Tynan Beatty

indeed, preload mode was on. we’ll give it a try. thanks.

pifarre, did you also try reuploading the wp-login.php file? I don’t even get a cookie when I try the admin and pass, so I think there might be something going wrong with that file, or a setting on your server.

If you installed newer versions of wp and then installed the old version without deleting the database contents in between, that could also be causing the problems.

pifarre, please try to delete the entire wp-admin folder and reupload a fresh one. Then make sure to press F5 while on the wp-login.php page and try to login again.

On line 249 of style.css change in #page the width: 760px; to width: 855px;

On the very next CSS element down, on line 258 of style.css, change in #header the width: 758px; to width: 853px;

Further down on line 324, change in #footer the width: 760px; to width: 855px;

Still further on line 583, change in #sidebar the margin-left: 545px; to margin-left: 640px;

Then to finish the job you need to open the following files in GIMP or Photoshop or something you prefer to edit images. One file at a time, cut the image in half and move the right side over 95 px, copy a 95px wide rectangle piece from the right side of the left half of the image (the piece next to the open space you just created), paste the copied piece into the new open space in the middle of the image, resave each image and reupload them:
https://www.flatwebb.ukfsn.org/Hindon/news/wp-content/themes/default/images/kubrickbg-ltr.jpg

https://www.flatwebb.ukfsn.org/Hindon/news/wp-content/themes/default/images/header-img.php?upper=006633&lower=006633

https://www.flatwebb.ukfsn.org/Hindon/news/wp-content/themes/default/images/kubrickfooter.jpg

peace~

Please don’t feel dumb! We all had to start somewhere. Just take the opportunity to learn a little more ??

You might want to have a look at A List Apart’s CSS Sprite article and also phpied’s article on CSS sprites for repeating backgrounds. Lots of your repeating images can be made to have the same vertical or horizontal dimensions, and then combined into fewer files as described. Any non-repeating images can all be combined into a single file. There are some tools to do this on the web but you can also just use the GIMP (or photoshop or whatever).

As for combining/minifying the js/php, you can try out Omninoggin’s WP Minify plugin. There are a couple others that are good too.

For loading Javascript in the footer, have a look at my recent post.

You can add some blank links with unique id’s somewhere outside your main body, then easily display them as blocks, size them, and absolutely position them with your css file. The one that would float over the rss icon wouldn’t need a background image (unless you want it to light up or something on rollover). The one with your logo would need your logo as the background image.

Google is your friend ??
peace~

Good point neuville. Authors can publish posts (I posted a little hastily it seems), Contributors cannot. However, contributors also cannot upload files. If you’re using role manager you should be able to create a custom role, or grant Contributors the ability to upload files, and then set your default user role to Contributor instead of author. I’m not sure how the role manager plugin works though, as I’ve never used it.

Check out the TDO Mini Forms plugin for a quick post form that may solve all your troubles though.
peace~

Instead of just adding the javascript (if you did it manually), you should use wp_enqueue_script to avoid clashing with plugins that also use jQuery. You’d just need to call wp_enqueue_script('jquery'); before the wp_head(); or before get_header();
Or if you are using an external js file like you should, then you’d have to do something like wp_enqueue_script('my-script', '/wp-content/themes/my-theme/my-script.js', array('jquery'), '1.0');

Make sure to note that WordPress loads jquery in noconflict mode, so you have to format your jQuery as follows:

jQuery(function($){
some code...
});

if you want to use the $ function.

If you find that your theme isn’t printing out the <script...>...</script> then you can use the functions.php to add_action('wp_footer', 'wp_print_scripts'); or just manually call wp_print_scripts(); somewhere in the theme where you want them to print. Be careful if doing something like this though, because you’ll probably want to also include something in the functions.php to remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_print_head_scripts', 9);
and
remove_action('wp_footer', 'wp_print_footer_scripts');. To avoid printing jQuery twice if you enqueue it after the wp_head();
peace~

Under the ‘General Options’, change the new user default role to author contributors cannot upload. As for a custom submit form, I’m pretty sure you can use QuickPress on the front end, though I haven’t experimented with it. You’d just need to make a custom page template for your theme that has the QuickPress form on it. If that doesn’t suite your needs there are probably some plugins that would handle the submission aspect.
peace~

The pink and white are a bit brutal on my eyes. I stare at the screen almost all day long and I’ve made a custom javascript that specifically converts any white backgrounds to beige for exactly that reason. The blog layout doesn’t seem bad, but the feel of it isn’t quite inviting to me. I think you might want to investigate the effects of colors on people. One big suggestion for making it feel a lot better is to use more earth tones. If your favicon/logo is a nice faded green money sign, I suggest using that color throughout the site. A nice faded shade of green (instead of the pink), and a beige background instead of white (for the main content). A secondary color could be a faded brown tone (where the giant black header area is). These suggestions could go a long way to making the user feel more at home on your blog. Of course, design is also a matter of personal taste ??
peace~

The template looks pretty cool in general. Nice work there!
I have a couple suggestions:
1) There are a lot of http requests (from images). You should try combining as many of those into sprites as possible.
2) Try and load as much javascript into the footer as possible (instead of the head).
3) Gzip your html output (this will help a bunch, as will the image combinations). This should be as simple as adding the following php just before the doctype in your theme’s header file:
<?php ob_start('ob_gzhandler'); ?><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional[…]

Check out Yahoo’s guide to speeding up a site

As for personal taste, I’d like to see your logo up next to the site title, and I’d also like that big RSS icon to be clickable.
It looks really good though, so try to focus on the user experience now ??
peace~

Pretty interesting minimal design. For the homepage, tag pages, and any other index type stuff I have a quick suggestion:
The ‘Pages’ navigation is kinda cool floating there but I find it somewhat distracting as well (possibly because it doesn’t quite fit the sketchy images that define the other parts of the page). With a link to the top above and below every article, I also don’t think you need the floating pages nav. Put it at the top and/or the bottom in my opinion. Maybe even just have the current page link be a dark grey number with no box around it, so it would be less distracting (my eye goes right to it and not to the articles).

The rest of the individual pages look pretty nice but you might consider adding a white-space:nowrap to your tag cloud so the links don’t break across lines (that’s pretty minor though).

Nice Job ??
peace~

Try using the F5 key to clear your browser cache once you get to the admin page. If it still seems messed up, one option is to delete your wp-admin folder and upload a fresh one. That might fix your problem.
peace~

Well I should have provided you a good example from the start ??
Check out the tizag php form example for a nice starting point.
peace~

If your sidebar is floating then yes you have to put it above what it’s floating next to in the source code, assuming you aren’t using javascript to manipulate the document (at least until css3 is widely supported). As far as it hurting SEO, the short answer is that it probably is, since a sidebar often has h3 headers (like if it uses widgets), and the main content has h1-h3+ headers. An h1 header should not be below any other headers in the source code. Other than that, having any content (like a sidebar with links) above the main content in the document is going to somewhat dilute the page topic for a search engine.

There are however, several methods other than floating that would allow you to place your sidebar after the main content, while still making it display alongside the content (holy grail, w3c tableless to give a couple starter examples).
peace~

Hi Jet,
I don’t think this would be too complicated to achieve with WordPress.
You can make the whole site WordPress and have it up in under a half an hour (maybe up to 3 for your first time). Then WordPress allows for the creation of custom page templates.

What you can do is write your own custom page template that has a form where users can answer the questions, and targets itself as the action for the form. In the top of the page you’ll then need some php script that handles the user’s input.

The WordPress codex are a great place to learn how to format a custom page for addition to, and use in any WordPress theme. Try looking at and around the docs concerning creating your own page template.

Essentially you could use the default WordPress theme and spend all your time working on 1 custom page. That one page will change its display based on the php script you write in the top.

Take a look at the wp-login.php page in a default wordpress install for a somewhat complex example of how to format a page that catches and deals with its form’s inputs.

Basically, you’ll need a little bit of knowledge of php, which generally follows the same formats as any other coding language, and you can search the php.net documentation to find functions you can use to deal with the data you’re catching.

You won’t need to know how to style with css if you use the same classnames as the default template pieces (or whatever template you choose), but you’ll also need to know a little bit about html to make the form and the page output. This stuff is web programming 101, so 3 months and a good understanding of basic logic, and the knowledge that whatever you want to accomplish has likely been laid out in smaller pieces across the net with handy examples, should be plenty of time.

If you know a little bit about coding languages and the structures common to all languages like strings and arrays, you’ll want to be googling phrases like php string and php array. If you don’t know what things like a string, an if/else statement, a for loop, or a while loop are, then you might have to spend a bit more than 3 months, depending on how fast you learn, but the knowledge is around the web (w3schools is another good resource).
peace~