Newbie is confused

  • Unknown's avatar
    houseocdfan · Member ·

    Just started a blog & wanted to add something to the page or post. Have tried reading the how to’s but am confused, wanted to add the twitter widget & about me have tried to do both but I didn’t work… I am a little technologically inept & actually had trouble just comprehending the terminology …..anyone offer laymans terms ? :)

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    shawnajroberts · Member ·

    Hi there!

    I’m happy to help you with these things. Can you tell me more about what you were trying to do with your posts and pages? And how far you got?

    Can you also tell me about the trouble you’re having with the Twitter and About.me widgets?

  • Unknown's avatar
    houseocdfan · Member ·

    I have progressed…slightly lol

    When I first did it I could only see the actual blog, none of the pages or widgets. I have since managed to get the about me page static and the blogs now show up at the bottom of the page.

    I did get the twitter widget to display on the blog pages but didn’t like it so took it off. I did originally want it on the front about me page like in the left bar (I think)

    For some reason I thought it would be like a mini website where you can organise your blogs to go under a certain page, I did do another static page as I thought I would be able to put them under that page if that makes sense. So that in time if I wanted to blog about different subjects I could. (unless you have to upgrade to premium for that).

    The about me widget I decided not to do it (not that I could) and just stuck to the actual page instead.

    Thanks for contacting me, if you have helpful hints or tips they would be much appreciated. still don’t know what I’m doing.

  • Unknown's avatar
    timethief · Member ·

    For some reason I thought it would be like a mini website where you can organise your blogs to go under a certain page, I did do another static page as I thought I would be able to put them under that page if that makes sense. So that in time if I wanted to blog about different subjects I could. (unless you have to upgrade to premium for that).

    No upgrade is required to create a custom menu on any WordPress.COM hosted blog.

    Please read this first Post vs. Page http://en.support.wordpress.com/post-vs-page/

    (1) There is only one page we can post to in any blog.
    (2) The static pages http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/ we bloggers create do not automatically update.

    Only the dynamic pages like Archives, Categories and Tags created by the software when we publish a post will update automatically update with new posts.

    By default the front page of the blog is the Page that displays all posts in your blog. You can create a static front page and have your published posts display on another page http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/front-page/ but doing that does not change what follows.

    Though there is only one dynamic page in a blog for posts (not pages) http://en.support.wordpress.com/post-vs-page/ and we cannot post to more than that one page, we can create the appearance that we have posted to more than one page.

    We assign categories to posts. http://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/categories/
    Until we publish a post with a category assigned to it the relevant dynamic categories page will not have any data that it can display.

    This guide will walk you through how to create category pages for your blog, to display groupings of similar posts on pages other than your front page. http://en.support.wordpress.com/category-pages/

    Create a custom menu
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/#creating-a-custom-menu
    Add dynamic categories and sub-categories pages to it
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/#adding-category-pages
    Create order and sub-menus (dropdowns)
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/#changing-the-order-creating-sub-menus

    There are many common errors, misunderstandings and misconceptions when creating custom menus and there are some tweaks you can use to improve your custom menu as well. Here is more information:
    http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2010/06/30/posts-on-pages/

    Custom menus

  • Unknown's avatar
    youtheworldwandering · Member ·

    I would really appreciate any help on how to make my top nav bar one line across. It is viewing as a few lines in length instead of one nice neat navigation bar across the top of my site. My site is http://youtheworldwandering.com any help would be much appreciated! Thanks!

  • Unknown's avatar
    shawnajroberts · Member ·

    I would really appreciate any help on how to make my top nav bar one line across. It is viewing as a few lines in length instead of one nice neat navigation bar across the top of my site.

    Your navigation menu has too many top-level items to fit in the given menu space. You may want to move some of these nav items to a second menu that you can set as the “Secondary menu in left sidebar”.

  • Unknown's avatar
    youtheworldwandering · Member ·

    It doesn’t matter if there is only 2 items in the top menu, it still stacks them on top of eac other instead of side by side. I think it’s something to do with CSS but I don’t know what to change / code to use. Thanks for your help though

  • Unknown's avatar
    shawnajroberts · Member ·

    Thanks for doing that. i do see what you mean now. Here’s the code that’s causing this:

    /* Left SIDEBAR MENU centred */
.menu-item.menu-item-type-post_type {
	margin: 0 auto 0 -20px;
	width: 100%;
}

    Your selector is choosing all menu items, not just the ones in the left sidebar. Can you tell me more about what you were trying to do with this piece of code. Your comment sounds like you wanted the sidebar menu centered, but it doesn’t look like this code is effectively doing that.

    If you let me know more about what you want to happen there, I can help you figure out the correct code for this.

  • Unknown's avatar
    youtheworldwandering · Member ·

    Thank you so much!! I have been trying to figure this out for 2 days now and I’m becoming frustrated. Much appreciated.

    SO basically:
    I was trying to put a top bar menu on my site yesterday when I posted the first comment above in this forum. The components of the menu were aligning on top of each other in a jumble mess instead of in a nice neat row across the top of my site. I became frustrated with it and deleted the menu.

    Then when I deleted it, the pages on my website somehow read as the top bar menu – all side by side (what I want) but I did not create this in the appearance > menu section. Rather each page on my site is just showing at the top of my menu bar. I don’t know how / why?! I am unsure how to get rid of this.

    In the meantime I created a sidebar menu. This works fine, except only the category and link components of the menu are aligned in the centre and the pages are aligned slightly to the left. I am unsure how to fix this. If you take a look at my site now you will see this. http://youtheworldwandering.com

    So in a nutshell I need help with 2 things:
    1. How to make a top bar menu that will not view as jumbled!!! Then I could get rid of the left side bar menu altogether.

    2. But it would be handy knowing how to centre the writing on this side bar menu for future reference.

    Thanks so much!!!

  • Unknown's avatar
    youtheworldwandering · Member ·

    I have solved number 2!! centring the sidebar text by deleting the code you suggested. Thank you! Still need help with number 1 tho!

  • Unknown's avatar
    shawnajroberts · Member ·

    Thanks for laying that all out so clearly! :)

    1. How to make a top bar menu that will not view as jumbled!!! Then I could get rid of the left side bar menu altogether.

    We automatically add top level pages to your menu bar when you have no menu set as your primary. If you’d like to move your menu from the sidebar to the top of your site, you can do that by setting the Primary menu and unsetting the Sidebar menu in the Menus pane of your Customizer:

    https://youtheworldwandering.wordpress.com/wp-admin/customize.php

  • Unknown's avatar
    youtheworldwandering · Member ·

    Yes you just made my day :) thanks very much!!

    Also, could you please tell me a code to make the text around size 14 if it’s not too much trouble?

    I’m also trying to figure out how to remove ‘category archive’ heading when you click on a category link on my homepage.

    Thank you!

  • Unknown's avatar
    shawnajroberts · Member ·

    Also, could you please tell me a code to make the text around size 14 if it’s not too much trouble?

    Sure! Which text do you want to be size 14? The body text? Just to let you know, its a good idea to keep all of your fonts size 16 or greater for optimal readability on backlit screens.

    I’m also trying to figure out how to remove ‘category archive’ heading when you click on a category link on my homepage.

    You’ll need to do this with some CSS code. Try this:

    .archive-header {
	display: none;
}

    Here are some resources for learning CSS:

    An Intro to CSS, or How to Make Things Look Like You Like

    An Intro to CSS: Finding CSS Selectors

    And you can find some more CSS resources here:

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/custom-css/#css-help

  • Unknown's avatar
    youtheworldwandering · Member ·

    Thanks so much. Removing the category archive text worked :) perfect.

    Sorry I wasn’t clear with the text – I was referring to the text in the top menu. I would like it size 14 is possible.

    And last last thing! If you don’t have time this is ok you, but would you know how to make the margins smaller between the posts? If you look at my site, there is a large white gap under my slider feature and the first post. Then in between each posts there is a large gap before the start of each new post. Would you know how to reduce the width of this?

    Will definitely check out the links. Thanks very much. You have been a wonderful help!

  • Unknown's avatar
    shawnajroberts · Member ·

    Thanks for the clarification. Here’s some code to make your font closer to size 14:

    #menu-top-bar {
	font-size: 125%;
}

    I set it in percentages instead of hardcoded size so that it will still scale with the screen size and be responsive with the rest of your site. Let me know if you have questions about that and I can point you to some resources about responsive CSS!

    If you look at my site, there is a large white gap under my slider feature and the first post. Then in between each posts there is a large gap before the start of each new post. Would you know how to reduce the width of this?

    Try this:

    .content-area, .content-sidebar {
	padding-top: 20px;
}

#primary .hentry {
	margin-bottom:20px;
}

    I see you’re using a bit of CSS to hide comments on your pages:

    /* removes comments from pages only, not from under posts */
.page-template #comments {
	display: none !important;
}

    You can actually just turn these off instead of hiding them. Opening the page editor and scrolling down to the Discussion module. Uncheck the box next to ‘Allow comments’:

    If you don’t see the Discussion module, click on ‘Screen Options’ at the top of the page and check the box next to ‘Discussion.’

    You can also disable comments on your blog through Settings > Discussion:

    https://youtheworldwandering.wordpress.com/wp-admin/options-discussion.php

    You can read more about the comment controls here:

    http://en.support.wordpress.com/enable-disable-comments/

  • Unknown's avatar
    youtheworldwandering · Member ·

    Both of those things worked!! And I will look into the comment suggestion too. Thank you so much for your help. I never would have figured any of that out on my own. I am so happy now my blog is looking so much better thanks to having your help :) all the best for 2015 :)

  • Unknown's avatar
    shawnajroberts · Member ·

    I’m happy to help! Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.

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