WordPress Plugins
One reason I love using WordPress for my blog is because of all of the great plugins that are available. Some of them are a little complicated to set up, so I haven’t tried them yet. But the majority so far are fairly simple.
There is a sticky plugin, which I use to keep certain posts always at the top of the page, a spam comment catcher which is amazing, and a podcast plugin which I hope to try soon.
Since I’ve got a fair bit of content on this blog now, I wanted to be able to show related posts that I’ve done in the past. There are a few different WordPress plugins for that. The first I tried was the Related Post plugin, but I wasn’t sure how to make it work. Non-techy that I am, I need easy, easy, easy.
So I deleted that one (two similar plugins would have caused problems) and I tried the “Yet Another Related Post” plugin. Much easier to set up, but I couldn’t for the life of me see any related posts. Then it dawned on me, maybe I had to click on a specific post to read it. And yahoo, there was a listing of other posts. Most of them seemed to be related and I’m very pleased.
These plugins can be found at various sites on the Internet and are then downloaded to your computer. The next step is usually to unzip the file and read any instructions that are included. Then the plugins need to find their way to your website file manager and into the folder marked WordPress plugins, which is usually in a folder called wp-content. Trust me, it isn’t as complicated as it sounds.
Your plug-ins can either be uploaded from your site or you can use an ftp program on your computer to send them. Once the plugins are in the plugin folder, they will show up on your WordPress Plugins tab where you click for a one time activation. If you do a google search for WordPress Plugin video tutorials and watch one, my instructions will make more sense to you.
Comment Moderation
When I was having so much trouble with spam, I had to stop allowing comments, and I couldn’t figure out why I was still getting them. Later, I installed the Akismet plugin that catches spam (and does a great job too) and turned the comments back on, but blog posts that were already written still wouldn’t allow comments.
I thought I must have to manually go back to each old post and check “allow comments”. So I did, but once I got past the post where I decided to stop comments, the older posts were fine.
Finally the light bulb went on (sometimes in my head it takes a while) and I realized that when I stop comments from the main options area of WordPress, it only stops them from that point on (not all of my past writing, like I thought it would).
Same thing when I turn the function back on. It only does exactly what I tell it to – now if only I could do that with my husband.
Fatal Error Changing WordPress Theme
For some reason, I always have to learn every computer lesson the hard way. Sometimes a WordPress template clashes with a plugin I’ve added and won’t work anymore. Or if there are too many themes in my WordPress themes folder, they weigh down my blog, so I have to go through and delete some of them.
This time, it involved changing the theme (or appearance) of one of my other blogs. It’s usually an easy process – one click on the theme of your choice and you can see how it looks. If you don’t like it, click on another and change your blog again. I’ve done it lots of times and it’s always easy.
But not this time. I found some new themes and uploaded them to my hosting service. Clicked on the theme I liked and suddenly got the fatal error screen. Not only that, but I couldn’t go back to my administration panel or access any part of my blog. Two years of writing gone in five seconds.
I’m still feeling sorry for myself today, as I wait to hear if my hosting service tech support can fix my mess or not. I did do a backup of the content, but probably about two months ago. So any new posts won’t be there. And since I can barely remember where I live half the time, no way could I re-construct any of the writing.
There’s my sad tale for the day. And what was the lesson I learned from it? No matter how easy a change to my blog might seem to be, I should always do a full backup first. Oh well, it’s not the end of the world, but it bugs me just the same. Please tell me I’m not the only one that seems to make every mistake known to man?
Yay! I managed to fix my other WordPress blog and I got back all of my lost content! As you can tell, I am thrilled, and it was so easy.
I got an answer to the email I sent to my tech support at Netfirms. He told me to go into my themes folder and delete the problem theme. Then the content would revert back to its default appearance. It worked and my blog is as good as new.
