SO… You will have to search the web for tips on how to set up and customize your store but here’s how I made it look nice in my K2 powered blog over at Kulcha.
First thing, I got the inline frame code for my store and it looked horrible… about 2 inches wide and scrollbars everywhere!
Next, I created a template in my theme which would elminate the sidebar:
- Take page.php & add template php code to the top e.g.,
<?php/*Template Name: No Sidebar*/?> - Remove the
<? php get_sidebar(); ?>from near the end of it - Save this as pagenosidebar.php and upload to theme directory
- Create a css class to increase the width of your primary div (I put it in the css of my custom K2 style)
After that, I had to edit the css of my aStore. (That sounds dirty huh?)
I just trimmed the margin of the body div from 24px to a lovely 5px.
The latest version (basically a release candidate 3/4 for version 2) boasts an amazing Ajax sidebar manager. There are also very fast live, search features and an Ajax comments engine which posts comments without reloading the page. Sweet?
Searching through themes can be a bit overwhelming… I’ll be looking for function and get distracted by form. Or I’ll be looking for something cool but then remember that I want it to be supported by the latest version of WordPress. K2 is, for now, taking care of all that for me. I’ve got other fish to fry so… I’m using it a lot. Isn’t that what its for?
Oh yeah, you can get it here. And there’s forums where you can post your nubile questions… or heck, ask me?
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My installation of WordPress is in a folder below my root directory. Therefore all of my WordPress folders and files are below www.soulcode.net in a folder named blog. Of course I didn’t want visitors to www.soulcode.net to be presented with a different look and feel and so I followed the WordPress codex about giving WordPress in its own directory while leaving the WordPress index.php at the root of my site. And so in the world of WordPress 2.0, using the sem_static_front plugin and the /* Short and sweet */ index.php, I was whistling dixe, bob’s your uncle, a-ok, rockin’ like dokken… in other words I had a static front page and my blog postings lived beneath www.soulcode.net/blog. Whew, all this typing’s making me thirsty… How about we sell some Carlsberg beer or something right about here…
And so, I merrily upgraded to WordPress 2.1 with illusions that it would be as easy as the upgrade from WordPress 2.02 to 2.05 and boy did I cry. In WordPress 2.1 Options/Reading the first section is titled Front Page and looks a bit like this:
Well I had selected Home to be my Home page and another page that I called Blog to be the index of my blog and it wouldn’t work. The root address of my site kept returning the latest posts, i.e., the blog index page.
By the way, I had followed the WordPress Codex in regard to these settings in the Options/General of my WordPress address (URL) and Blog address (URL). And so, WTF?
I tested on a different site, doing a fresh install of WordPress 2.1 and using the Options/Reading/Front Page settings and they worked like a charm. I searched the WordPress support forums but found no definitive answers… until I came across this very confusing document. It is written reasonably clearly, however, the authors provide too many options, and like a witch doctor in a drugstore I was overwhelmed. And so I took off my shirt, smeared my chest with chicken grease and downloaded the Filosofo Home-Page Control. I uploaded it to the /wp-content/plugins/ folder and activated it in the Plugins Dashboard section and it ‘just worked’. I left its Home-Page Page option set at WordPress Default and its Blog directory option blank. This is rather strange behavior from code, essentially I’ve activated a plugin which is telling WordPress to do what it is already configured to do that is, use a certain page as the index of my site and another “page” as the index of my blog.
]]>- Posts – dynamic, chronologically presented, the original daily blog item
- Pages – rarely changing, essentially a static Post
- Links – web addresses and descriptions of sites that relate to your content
Each item of these types of content may also have one or more Categories associated with it. Categories are less important, in my opinion, for Pages than they are for Posts and Links.
Note: There are two different sets of data for Categories. Pages and Posts share the same tables in the WordPress database and have their own Category table. Links use a separate and different Category table – its a Link, not a Post! Read more about Links in this article.
Remember, Pages are simply “static” Posts.
To start adding content to your blog, login to the Admin (yourblog/wp-admin) page and click on the Write Panel. It will default to writing a Post but this is also where you would write a new Page. Just fill in the blanks, type “My Test” in the Title field and then type “This is my first test post.” in the post window (also known as the body of your Post). Now click on Publish and wait a few seconds while WordPress stores this in the database (and makes it available to the world!)
Now click on the “View site” link which always lives at the top of the Admin page next to the name of your blog. Tip: Use tabbed browsing from Firefox. It rocks! You can right click on “View site” and choose Open in New Tab and easily switch back and forth between managing and previewing your content.
Now return to the Admin site and choose the Manage panel. Using the tabs under the Manage menu, you can manage the posts and Pages in your site. That is, you can Edit them, change the title, text and Categories assigned to the Page or Post. Heck, you may even occasionally want to delete something!
You can read more about using WordPress at the very helpful WordPress Codex. Of particular importance is the section on Planning.
]]>Read this article for more information on WordPress
]]>Still others take advantage of the WordPress CMS features to offer navigation and customizable sidebars.
It may be useful for you to read the extensive WordPress documentation on using themes.
Below is a short list of websites which allow you to browse and download WordPress themes. I have ranked them in order of their usefulness to me:
- WordPress Theme Viewer
- AlexKing WordPress ThemeBrowser
- WordPress Site Featured Themes
- WordPress Theme Park
To install a WordPress theme, you must first copy (or ftp) the theme’s files (images and code files) up to your website to the wp-content/themes folder. Please read this article for more information on using File Transfer Protocol software (ftp). To activate a WordPress theme:
- Log in to the WordPress admin panel.
- Select the Presentation menu option.
- From the Select column in the table, click on “Select” for the theme you wish to activate.
- To view the new look, click View Site at the top of the Panel’s screen.
Blog software was created to make it easy to produce a daily “web log”. WordPress is one of the most popular packages for creating blogs and has been extended so that it is an excellent tool for small websites – what I call “blogsitesâ€.
In a “blogsiteâ€, the website’s look and content are “controlled” by a blog software package such as WordPress. This allows you to create a website which is:
• Visually interesting and easy to navigate for the user
• Easy to update and add content to for the site owner
Remember why you want a website in the first place; because you have something to say to the world – you want to write not program. If you want to shortest path to content creation you need a “blogsiteâ€.
Blog software is one type of content management system or CMS. A CMS uses a database to store the content (text, media and layout instructions) of a website making updates and additions much easier and less costly than a custom, hand-coded web site.
The look or design of the entire blogsite is controlled by a “themeâ€. A theme is a set of files with code to control the colors, fonts and other layout features of the site. Themes are fairly easy to customize but a new user should look through these WordPress theme sites to find a theme that will not need a great deal of initial customization to satisfy their need.
Once the user has a theme that is generally pleasing to them and suitable for their type of information, they can quickly begin to create content for their blogsite. We will explore different types of content and WordPress in more detail in our next article: WordPress101.
]]>The phrase “mailing list” means a few different things. Some lists are “moderated”and voluntary/private and other lists are just plain spam. The SoulCode mailing list is a voluntary, group of like-minded individuals. We can send them (you?) all email and they can opt out of the list at any time. Since the email comes to you this is called “push” technology. A blog is also a great way to post a News Letter but is more of a “pull” technology. Readers have to navigate to the website and then to the blog page. Or do they?
No. In fact blogs can be “pushed” through a subscription technology known as RSS. Through RSS, readers can “subscribe” to a blog either through the use of blog reader software like SharpReader or an enabled internet browser (Firefox works and currently IE does not). There are also cool RSS tools for Microsoft Outlook. To subscribe to the SoulCode blog use this address in your blog reader http://soulcode.net/feed or in most readers you may just be able to enter http://soulcode.net
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The site includes integration with Gallery 2.0 and the WordPress Gallery plugin.
The full list of technologies mastered, sites developed and mountains climbed is under development. Please check back soon!