I've got a blog with a bunch of tags for each post. Those tags are being used for SEO purposes, and I'd rather not show them. If I go into single.php and comment out the post_detail div or put display:none on it, will Google still read it?

Ned
May 23, 2002

by Hand Knit
Use the css to negative text indent it. Or you can make the text really small and have it be the same color as the background.

cocteau
Nov 28, 2005

The best Darcy.

Ned posted:

Use the css to negative text indent it. Or you can make the text really small and have it be the same color as the background.

Right... the tags need to "show" on the screen in the sense that they are part of the generated HTML code. But it doesn't have to be visible to anyone actually looking at the page.

Using display:none or commenting out the php that calls the tags would hide the tags from both browsers AND google.

sim
Sep 24, 2003

Ned posted:

Use the css to negative text indent it. Or you can make the text really small and have it be the same color as the background.

Don't do this. Be forewarned that any trick you know of (including CSS hiding) is well known by Google and they most likely penalize for using them. Here's an article from 2005 that quotes a Google employee:

quote:

I don’t recommend that people use CSS to hide text... We can flag text that appears to be hidden using CSS at Google... If you’re straight-out using CSS to hide text, don’t be surprised if that is called spam...

There's also a Google Webmasters Tool help page which says the same thing.

cocteau
Nov 28, 2005

The best Darcy.

sim posted:

Don't do this. Be forewarned that any trick you know of (including CSS hiding) is well known by Google and they most likely penalize for using them.

What would you recommend then? Are there any google-approved alternatives?

sim
Sep 24, 2003

cocteau posted:

Are there any google-approved alternatives?
Essentially, no. In Google's view, anything that "presents information to search engines differently than to visitors" is "perceived as untrustworthy".

You could hide/move the text via Javascript, but I don't know the extent of how Google tracks/penalizes that kind of thing in comparison to CSS. My suggestion would be to style the tags in such a way that they are palatable to the reader: smaller, out of the way, but still readable text.

jackpot
Aug 31, 2004

First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<
Well drat, thanks for all of that; I think I came close to screwing the guy with my display:none brilliance. The page has a white background, so I've given the tags a #aaa color; they're still very visible, they just don't jump out like they used to.

cocteau
Nov 28, 2005

The best Darcy.

jackpot posted:

Well drat, thanks for all of that; I think I came close to screwing the guy with my display:none brilliance. The page has a white background, so I've given the tags a #aaa color; they're still very visible, they just don't jump out like they used to.



Would styling the tags with #fff color on a #fff background be a workaround I wonder...

jackpot
Aug 31, 2004

First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

cocteau posted:

Would styling the tags with #fff color on a #fff background be a workaround I wonder...
Good question! The answer is a very emphatic "no."

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66353

quote:

Hiding text or links in your content can cause your site to be perceived as untrustworthy since it presents information to search engines differently than to visitors. Text (such as excessive keywords) can be hidden in several ways, including:

- Using white text on a white background
- Including text behind an image
- Using CSS to hide text
- Setting the font size to 0

Twiin
Nov 11, 2003

King of Suck!

Kitsch! posted:

Can anyone recommend any paid Worpdress templates that offer decent support (forums or otherwise)? I've been using free themes so far but unfortunately, whenever something inevitably goes awry I've had to rely on my very limited CSS knowledge to try to fix things (which usually ends up making things worse and breaking the site).

I think the Carrington guys offer support.

jackpot
Aug 31, 2004

First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

Twiin posted:

I think the Carrington guys offer support.
I'm really diggin' their footer:

Aturaten
Mar 23, 2008

by elpintogrande

sim posted:

Don't do this. Be forewarned that any trick you know of (including CSS hiding) is well known by Google and they most likely penalize for using them. Here's an article from 2005 that quotes a Google employee:

Untrue in the sense that Google literally has to manually check if websites use CSS in their deception. Many websites, EVEN GMAIL, use CSS tricks for presentational purposes. They flag you if they find a shitload of keywords on a single page that are not particularly linked.

Twiin
Nov 11, 2003

King of Suck!

jackpot posted:

I'm really diggin' their footer:



The Carrington Build theme is pretty much revolutionary, if you're building CMSs. I spent two or three years with a team developing two plugins to help CMSify our sites, and Build makes them both very nearly obsolete.

maskenfreiheit
Dec 30, 2004

cheesypeanut posted:

code:
#access .menu {
	float: right;
	left: -50%;
	position: relative;
}

#access ul {
	left: 50%;
	position: relative;
}
Shamelessly stolen from here. Let me know how it goes.

Didn't seem to work. Where should I put the code? I stuck it in style.css

DNQ
Sep 7, 2004

Let me hear you balalaika's ringing out, come and keep your comrade warm!
This is probably more of a Facebook question than a Wordpress question, but it's come up in the context of a Wordpress plugin so I will ask here. I have installed a plugin which allows site readers to "like" a page and it will be posted on their facebook page. The only problem is if you like my front-page (http://www.themasterplanblog.com), it shows up on Facebook as "Lithium Hosting - Account Setup" etc. Where is this drawn from? It's a FB thing, I know (it's literally the same as if I type the url in and his post - again it doesn't retrieve the site name properly). Any ideas? It's bugging me! Presumably it's a meta tag somewhere..

maskenfreiheit
Dec 30, 2004
I'm trying to center the navbar in my coraline theme. I googled a bit and found this css:

#access .menu ul {float:left; position:relative; left:50%;}
#access .menu ul li {position:relative; right:50%;}
#access .menu ul ul {position:absolute; left:0;}
#access .menu ul ul li {left:0;}

I put that in style.css, but it didn't help. Any ideas on how to do this?

Bonefish
Jul 29, 2008
I would love for someone to tell me how they got jQuery UI installed and functional on their wordpress theme. I am tearing my hair out trying to get this to work, but no love.

Ned
May 23, 2002

by Hand Knit

Bonefish posted:

I would love for someone to tell me how they got jQuery UI installed and functional on their wordpress theme. I am tearing my hair out trying to get this to work, but no love.

code:
wp_enqueue_script('jquery-ui-core', '', array('jquery'));
wp_enqueue_style('jquery-ui-theme', get_bloginfo('stylesheet_directory') .'/jquery_ui_stylesheet.css');
That will load the code and you'll need to install a jQuery UI theme in your theme directory and link to the stylesheet.

abelwingnut
Dec 23, 2002


I just started a new WordPress today via Bitnami. Oddly I don't see the sharing section under Settings. Is that because I'm only running it local at this point? Will it appear once I upload to a live server?

Aturaten
Mar 23, 2008

by elpintogrande

Ned posted:

code:
wp_enqueue_script('jquery-ui-core', '', array('jquery'));
wp_enqueue_style('jquery-ui-theme', get_bloginfo('stylesheet_directory') .'/jquery_ui_stylesheet.css');
That will load the code and you'll need to install a jQuery UI theme in your theme directory and link to the stylesheet.

Today I learned that wp_enqueue_style is a thing.

Broccoli Must Die!
Aug 12, 2004

Meow.

DNQ posted:

This is probably more of a Facebook question than a Wordpress question, but it's come up in the context of a Wordpress plugin so I will ask here. I have installed a plugin which allows site readers to "like" a page and it will be posted on their facebook page. The only problem is if you like my front-page (http://www.themasterplanblog.com), it shows up on Facebook as "Lithium Hosting - Account Setup" etc. Where is this drawn from? It's a FB thing, I know (it's literally the same as if I type the url in and his post - again it doesn't retrieve the site name properly). Any ideas? It's bugging me! Presumably it's a meta tag somewhere..

I don't know the answer to this, as I have never had any problems with Lithium/FB as you've mentioned. You may well be better off asking in the Lithium Hosting thread.

Tars Tarkas
Apr 13, 2003

Rock the Mok



A nasty woman, I think you should try is, Jess.


DNQ posted:

This is probably more of a Facebook question than a Wordpress question, but it's come up in the context of a Wordpress plugin so I will ask here. I have installed a plugin which allows site readers to "like" a page and it will be posted on their facebook page. The only problem is if you like my front-page (http://www.themasterplanblog.com), it shows up on Facebook as "Lithium Hosting - Account Setup" etc. Where is this drawn from? It's a FB thing, I know (it's literally the same as if I type the url in and his post - again it doesn't retrieve the site name properly). Any ideas? It's bugging me! Presumably it's a meta tag somewhere..

I previewed your site as a facebook post and it pulled the normal meta info:

The Masterplan - Opinion and Commentary
http://themasterplanblog.com/

Opinion and Commentary

poshphil
Jun 17, 2005

I'm currently trying to get a business started designing websites for a particular business sector. The websites basically want quite a large amount of static information, but I'd quite like the end users to be able to edit stuff and have a blog as well if they want to, so have decided to approach this using Wordpress (I work in the business sector, have dabbled with website stuff over the years but am effectively learning from scratch).

I'm just wondering what people think would be the best way of doing this before I start creating hundreds of pages so I don't have to go back and change loads of stuff later.

Essentially it's a resource area for clients of the businesses, and within that area there's maybe 8 different categories. Within each of these there's up to another 10 or so sub-categories and then within that there's another 10 or so individual pages with the content relating to that sub-category.

I haven't entirely decided how I want users to navigate it yet either - I think Resources will likely be a main menu item, but whether I have a drop down for the first 8 categories from that and then the rest of the navigation within those first 8 pages or something else I'm not 100% sure.

Following on from that, the static content that I create will be relevant to every site I design, and will be one of the main selling points, so I will be aiming to roll it out on each site I do. With that in mind, is there a best way to do this or would it be a case of moving the database etc. onto each server and applying whatever theme I design for the client from there?

I'm still getting to grips with themes and Wordpress itself but I want to be giving consideration to how I'll be adding content to the site when I'm designing themes, so any thoughts/help/advice will be appreciated.

Also if anyone has any recommendations on books/tutorials particularly on the theming side I would appreciate that as well.

Twiin
Nov 11, 2003

King of Suck!

poshphil posted:

I'm currently trying to get a business started designing websites for a particular business sector. The websites basically want quite a large amount of static information, but I'd quite like the end users to be able to edit stuff and have a blog as well if they want to, so have decided to approach this using Wordpress (I work in the business sector, have dabbled with website stuff over the years but am effectively learning from scratch).

If you want the end users to be able to edit hundreds of pages, I would recommend a wiki.

poshphil
Jun 17, 2005

Twiin posted:

If you want the end users to be able to edit hundreds of pages, I would recommend a wiki.

I got my terms messed up there - I meant whoever at the firms I would be selling to was tasked with looking after the website (posting their own news items etc) rather than the eventual end users.

So giving them the option to edit any content, maybe tailor anything particularly specific to their firm etc, would be nice, but not let it be freely edited by anyone.

abelwingnut
Dec 23, 2002


What's the best plugin for a twitter feed in the sidebar?

Twiin
Nov 11, 2003

King of Suck!

Abel Wingnut posted:

What's the best plugin for a twitter feed in the sidebar?

If you're using Wordpress Jetpack (and you should be), it's included.

abelwingnut
Dec 23, 2002


Twiin posted:

If you're using Wordpress Jetpack (and you should be), it's included.

THis owns--thanks.

Also, I just enabled my sharing settings. I'm trying to edit the position of the links but I can't find the necessary PHP. Where is it in content.php?

cocteau
Nov 28, 2005

The best Darcy.

Abel Wingnut posted:

THis owns--thanks.

Also, I just enabled my sharing settings. I'm trying to edit the position of the links but I can't find the necessary PHP. Where is it in content.php?

What theme are you using? And by links, do you mean the links for your social media or your navigation?

If you want to catch me offline I might be able to help you out over the weekend.

abelwingnut
Dec 23, 2002


cocteau posted:

What theme are you using? And by links, do you mean the links for your social media or your navigation?

If you want to catch me offline I might be able to help you out over the weekend.

My own child of 2011. And yes, I'm referring to the social media links. You can see it here:

http://www.theplebes.com

cocteau
Nov 28, 2005

The best Darcy.

Abel Wingnut posted:

My own child of 2011. And yes, I'm referring to the social media links. You can see it here:

http://www.theplebes.com

Yeah I'm sure I could help you out... find me on AIM if you want.

RyanNotBrian
Nov 28, 2005

Always five, acting as one. Dedicated! Inseparable! Invincible!
Any recommendations for a banner ad manager for a WP site?

I've come across this one which seems fully featured:
http://www.oiopublisher.com/
It has a small price tag but that's fine.

There is also Adserve which is free:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/adserve/

I don't need clients to be able to manage and buy their own ad spaces, that will all be handled by an admin. I just want a simple way for the admin to be able to upload ads into various spaces and extract performance reports.

Any experience with the above, or any other recommendations?

thanks

Captain Corny
Dec 16, 2000

Abel Wingnut posted:

What's the best plugin for a twitter feed in the sidebar?
I like tweetblender.

Finklemeyer
Oct 29, 2004
Pants?

Captain Corny posted:

I like tweetblender.

Agreed. Tweet Blender has a lot more options than Jetpack's Twitter widget.

sim
Sep 24, 2003

Does anyone have experience with, or know of a good resource on custom Wordpress installs? Specifically, modifying the defaults via wp-content/install.php. The Codex is useless and although this article has been a tremendous help, I'm starting to reach the end of the trail.

Currently I'm struggling with how to get the SITE_NAME into a post when the wp_install_defaults function is run. I can insert the content fine, but the site name as entered by the install form is not available to that function for whatever reason.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

muscat_gummy
Nov 30, 2008

sim posted:

Does anyone have experience with, or know of a good resource on custom Wordpress installs? Specifically, modifying the defaults via wp-content/install.php. The Codex is useless and although this article has been a tremendous help, I'm starting to reach the end of the trail.

Currently I'm struggling with how to get the SITE_NAME into a post when the wp_install_defaults function is run. I can insert the content fine, but the site name as entered by the install form is not available to that function for whatever reason.


I did a bit of this myself. I might be remembering things completely wrong, but I believe that by the time you get to the function wp_install_defaults, the blog itself has already been created. As in, the blogname option should be there already and you can get the name of your site with get_option('whatever'). Is that what you've been trying to do and it hasn't been working?

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply