• Resolved cuppa500

    (@cuppa500)


    I hope I am in the right place – apologies if not.

    One of my blog readers sent me an email which in part reads “My question relates to loading your blog on my iPad. When I click on a month it takes me to your most recent post and of course this makes sense except when I want to go back and read earlier posts I have to load each post to get back to the earliest. Can you tell me if there is any way around this please?

    Having checked I find that he is correct, on the ipad, at the bottom of the post the only option is to go to previous or next post using arrows but using the same browser on my laptop it is possible to select individually numbered posts from within the month selected.

    Is there any way of making this more user friendly to ipad users?

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • It is not different between iPad and desktop. Your reader clicked on a month (not sure where) which would show an archive page. The archive page uses the function for post pagination, which shows numbers as links to the other pages of the archive. Clicking on a single post, the pagination is no longer relevant, so the single page shows links to the Next/Prev post. This is standard usage. The confusing part might be that the theme you are using shows full content everywhere, so it is difficult to tell the pages apart (archive or single).
    You can remedy this by using the “More tag” in your posts, which is an indicator for how much to show on archive pages. (the full content is always shown on single pages)
    You can also use a widget in the sidebar for Categories or Archives, so that links to the other parts of your site are always available.

    Thread Starter cuppa500

    (@cuppa500)

    Hi Joy, thank you for your reply.It is good to know there is a solution.

    However I am completely ignorant about the use of Tags. I wonder if you or someone else might tell me how to go about using the ‘more tag’ in a step by step way.

    If there is a plugin to achieve this which avoids me having to edit wordpress files it would be far preferable. Even with this assistance would be welcome, at least as far as understanding the concept of what a tag is & how to add it. Thank you

    There are various definitions of Tag. One used with WordPress is the taxonomy in which you attach keywords to your posts so that those posts can be retrieved as a set, such as “birds” or “Asia” or whatever is in your post. It’s the same as a category, but not hierarchical, and provides a different way to access your posts.

    Another use of the word Tag is for HTML elements. A paragraph is denoted by a <p> tag and a list is the <li> tag. So in the classic editor, there are buttons for “Quick tags”, which insert HTML elements into the post for you, similar to what you see when typing here on the forum. One of the Quick Tags is the More Tag, which is <!--more-->. This is a HTML comment which WordPress treats special, as described above. The block editor tries to distance the user from HTML, so the terminology is about blocks instead. So it has a Read More block. It is the same thing and functions in the same way.
    See this page (which is for Classic editor) for info on Quick Tags:

    As you can see, the More Tag is part of the content. There might be a plugin that could help you insert them into each post, but I don’t know. It could be a tedious job if done by hand and you already have a lot of posts.
    You can switch themes to one that shows excerpts on archive pages, or make a child theme that does that.
    In your case, more navigation in the sidebar would be helpful, whether it’s a Category widget or a Menu widget or an Archive widget.

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Joy. Reason: link was messed up
    Thread Starter cuppa500

    (@cuppa500)

    I have now tried installing multiple different category and archive plugins which allow me to use a shortcode on a page (called Previous Posts a sub menu under ‘Posts’ in the main menu). I successfully generated a list of all posts by date and title this way. It looked just what I wanted.

    BUT there remains a problem, and it has existed with every different plugin I have tried which leads me to believe that the problem must be on my site or with my web host and not with the plugins.

    The problem is that dated posts in the list open posts from either the wrong year. eg if I click on a listed post 26th August 2017, it opens a post from 27th August 2018, or just the wrong date eg If I click on a post from July 12th 2018 it opens a different post from 31st July 2018.

    These results have been consistent with all the different plugins I tried.
    I tried listing just by category, but got the same results.

    All plugins have said that they are compatible with my version of WordPress (4.9.8), so all I can think of is that it must be something wrong at my end, but have no idea where to look. The dates on individual posts seem correct. I am so fed up and frustrated after spending hours on this.

    If anyone can assist me in resolving this issue I will be most grateful.

    Thank You
    Ian

    If it makes any difference my host (GoDaddy) runs MySQL 5.5. and PHP 5.6.

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by cuppa500.
    • This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by cuppa500.

    I can see that the archive page is using the wrong links for the post. This is done by the theme, but I tried it on a test site with the same theme and it works fine. That means that you have a plugin that is filtering the links and causing the problem.
    I’m not positive it’s related, but part of the last security update did affect the filtering of links. Since you are on 4.9.8, you don’t have the latest security update.
    You can use the WP Downgrade plugin to go to 4.9.10 if you don’t want to go to 5.1.1.

    Regardless of that, the links are wrong, unless you really did name your posts with numbers. If you did, you need to change that since WordPress considers numbers as dates. If you did not, use the Health Check plugin to isolate which plugin is doing it (you can disable plugins for your user only and not affect your visitors).

    Thread Starter cuppa500

    (@cuppa500)

    Hi Joy, thank you for the assistance you have offered.

    I tried the health check plugin with all plugins disabled and got the same result with the links going to the same incorrect posts, suggesting I guess that a plugin is not responsible.

    I have now updated to WordPress 5.1.1 – again has made no difference.

    I don’t understand your comment about naming my posts with numbers. All my posts have descriptive names as per the list of links which is not working. If you have somehow seen those posts ‘named’ with numbers I know nothing about it.

    I haven’t tried downgrading to 4.9.10 as it seems nothing was different between 4.9.8 and 5.1.1 as far as the link problem goes which suggests to me it is probably not related to the wordpress version??

    Could it have anything to do with the Twenty Seventeen Theme version I am using? It is an older version which I haven’t updated because of warnings about losing any customisation I have made. To be honest I can’t recall what I have customised as far as the theme goes and it worries me what I might lose if I update it. Dashboard tells me I have Twenty Seventeen version 1.4 and invites me to update to 2.1.
    ‘Manually’ creating a child theme/changing style sheets (whatever they are) etc etc is beyond my level of comfort and understanding.

    If I were to create a ‘child theme’ using a plugin like ‘Child Theme Wizard’ plugin (because it looks the simplest to use) using my existing Twenty Seventeen 1.4 Theme as the ‘parent theme’ and then subsequently updated 1.4 to 2.1 via Dashboard, would this retain any customisations I may have previously made to the theme?
    Thanks again,
    Ian

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by cuppa500.
    • This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by cuppa500.

    Well, I did test using an older version of Twenty Seventeen, but still, it seems like it’s the theme causing the problem. Then again, you don’t seem to understand what I was seeing, so I’m not sure we are talking about the same problem.

    The warning for theme customizations is about actual file changes made to files in the theme folder. It’s a holdover from when that was the only way that people knew to make changes. Now, there are better ways to customize the theme. If you have not made any changes to theme files, you can update with no problem (it will warn you regardless). The update actually deletes the folder and extracts it from the newer zip file, so that’s why changes there are lost. That’s why child themes are the recommended way to introduce code changes to a theme. The parent theme can be updated without affecting the child. (But you don’t have to make a child just to update the parent…there’s nothing to protect if you don’t have any file changes.)

    If you did (or someone did, or you forgot you did) make changes to the theme, that would explain what I see. When I go to your link, the first post it titled “Timelessness” and its date is March 7. But hovering on both the title and the date shows a destination of Blog/03 instead of Blog/timelessness or something similar (I don’t know what your permalink structure is set to). Even a search for “timelessness” finds the post, but the link is for Blog/03. So, a link like Blog/03 is interpreted by WordPress as a date archive. So maybe you have changed your permalink structure accidentally?

    Thread Starter cuppa500

    (@cuppa500)

    Joy ………. I could kiss you. You identified the problem & a simple mouse click has fixed the link problem. As you surmised someone (me) had changed a permalink setting (not really knowing what I was doing) & forgot I had done so. Luckily it was a fairly recent change & your post prompted me to go look at ‘Permalinks’ under settings. As soon as I looked I recalled making the change & knew what I had changed it from. Changed it back & all was good. It must be painful dealing with folk who only have limited knowledge like myself, but I thank you for doing so from the bottom of my heart.

    In regard to updating my theme.
    All the changes I have made to the theme have been done via ‘Appearance’ in Dashboard. Changes via the Appearance sub headings of ‘Customise’, ‘Widgets’ ‘Header’ & ‘Menus’.

    No changes under the Appearance sub headings of ‘Themes’, ‘Edit CSS’ or ‘Theme Editor’

    Does this mean I can update the theme from 1.4 to 2.1 via the dashboard without concern?

    Thank you so much again!

    Yes, you can update your theme without concern for losing anything. That’s how updates should be.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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