RossB
Forum Replies Created
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Forum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: blog looks "magnified" in IE compared with FF and Chromechadrew, thanks so much – it IS the text zoom. Was set to 125% on IE9.
Phew – easily sorted!
Still concerned about all those markup and CSS errors, although if most of them are just down to youtube code not being HTML5 compliant, I guess that’s not a huge concern. Do you think this would also account for the 200+ 404 crawl errors?
I’ve had a drastic sudden drop in traffic in the 2 months since I changed to a “pretty” permalinks structure, and am wondering if these crawl errors might be partly responsible.
Anyway, thanks a lot for your help.
Cheers
RossForum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: blog looks "magnified" in IE compared with FF and ChromeThanks, esmi. I’m grateful for your input – but alarmed by all these errors! I have to admit, I have no idea how to fix any of them.
Another question, please – how would so many errors come about in the first place? All I do is write posts! The changes to my blog have been pretty minimal, and where possible just make use of plugins (eg: changing header size, adding social media buttons). The CSS changes in the style sheet – and I would have thought they were pretty minimal – have all been at the advice of a couple of tech-savvy bloggers or folk from here. Surely all these errors haven’t arisen solely from this?
I also have over 200 404 crawl errors showing up in Google Webmaster Tools. Do you think they could be related to the markup and CSS errors you’ve identified?
Best
RossForum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: Blog title and description colour not as selectedDuh – shoulda posted a link to my blog. Here.
Forum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: Twenty Eleven theme search not working wellAfter doing some research on the above, it seems that the search problem may be due to a couple of things.
1. I read that using single quote marks in my post titles, as I do with my movie reviews, can mess things up for searches.
2. I routinely link to all my previous movie reviews at the bottom of each review post. Maybe this is interfering with the intra-blog search?
Any further clues from folk who understand these things would be much appreciated.
Cheers
RossForum: Themes and Templates
In reply to: Customising Twenty Eleven themeFixed! Thanks a lot, alchmyth!
Only the comment bubble to go…will try to get on to that over next 24 hours and report back.
Thanks so much for staying with me through this. It was a much-needed change that I’d been putting off for a long time, but you’ve taken a lot of the pain out of it!
Cheers
RossForum: Themes and Templates
In reply to: Customising Twenty Eleven themeHi alcymyth
Been caught up for a couple of days and unable to get back to modding my blog until now.
I’ve pondered on your comment about leaving the tags in place, and have decided to go with the tags. So, reinstated! Ta for the crash education!
I’ve done some messing with the CSS in the Style Sheet and after a lot of frustration have managed to get the header to the size I want. I’ve replaced the default header with a very plain customised one – that will have to suffice until I get around to designing something better.
I’m beginning to like the clean, content-focused design of the Twenty Eleven theme, but there is one annoying aspect that I would GREATLY appreciate some advice on. As will be apparent when my site is viewed (pls see http://theboomtownrap.perthpunk.com/wordpress/), the white posting area comes to an abrupt and untimely end under the Sitemeter link, and the grey background then goes right across the page from that point down. This looks weird and unsightly, especially happening as it does just after the first pic of the photo series that concludes the post. This only happens on the home page. If I click on the post, or any other post, the white area does not end like that, instead continuing on ad infinitum no matter how far down the page I scroll.
Do you have a fix for this please?
Cheers!
RossForum: Themes and Templates
In reply to: Customising Twenty Eleven themeHi alchymyth. An update.
Re 1: I’ve followed through on your complete instructions and the tags are no longer visible – hurrah! However, there are now two little vertical division lines (I guess the tags used to be enclosed within them). I can live with these, but just wondering if they can easily be reduced to just one vertical divider line?
Also, as stated previously, I am concerned that I have not just made the tags invisible, but have deleted them altogether (which I don’t want to do, as I think that will compromise SEO or at least the ability to be picked up by search engines.
Re 2 and 3: Have actioned both as per your suggestions, but no changes are apparent to the appearance of the theme. Maybe I should have copied and pasted the entire parent functions.php file to the child theme, rather than just created a new functions.php file and copied your code to it.
If this is getting too protracted and time-consuming, I’ll see if I can hunt down some possible solutions or learn enough to converse a little more tech-articulately via Google!
Cheers
RossForum: Themes and Templates
In reply to: Customising Twenty Eleven themeHi shastaw
Thanks for that tip! I’ll have a look into what my ISP offers…will also have to check up on synching (never heard of that until now).
Cheers!
RossForum: Themes and Templates
In reply to: Customising Twenty Eleven themeFirstly, thanks so much for all your help, alcymyth. Much appreciated.
I’m slowly working through your suggested mods. Re 1, I’ve made your first edit to the style.css of your child theme, but there was no visible effect to the tags as they appear online. Obviously, I also need to follow up with your content-single.php edits. Two points of clarification here, pls.
a) First, I copy the entire contents of the parent content-single.php file to another such file, which I then upload into the child theme – correct?
b) Will your edit remove the single post tags entirely, or leave them there for each post while rendering them invisibile publicly? It’s the latter I’m seeking to achieve, not the former. Just thought I should check before I go ahead with this edit.Cheers!
RossForum: Themes and Templates
In reply to: Customising Twenty Eleven themeThanks, alchymyth. Appreciated.
I have now created a TwentyEleven child theme and it shows up in my dashboard, and is able to be activated. So, all OK there, it seems.
However, I note a caption under the child theme that states: “Changes made to the templates will affect both themes.”
I was under the impression that if you made changes to the child theme they were not also made to the parent theme. Have I got this wrong?
Cheers
RossForum: Themes and Templates
In reply to: Customising Twenty Eleven themeThanks, alchymyth. I hadn’t heard about child themes until your post, but on doing more research I understand the concept now. Great idea. I’m setting one up today, then will get back.
In the meantime, I have a very basic question. Regardless of whether it’s a child theme or the theme itself being customised, is it possible to somehow do it without changing the current theme of the blog? It seems to me that it’s necessary to activate a theme if you want to customise it; otherwise, the theme’s files (style.css, header.php etc) are not accessible for modding.
In other words, I’d like to work on customising a new theme ‘offline’ that can be activated once completed, and in the meantime my blog would continue with its current theme. Thus, the change to the new theme would be instant, rather than being a public work in progress.
Possible or not, pls?
Cheers
RossForum: Themes and Templates
In reply to: customised header in twenty elevenPls disregard the above. I was asking questions without carefully looking into the twenty eleven theme. Have just upgraded to the current version of WP and tried a preview. Will have a good look at Widgets etc, and hopefully won’t need to ask any more dumb questions! Will post separately with any specific queries that might follow on from properly investigating the theme.
Thanks for the help and patience!
Cheers
RossForum: Themes and Templates
In reply to: customised header in twenty elevenYes. It doesn’t mean much to me. I don’t understand the code. I’ll have look at the files on my host server – if there’s one there called ‘header’, I guess I upload the banner to there…?
Forum: Themes and Templates
In reply to: switching skins/themesThanks, Chip.
Another question, if I may. I’ve just been previewing a few themes and notice that most of them mess up my current layout in various ways (eg: font sizes that are uniform on my current theme vary in some paragraphs when switching to a new theme; text captions currently under photos move to beside the same photos when theme is switched; my ‘Categories’ and other side menu headings disappear and all I get is ‘Archives’ with most themes I’ve previewed).
There are a couple that faithfully reproduce the appearance of my blog as it appears with my current theme.
Any idea why the majority (it seems) of themes alter the current appearance of my blog in some aspects, as per the examples above?
Is it relatively simple to modify the themes that do not exactly reproduce my blog appearance, so that all appears as it does currently?
Cheers!
RossForum: Themes and Templates
In reply to: customised header in twenty elevenThanks, alchymyth. But assuming I create a customised header in Illustrator, say, and therefore have it stored on my computer HD, where would I upload it in the first instance, pls, so that it can be added?