manstraw

When you change your permalink structure in wordpress, it will either write to the .htaccess, or provide you with the code you can update yourself.

for now, I would delete the .htaccess file to get rid of the 500 errors. Are they gone?

Then I would update the permalink structure, and see if wp updates itself? If it doesn’t update it, copy the code it will display (scroll down) and replace the contents of your .htaccess file with this code.

If the 500 errors return, you need to contact your webhost.

Well, I would just browse the themes until you find something you like. If you still need to change a colour of something, just provide specific info to this forum, and people will help you.

The colours and layout are pretty much always controlled through the CSS file. So if you study anything, study css.

PHP isn’t necessary to know as much for your specific concerns. Plugins will likely provide most of the functions you will ever require. If you can ftp the files into place, and follow simple instructions, you should have no php related problems.

theme viewer – http://themes.wordpress.net/

Look in admin, Options, Reading. You’ll see an place for show full text or a summary in your feeds.

oh well, I guess the domain pirates have it now. who was in charge of that site and it’s registration? I haven’t checked to see if it can be renewed or not. Let’s hope so. Arrrgh matey, if the pirates ‘ave it, it be lost. Arrrrrrgh.

Is it hiding at http://wp-plugins.net/ ?

I’ve wrestled with that decision myself. I tend to not have it. The people with an rss reader will know how to copy the link and paste it into their reader. Some people with readers don’t have their browser recognizing the feed: identifier. When they try and copy that url, it’s often not recognized in a reader, and they get confused.

It’s not all quite meshed right in my opinion. I’d like to see firefox be smart enough to offer to add a feed: to it’s live bookmarks if it doesn’t have an external rss reader to hadn off too. And maybe that choice should always be presented. And similar behaviours for other browsers would be good too.

A proper css files can’t do that. But you can put css values in a php file (like your header), and use php variables to experiment. Anything you duplicate in the header will replace what is in the css files, as long as it comes after the call to your css page.

Something you might really appreciate is the web developer plugin for firefox. I use it to experiment with CSS. You can call up an edit css panel, change something, and the change is instantly reflected on the page. I mainly use it for colors and for precise position of certain items.

You need the firefox browser, and then just go Tools > Extension, and then click the Get More Extensions link at the bottom right. You can search for “Web Developer”. It gives you a bunch of cool stuff that is all very useful for developing web pages.