Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with blog and html

How do I create an online poll which users can permanently add to?

kmccormi — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:41:10 -0800

How can I create an online HTML form poll, preferably for free, wherein the list of multiple choices can grow when users decide to add to the list of choices? Many poll creators allow for the creation of multiple choice polls that give the viewer the option of selecting "other" with a text field for comments. However, usually this entry does not then become visible to viewers who visit thereafter.

I want my list of choices to be able to grow. If a user sees an existing choice that he likes, he can add his vote to that one, but if he doesn't see an existing choice I would like him to be able to add that choice permanently to the list. Any user who visits afterward will see his choice in the list and be able to vote for it.

I also would love for this poll to be clean, ad-free, and preferably embeddable into a blog or personal site. Does anything like this exist? Thanks.

Help me get the Wordpress audio player plugin to work? Please?

hifiparasol — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:19:35 -0800

I'm having trouble implementing the Wordpress audio player plugin on my website. Please help a baffled man. I've installed the Wordpress audio player plugin on my website, but for the life of me I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong -- it's not showing up on the page.

I'm writing the page using the "html" setting on the wordpress control panel, and I'm following the instructions listed under "usage" in the 1pixelout link above. The file I'm trying to play is definitely in the folder I'm directing the player to (I'm hosted, it's not just a WP blog); I can link to it conventionally (as in, without the player).

The only change I made was to change the audio files directory path from "/audio" to "/uploads." I've even tried checking the box (in the audio player controls on my WP control panel) that replaces all links to mp3 files with a player instance. Didn't work.

Can someone help me out here? I have a feeling there's some extremely minor thing I'm doing wrong, so don't think I'm too foolish. Thanks.

How can I change the css of a post along with the theme?

Solomon — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 05:32:01 -0800

Using Wordpress, how can I call CSS for a post from a specific file, rather than having the CSS embedded within the post? Situation: I write a post, and have some text highlighted in a certain colour that matches the theme (for example). When I change the theme, the colour of the text no longer matches.

Idea: use a .css file for each theme that contains the CSS for the posts, and call the necessary font colour/size etc from that, instead of having it within the post itself. Sort of like a theme for posts, instead of the whole site. When the theme changes, I can quickly change the post .css file to the correct one, and have the changes reflected in the posts when they are viewed.

Problem: I have no idea how to do this. I have a vague idea of how to create a .css file, and can probably work that out. What I want to know is what to put in the post html to ensure that the correct .css file is called, per theme. At the moment, I have [span style="color: #5a008c"] - obviously with different brackets. I want to be able to have ["path to file" "correct section" "whatever"] instead, that will give me the same results as above.

How do I do that? What syntax do I need to put in a posting to make it call the correct .css file?

1) web-site idea, 2) ??? 3) The Awesome

indiebass — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:52:23 -0800

Can the hive help me get a web site started? I have very specific ideas, but I'm a dinosaur when it comes to everything about the insides of websites. Back in the day when I set up a website, it was the late 90's and everything had to be coded by hand and ftp'ed to someplace. I realise we are in the 21st century and there are much easier ways to go about things.

I already have a domain purchased. What I want to make is a site that is very similar to the old Pajiba setup: graphic banner across the top, assorted goodies in one or two side columns (probably just links in one, at this point) and a main area in between. The idea behind the site is that I'll be reviewing things, but they won't necessarily be new things. That is, whatever my netflix might be, an album I listened to... things like that. So in the middle I'd like to have a photo, a title and one sentence, where you can click on the title and it takes you to a separate page that is cataloged as http:www.mydomain.com/review_title.html (or whatever) and looks like the front page, except the middle bit is just the extended article.

Further complicating things, is that I wanted to set up the website with free hosting, if possible, and if I actually start generating traffic outside my immediate circle of friends then I'd think about buying some space/bandwidth.

So how do I even start? I know you can use a unique domain name with, like, blogger - which is free - but do they let you structure the workings of it like I want to? (the title-link deal to pages behind the page) I feel confident that I would be able to make the page look like I want it to, it's more the workings and the hostings that I am unsure about.

I've put off asking this question out of embarrassment for a couple weeks, because of the n00b-ishness, and I've really tried to navigate it on my own, but put in "free web hosting" into the google and it's like the internet punches you in the face. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!

HOWTO: keyboard shortcuts (not access keys) on websites?

jruckman — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:18:19 -0800

Any idea how keyboard shortcuts on websites are implemented, a la Google Reader and ffffound.com? I'm not talking about access keys, or maybe I am -- but I don't want to press Ctrl + a key to have it work, I just want to press the key. Specifically I want to implement this on my WordPress blog to allow for tapping through blog posts.

WP Blog gone blank, Admin section is fine

Baud — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 15:53:01 -0800

WorpressFilter Blog gone blank, Admin section is fine - help ! I've upgraded my Wordprees blog to the latest version and all hell broke loose on me... First it was a full blatk blog and admin section. I've regained access to the admin section by deleting a theme folder but there is still a white page where somebaudy.com used to be

Deleting the content of the plugins folder did not help.

if it's of any help I'm hosted by DreamHost

Now where did that link go?

Solomon — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 05:34:03 -0800

What HTML code do I need to add to my Blogger blog template to automatically underline all the links I make in a blog posting? I can get the links to show up in the correct colour, but that colour is quite close to black, so I'd like the text to be highlighted another way, one that is expected when linking. I do not want to change the colours. I'm pretty thick when it comes to HTML, so I'd really appreciate it if you were quite explicit when saying where it has to be. The blog is linked to in my profile, if you need to see the page source.

A theme for wordpress and google maps mashup?

sethwoodworth — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 15:18:00 -0800

I'm starting a new tourism website for my local area. It's a mash of google maps, with photos and information of a given area featuring some of the neat stuff happening, or that has happened. And now I need some help with the wordpress theme. I'm using Wordpress to manage my stories and some of the photo linking, and I have most of the google-maps configuration for the pop-up photo galleries done. What I need is a nice two or three column layout for the google map on one side, a narrower column on the right for the wordpress content, and possibly a third on the far right (or far left) for a text ad column.

I am pretty new to css and wordpress, but I can do html, and I worked my way through the javascript for the google map. What should I look for in a wordpress theme, where do I look or should I customize one from somewhere else.

I'm sorry this is sort of broad, but I'm looking for someone to point me in a direction, not necessarily solve the problem for me. I've googled and found many resources for google map plugins and google map tools in general, but no themes that can display a big block of google map and my blog.

Help please hive-mind!

How can I make an RSS-like feed that is publishable by the public?

itchi23 — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 16:48:08 -0800

How can I make an rss-like feed that is publishable by the public? Maybe there's a better way to do this, but here's what I'd like the end result to look like Ideally, I'd like to have a subscribe-able public feed that can be published by anyone interested in a very niche topic. It would be a one-way type communication where the publisher would post tiny news items to a feed, but no dialog would occur between publishers of the "news" items... It might be similar to Twitter, where there's small one-line items, but they would include html links. No login or registration should be required, as I'd like publishers to remain anonymous if they'd like. Maybe it could be a webpage where the anonymous comments would then go out into a feed? Does this make sense, and how might I be able to do it? Thanks!

How do I automatically create a new window, blog stylee?

Rabulah — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 11:48:05 -0800

Blogger.com template query - I'm using the Minima Ochre template. What HTML can I add to the template to make all links open in a new window? I love linking to interesting things I find as I trot round the web on my blog. However, I'd also like those interesting things to open in a new window/tab when the user clicks on the link.

I know I can add 'target="_blank" ' to the HTML of every link I make, but I don't want to have to do this for every link I create. I'd like to have some HTML in the template that will automatically create a "new window link" for me.

Is this possible? If so, how?

Easy image insertion in MT

XQUZYPHYR — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 16:22:20 -0800

Movable Type: is there a plugin/hack that would make it easy to insert a different line of code depending on a selection from a pull-down menu? What I'd like to do is replicate an old format on my blog posts seen in earlier posts here.

For all those posts, I was simply inserting the IMG tags in the actual title line of the post. That's obviously both cumbersome and bad coding.

What I'd like to do is have some kind of option in my edit window where I can select an item from a dropdown menu, or write in a keyword or something, and then the corresponding icon graphic appears in the post. As the page I linked to shows, I'd prefer it to be able to have "no icon" as an option, as well as possibly different sizes. (The former is a much bigger deal though)

The closest I came was CustomFields, but it didn't seem to be doable as it's not complex enough to correspond image tags to a selection field.

I guess the best comparison would be those weird "current mood" things on LiveJournal, etc. Except instead of selecting the mood and having it display the mood I'm in, a corresponding picture would be there.

I have this nagging suspicious this is a simple thing to do and the answer is right under my nose but I've tried unsuccessfully for a month now to come up with an idea.

I need to be universal baby :)

crewshell — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:10:42 -0800

Can you help me recode one part of my blog / website so that it works in all browsers? (I think its an easy fix that I am over looking) I have a blog at www.mentaldribble.com. I love the new theme I found but there’s one problem. On the upper right hand corner where it says PAGES, CATEGORIES, ARCHIVES, when you mouse over it there is suppose to be a drop down list. It works in IE 7 but not 6, and I believe it works correctly in Firefox too but I would like it to work in all the browsers.

What can I change so the code works in IE 6?

Also - I recently added a few more categories and the drop down is interfering with the links on the left of the page and I cant seem to select any of the categories that overlap those permanent links on the left. Namely "virgin islands" category on the drop down overlaps the search box, and when I try to select that link the drop down list just disappears..

If you can suggest a better way to accomplish this drop down list, or can just fix the way it currently works, that would be AWESOME.

Thanks hive mind.

Why are my individual Blogger posts using a different template?

beaucoupkevin — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:41:49 -0800

[BloggerFilter] My individual blog posts are not reflecting the template used at index.html file. As you can see, the individual post doesn't feature the Haloscan comments link or the social bookmarking stuff. It looks like the same DIV is being used for both, but I can't figure out why it's changing. Any advice, Blogger/CSS geniuses?

A possible hint: this all started when I attempted to switch to WordPress and had it munge up my site.

RedirectFilter: Can't edit meta or serverside files...

vanoakenfold — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 07:45:36 -0800

Yet another redirect question: How can I auto-redirect a visitor to another page, although I can't edit the page's HTML/code, per se? I've got a blog on a freebie host with no adverts, and I want to redirect users from the blog page (wordpress) to a new blog page on a different host -- but all I can do is submit story entries, not edit the actual code like the meta tags (as far as I know, unless you know of a wordpress.com seup function I am not aware of..?

Is there an HTML or or some js taggery I can set up in one of the stories/articles to make the page redirect to the new blog?

I've seen it done on Myspace I think.. Some fake account with a cute girl picture wants to be my friend, so in visiting her profile to see if she's actually a person, the myspace account redirects you to a porn/spam-etc site instead. How do they do that without being able to actually edit the serverside page data?

Petitions inside a site

kenneth — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 07:15:07 -0800

I'm going to start a site to petition a board to keep a local public official in office. I want the site to include facts about why he should stick around and links (obviously) this stuff can be done easily with Wordpress (as we learned yesterday), i'm guessing. But i also want to incorporate a petition that can keep some information private (like e-mail addresses) but make other information public (neighborhood, city, state). Ideally, I'd like to be able to print the content once the numbers get up. What's the best way for me to do that? I've got some skills, but it's been a couple of years since I've built a site. (last one was a moveable type install)

HTML woes: Google/Amazon ads and IE display woes

jdroth — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 07:38:23 -0800

HTML woes: How can I make Amazon ads play nice with Google ads? Also, why is my web site's layout screwed up in Internet Explorer on Windows? I can't figure it out. #1 — Starting with this Sesame Street post in the blue, I was able to create an entry on my personal site that has enjoyed very high traffic (for me) over the past week. My Google Ads have worked nicely, but now I want to tack on an Amazon iframe ad in the middle of the entry. When I do, something goes wrong. Where the Amazon ad should appear, half of the Google ad appears, and the regular Google ad doesn't appear where it should at the bottom of the page. I haven't the faintest clue what's wrong. (I've taken the Amazon ad down for the time being, so there's no broken-ness to view; I can re-implement the broken-ness if that will help diagnose the problem.)

#2 — On a similar note, my site doesn't display properly on Internet Explorer for Windows. It's always been a source of embarrassment, but now I'm even more ashamed to have all these new visitors coming to look at Sesame Street videos only to find my broken formatting. Here's a screenshot of how things look on my Mac (and most (all?) Mozilla-based browsers). Here's a screenshot of how things look on Internet Explorer for Windows. I have no idea what is causing the problem. (Well, I suspect it's something in my sidebar, but beyond that I'm clueless.) Can anyone help me diagnose this problem? I've been ignoring it for almost two years.

What's wrong with this CSS?

aaronetc — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 19:54:55 -0800

I have a CSS class that displays "correctly" in Safari and Mac IE, but for some reason knocks the font size down in Firefox and IE under XP. Everything looks right to me, but I'm not a CSS expert by any means. Anyone care to take a look? The site is here, the CSS here; it's the class "blogbody" that's causing problems. This is a modified Movable Type default template, so it seems like it ought to work -- the only thing I could think of to change in the HTML was to remove the second </div> and the end of each blog entry, because I couldn't tell what it was closing, but that had no effect. I tried altering the font-size in the CSS, which only changed the first entry; subsequent entries always stayed at what looks like 10px. Any ideas?

Display my blog entries on another site?

electric_counterpoint — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 19:54:43 -0800

Quick-n-dirty way to put a "teaser" latest blog entry on my homepage? The facts: I've got a blog and a more static "homepage." They're separate, totally different designs. Someday they'll be hosted together on the same server under the same domain, but until then they don't even know one another exists. The blog is powered by Blogger and hosted on their Blogspot.

I'd like to show my latest blog post as a teaser on the front page of my personal website, in an iframe. Ideally it would even have a word limit -- maybe the first 100 words and then an ellipsis and link to the actual blog.

I can't figure out how to make it happen, though.

Things I've considered:
- Adding it as live RSS content. Since I own both sites, it ought to be easy. Unfortunately, I can't find a free RSS parser that will allow me to do it without having my server up. The server won't be up for a while for reasons I can't control... and I don't want to pay $50 for a parser license, only to junk it once my server comes online and I can do it for free with server-side stuff.

- Somehow putting the standard Blogger tags into my homepage (or iframe) and actually publishing each entry both places. Not actually sure how I could do this -- is there an automated way to do it? Would I have to cut and paste each entry into two separate posts in two separate Blogger accounts?

There should be an easy way to do this, since I'm dealing exclusively with my content (sites and feeds). But, I've been putting this off for the duration of the time it's taken to build the sites, and now I've got a glaring white space on my homepage that I'd rather not show off to the world. Thanks in advance for your ideas!

Why don't Amazon and Typepad play nice together?

Servo5678 — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 09:43:25 -0800

Amazon links and Typepad blogs don't play nice together. Let me explain the issue that I'm experiencing with posting links generated by Amazon Associates on my Typepad blog. The problem is that Amazon links contain the & symbol, and when that symbol is pasted into Typepad the Rich Text Editor converts it to a & amp; which is the proper code in HTML for the & symbol. Amazon links do not like seeing & amp; in a URL instead of &, so my Amazon links are broken on my blog. Even if I remove the amp; by hand, Typepad restores it when I switch between text view modes. Even opening an existing post for editing restores the amp; text.

I thought I had a way around this by composing my posts in Rich Text mode and then switching to plain text for posting, but it turns out that posting as plain text sends unformatted HTML code into my Atom feed which is annoying my readers, to say the least.

So, after all of this, my question: how can I keep Typepad from changing the links that Amazon generates?

Voting Buttons in Blog Entries

toftk — Sun, 19 Jun 2005 22:05:19 -0800

I want to allow people to vote on things in a blog entry. Is there a code I can use to track voting easily and allow people to just click a radio button or something to cast their vote?

Started My Own Blog: Need Advice on CSS, Non-FTP Updating & Automated Archiving

anastasiav — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 14:22:50 -0800

I'm in the process of starting my own weblog (it launched on Thursday). I can write pretty decent basic HTML by hand (in notepad), but CSS wrestled me to the ground and stepped on my head and a lot of tech jargon passes me right by (I'm a designer and a writer, not a programer, I guess). What advice does Metafilter have for me? I should also mention, I guess, that I've looked at Blogger, but (I know this sounds stupid) I can't quite figure out how to make it work in any way that doesn't look like I'm using Blogger. My big problem at the moment is that I need a way to update from work without using an FTP client, and I know I'm going to need an automated way to archive things eventually.