ontplates

Didn’t work. I’ll have to talk to my theme provider– I bet something has been that changed that identifies the location of the icons. Thanks anyway.

I have my site up and running, through trial-error, forums, theme support, and buying a WordPress book. Thanks all.

Thanks to RossMitchell– and I have more questions.

1. When I use the “Post” option in my dashboard, that takes me to an editor that I presume is WordPress 4.0. It’s well suited for adding blog-style posts. But what I would want to do is be able to put sale stock there similar to my present site. In my mind, I envisioned a sort of template where I could drag and drop the various items, with each having their description embedded. Maybe there’s a database section or portfolio section that must first be populated with items. However, I have no idea whether that’s a WordPress thing where I have to find something in my dashboard, or if there would be some sort of “portfolio mode” in my theme that I would activate and then add items that way. Obviously, I don’t expect you to know the intricacies of my theme – but if that’s what I want to do, should I be fiddling with WordPress, or looking within my theme? I’m not sure where one ends and the other starts.
2. I know nothing about what a child theme is, aside from that I should use one when I finally figure out how to design my site. I saw in a wiki somewhere that they get installed as subdirectories from the parent theme. Do I have to buy yet another theme to make a child theme? Or do I somehow install Affle again in a subdirectory? What should be my first step to getting a child theme?
3. What’s a caching mechanism? Why do I need one?
4. I used WordPress 4.0 editor to make a couple of experimental “post” pages. I can only see these when I’m in the editor and click the “preview” button. Where can I view an index of what posts I’ve made?
5. After making the posts I mention in my previous question: When I go back to my embryonic site on WordPress, I still just have the Sample Page. I presume that I would need a menu to link to these posts (which are not static .html files, as the URL ends with something like ?p=22 which means the post page I’m seeing is generated on the fly somehow. I’ve seen the menu widget, but I don’t understand how to configure it. Mine says “frequently asked questions” and goes nowhere because I don’t understand how to point the menu to a target. In HTML, I can do A HREF tags in my sleep. If I could do this, I might be able to hammer out a “terms & conditions” page or a “FAQ” page and learn to get my balance on WordPress.

Thanks a bunch for your help so far.

Jon

“Lost lost lost” is the only possible subject. As I mentioned, I had no idea if this forum was even appropriate. It got your attention, no?

I will read the guide mentioned by WebPrezence.

I sell enough to keep my geeky hobbies self-funding (a labour of love), but e-commerce on the site is beyond what I wish to do at this time. I take cheques / MOs in the mail and use PayPal. I want to just rebuild my present site using WordPress, then do tweaks to it once I’ve learned more.

Here is my site as it presently exists, done with raw HTML and text editors:
ontplates.com the site lives on my ISP with a GoDaddy domain redirect. I lost my image server, so I’ve been limping along paying photobucket to host the images, which I dislike.

Here is my temporary location using WordPress, where I can’t figure out anything:
http://69.195.124.189/~ontplate/

WordPress seems to be more for blogs. I’m not a blog, so I don’t intend to use its “new post” items, and as I mentioned a sec ago, I don’t want e-commerce options presently. I would like to begin by designing it like a portfolio where the items are searchable and I can search for subcategories (e.g. items from 1960-1970). It would be even better if I could easily mark when things sell without removing them from the site.

So, I know what I want the end product to look like and how I want it to work, and in the past I’ve been autonomous enough to just carry it out on my own. But here? OMG. There are 958 different options when I flip through my theme’s options. Some questions that boggle me now:

1. Is a plugin the same as a widget?
2. Is there a WYSIWYG editor you would suggest that would work with my theme rather than selecting an endless series of dropdowns and checking boxes? When I select something, I’ve been re-loading my temporary site to see what I did– hence the odd remarks I’ve made all over the one page I’ve altered.
3. From where am I supposed to do the actual “designing” of my site? I see my theme options on my dashboard (where 95% of the options seem to be), but I also see portfolio options there, and if I go to “themes” on my dashboard, I can click a “customize” button on my theme (Affle) which allows me to change a few other things. Too many spots to find options to change things. And now I think I have to get a plugin with a WYSIWYG editor. Hence the “lost” subject line.
4. I tried using the “portfolio” thingy on my dashboard and uploaded an image with a caption. But I don’t know if, in so doing, it created a an updatable portfolio page, or if it’s just a place where portfolio images are stored and fed into auto-generated page when called up– and I can’t figure out how to link a portfolio from my menu or somehow join the two so I can click from one to the other, or just have a portfolio style layout visible from my front page like the live demo of my Affle theme.
5. I think Affle is a child theme. What’s a parent theme? Must I get one of those, too?
6. I saw the live demo for my theme and I thought, “yep, that’s the structure and the look.” But I can’t figure out how to get a portfolio-esque set of content, divided in columns, to appear on my main site, because it’s starting me off with a single column page with sample text on it. I sell to a lot of elder folks, and the fewer clicks they make when they visit my site, the better, so that’s why I want to try and show a portfolio of items up front.

I would be grateful for recommendations, or other resources to see to school myself before perform more of a hack-job on my new site.