The WordPress Q&A Thread

Hey,

I know that a few of you have WordPress blogs. I work with supporting WordPress as my day job and I'm happy to help out if there's something I can (my knowledge has limits). So I thought I would open up this thread and have it a place where if you have a question about how to do something with WordPress, I (or of course someone else from BF) can feel free to answer it and help you make your blog/site a bit better in the process.

oh, and:

Plugins You Should be Using

This is by no means a comprehensive list; it's just a set of plugins that I install on pretty much every WordPress installation (and maybe some others that have come up in conversation in this thread).

• Akismet (there can be only one)
• Automatic Updater (keeps things current, which is important)
• Jetpack (WordPress.com-connected services)
• WP Super Cache (static file caching; makes life bearable on shared hosting)
• Email Post Changes (if you have a multi-author site)
• TinyMCE Advanced (if you want to be able to screw up your site with fancy HTML)
• Viper's Video Quicktags (if you embed a lot of video)

Why does Charles troll so much?

Hey, this is PERFECT, as I just ran into an issue with the newly released 3.5. I was using a gallery plugin to put all of my images in a post in a fancybox. However, the new gallery is pretty cool, so I turned that plugin off and am now using the default gallery.

The problem is that pictures embedded into the body of the post no longer show up in a nice gallery popup or anything, but simply link to the large image, which is a usability issue, I feel. How could I link those embedded images into their associated gallery images by default?

Or should I just turn the fancybox gallery back on?

Thanks Ryan! :)

Somewhere along the way I forgot how to make my about post show up as a category on my front page. I think I also forgot how to add more categories to the header. These things are probably connected.

What do you mean show up as a category on the front page?

I always did this by adding the links in index.php. Maybe there is an easier way, though.

I seem to recall an easier way, but that sort of copy-pasting is probably the fast track.

Like, the way that Politics and War etc show up.

Oh, isn't there simply a widget that will show the categories? Some themes also allow embedding category menus as well I think.

Dang, you know, we really need a sticky thread for people to pimp their blogs, I see your blog there, and in your links I see that CSL and JeffD also have them, and BDR I think is Bill's. I guess really should make more bookmarks =)

What was the plugin you were using? I could see that the media update in 3.5 would mess with that a bit.

Have you checked out the carousel display option that was added to Jetpack (http://jetpack.me/) recently? Based on what you are describing, I think you would like it.

Why does your mom suck so much?

(sorry; I couldn't resist)

Check out Appearance > Menus in your blog's Dashboard. We have a tutorial about this on WordPress.com that will apply to most self-hosted blogs as well:

http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/

Most themes that have been updated within the last few versions of WordPress should support custom menus.

What are you using, WordPress from five years ago? :)

I just updated the OP with a list of plugins I usually use on new self-hosted sites; consider those to be plugins that I endorse for use. I'll add some there if neat-o conversation comes out of this thread about plugins, which I hope it will.

Thanks, that's what I was missing. I kept being able to look at the categories in other aspects of the UI but I didn't remember that they were counted as "menu" artifacts. Thanks!

I was using Fancy Gallery, which I've just turned back on. I actually have Jetpack installed, and the galleries were using the carousel, which I like very much, but the problem remains that photos embedded in the body of the text of the post don't get that treatment and simply link to the image itself, rather than the carousel, you know? I'd love to know how to fix that.

My Wordpress install is up to date, but the theme I use is one that I've been modding slowly over the course of several years. It works!

This plugin is a bit out of date and I don't know if it will conflict with Carousel, but try this if you want your images to pop out a bit:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-jquery-lightbox/

It looks like Fancy Gallery hasn't been updated in a while and perhaps that's why it's not functioning properly. Give a look through this search on Extend, too:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=lightbox

What happened to Movable Type?

Rise from the dead, zombie thread!

I'm ridiculously excited because I just wrote a pretty major feature for bbPress, to fix the way subforms show up in the main forum listing. Now the subs show freshness and number of topics and such, just like the parent forums do. People have been asking the bbPress guys to put in this feature since 2010 or so, and I just wrote it! I've never contributed code to an open source project before. I need to tweak it some and test the shit out of it, but YAAAYYY IT WORKS!!!!

I installed self-hosted WordPress! No problems so far, in fact I was amazed how easy it was. Literally just editing one configuration file in obvious ways, then upload everything and execute one PHP script. Now let's see about those plugins...

edit: Holy cow, Jetpack lets me deactivate those annoying spam Likes and supports embedded LaTeX! Awesome.

So I'm looking for a new host for my WP blog, something more dedicated than Dreamhost's shitty shared servers. Anyone have any suggestions?

Okay, first question. How do I connect my own author profile with my existing Gravatar that's in use on WordPress.com? There doesn't seem to be an option for that, even with Jetpack.

If you don't want a shared server, look into a VPS. I use virpus.com, which is really cheap, but they have datacenter issues on a somewhat regular basis. I might have downtime of a few hours a month because of that. It's not a huge deal to me, but it might be to someone who demands ~100% uptime!

The only thing with a VPS is that you are responsible for managing it yourself, unless you pay extra to have the hosting provider manage it for you. Since it's a VM, you do have to worry about keeping it up-to-date and secured.

You mean this?

https://plus.google.com/authorship

Or something else?

Thanks Gorzek, yeah, I'm looking for something not shared indeed.

No, I mean Gravatar as in Gravatar. :p It's a portable user profile made by Automattic that's enabled by default for WordPress.com blogs. I authorized my new self-hosted blog with my Gravatar profile but still can't see any way to use it from my blog.

Oh, yeah, Gravatars are awful to use. Try this instead. :)

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-local-avatars/

Thanks, that worked for a user picture. I'd still like to know why WordPress and Jetpack can't find my Gravatar, though...

edit: Figured it out! I had used different e-mail addresses on Gravatar and on my local WordPress installation, and Gravatar does its match-making based on e-mail addresses. Now it works.

No clue, I had the same problem, which is why I gave up on Gravatar entirely. :/

I edited after you posted, so maybe you haven't seen this: the e-mail addresses need to match exactly, then it worked for me.

Next question: is there a plugin to restrict user comments to those with a social network login? WordPress.com does this automatically -- when you flag that only "registered users" can comment that includes Twitter and Facebook users, not just WP users. But it seems that WordPress.org only accepts a WordPress login, and Jetpack only adds its Twitter/Facebook options when commenting is not limited to registered users. Halp?

I used Bluehost a few times for a work project, had no problems. I'm not an expert though.

Ryan Markel tweeted that he was brought down by pestilence at 3 o'clock in the morning, which is no doubt why he hasn't shown here since the thread was revived. Get well soon!

In the meantime, I've finished my weblog transition from WordPress.com to self-hosting. Read about what happened if you like!

Aw, I miss the image of the Akropolis! I'd advocate putting up a smaller one just to add a splash of color to the site that won't unduly interfere with the content. Otherwise, the layout is very clean and easy to read.

It's true, the picture added a nice splash of color to the site. Maybe I'll put it back after all...

edit: Now that I can edit my theme's CSS files I should be able to overlap the image with the title, that way it won't take up so much space. That might work.

I think I've finally found a new theme for my blog and am planning on bludgeoning it into shape this weekend (after creating a child theme first, as I usually end up having to go into the CSS directly). I'll post before and after shots that will hopefully not be reminiscent of, say, the Titanic's maiden voyage.

The new theme is up and running but I have yet to decipher the CSS sufficiently to figure out how to only get the links in a post to display underlined without also underlining the title (header) of the post. I've found plenty of suggestions on how to do this and the best I can come up with is the author of the theme implemented things in a goofy way that makes this very difficult to do.

I am at an impasse. On the one hand I think I can tweak this theme to my liking. On the other hand I really want my links to be old school. My temporary solution is to eat ice cream and forget the whole thing.

One thing I have found very useful when hamfistedly tinkering with anything CSS/Wordpress is the Firebug add on for Firefox. It will at least give you half a clue what exactly the element name / colour you want to mess with is called.

http://getfirebug.com/

Yeah, I actually used Firebug to try to ferret out the appropriate code but like I said, the author of the theme seems to have strayed from the usual conventions.

But the ice cream was good.

(If anyone is feeling masochistic and wants to check, it's the Rembrandt theme. Better yet, prove me dumb by finding the obvious answer.)

You could try underlining links everywhere and then specifically removing the underline from post titles and other places where you don't want them. That might be easier than figuring out all the ways to address the underlined locations.

All modern browsers have developer tools for CSS analysis built in, by the way. No need for Firebug. Just use Web Developer > Inspector in Firefox (Ctrl+Shift+I), or Tools > Developer Tools (F12) then Find (Ctrl+B) in IE9/10, or right click > Inspect Element in Chrome.