Daniel Payne

Recap: Expert Q&A

Here are some of the major questions raised and answered at our July User meeting. Many more questions were raised as well.
 
Q: I have a youtube video that I am trying to put up on my home page but cannot get it to play. I have successfully done this in the past and have video sidebar plug-ins, but am still striking out.   Kathleen
 
 
Q: Is there a way to disable Comments from all New Pages as a default setting?
Doug
 
A: Yes, in WordPress click on: Settings> Discussion> Default Article Settings. Un-check the box for, “Allow people to Post comments on new articles.”
 
Q: Why are some styling buried in core files?
 
A: For WordPress themes all of the styling is contained in the style.css theme file. There is nothing in the WordPress core that will effect styling, except when you login to WordPress.
 
Q: Can email be collected directly into my site and then resent with a newsletter?
 
A: Yes, with a plugin like Newsletter you can capture email names, and send out email newsletters. You can also use plugins for popular newsletter tools like: MailChimp, Emma, Constant Contact, eRoi, etc.
 
Q: I have issues with fb and twitter on my client site.
 
A: You can Copy/Paste code from Facebook for badges: Profile, Like, Photo, Page. There are also dozens of plugins for Facebook. Twitter recently stopped support for old integrations, so you need to find a WordPress plugin that supports their new format. This Twitter plugin works well.
 
Q: A client site isn’t showing it’s comments or the comment box even though all settings are correct. What might be the problem?
 
A: That sounds like an issue with the Theme. Try switching themes to see if comments come back to life. Or, it could be a conflict with jQuery or Javascript caused by a plugin.
 
Q: My burning question is, I have a publisher WordPress site, I need to be able to have each of my authors have their own blog. How can I have more than one blog on one WordPress site?
 
A: In WordPress you will add a New User, then for each user there will be a page with just their blogs like: http://www.my-site.com/author/bob/, http://www.my-site.com/author/sue/, http://www.my-site.com/author/jane/
 
Q: Can you say anything about the difference between wordpress.org and the other wordpress?
 
Q: For a free WordPress site use the WordPress.com site, which will allow an address like my-new-site.wordpress.com. Later on you can buy your own domain name and then continue to use the my-new-site.wordpress.com to login and make updates. For a self-hosted site like http://www.my-new-site.com you can download and install WordPress from the http://www.wordpress.org web site. From a branding viewpoint it is more impressive to clients when you use http://www.my-new-site.com because that conveys that you are serious about your business.
 
Q: Regarding inserting images into a post – I understand loading images onto “Insert Images” however I am logging a lot of images.
 
A: For photo-heavy web sites we recommend using photo gallery plugins like NextGen.
 
Q: How can my slideshow also play music?
 
A: There are many plugins for slideshow with music, oQey Qallery is one of them.
 
Q: What is RSS?
 
A: RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it’s a way to share content from one web site on another. For example a WordPress site will automatically create an RSS feed at the address http://www.my-web-site.com/feed/ . You can use WordPress plugins to read an RSS feed from another web site and then display that content on your web site. Craigslist is also a popular web site that will create an RSS feed based on your searches, so you can look for something like “MacBook Pro 17” once and then add that RSS feed to your reader that will then alert you the very moment that a new “MacBook Pro 17” appears, saving you the time of having to visit Craigslist 10 times per day search for the same thing over and over again.
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10 thoughts on “Recap: Expert Q&A”

  1. Re: “Is there a way to disable Comments from all New Pages as a default setting?” I wasn’t able to attend the Meetup, so I’m not sure if the answer covered this already, but a clarification of terms is called for here. Did the user want to disable comments period, or just for Pages (as opposed to Posts). If the former, then the answer given applies. If just for Pages, but leave on for Posts, then the theme file for rendering a Page (usually page.php) needs to be edited to remove the comments function.

  2. I had the same thought, Robert. But there is an easier way to remove comments on a Page. You can go into “Quick Edit” as opposed to “Edit” for a Page. There is a box there called “Allow Comments” that you can UNCHECK.

    I don’t know why this isn’t available in “Edit.” Usually something “quick” has LESS functionality, not more. But anyway, this much easier than fussing with code.

    2. Thanks for sharing that tip! I did not know that.

      That’s what I love about the WordPress community, I’m always learning because people are willing to share what they know.

      1. You’re welcome! I’m always willing to share what LITTLE I know! 🙂

        This does beg the question, though…. Will new versions of WordPress acknowledge that being able to remove comments from a Page is a fundamental, basic necessity for most people, and it should be EASY to figure out how to do this? It should be a check box right there on the page as you’re editing it. Before I knew what I told you above, I had to search through tons of forum discussions after thoroughly exhausting my own efforts to figure it out! And I even had to do that same search again when the issue came up a second time, because I had not remembered the solution. I remembered that it was “easy,” but I didn’t actually remember what to do. It is such an EASY, SIMPLE solution, and yet it is hidden deep down where you would least expect to find it.

        Not only that, it must be done manually for each page where you don’t want comments. As the original answer stated, there is a way to disable comments from ALL new “articles.” But that includes blog Posts, not just Pages. There should be two options: 1) Allow / Don’t Allow comments on new Posts, and 2) Allow / Don’t Allow comments on new Pages.

        Until the developers see fit to make that happen, we’ll have to go into “Quick Edit” and uncheck that box for Pages. Because more than likely we ARE going to want to automatically allow comments for Posts.

        What bugs me most about this is that I see inexperienced WordPress users putting up websites that have comments enabled on all their pages. It looks trashy. They just don’t realize there’s an easy fix, because WordPress isn’t making it easy for them to FIND the easy fix!

      2. I believe this is one of the places where WordPress’ roots as a blogging platform only are still taking precedence over its use as a CMS, or even as an application platform. Some of this is inevitable, but this particular situation shouldn’t be too hard to fix. I agree that if would be great if comments were off by default for Pages and on by default for Posts, with a checkbox in the settings to toggle either one, as well as the ability to override on a per Page or Post basis. I’ll see if there’s a ticket for this this already and if not I’ll submit one.

        Although removing, or commenting out, the get comments functionality in page.php (or its equivalents in the hierarchy) is a little more work up front, it only has to be done once and then comments are off permanently for all Pages from that point on. That’s assuming, of course, that one is using either a bespoke theme that they update themselves, or is using a child theme in conjunction with a parent theme. Otherwise a theme update could possibly return that unwanted functionality.

    1. Cool, thanks! However, I see that there are also some precautions with it. I’m not an expert on WP history, but I imagine a lot of functionality originally started out as plug-ins. Then, they were so popular that their functions became standard and built-in. I still think that this could be achieved very simply by having standard checkboxes in the Settings, one for Posts and one for Pages, toggling comments off or on. Robert, if you submit the suggestion, I’d like to see it. And if they don’t do that, they should at least get a checkbox onto the main “Edit” page!

  4. Hi. If you’re still fielding questions, is there a way to order old (archived) posts alphabetically (first letter of title)? What about numerically (chapter #)? And/or by date (not date posted by date first published elsewhere, found just below the title/header of the article)? Thanks.

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