New to WP, please help

[David Herndon]

I need some help. I am very new at using wordpress. I have a site hosted by godaddy.com and I installed WP and the Authentic theme. I went about testing some features but my page continually comes up as the following http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/8969/helppa.jpg

I can’t figure out why it’s so messed up.

Thanks

[Bill Robbins]

David,

Thank you for your business first of all and welcome to WordPress. Beginners are always a welcome. Let me see if I can help you out.

Taking a look at the image you sent there were a few things that caught my eye.

1) Background: WordPress’ background editor has an unusual way of representing how an image is to repeat itself. What you want to do is set the background image to “tile” so that fills the entire background.

2) Widgets: With a new site, WordPress adds several default widgets which are the ones that you see on the right of your home page. You can change those out by going to the Appearance section of your WordPress dashboard and selecting widgets. The widget available areas of your theme are listed on the right. Your available widgets are on the left. You can add, remove and rearrange widgets by opening up a widget area and then dragging and dropping the individual widgets to where you’d like them to go. The Authentic theme demo uses a text widget for the welcome text you see next to the slideshow.

3) Slideshow: To add slides, go to the media section and select “Slides.” Adding a slide is similar to adding a post. There is actually a quick video you can watch here that will walk you through adding them:

If you have any trouble or other questions, please feel free to ask.

Thanks again,
Bill Robbins

[David Herndon]

Wow! Thanks for the quick reply. I’m reminded why I went with you instead of your competitors.

The site is really coming along now. A lot of it is still just the copied template but I’m really making headway. Soon I’ll replace all the media and posts with our own.

There seems to be another impasse I’ve come across though. I love the way your Podcast page is set up but some how mine just redirects me to my main page and I don’t know what I did wrong nor how to make mine look the same as yours does.

Here’s the site I’m working on… again it’s still mostly a copy and paste of the template.
http://www.cfpny.org

Any insight would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[David Herndon]

Also on my “Need Prayer?” page I’d like to add 2 fields and a button for people to submit their prayer request and name. I’d like for the information to be emailed to the head of our prayer chain. Is there any easy way to do this? I have 0 knowledge of CSS.

Thanks

[Bill Robbins]

David,

I do try to be as quick as possible when answering requests. I’ve been on the other side waiting for support many times and it’s no fun to wait.

For the podcasts, here’s one thing that you try to see if it will help. Go to the Settings section of your WordPress control panel and select Permalinks. Select one of the options other than the default (postname is a great one to use). Then save your changes. Once the page refreshes, click save one more time. Then see if your Podcast link works.

The podcast section is built using a WordPress feature called “Custom Post Types” which has been around for a couple of years now, but WordPress still doesn’t have any easy way to add these to navigation menus.

If you still have trouble with your podcast link, let me know.

---

The best solution for WordPress forms is a plugin called Gravity Forms. It uses a simple drag and drop interface to allow you to create forms. You can then easily send the information your visitors subit to the email address or addresses you’d like to. Gravity Forms can do quite a bit more than that, but that’s a start.

There are some other free options you can consider. Many people like CForms II and Contact Form 7. Neither are as easy to use, but they do work.

If I can help with anything else, just let me know,
Bill

[David Herndon]

Perfect. Thanks again.

[Bill Robbins]

Glad to help. If you need anything else, just let me know.

[David Herndon]

One last question and then I believe I’m all set up. I know it doesn’t directly deal with your theme but how do I create a podcast feed? I’ve googled it and it’s the most ambiguous answers I’ve ever come across. I want to be able to get the subscription links up and running. Then the site should be complete (pending some pictures).

Thanks

PS – I feel like the dumbest person ever not knowing how to create a feed…

[Bill Robbins]

David,

Great question. There is actually a bit of a guide on Podcasting in these instrucions. If you need any additional help, just let me know.

Bill

[David Herndon]

For some reason iTunes is saying my feed has already been submitted. And when I search my link in iTunes is comes up with a podcast from Christian Fellowship Chruch in Detroit Lakes MN.

[Bill Robbins]

That’s most peculiar. If you don’t mind letting me know what the URL to your feed page is, I’ll take a look for you.

[David Herndon]

http://cfpny.org/podcast-feed/

[Bill Robbins]

I think you’ll have to take that one up with Apple. I checked the raw feed and iTunes pulled your most recent message for me so that’s good. But I had the same error while trying to submit it that you did. Since they organize the podcast feeds they should be able to straighten that out since you obviously have the domain that feed is associated with.

If I can help, let me know,
Bill

[David Herndon]

I talked to iTunes support the only solution they could offer was to change the link for the feed. I can’t find any option in WP to allow me to change it from cfpny.org/podcast-feed to something else. Any ideas?

[David Herndon]

Never mind, I figured it out. It was rather simple to change the address… however it still didn’t fix the problem I’m continuing to dialog with iTunes to find a fix to my problem.

Do you have a facebook theme set up for the new timeline view? I hate the view but they won’t let new pages revert back to the classic view.

And is there a way to slow down the slide show? I’d like it to be 10s per slide instead of 5s.

Thanks in advance.

[Bill Robbins]

David,

If I can help with your iTunes trouble let me know. That sounds like a mess.

The Facebook page will have the new timeline width when I finish making the theme responsive, most likely in the first part of May.

You can change the number of slides that are displayed there. Here’s how:

1. Go to the Appearance section of your WordPress control panel and select edit to open up the theme editor.
2. From the list of files on your right, choose page-facebook.php and look for this spot:

   
   <?php $loop = new WP_Query( array( 'post_type' => 'slide', 'posts_per_page' => 5, 'orderby'=>'menu_order', 'order'=>'ASC' ) ); ?>
   

3. Where it has the number 5, replace it with -1
4. Save your changes.

That should let an unlimited number of slides be visible.

Have a great week and let me know if I can help,
Bill

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