Da Blogmother

WordPress Permalinks, GoDaddy, .htaccess file: Patience required

Eric Blackwell wrote here of using Custom Permalinks in WordPress by going to the WordPress Dashboard Settings page

Clicking the Permalinks tab, then checking Custom Structure

And typing this short piece of code:

/%postname%/

Then click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

Now click View Site, click on one of your post titles .... and if your blog is hosted on GoDaddy, what you will see next is a 404 error

Eric suggested FTP uploading a blank .htaccess file.  I experimented with a couple of my "cat blogs" and found it wasn't neccessary.

Here's why:  When I clicked on the post title, the system automatically created an .htaccess file.

However, it takes a certain amount of time for the new .htaccess file to be recognized by the GoDaddy servers.  This is true even if you manually create a new .htaccess file and upload it yourself.

The average wait on the blogs I tested was 30 minutes.

So, here are Eric's instructions modified for GoDaddy

1.  Click Settings

2.  Click Permalinks

3.  At Custom Structure type /%postname%/, click Save Changes

4.  Click View Site

5.  Click on any post tile

6.  See 404 error

7.  Go out and water the garden, play with your dog, or watch TV.

8.  Come back in about 1 hour, view site again, click post title again.  Bingo, now it works.

And here's the reason I found in one forum:  new .htaccess files are only processed once per hour by GoDaddy -- From my limited testing it seems it occurs at the top of the hour....

Using A Banner Title Image

In the past, I posted WordPress notes on Queen Of Kludge only, and TypePad notes here on daBlogMother.  Since I've recently had a few WordPress projects going on, daBlogMother has been quiet.

Well, never mind.  I think I shall post my WordPress notes here on Mother, too, even though Mother is hosted by TypePad.

Just installed DOJO theme at Questions4RealEstate.  (In a few days, this blog with have some pertinent posts, right now there are only a couple test posts.)

To replace text title with image

Opener header.php

Find this code

<div id="header">
<?php if ( is_home() ) { /* use an h1 on the homepage */ ?>
<h1 id="blogname"><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>
<?php } else { /* and a p tag everywhere else */ ?>
<p id="blogname"><strong><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></strong></p>
<?php } ?>
<p id="tagline"><em><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></em></p>
</div> <!-- end header -->

Replace  both instances of  <?php bloginfo('name'); ?>

With  <img src="http://www.questions4realestate.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/questions.png">

Final code snippet:

<div id="header">
<?php if ( is_home() ) { /* use an h1 on the homepage */ ?>
<h1 id="blogname"><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>"><img src="http://www.questions4realestate.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/questions.png"></a></h1>
<?php } else { /* and a p tag everywhere else */ ?>
<p id="blogname"><strong><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>"><img src="http://www.questions4realestate.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/questions.png"></a></strong></p>
<?php } ?>
<p id="tagline"><em><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></em></p>
</div> <!-- end header -->

Using Larger Images in TYPEPAD

TypePad users:

Have you ever inserted an image in a blog post

Only to find that when you view the post, the image is much smaller than you intended??

And no matter what you do to resize the image, it stays too small?

Here's why:

TypePad's default stylesheet contains an image class style command, called "image-full" that re-sizes the displayed image in the blog post.

To change this, from the Edit Post window, click on the HTML tag.

Find the image tag, and look for the part of the image tag that reads class="image-full"

Delete just that part of the tag.

Click Save to re-publish the post.

There, now the image displays at its full, original size.