Title: BillHam's Replies | WordPress.org --- # BillHam [ ](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * [Profile](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * [Topics Started](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/topics/) * [Replies Created](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/replies/) * [Reviews Written](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/reviews/) * [Topics Replied To](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/replied-to/) * [Engagements](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/engagements/) * [Favorites](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/favorites/) Search replies: ## Forum Replies Created Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 22 total) 1 [2](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/replies/page/2/?output_format=md) [→](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/replies/page/2/?output_format=md) * Forum: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) In reply to: [Media File Manger, RIP](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/media-file-manger-rip/) * Thread Starter [BillHam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * (@billham) * [7 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/media-file-manger-rip/#post-10876078) * Thanks for checking, Steven. * I’ll certainly have a look at the suggestions in that link. * Forum: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) In reply to: [Plugin to combine posts and move to an archive page](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-to-combine-posts-and-move-to-an-archive-page/) * Thread Starter [BillHam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * (@billham) * [7 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-to-combine-posts-and-move-to-an-archive-page/#post-10655046) * Thanks for the comments. I think you folks are a lot closer to the technical side of things than I am and are looking at the issue from that angle rather than what the user sees on the screen, which is what I’m interested in. * My site is basically very simple and all I want is that the posts I put on the homepage (no comments allowed) get moved somwhere separate in an entirely textual format every 12 months. I’m not in the least bothered about search engines, authors( all me), permalinks or whatever might be attached internally to a post. These can all go as long as the title, date and text are retained. * I have done it all manually. Opened my homepage on the server, copied all the posts from first to last, opened a new Page and pasted them in. Then for each post in the new page I removed the links from the title & date and deleted the‘ edit’ text item. Went to the list of posts from the dashboard and deleted them all. Published the Page and set up a link to it. Job done as far as I’m concerned. The html of the new page still contains references to posts and associated gubbins, but these get ignored by browsers and as long as they don’t affect the appearance( they don’t) then I’m not bothered. * If all that offends the purists, then I’m sorry. I know you’re all thinking ‘ this guy hasn’t a clue’ and you might be right, but the bottom line is that it works for me and it’s what I want for my site. * Forum: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) In reply to: [Plugin to combine posts and move to an archive page](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-to-combine-posts-and-move-to-an-archive-page/) * Thread Starter [BillHam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * (@billham) * [7 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-to-combine-posts-and-move-to-an-archive-page/#post-10637018) * Thanks for the reply, and yes, I do want to mess with the dynamics. * I’ve seen the Archive widget and it specifically does not do what I want to do, which is to clear off 12-months-worth of posts from the homepage so I can start again with a clean sheet. The posts would be moved en masse to a new page, which will ‘un-dynamicise’ them and they will just become static text in that page and would no longer be ‘posts’ as such. I don’t just want a have a new place to get at old posts from a different place (e.g. a widget on the sidebar) and have them remain where they are. * As far as I can see all the archiving plugins such as you suggest leave the original posts where they are, and if one is deleted it’s deleted from the archive. That’s not really what an ‘archive’ is to me. * Now, I could do the clear-out manually by copy & pasting them one at a time and then deleting them but that would get a little tedious after doing about ten and I currently have 37. I was really holping a plugin might be able to to this for me. Is it such an unusual thing to want to do? * Forum: [Plugins](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/plugins-and-hacks/) In reply to: [[Media File Manager] Uploading a PDF also generates 4 JPG files](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/uploading-a-pdf-also-generates-4-jpg-files/) * Thread Starter [BillHam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * (@billham) * [8 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/uploading-a-pdf-also-generates-4-jpg-files/#post-9795649) * Cancel, cancel, cancel. * This behaviour has nothing to do with this plugin. Apparently it is a feature of WordPress itself that was introduced in WP 4.7 although it only manifested itself for me in 4.9. These thumbnail JPGs are supposed to help with displaying the files in Media Library. * I still don’t want them as they do not enhance my site or its administrationn in any way. If anyone else wants to lose these files, see * [http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-disable-pdf-thumbnail-previews-in-wordpress/](http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-disable-pdf-thumbnail-previews-in-wordpress/) or if you prefer a plugin, [https://wordpress.org/plugins/disable-pdf-thumbnails/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/disable-pdf-thumbnails/) * Thanks to Steve Stern, moderator on the general WordPress.org forum for this information and for straightening me out. I posted this issue there after no response here. See [https://wordpress.org/support/topic/uploading-a-pdf-also-generates-4-jpgs-of-the-same-file/#new-post](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/uploading-a-pdf-also-generates-4-jpgs-of-the-same-file/#new-post) for the full story. * Forum: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) In reply to: [Uploading a PDF also generates 4 JPGs of the same file](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/uploading-a-pdf-also-generates-4-jpgs-of-the-same-file/) * Thread Starter [BillHam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * (@billham) * [8 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/uploading-a-pdf-also-generates-4-jpgs-of-the-same-file/#post-9792272) * Thank you. * Now I feel really stupid. I may be a WordPress ingenue but I’m not that green. Normally when I experience an unexpected behaviour the first thing I do is google it to see if it happens elsewhere. That particular part of my brain failed to kick in with this one, so thank you for your patience and pointing out these simple resolutions to what appears not to be a problem at all but a feature. * Issue over, and thanks again. * Forum: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) In reply to: [Uploading a PDF also generates 4 JPGs of the same file](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/uploading-a-pdf-also-generates-4-jpgs-of-the-same-file/) * Thread Starter [BillHam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * (@billham) * [8 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/uploading-a-pdf-also-generates-4-jpgs-of-the-same-file/#post-9790614) * OK, thanks for the explanation. * All I can say is – Why? I don’t want or need these files. Who does? I often have to replace several PDFs at a time (up to 15) with new versions and having all these extraneous, useless and unwanted JPGs proliferating and lying about cluttering the place up is just a waste of space and my time getting rid of them. * Does everyone else just live with this? Is it switch-offable? Would going to a different version of PHP fix it? My localhost is using 7.0.10 and my host is on 5.4, with 7.0 available. Is there a particular PHP setting or extension involved? I’m not really used to messing around with these things so any advice would be appreciated. * Forum: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) In reply to: [WordPress generates JPGs when Uploading a PDF](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-generates-jpgs-when-uploading-a-pdf/) * Thread Starter [BillHam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * (@billham) * [8 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-generates-jpgs-when-uploading-a-pdf/#post-9710255) * Thanks. I had a likely suspect and deactivated it. The symptom went away. The plugin is called Media File Manager and lets the user set up and maintain their own bespoke folder structure within the Media Library. * It looks like MFM is persuading WP that PDF files are Image files as the four JPGs are the sizes as specified in Settings/Media, plus another presumably standard size. They are all copies of the original PDF. * Unfortunately this is a free plugin and the author seems to have abandoned it as it hasn’t been updated for some time and is said to be compatible only up to WP 4.8. * I’ve put a post on the plugin support page, but I’m not holding my breath for a response let alone a fix. * I have quite an extensive structure of subfolders and can’t just abandon it so it looks like I’ve got to bite the bullet and either delete all the extra files after uploading, or deactivate the plugin and reactivate it before and after uploading, especially for the multiple uploads. * Thanks for listening. Closing this off now. * Forum: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) In reply to: [WordPress generates JPGs when Uploading a PDF](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-generates-jpgs-when-uploading-a-pdf/) * Thread Starter [BillHam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * (@billham) * [8 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-generates-jpgs-when-uploading-a-pdf/#post-9707458) * Thanks for the ideas. I’m using the Weaver Xtreme theme (non-Pro). If I was going to switch themes on my live site, even temporarily, the users might get a little worried. I’ve no idea how it would look under Twentysixteen or other standard theme, and would it switch back all right? You can tell I’m not used to doing these things. * If it isn’t a daft idea I might download my site to localhost on my PC and see if it happens there. If so, I’ll go through your suggestions. If not, then… Disable the live plugins one by one, I guess. * Forum: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) In reply to: [Copy/paste Excel data to a page and retain formatting](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/copy-paste-excel-data-to-a-page-and-retain-formatting/) * Thread Starter [BillHam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * (@billham) * [8 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/copy-paste-excel-data-to-a-page-and-retain-formatting/#post-9634353) * Thanks for the comments. I appreciate them and understand the implications. * In my working career I wasn’t restricted to VBA. I worked with mainframes for a large insurance company. I started with the low-level language PLAN (never heard of it eh? Not surprised). I moved on to COBOL when we converted from ICL machines to IBM ones, and then as a systems programmer used SAS extensively for capacity management and computer performance reporting and the like. Oh, yes, there was a fair bit of BASIC programming on my BBC computer at home too. Only in the three years or so before I was invited to take early retirement in 2002 was I significantly exposed to PCs and got sucked into MS Office and Dreamweaver and went on a VBA course. I’ve used that latter expertise ever since to help organise and run competitions for the various target shooting organisations I’m associated with. I’m too old a dog to learn new languages properly now although I did poke about with PHP a few years ago so have an idea of what it’s about but as I said, my HTML knowledge is pretty sketchy and frequently involves looking up ‘how to’ sites. * Sorry, you didn’t want to know any of that. * I’m sure I’ll find a reasonably usable solution to the issues I’m facing. * Closing this off now. * Forum: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) In reply to: [Copy/paste Excel data to a page and retain formatting](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/copy-paste-excel-data-to-a-page-and-retain-formatting/) * Thread Starter [BillHam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * (@billham) * [8 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/copy-paste-excel-data-to-a-page-and-retain-formatting/#post-9630625) * Hi bcworkz. Aha! Saracasm – I like it. * Anyway, I appreciate the time you took to respond and I take on board the reasonings in your second paragraph. Looks like I shouldn’t be holding my breath, then. * As for your third paragraph and accusations of living in the past, yes I have to hold up my hand on that. The underlying tables which are transferred from Excel (and in a couple of cases, Word) are maintained in legacy files so far removed from a website as can be imagined. There is quite a lot of VBA macro activity too. My task as site administrator is to transfer tables to my site so that a wider public can have access to them. Up to now, that’s been straightforward and dead easy. It’s for a target shooting sports organisation and shooting is a sport based on numbers (scores) and statistics (averages) and lists of competitors and their scores are commonplace. Holding that kind of data in Excel is the logical place. Some tables are historical archives and only get updated once a year to add one row with the latest information. Some tables are a little more dynamic and need to be changed weekly or so. Some (quite a lot) are converted to PDF files, uploaded and linked-to. * I completely understand your arguments about moving on with the technology and the existing data schema. Unfortunatly it is well beyond my competence (or that of anyone I know of in the organisation) to maintain all the data in a WP database( it would have to be many databases). I used to be a professional programmer in a former life but VBA is my limit and do not intend to start learning PHP or SQL or whatever would be required at this stage. Rudimentary HTML is as far as I’m going with this and CSS is a closed book at least so far. WP was meant to be an easy option. Hiring a professional to set it all up is out of the question due to lack of funds and even if we had a few £K’s available the management committee are liable to say, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. And I’m stuck with it. * So, looks like I’m recreating an obsolete website as a not-quite-so-obsolete one. Better than doing nothing though. * Forum: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) In reply to: [Copy/paste Excel data to a page and retain formatting](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/copy-paste-excel-data-to-a-page-and-retain-formatting/) * Thread Starter [BillHam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * (@billham) * [8 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/copy-paste-excel-data-to-a-page-and-retain-formatting/#post-9629388) * Thanks for the reply. I looked at Tablepress quite early on and rejected it pretty quickly. It’s one of those plugins that require the cells comprising the table I want to go onto my WP page to be saved as a separate file (and btw, CSVs don’t carry any formatting info) and that is one of the things I’m trying to avoid. Anyway, saving it as an xls file instead and importing that into Tablepress results in a very plain-jane (sorry, are we allowed to say that these days?) table with minimal formatting that it has thought up all by itself. In particular, borders are again removed and any bolding is also removed. * Tablepress’s table manipulation page just does not give me the options to format the table the way I want it and I would not want to have to do that every time one of my tables was changed and needed to be replaced on the WP page. Maybe I’m not understanding Tablepress sufficiently. Call me old-fashioned but I want my tables to look like what I want, not what some plugin developer thinks might look good. * I’m still looking for a quicker and more direct way of transferring selected cells from Excel to a WP page and keep the original formatting than by 1. extract, 2. save, 3. import (by whatever method). If I really have no option but to go that way I’d probably use Docxpresso. I live in hope though. * Forum: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) In reply to: [Page names containing numbers cause title to be suppressed](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-names-containing-numbers-cause-title-to-be-suppressed/) * Thread Starter [BillHam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * (@billham) * [8 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-names-containing-numbers-cause-title-to-be-suppressed/#post-9531980) * OK, thanks for the suggestion. * Forum: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) In reply to: [Page names containing numbers cause title to be suppressed](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-names-containing-numbers-cause-title-to-be-suppressed/) * Thread Starter [BillHam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * (@billham) * [8 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-names-containing-numbers-cause-title-to-be-suppressed/#post-9531135) * I tried “2 ways 2 do it” too and it worked. ish. The title did not appear on a Preview but did so on a View Page and when accessed directly using its permalink on the Page editor in another browser. * I tried “20 ways 2 do it” and “20 ways to do it” and both failed – no title on any of the ways to view the page. Same with “2 ways 20 do it” and same with “ 2 0 ways 2 do it”. However, “2 0 ways to do it” gave the title on View Page but not on Preview. * “1 2 3 4 ways to do it” and “1 2 3 ways to do it”- title shown on both views. “ 1 2 ways to do it” gave no title on Preview but it was present on View Page. * I’m even more confused. Multiple digits seem to be confusing WP too. * Forum: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) In reply to: [Page names containing numbers cause title to be suppressed](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-names-containing-numbers-cause-title-to-be-suppressed/) * Thread Starter [BillHam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * (@billham) * [8 years, 9 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-names-containing-numbers-cause-title-to-be-suppressed/#post-9529786) * Thanks for the reply. * I’m talking Pages here, not Posts and the site doesn’t have any Posts as it’s totally non-blogging. I don’t know if the mechanism is any different. * The site is [http://cntsa.org.uk/](http://cntsa.org.uk/) * Forum: [Plugins](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/plugins-and-hacks/) In reply to: [[Kadence Security – Password, Two Factor Authentication, and Brute Force Protection] can't login to wp-admin](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cant-login-to-wp-admin-31/) * [BillHam](https://wordpress.org/support/users/billham/) * (@billham) * [11 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cant-login-to-wp-admin-31/#post-5598703) * Further to my post just above, I found today that my secondary test system was affected for the first time as well as my live site. I went into the usual recovery method and found on reactivating iThemes on the live site that it couldn’t find the plugin directory. I faffed about for a bit, panicking slightly, until I found that the reactivation was attempting to use the name of the temporarily renamed directory (now renamed back to its proper name) so failed. I renamed it back to the temporary name, and it reactivated ok. Phew. * I did the renaming thing on the testing site and it reactivated normally. I decided that I didn’t want the iThemes in my live site to remain in a directory with a non-standard name, so I deactivated it, deleted it and reinstalled it. I then manually reset all the settings using those from the test site. * The question is, how did WordPress (or iThemes) know that I had renamed the plugin directory completely outside the WP environment (using my standalone FTP product) and start using that name in the pathname for the activation process? And why didn’t it similarly use the right name when it was renamed back? I’m confused. * I hope the fresh install will cure this issue, but I’m not holding my breath. 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