davedorm

Wow, so duh, I did not put in the link. Needed sleep when I posted that, thanks for catching it.

gestroud wrote:

Site loads a wee bit slowly – probably because it’s grabbing feeds from other sites.

Yeah, someone else said the same thing. But the site is not loading feeds, they are already loaded and in the database as posts. The image up top, and the headline images, may be slowing things down a little, I don’t know. I also am not using WP-Cache, my understanding is that will also speed things up.

It loads pretty fast for me at home and also at work. I am hosted by Dreamhost, they usually have a phat pipe.

the theme looks a little too “20th century” for such a futurisic site

I wanted to get away from the “Trekkie” look. That stupid “LCARS” computer look, gray text on black background, etc. I wanted a NEWS PAGE not a TREKKIE PAGE.

I am only using excerpts on the index page, when a visitor clicks through, the article is complete with graphics and such, where available.

I appreciate the input.

bump

I know it seems impatient of me, but I am really stuck here. Need an answer ASAP.

I have optimized/repaired the Database.

I have replaced the offending files mentioned:

* wp-admin/page.php
* wp-includes/pluggable.php
* wp-includes/wp-db.php

…with unedited originals from 2.2.3 (the correct version I am running.)

The only thing I can see is that it is the apostrophe that harfs it. If I escape it ( \’ ) it parses fine.

Could this have something to do with “magic quotes”? I disabled the functions because it was crashing on any apostrophe and curly quote character. Maybe I need to un-do those changes?

OK, so… like… BUMP

I deleted the cache, and DISABLED it in wp-config.php

Still b0rked.

Oh crap!

http://issmacarthur.com

[pounds head on keyboard]

Bump…

I did find a clean copy of phpQuest. It’s like two years old and not in development anymore. If someone could make phpQuest into a WordPress plugin, that’d be awesome.

OK, the banner problem has been fixed. It was my fault, it seems. The guy who made the banner provided me with a JPG and a PNG file. The PNG contained all the layers and individual pieces unflattened. That’s why it was so friggen huge (450KB, I was using the PNG. I replaced it with the JPG (something like 5KB). I don’t know, I was always told PNG files were better, so I used the PNG. I know now for next time.
Added polls plugin. Only thing I want to add is a category icon plugin. I just need to create icons somehow. I am not too good with graphics.

Let me answer these in order:
Root said:
No useability issues there then.
Nope. Using Gemini. No useability issues here. (grin)
2Fargon said:
The font size in the menu is too small for comfort, in my opinion
Was set to 70% normal. I upped to to 80%. 90% was too big, so see what you think now.
WildDuck said:
the size of of your banner pix is to big o,5 mb.......not nice for people on slow connections.
I understand. I emailed the guy who made the banner to see if there is any way it can go “on a diet”. I noticed that it is saved with all the layers intact. He should be able to flatten it and add some sort of compression matrix. We’ll see what we can do. I never noticed it, I have broadband. Thanks for pointing it out.
DanBowling wrote:
usability can be improved if you define posts a little better... image seperators or perhaps indentation of the text (even a little extra space after a post). The whole page looks kinda filled... where's the white space?
Good point. The “old” Xoops site had the newsfeeds on the front page and blog was on the menu. I wanted the “local” news first, the stuff written by the authors of the blog. But I wanted the newsfeeds on the front page, too. So I rewrote The Loop to have titles and excerpts like my RSS feeds and tried to make it all look the same. What resulted was the cluttered mess you saw.
I have moved the newsfeeds to a secondary static page accessible from the main menu. Hopefully, my readers who actually come to the site to read the newsfeeds will find their new location. But what we now have is a more traditional Loop with last 5 full text posts on the front page, plus I have added page navigation.
Please continue your nitpicking, folks, I do find it very useful. No, really!