James W. Heisig

This indeed did the trick. If a button is disabled, one would think that any change in its name would have no effect (as is the case generally). But in this case, even if it is disabled on the “Galleys” page, it will show up correctly on the “Book description” page.

At some point, a thorough HELP page with details on all the various functions of WBG might save a lot of time for you. I always feel foolish after you guide me through a solution, but without your help there is no way to figure it out on my own.

I don’t see how to do this. I clicked on the “Display sidebar” button, and a column does indeed open up, but there is no WBG template for me to edit.

If I opt to “Edit with Elementor,” to add a widget, then all the “book description” data disappears. The default editor has no way to add widgets. I looked through everything I could find on this forum and viewed all the videos I could find, but I came up empty.

I made the form OK, and activated the sidebar. But when I open a particular book’s page to add text, there is no place to input text specific to that page. Am I missing something basic? (Not unlikely, given my feeble skills with WordPress.)

Thanks for reaching out. It is indeed as I first thought. For now I changed the wording to “Title & decription”, but could you tell me how to fix the code so it chooses only the actual book title?

I think I wasn’t clear enough. I can add the sidebar and adjust the widget, but… this shows up on ALL pages in WGB. I only want to put in a blank form that I can add text to. The idea is to include “book review” comments on the right of each book, which would, of course, be unique to each book. I do not want to have users adding comments but only to display the text I enter. Is this possible?

• This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by James W. Heisig.

I am afraid I do not understand. I can click on the “Display Sidebar” OK, but I don’t see where to format it. I have avoided using Elementor to edit WGB books because all the information gathered up in WGB is not there. But if I use the general WordPress editor, there is no way I can see to manipulate a sidebar.

You happened to pick a lucky word, “Transitions”. Take the term “Nishida” for example (which is the name of an author) and type it in TITLES. Most of the titles that come up do NOT have “Nishida” in the title, only in the description. Or take my name, “Heisig”. I appear in NO TITLE and yet my name comes up 14 times in books where I am the author or the editor).

Another problem shows up when I search for the name “O’Leary.” The word automatically changes to “O\’Leary” and nothing shows up in the search. But when I type just “Leary”, his 2 books show up fine. Now this is the same problem at one level—namely, the author’s name showing up when you are searching only for titles. But the more serious problem is that the search engine cannot handle apostrophes

I now see that this may be a general bug in WordPress (or the WBG at least). I created a search function, but it returned “not found” for any title that had an apostrophe in it. I then looked at the “All books” page for WBG and found that the same thing happened. The items were present, but if an apostrophe is used in a title, it cannot be searched.

Yes… though it might be a good idea on your end to look into why this is happening. And once again, thanks for your help.

I discovered the problem and fixed it. It had to do with the way WP handles my PNG files in Smart Slider.

Although I generally prefer PNG files, when they were downsized in the Smart Slider, they became fuzzy on the desktop setting. I converted them to JPG and the images show up perfectly now, both on the desktop and in the table and phone modes.

I have searched the web and your FAQ, but cannot find any help on how to sharpen images that have become lo-res in Smart Slider. I saw the advice to turn off the “Convert to WebP”, but these optimize options are already off. Turning them on did not help. The images are fine by themselves, and the pages where they appear outside the Slider display fine. And—oddly enough—they display perfectly on the tablet and mobile device. It is only the desktop where they show up fuzzy. The page in question is this: Collections – Chisokudo Publications

• This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by James W. Heisig.

Perfect again! Is there any way I can see all CSS options, or is this hidden code?

I tried this, but there is no change. I even went all the way to 0 and then to 100, but the pages remain the same (e.g., Absolute Nothingness – Chisokudo Publications).

That was amazing! Since you are obviously a whizz at these things, could I ask if there is a CSS commands to lessen the space between the header and the book information by about 2/3?

And if there is somewhere I can learn how to do this myself, it would be much appreciated… and save you more of these pestering queries.