Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with wordpress

Free (or cheap), clean, minimal, mostly text Wordpress theme

codacorolla — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:08:38 -0800

I'd like a place to put up a CV and occasionally some writing. I'm looking for a minimal, clean, and if possible free Wordpress theme. In terms of references, I really like the look of Grantland articles (for example, the first thing I clicked on their frontpage). I love the running header, the minimal navigation, the centered space for an article, the white space, the blocking, and the running foot-notes on the side.

Best tablet and workflow for blogging

melissa — Mon, 13 May 2013 08:57:44 -0800

I would like to purchase a tablet so I can do more blogging without lugging a laptop around. What are the best tools/apps/workflow tips to be able to do this without tearing my hair out? Special snowflake stuff inside. Here are my snowflakey specs:

I blog using self-hosted Wordpress, and I can do basic maintenance on it myself.
I already have a Bluetooth keyboard I like, and that works with both iOS and Android.
I currently have an iPhone 4S and my husband has a Nexus 7 tablet I can experiment on.
I'm leaning towards an Android tablet because there are more options at various price points (read: cheaper).
A 7 inch tablet is ideal - will fit in my purse with the keyboard and all my other purse stuff.
I would love to be able to insert Flickr/Instagram pictures easily, but the more I search, the more I see that this isn't really done outside of the iPad-only Blogsy app. That app looks like what I'd like to use, but I can't justify spending so much more on an iPad (with all new connectors/accessories) on the basis of one app that may or may not stick around.
I am reasonably comfortable with HTML. I just think it's ridiculously difficult to insert Flickr images into the WordPress mobile app.
I have and use both Dropbox and Evernote. I know that Evernote works in rich text and can cause unusual formatting when exporting to Wordpress. Should I consider a plain text editor and work in Markdown? (I've never worked that way before, but it looks easy to learn.)
I have no problem paying for apps if they're worth the money.
Outside of blogging, I would be using this tablet mostly for various social media (Twitter/FB/Pinterest) as well as reading web stuff from Pocket and ebooks via Kobo/my local library. I'm not a big gamer, but I'd probably watch occasional videos on it too
I'm in Canada if that affects any tools/toys I can purchase.
I'm willing to wait if the Next Big Thing is worth it. (I need to save my pennies too!)

How do you make blogging on a tablet work for you? What's your workflow? Thanks!

How do I get a selected attribute term description to show on the page?

Snackpants — Wed, 08 May 2013 12:12:33 -0800

I am working in Wordpress with the Whitelight theme. I'm pretty new but know enough to be dangerous :) I have set up my attribute terms and added it to the variable product's page. Since they are scents, I would like to have the description (that I wrote when creating the term) appear on the product page. How this possible? Thanks! Happy Day!

Moving Wordpress content from multiple domains into a single one

jbickers — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:47:30 -0800

I've got multiple domains, all running Wordpress, and am down-sizing to just one. Looking for the easiest way to get the content from the other domains moved/imported to the keeper domain, each in their own category. So for instance, I've got the domain I'm keeping, call it myname.com. I also have two other domains, A and B. What I want to do is get all of the content from domain A into a new category on the keeper domain, in a category called A. All of the content from B moved over, into a category called B.

That means I want to ignore the category and tag structure of A and B as they currently are - I just want all of A in a single category on the keeper domain, all of B in its own category, etc.

I know export and import would work, but that'll keep the category structure of A and B, right? Should I just do that and then go through and delete the categories? I would rather not do that as there are a ton of posts and that would represent a lot of busywork.

Solve the Single Weirdest WordPress Glitch Imaginable

dubadubowbow — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 01:34:22 -0800

I'm running the Amazon S3 plugin by TanTanNoodles on a fresh installation of WordPress with no other plugins, and whenever I use it to upload any media, it correctly sends it off to the S3 bucket. But only if I use my iPod. I can not begin to understand why. Otherwise it uploads directly to the normal folder where my WP install is. I would like to get this to work, but even more so I want to know how on earth... what's happening?

Tried Chrome, Safari for iOS on newest iPod available, with all user accounts; tried Windows and Mac with Firefox, Chrome, and IE/Safari, with all user accounts. I am running the same bersion on several other blogs which work flawlessly, and I have configured everything identically with my host, WordPress, the plugin, and Amazon S3. The only thing affecting the upload destination is whether I am or am not using my iPod. What the.

Who's compressing my JPEGs: Gmail, iPad, or WordPress?

Artifice_Eternity — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:29:42 -0800

The other day I discovered that some JPEGs I'd posted to my (self-hosted) WordPress blog had been compressed. The subject of my blog happens to be anaglyph 3D photos... and if the images are not saved at a very high resolution, a phenomenon called "ghosting" or "crosstalk" appears, where parts of the image that are only supposed to be visible to one eye are visible to the other eye as well. This can ruin the 3D effect. So it's important that my images are uploaded and posted with no added compression. The problem is that I don't know exactly where the problem occurred. Details below... These particular images got to my blog somewhat circuitously: after exporting them from Photoshop on my PC at a very high resolution, I attached them to a Gmail message... then I downloaded them to my iPad's photo gallery... and then I uploaded them to the blog via the iPad WordPress app. Upon viewing the posted images, I could see a very definite degradation of image quality.

What I'm trying to figure out is which step in the chain caused this. I've sent image files thru Gmail many times, and never noticed any compression, so I'm assuming/hoping that's not where it happened.

I know that Apple often has stuff going on under the hood of its hardware and software that isn't clearly explained to users (which is why I've been wary of the iPad, and have only started using this hand-me-down unit recently). So it's my prime suspect. I looked for settings that might control image compression, but couldn't find anything that mentioned it or would allow me to prevent it from happening.

Then there's WordPress. When I upload multiple photos using the WordPress Media Uploader on the PC, there is a message that appears that says "Crunching..." My research suggests that the original images are not being compressed during this process, but rather that multiple image sizes are being created. Ultimately I've decided to upload images from my PC by inserting them individually into posts; the Media Uploader seems to handle this without any visible quality loss. But what the iPad WordPress app may or may not be doing to my images is still a mystery to me.

I'd really like to know where the problem occurred. It would be nice to be able to upload stuff from the iPad to the blog -- if this unwanted compression can be eliminated. I'm also thinking about buying the iPad Camera Connection Kit... but I don't want to try moving photos from my cameras thru the iPad to email or cloud storage, if it's going to mess them up.

Can anyone shed any light?

Wordpress for Multi-Genre Creators?

airguitar2 — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:58:54 -0800

Can you recommend a clean, minimalist Wordpress theme that can display art as well as writing? Bonus for free. Most themes I'm seeing are designed for visual display of art OR blog-style writing. I'm looking for a theme that will display BOTH paintings AND excerpts from published writing...

I like this theme:

but I need more white space between the images. Also, I'm not sure if this will be able to satisfactorily handle writing as well.

Any suggestions?

How To Prevent Spam on Wordpress Blog

goalyeehah — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:27:35 -0800

I have a wordpress blog. Comment sections is being filled daily with spam comments. Is there any way I can block these?

Is there a true WYSIWYG Wordpress Editor?

aburd — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 19:24:57 -0800

My wife has been forced to update and maintain her company blog. She is trying to create posts using the default online editor. I am watching her breakdown on a weekly basis while dealing with this. She hits backspace on a paragraph and the paragraph jumps to inside the caption box of the previous image. She creates a post, hits preview and nothing is even similar to what she was trying to create; text that was wrapping around an image is suddenly all messed up, weird breaks appear in paragraphs, Large blank spaces appear on the page. She has no experience with coding so getting her to actually code the post is tough. Is there an easy solution? I want to help her make her life easier.

Simple solutions for a private micro-mix sharing site?

Shepherd — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 07:46:17 -0800

As my friends and colleagues continue to move and diversify, I'd like to make a small, private site where we can share three- to five-song "mix tapes" of what we really love these days; ideally super easy from an interface perspective to create these mix tapes. What's my shortest path to goal? I'm comfortable with basic HTML (pre-5), simple CSS, and WordPress. I'm not at all a Tumblr user. Privacy is super important. My ideal would be something like the original iteration of designers.mx, before it got kind of bloated.

I just need the site to let users do two things:

1. Upload a mix. Three to five MP3 tracks, a name, and a "cover image".
2. View and download current mixes (by cover image), sorted by most recent first.

With a straightforward login/privacy barrier that prohibits random browsers from accessing the site.

I'm dealing with people who for the most part are fairly Web-savvy. I'm confident that they *could* handle doing this in a pretty standard WP framework where they make "posts" as a "contributor" to a "blog", but I think the success of this project will lie in making this as fast, seamless and painless for the users as possible.

I'm not super keen on spending money on a WP theme, but if $20 could save me eight hours of fiddling, I'd consider that a sound investment.

Tool for building a reference guide website or document generator?

100kb — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:23:36 -0800

Is there a word for these types of web-based tools, and a widely-used way to make them? One: a way make a web-based reference guide / glossary / help centre. Two: a tool that will generate a custom 20-page PDF based on complex user inputs, complete with table of contents. Are there open-source, well-supported solutions for building these things? Maybe a way to combine some plugins for Drupal or Wordpress? I really have no idea how to tackle this. I have a client who has a unique need. I'm trying to figure out if I can provide what they're looking for, and if not, where I should point them. Let's call them a non-profit association (NPA). They support small member organizations (MO's) by providing legal counsel, and one of the legal services they provide is a toolkit for new non-profits to write their documents of incorporation and bylaws.

Currently this is a Word document that has all the legal language the MO needs, in several optional variations, with notes where they should cut and paste things or customize. The user (MO member, usually not computer-savvy) has to cut and paste this Word document into a new Word document and then figure out how to generate a new table of contents and change the text to reference that new table of contents. This is required because often the text says things like "(when such and such happens) see bylaw 2a subsection 3 (but if such and such doesn't happen) see bylaw 3c subsection 1," so numbering needs to be consistent. The process often goes badly and the MO has to send their document back to the NPA to be cleaned up and fixed, which creates a lot of work

The current Word document also comes with a reference guide which explains legal terms and bylaw implications. Currently this guide is produced as a static PDF or printed booklet.

The NPA has a vision of this all happening online, in a more controlled way. They want the guide to be an interactive help centre, linked directly to the working document. So as the user is working on selecting their bylaws, they could click on a term and go to a web page with a definition, or see a pop-up with an explanation. Furthermore, the NPA would like to have more control over the final document, ideally they'd like PDF output based on a limited number of choices, rather than a Word Doc. The process is complex enough that the user should be able to save their work and come back later, rather than doing it all in one sitting. The MO's already all have logins to the NPA's (Drupal-based) site where they access the downloadable resources, so Drupal makes sense as a starting place. Any ideas about how to tackle this with existing tools? Are they looking at paying $50k for a complete custom web app? Or is this just plain too big to tackle, and they should put the money towards hiring a bunch of legal assistants to deal with the workload from the current system?

Reading to complete before a technical interview (CSS, JS, HTML)?

jsturgill — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:15:56 -0800

I'm scheduled for a technical interview after the weekend for a front-end development position. I'd like to spend some intensive time beforehand reading relevant blogs and books to prime the ol' noodle and supplement my existing knowledge. Could you recommend some resources? Are there questions you would ask an applicant in this situation, or that you have been asked? The interview will, in particular, cover "HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery." The company in question runs on WordPress, so items at the intersection of any and all of those technologies might be particularly helpful. Code will be discussed and produced as part of it.

Securing a wordpress site accessed through a gmail email

Kerasia — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 02:55:53 -0800

So. If you had a wordpress self-hosted website accessed through your name and an ok password and a gmail account associated with the wordpress admin login, what would you do to secure everything from fuckery? Asking for a friend. Her popular website is getting a lot of login attacks. Most of them are from Russia and China (she's in NZ) and she blocks those IPs via a plugin. But some are from NZ itself and she has reason to think, due to her work and website, that disgruntled opponents are trying to crack her site.

What are the latest and best protocols for securing her site, email etc? The easier the better, she's not super IT skilled.

Help me create a 10 hour coding project to assess contractors for hire

Th!nk — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:38:07 -0800

I'm trying to hire a full time coder for my business. I build, maintain, and remodel my own portfolio of websites (PHP, JS, WP, HTML, CSS, MySQL, etc). Once I have a few candidates I would like to assign them all the same small (paid) project so that I may assess their abilities. What should the test include? All candidates will be US-Based. $6000/mo budget cap. The most important skills are PHP, JS, MySQL, Wordpress, and the ability to self-organize and self-manage. Experience/familiarity with MVC architectures is also important as I have a few projects which will require completely custom CMS's.

I used to do all of my coding myself, but at best I would be considered an arm-chair coder. I've spent well over $50k on foreign odesk contractors and have been marginally satisfied with their quality - so now that I can afford to pay more it's time to find somebody proficient for long-term remote work on the sites in my portfolio.

I would really appreciate some ideas about what the best test project might be in order to judge them comparatively. Everyone will be native-English speakers based in the US.

I'm stumped on the details now that I'm trying to hire people who know more than me. What things should be included in this test to demonstrate capability and what should I look for specifically in their processes and code when the time is up?

Google Calendar Alternative Needed

stoneweaver — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 12:44:40 -0800

I need to be able to sync at least two calendars between iOS and Android, and I don't want to use Google Calendar anymore. What should I use? For obvious reasons, I don't trust Google with my calendar anymore. I need an alternative that will instantaneously (or near it) sync two calendars - one on an iPhone and one on an Android. Bonus points given if I can import my current calendar into the new one, but this is not a mandatory feature. I would be willing to pay for this once, but not monthly. I would also like to be able to access the calendars from a browser. It's OK if it's one calendar, as long as things can be colored/tagged for different people/organizations. (Extra Bonus: It would be super lovely if it were a calendar that I could easily import to Wordpress, but this is more a dream than necessity.)

I want a distributed Facebook.

eviemath — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 23:02:08 -0800

I want a distributed Facebook. What necessary pieces are already available, and what work would need to be done to integrate currently available necessary pieces? The basic idea:

Users must have their own web space. User data (pics, posts, etc.) are stored locally on the user's own web space. A list of other users and their access permissions is also stored locally.

A central service keeps a list of all users for verification purposes, along with an index to the local user sites. (So that users only have to log in once, rather logging in separately at each of their friends' sites.)

Comments on user posts could be dealt with in one of two ways: (i) comments are "owned" by the user whose content the comment is associated with; (ii) comments are just another type/category of post with a link. Users could enable tracebacks to semi-effectively create comment threads (this would be a bit ungainly; I'd prefer option (i)).

News/RSS type feed that automatically updates each user on their friends' selected activity when said user logs in to their own node. (Ideally, this could be a one-stop feed for everything the user is subscribed to: the distributed social network, Twitter, news feeds, podcasts, etc.)

The client interface must be secure (grar WordPress!), doesn't have to be super customizable (grar WordPress themes!), but does have to do all the basic social network stuff (let you post text, photos, videos, sound, and links; be searchable (keywords would be a nice addition); let you manage who can see and/or comment on which posts). I have a preference for open source projects, as well.

Are Diaspora hubs far enough along in development that they could be used in this way (if, for example, someone volunteered the web space to host a central index), or do they also rely on all data being stored on central servers? What options are available currently that do (all or) parts of this? For example, you can get extensions for WordPress that allow user management and access control locally, but there's no central registry of all users or the sort of indexing I'm thinking of. And there are security issues with the community (yet not open-source) development model for themes and other extensions. Other CMSystems, like Drupal, or courseware type content delivery systems, like Moodle, are similarly non-networked (though maybe more secure?). There maybe seem to be some identity verification type options - something about avatars?? - that such an application might be able to piggy back off of?

In summary:
1. What pieces of the puzzle are currently available?
2. What work would need to be done to integrate these pieces? (Eg. a standard, well-vetted theme for WordPress or Drupal or something, together with a wrapper/central verification and RSS service that would hide the login details for each individual blog site, make the user experience seem like a unified social network rather than accessing individual blogs, and allow for a news feed on their friends' activity.)

Which Social Media is "Best"?

CollectiveMind — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:07:01 -0800

II am trying to get a handle on web content and which content has, overall, the best stickiness. Sites like YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr are, as near as I can tell, mostly visual. Blog and microblogging sites like Wordpress and Twitter are word based. Quora, Reddit and Metafilter are information sharing communities. Podcasts and music sites like MySpace or Soundcloud are, for the most part, sound focused. And then you have sites like Facebook and Google+ that are trying to combine the best of all of them. I'm not asking about raw numbers or surveys that show which sites are used by the most people, though I admit that may be the closest I can get to my question. It seems to me that those sites that give people the most freedom to do more than one thing, i.e., not restrict them to a keyboard or a screen, would be the most popular since time is limited. But is it simply that some people who prefer video or are OK typing into a keyboard don't care about how much time they spend focusing in one direction? And are they markedly different from people who only want to listen to podcasts?
Or am I just going to have to be satisfied with leaders in each genre rather than discovering which social media is the "best."

How can I allows clients to preview a website before it goes live?

cirrostratus — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 07:31:03 -0800

One of our clients has a WordPress site running on our IIS Windows server. They want to be able to preview and edit the site before it goes live. How can this be accomplished? I currently have a couple computers in their office with edited hosts files that allow them to see/edit the new site on those computers, but that solution feels hacky and they want to be able to see the site from any computer. How can I set it up so they can see it from any computer, ideally just by typing in a secret url? Is there something I could put in the server's inetpub/wwwroot folder so they could just type in http://ip.address/something to see the new site?

Wanted: WordPress website tutorial

braemar — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 08:42:52 -0800

What are the best online resources to guide me in developing a website using WordPress? I know how I want the site to look, and I have designed other websites using handcode and rough tools such as Word. The site won't be complicated, about 8 pages with drop down menus and rotating photos on the front page. I would like to also link to Flickr and YouTube from this site.

Tracking user activity on a Wordpress blog

codacorolla — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 11:01:00 -0800

Wordpress question: Is it possible to generate a report on which users are the most active on the site in terms of interactions, click-throughs, and time logged-in? I see a few plugins which claim to do this, but it seems like something you'd have had to have installed since the time you wanted to start keeping track. Is there something I can use which will find this information automatically?

How to bulk download files of one type from the WordPress Media Library?

houseofdanie — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 14:56:38 -0800

Is there a quick (or a quicker) way to download all files of a given type from the Media Library of a self-hosted WordPress site? The site in question has about 200 MP3s. I can easily sort out the MP3s by selecting "Audio." But how can I download them all at once? Is there a plug-in? FTP looks like a big pain, too, as these files are organized in folders by year and month, and there are several years here -- and many months with no uploads at all.

Linking Social Networks

CollectiveMind — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 00:45:27 -0800

I have been combing the social networks I use trying to find a way to link two of them. It's not a big list; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Soundcloud, and Wordpress. I know about IFTTT and Hootsuite, but I'd prefer to not use third party apps if possible. Facebook and Twitter of course, connect to almost everything. But I'm also trying to figure out how stuff I upload to Soundcloud can be posted on LinkedIn. And likewise, I can't get LinkedIn posts to show up my Facebook business page. Is it just not possible w/o 3rd party apps that will make posts I don't need? If there is a way, can somebody tell me?

Wordpress site, built in English, for Chinese readers

cilantro — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 09:46:53 -0800

Tell me what you know about building a Wordpress-based site in English, but with Chinese-language content. Or any other language, really, if it applies to this situation. The site will be built by English-speaking designers and developers for an English speaking company that wants a small Chinese-language Wordpress site for their burgeoning Chinese market.

The CMS will be in English, and Chinese language content will be input directly into the CMS by the translator. The reason we're not doing this as a static build is that the content will change on a regular basis.

All the information I've found so far is about using plugins to automatically provide translation - that doesn't apply because we will be using a professional translator. I just want to know about things like

-design considerations
-Chinese character support
-I know Wordpress.org is banned in China - does that mean there will be problems at all with building a site with a Wordpress framework?
-Anything else I've forgotten?

Easiest way to get decent-looking affiliate site online?

StephenF — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 08:59:47 -0800

I want to get an affiliate site running without spending a huge amount of time or money on it. What I want is a pretty standard shopfront with a grid of icons, and some text explaining why I think you should buy these items, running on my own domain. All the actual sales will be done on the affiliate end, so a shopping cart is not required. This seems like something that would have been asked before, but if so I can't find it.

I've tried a few approaches:

- Wordpress with Thesis: All going well until I found I couldn't buy a Thesis skin outright and vendors were looking for a USD100 annual subscription.
- Wordpress with another online-store theme I bought at ThemeForest: Grid layout for products turned out to be impossible, writer of the theme no longer supporting it. USD57 wasted.
- Shopify: Looks perfect but for actual sales rather than affiliate stuff, and I never was able to figure out if I could use my own domain or not
- ZenCart: Currently almost finished the install but am at work so will complete in a few hours. Documentation looks to be lacking unless you're willing to pay for it.

I must admit I am somewhat frustrated. I don't want to learn HTML and CSS and do it from scratch, or to spend hours playing with drag-and-drop designs, or to get nickel and dimed into submission. Is there some easy solution here that I am missing? I want to get to a point where I can set up a site like this easily and quickly to test a number of approaches to some markets I have in mind, and the tools are really getting in my way at the moment.

Thanks guys!

Can you recommend a good device detection approach for Wordpress?

radiocontrolled — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 08:51:42 -0800

Not sure I want to use Twitter bootstrap for the mobile versions of my Wordpress site. What alternatives do I have? I used the responsive Twitter bootstrap framework & HTML5 boilerplate as the base for a Wordpress custom theme. It's working well and fun to use for the tablet / desktop versions of the site. But I don't like Bootstrap's use of display: none to hide markup and I have found some accessibility problems in the mobile version that are making me consider creating another version of the theme.

So I am considering creating a mobile version of my theme to send to phones. But I have read that device detection is not the best (i.e. not foolproof) and that it is better to design responsively. I'm also curious if there's a good case to be taken for sending a specific mobile theme to a mobile phone using device detection and I want to experiment with that.

Are there good plugins you'd recommend (e.g. that harness WURFL?) that make it easy to create a separate mobile theme? Have you ever used device detection as opposed to media queries to send a mobilized theme in wordpress? Are there guides you recommend? Your thoughts and experiences are welcomed. At the end of the day, accessibility for my desktop site is good, and it's a priority for my mobile site too. Thanks!