Wrong Sidebars Loading, Custom Text Styles Needed, Portfolio Not Working

Wrong Sidebars Loading, Custom Text Styles Needed, Portfolio Not Working

Hi, Folks! I’m a WordPress newbie, but excited to dive in. I will use this system for both blogging and to show my work portfolio, which will have a range of media including videos I made. I intend to embed all my own content = no cloud or Youtube links.

I added a theme called Dandelion, which worked fine when I had no content and just used their placeholder text. I have added some plugins, but the issues I’m having are present even with all plugins deactivated. I have not touched any of the actual code, just used the interface to customize.

Here is my site: Timegod.com

Issue 1: Sidebars
I made 3 different sidebars that seemed to make the most sense for different areas of my site. I have chosen what seemd to be the best template for each page, e.g., Portfolio template for Portfolio page and Default template for Blog. The issue is that the blog pages are showing the default sidebar and not the Blog Sidebar, even though I chose Blog Sidebar in building the page. The only page that is showing the Blog sidebar is a page of mine called Messages, which is also using the Default template.

Issue 2: Portfolio page not working
I definitely chose Portfolio for this page, but it is not showing the special Portfolio slider widget created for the Dandelion theme to showcase portfolio pieces. There should be an interface at page top that has clickable thumbnails of portfolio pieces. I’ve only added two pieces so far, as I’m still testing. But, I don’t intend to add more until I figure this out.

Issue 3: How to create custom text styles to use in the admin interface?
What I’m looking for is to be able to have a pull-down that will apply text styles, as you would in Adobe InDesign, to text as you are typing it into a post. I’m used to being able to set the style for my A-heads, B-heads, etcs in Indesign and Dreamweaver.

I added the two plugins called TinyMCE Advanced and Advanced TinyMCE Config thinking they would provide what I need, but they have not. The plugins allowed me to add a button called Styles to the Admin interface, but all it does is make text bigger.

I thought I could create global text style choices by changing the color/size/font info for the H1-H6 headers by editing the CSS style sheet for the Dandelion theme. This would at least be something, even if could not create custom indentation for bullets, etc. But, changing the hex color value for headers in the theme CSS had no effect at all.

I am very frustrated!!!! I’m tempted to go back and just do my site in Dreamweaver. But, I don’t know about DIVs and I know only a little about CSS. I like all the functionality of WordPress and I like the theme I bought. But, so far I’m completely unimpressed with the ease customization. Ease of customization was a big selling point of the theme I bought. But, it is beginning to seem like I’m having to do all the complex work myself.

Anyway, any words of help are appreciated.

Thanks!
Alex