Sticky post headline in sidebar is ancient
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The post associated with Michelle in our sidebar is from 2013 and I can’t find a way to get it to unstick from that post and to instead auto-stick to the most recent of her posts like mine (Fred) do. Any suggestions?
THANKS!The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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I presume you’re referring to an author widget in the sidebar. You could display just the latest post by an author by setting the number of posts to display to “1,” and setting the visibility option to “show if page is a post.”
Alternatively, you could assign a certain post title to display in an author widget by assigning a special tag or category to the selected post, and then modifying the visibility options, limiting the post or posts (titles) displayed to those with the special tag or category. If there is only one post with a certain tag, then that post title alone will display in the widget.
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Thank you, musicdoc1. I tried to find where to make the changes for your first solution but I could not. Would you please tell me where? I looked on the post list display, in her user settings and in the settings for her most recent post.
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I also tried going into the Recent Posts widget and modifying the visibility options to show if tagged only with a tag unique to her most recent post but that didn’t work either. The odd thing is that I also can’t figure out why the author widget is displaying that fairly old post of hers to begin with.
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And I tried the same with that unique tag in the visibility settings of the Authors widget but when I saved it, it deleted the widget from the sidebar entirely.
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@ fredcloud,
Sorry that you continue to encounter issues with the Author widget. I’ll do my best to help, and if this doesn’t work you may request Staff attention by adding a “modlook” tag to the sidebar here.
I just noticed a few things that might be significant with respect to the issues you’ve been reporting. The author name for Michelle Lowther is “continuityhousing.” The author archives page for the posts she has authored is https://continuityhousing.wordpress.com/author/continuityhousing/. “Michelle Lowther” is the publicly displayed name, but not the author name, which is the user name of the member. Consequently, there is no archives page with the URL https://continuityhousing.wordpress.com/author/michelle-lowther/, as there would be if this was her user name.”
Also, the most recent post by the author “continuityhousing,” is the one displayed in the widget. It was published on July 12, 2013. If she has published more recent posts, then they must be under a different author name. However, I checked several pages of the annual archives for both 2014 and 2015 and found only posts authored by Fred Rogers.
Method 1, revised:
I tried to find where to make the changes for your first solution but I could not. Would you please tell me where? I looked on the post list display, in her user settings and in the settings for her most recent post.
The setting you need to apply this method is not in any of those places. It’s in the widget, just below the “Display all authors” option. The Author widget allows you to include or modify the following elements:
1. Title — action required: type or paste in title
2. Display all authors — action: place a check in the box or leave unchecked
3. Number of posts to show for each author: — action: enter a number in the box, 0 to 10
4. Avatar size — action: choose between “no avatars” and five size options
5. Visibility Settings — Options here are numerous. The Widgets support page suggests that multiple rules can be applied, but it’s not clear because the illustration shows a configuration which is impossible on the present widgets, showing two rule settings one on top of the other. It’s not clear whether you can apply multiple rules one at a time. That’s an important question since because you have multiple authors, and evidently want to use a separate widget for each author, the main thing you need to do first in the Visibility section is to limit or select the author. You could use either the “Show” or the “Hide” options to do this. Example: Choose “Show,” then at the If and Is menus choose “author” and “author name.”Method 2:
To display just one selected post, you may add a special tag to that post, a tag which is assigned to only that single post and not to any others. Then use the Visibility options to “Show” if the tag is that special tag. You may also use a category instead of tag, or assign the tag or category to a selection of posts if you wish to display multiple posts in the author widget. I’ve tested both the single post and multiple post alternatives with this method in a widget on my primary website. It works. The same setting would work in the Recent Posts widget as well.Method 3:
Add a “1” to the “Number of posts to show for each author” box. Then select “Show” at the Hide or Show menu, and in the menus below that select If “author” is “author name.” This combination of settings will display the latest post of the selected author. It does so because a. you’ve told WP to display one post, and b. you’ve told WP to display only posts by the selected author name.Incidentally, since you have separate widgets for each of the two authors, haven’t you already used the Visibility setting to choose which author’s work will be represented in which widget?
And I tried the same with that unique tag in the visibility settings of the Authors widget but when I saved it, it deleted the widget from the sidebar entirely.
That would happen if there were no posts with the combination of rules you set.
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THANK you, musicdoc1. I really very much appreciate your comprehensive response and will try each of those options until I’m successful. I really appreciate it!
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Okay, I went in and tried to modify as outlined in numbers 2 and 3 of your response and all it did each time was delete the display of the author widget altogether from the sidebar.
Her last posting was on 30Oct14 and it’s still there, although under Michelle Lowther and not continuityhousing.
Is it possible that the problem would go away if I had a separate author widget for the two of us? Otherwise it sounds like the only fixes for updating her sidebar headline would involve only one headline showing instead of one headline (the most recent) for each of us.
Thank you again. I’m sorry this is dragging out but your time and help are very valuable to me.
Fred
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