Some WordPress Considerations

Greetings and Salutations!

Okay – I don’t need a week to make up my mind on using a new wordpress theme, as referred in my previous post yesterday here. I have decided to SCRAP the old template and use this GILA template.

First of all, I like it for the following reasons:

I like the 3 column setup and design

I like that the entire page is used from side to side

I like that I was able to figure out what to change in the .css stylesheet template

The google adsense was able to fit in better, and work properly

These are the changes that I have implemented:

Left Sidebar – Rather than updating my template files with links and graphics, I converted it all into the “LINKS” section of this WordPress blog, and suppressed the graphic

Right Sidebar – Whatever graphic or javascript I was not able to convert, I left in the right sidebar

Right Sidebar – The number of posts listed in each topic category is non-existent, but I preferred it this way

Left Sidebar and Post Pages – The old template was not getting Google to spider the site and the adsense ads were not relevant. This new template works and the adsense should be working properly.

Single Pages – if you click on the header title at the beginning of a post, or the comment link at the end of a post, you will go to the “single” page. At the bottom of the page, there is some recommended searches based on the existing entry that you may follow up from previous entries in our archives. You may also select your own search criteria and enter it in the top right sidebar

I’ve lost the “hot jump links” at the top of each post now. As much as I want them, because I transferred most of the links to the left sidebar into the WordPress links area, I am unable (or oblivious to knowing the instructions how) to create an “ID” or “NAME” tag where to jump. I can create a hot-jump to the top of the Links section, but that’s it. The rest of the links in the sidebars are pretty much in plain view. There are links at the bottom of the page, in the footer below the cartoon that links to our other pages .. the Free Greeting E-Cards pages, the Photo Gallery pages and the Community Corner pages.

Are you still reading this?

Okay! Then, you probably know something about blogging and WordPress template programs, and are not too upset of this deviation from Pet Lover articles. For that reason, I thought I would post a few things that may be of interest to you, if you blog and if you use WordPress.

Plug-ins that PetLvr.com – [The Blog] is using (or at least is activated) at this moment

Spam Karma 2-Reloaded Adsense-Deluxe Auto-Hyperlink URL’s Backup Restore Bunny’s Technorati Tags Hello Dolly Image Browser Live Comment Preview Search History DoFollow Extract Terms Terms2posts Terms2search Terms2tags

How I backup all of my data and when I do it – If you are not backing up your data, consider it!

I use WS_FTP_le as my preferred ftp program, and edit all of my files with Notepad. In my individual theme folder, in this case, c:\petlvr.com\blog\wp-content\themes\gila … before I make many general modifications to the .php templates (like I did yesterday and today … I create a new folder and copy all of the themed template files from the ‘net into these backups before I make changes, in case I have to revert back to the original version that worked. They would look like …
c:\petlvr.com\blog\wp-content\themes\gila\backup-20050910
c:\petlvr.com\blog\wp-content\themes\gila\backup-20050911 etc…

If you are using blogger.com, where there really is only one template – on google’s server .. there is no backup function as of yet. But, you can click on the “Template” button and then hilite the entire text of your template and copy / paste into a new .txt file on your desktop. Before I switched blogs from blogspot to my own servers, I maintained a grandfather system of 3 backups of templates before I would add stuff in the sidebar, etc. etc … You can see for yourself why that was important, by viewing source at http://PetLvr.blogspot.com .

Every friday I use the Backup/Restore plug-in and make a backup of the MySqul database, and of the WordPress files. I have no clue if it’s really backing up things, but they are huge files! My last backup of the MySql database was about 3 MB in size, and the size of the WordPress files was about 85 MB in size! The plug-in creates the files in the ..\wp-content\backup folder and then I copy it to my hard drive and delete these big files from the internet. Once a month I have been doing permanent backups to CD-RW disks but, I will probably make that more frequent as my computer gets older.

How I often add posts to this blog – Are you doing something like this too?

Read this all about adding a “rightclick.php” to your root blog directory. I use Internet Explorer, and I had to add something to the registry of my winXP .. but, if I am surfing pages either independently or through my Bloglines.com feeds, I just right-click my mouse and the title and links pops up in a new window. I then save it perhaps after including the text material. It makes it a whole lot easier, as when I read my bloglines, I just pile up a bunch of articles at once, and post them over a few days.

If you are using blogger.com – you can download the Google toolbar, and go into “options” and make sure that you tick “Blog This!” .. then, you can just click the “Blog This!” link on the toolbar and the same thing can happen and speed up posts for you.

Well .. that’s about it for my wordpress blog tips and issues – You may now resume back to your regularly scheduled PetLvr.com programming! 😀

I would just like to take this added opportunity to remind people of the 3 links at the top of the page, for the PetLvr Corner, PetLvr E-Cards and the PetLvr Photo Gallery.

I have also updated the “ABOUT THIS BLOG” page and our continued need for contributors of content and the “BLOGGERS WANTED” pages, where the links are in the top of the Left Sidebar.

Take care.
HART
PetLvr.com