Anyone know of a recommended paid helpline service for WordPress.com blogs?
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Does anyone know if there is such a thing?
I’m tired of hitting the bumpers and taking hours to sort whatever out.
I need the time to work on content rather than working out how to set up and maintain the blog and would be happy to pay a reasonably small amount for an email or telephone helpline service.
Surely there is one?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there,
raincoaster may choose provide this service to you but consultation services are not cheap.We Volunteers could provide our advice free of charge here but that advice would be to strip a great deal of stuff off your front page and the sidebars and footer areas and that would run contrary to what your focus has been.
Bottom line: I cannot help you because my advice would not go over well with you at all. As I said yesterday the site “loads like a pig” because you have so many links on the front page in the sidebar and in the widgets. That’s not to mention too many lengthy posts on the front page as well.
Here is the report:
Your website is slower than 95% of all tested websites
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/q6TN3EKNF/http://truthinreality.com/ -
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I appreciate what you are saying and I don’t have a problem with it. Although of course it seems that WordPress.com does not support the way I want the blog to be so I may need to consider going elsewhere.
I really don’t want to do that, as apart from the slowness of the site and a few probably quite easily resolvable barriers that I need to break through such as the way the links in the top clicks widget show up and how best to set things up when I actually start blogging, I have been more than happy with what I have been able to achieve.
The difficulty is I don’t really want to have the site in another format and really don’t understand why if it is possible to have the format at all, it slows the site down so much. Why allow set ups that slow the site down so much? I feel it’s really too late to change it all around now, so it looks like my only alternative is to move the site elsewhere and take the format with me.
I definitely don’t want to have to go into all the intricacies of setting up and running a website whether it is wordpress.org or something else, but perhaps especially wordpress.org as it looks really complex and probably beyond my capabilities. That’s the reason I chose WordPress.com in the first place.
There is more than enough stress in daily life and perhaps especially on the internet these days with a constant stream of changes. Such as I quite frequently visit Youtube and it seems every time they have made more changes and moved everything around and I don’t even work out one set of changes before they make another. (I went on there yesterday and couldn’t even work out where I was – on my channel or on someone else’s!)
Sorry for the rant, but I’ve realised I have to do something about this
and would be grateful for suggestions from others who are or have been in a similar situation!Thanks.
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Although of course it seems that WordPress.com does not support the way I want the blog to be so I may need to consider going elsewhere.
Going elsewhere and doing the same thing again will produce the same result again ie. slow page loading time due to the overloaded front page, sidebars and footers. Worse still sites like yours are not attractive to search spiders at all for the very same reasons.
Please read this report http://ismyblogworking.com/truthinreality.com
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Thanks.
Without being sucked into a negative vortex of despondency, I think it must be possible to find ways to speed the site up somewhat.
Or I feel quite confident that I can find a site where I can do the same thing and it won’t be so slow and I guess I’ll have to ask around to find out.
It’s bound to take a few months to transfer everything over and in the meantime I’d be grateful to hear suggestions if anyone else has had similar experiences or problems and how they have dealt with them.
I know one thing and that is in searching for a new site one of my primary requirements will be having a reasonable helpline!
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These are the ways to reduce page loading time:
1. Edit posts and insert “the more tag” so only excerpts appear on the fort page. http://en.support.wordpress.com/splitting-content/more-tag/2. Reduce the number of posts appearing on the front page here > Settings > Reading
Blog pages show at most _ posts3. Reduce the number of widgets in the sidebar and footer areas.
4. Open the widgets in the sidebar and footer areas and reduce the number of posts displayed by them in the widgets that the option exists to do that in.
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5. Remove the flag counter widget as it’s not required by readers to locate any content that’s not displayed on the front page of the blog.
6. Remove the large images displayed in “Traditional Hymns” in the sidebar.
O c
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It’s bound to take a few months to transfer everything over and in the meantime I’d be grateful to hear suggestions if anyone else has had similar experiences or problems and how they have dealt with them.
It takes less than one day to hire a web host, http://wordpress.org/hosting/
set up a WordPress.org install,
http://wordpress.org/
update the nameservers to point to the new site,
http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/domain-management/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/domain-management/#update-nameserversupload a theme and plugins,
http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/export the content out of the WordPress.com blog and import it into the WordPress.ORG site.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/export/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/blogroll/import-export-links/However, if you do the same set up on that WordPress.org install as I said above the result will be the same.
… I feel quite confident that I can find a site where I can do the same thing and it won’t be so slow and I guess I’ll have to ask around to find out.
With respect I am sorry but I must disagree with that opinion.
I know one thing and that is in searching for a new site one of my primary requirements will be having a reasonable helpline!
The support here at WordPress.COM is very good and if you think it’s better at WordPress.ORG then you need to think again because it isn’t. Support here at WordPress.COM is long suffering, hand holding support for beginner bloggers. At WordPress.ORG it’s more along the lines of read the flipping manual support http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page as you are expected to have the skills to manage your own site and fix whatever breaks on it. WordPress.ORG supplies only software and peer support forums. There is no “Staff” as there is here. http://wordpress.org/support/
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I am grateful for the very helpful advice you have given me. I will do my best to speed the site up and stay with wordpress. com.
For now I have a whole list of things to find out about and fix, so I’ll get on with it. I can do just about every one except reduce the number of links.
I had or have no idea at all whether the help at WordPress.org is better or not. I just know that it seems to have more flexibility and plug-ins and so on but I did see it as being a lot more high maintenance and hard work. To be honest I don’t really want to invest too much time and effort into maintaining a website, that is why I chose WordPress.com. Computers have already taken over my life and most days I sit at one from when I get up in the morning to when I go to bed at night!
Some people have a much easier time with technology than others and while I can help out people who know less, I am very well aware that I struggle with understanding beyond a certain level and realistically I know that WordPress.org is beyond me and it would drive me up the wall to try and get to grips with it and grasp the technical jargon.
However I am very keen to keep the top clicks widget and I think the way it looks presently is not good as people can’t even see what they are about to click on! I wonder if there IS anything that can be done about it. Please would you let me know how I could go about getting an answer from a member of the support staff about this?
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However I am very keen to keep the top clicks widget and I think the way it looks presently is not good as people can’t even see what they are about to click on!
The Top Clicks widget displays links that people click which are external to your blog. It was working properly on your blog yesterday but I don’t see it today.
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I understand both WordPress.com and WordPress.org differences because I have had both types of blogs. I chose to move my personal blog back here from self hosting as paying for as No-Ads upgrade was cheaper than web hosting.
Another thing I would do to speed up page loading time is to copy and paste all of what’s all of the separate footer widgets into individual posts and then remove the widgets.
Then the site will be discoverable by Google and other search engines and the contents will be indexed.
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If you really, REALLY want phone support, we can work this out, but I will tell you all the same things TT just told you. The phone consultation covers ten hours a month of calls, and is $500 in advance. That covers the first month. If you don’t use your ten hours, they can be rolled forward to the next month or whenever.
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