Content on "Home" page but still get 404

You sound as frustrated as me when I first started with WP but hopefully you will get the hang of it and see its advantages.

Looking at you sight it looks like you have done some work because I don’t see any 404 pages coming up.

Depending on your theme, changing the look of your site (colors, fonts, etc.) is done using CSS not HTML.

The version of WordPress you are running can be seen on the home page of the Dashboard where it says “At a Glance”.

Did you figure out you have two tabs in the top right hand side of the editor? One is called the Visual Editor and the other the Text Editor.

Let us know if you need any other specific help. It helps to ask!

Cheers, Stacy

Thanks Stacy. I fond the two tabs. I’m trying now to figure out how
1.to get the site title and tagline to appear in the header
2. prevent the About page from looking like a blog post
3. Change the permalinks to use words only, like home, About, Contact, etc., when the only options I see offered involve putting a date and/or blog post name on them

This is really hard, and totally non-intuitive, so far as I can tell. Or, it’s just me thinking like a programmer, not a web designer…

1. The Responsive Theme has two options for the header: the site name and tagline or the Header Image. You want to combine them. You could do this by creating a 300×100 image that contains both your logo and your site name and tagline in an image editor. Then upload it in Theme Customizer in the Header Image. Or using CSS put a background image in the header with the site title and tagline over the image. The first option is easier.

2. To change the look of the coding that generates the about page you are first going to need to create a child theme. You can read about how to create a child theme here. Then you will copy the page template to your child theme and remove the meta information in the php file page.php.

You can disable the breadcrumbs in the Theme Options. You can disable the comments for all new pages in Settings->Discussion. You will need to disable the comments on all existing pages by editing the page and unchecking allow comments.

3. Go to Settings->Permalinks and choose option post name, then save changes and your permalinks will be updated to the new format.

Learning what you can and can’t do via the dashboard is the hard part for programmers because they are used to forcing everything. Some of the things you have asked for are customizations to the theme so you will have to do a bit of programming but you need the child theme first so your changes aren’t overwritten when an update to the theme comes out.

Hi Stacy,

Sorry for the slow response. I haven’t had time to get back to my web site, so I haven’t really had time to process your information. It sounds like the major issues I have are due to the theme I chose. I chose that becuase it seemed simple and because it is supposed to be able to adjust itself to various devices.

I am wondering if I’d have less work to do if I chose a different theme. Is there any way to know by looking at themes to choose from to determine if a theme would solve these problems, such as not having to create s special tiny logo to go with my site’s name and fit it into a tiny 300x 100 space? Or, can I tell if a theme by default won’t treat pages as blog posts, so I don’t need to create a child theme and so forth just to get this one small change? Or, am I going to be stuck doing something like the suggestions you made no matter what theme I choose? Thanks.

Ken

The Responsive Theme actually looks pretty good. And the company Cyber Chimps also looks really good. One of the things when you are looking for a theme is the support issue. Do the developers provide support or does it have community where you can ask questions or look at tutorials on how to do things. You just have to get used to WordPress. I searched for Responsive Theme Full-Width Header and got this page.

Put this code in Custom CSS:

#logo img {
max-width: 960px;
width: 100%;
}

Then I downloaded a header that was 960 pixels wide and it looks great. This took me about 2 minutes.

Creating a Child Theme is super easy, there are many tutorials and videos that show you how to do it. You could keep looking for another theme because there are 10s of thousands. I feel like a cheerleader here. COME ON KEN YOU ARE A PROGRAMMER! YOU ARE GOING TO END UP CUSTOMIZING ANYWAY BECAUSE THAT IS THE WAY YOUR BRAIN WORKS!

Btw, the second thing I do when I create a new WordPress site is create a child theme. Its the way I have done it since my first site. I always want to customize the theme, make it my own. Over time, I have gotten better at the design aspects and my sites keep getting prettier and prettier.

The first thing I do is try to find a parent theme which is similar to the way I want my site to look. Doesn’t have to be exact, just similar. Always look for responsive themes. Why were you drawn to the Responsive Theme? Was it because of the way it looked? Now that you know a little bit more about the way you want your site to look maybe you should look again.

Keep up the good work and remember content is key! Start adding some more content and then you will really start to figure out what you need.

Stacy

Hi Stacy,

Thanks for all the advice and encouragement. I guess I’ll go look at some more themes. For those of us who don’t normally do web design stuff, what tool would I use to put together a logo on the left and my site’s name and tag on the right in one full-page-wide image? Thanks.

Ken

There is an image manipulation program called GIMP. I’ve never used it because I use Photoshop but I have heard people say it is good. When you first start using an image manipulation program it is a good idea to google for tutorials and follow along. I searched for “make a website header with gimp” and found quite a few.

Stacy

Thanks again Stacy!! Great assistance!