Pro Theme Design Forum » Elemental » Technical Help
Post Author Details / 404 page / custom header
- Started 6 months ago by deus62
- Latest reply from deus62
- This topic is
not a support question
|
Hi Ben, I've downloaded the files two minutes ago and uploaded them to my site. a) The "Post Author" widget still does not show up on my pages. It should appear between "About This Site" and "Share This" on every page. I placed the widget in the "main sidebar" area. b) The 404 page works, but it looks wonky. Try this link: http://livingwithmusic.com/jazz-in-paris/yo I haven't fixed anything there (which would be easy, I guess) so you can see it. By default, there's no margin after the 404 error box. So, just a simple styling problem. Besides that I have one more problem. c) The "custom header" menu in the "appearance" section just doesn't work for me. No matter what I do, an image does not show up in the WP menu and the header isn't changed on my site. At this moment, I just upload a copy into the lib/image folder of "Elemental" and ... done, but I'd rather do things differently. Could this be a permissions problem? Which permissions should the folder have that the custom header is uploaded to? Again, Ben, thanks for your splendid support and a theme that was a total breeze for me to set up (and update)! Volkher |
|
|
Ah, one more thing. If you check that error page thrown up via the link I provided above, you can also see that my most recent entry (Going Elemental) has an image associated with it. But ... the image isn't in the entry anymore. I deleted it. There must still be a reference to it somewhere? |
|
|
BTW (not that I think it's relevant) ... just before I updated "Elemental", I went to WP 2.9.1. |
|
oops - I altered the wrong function. I modified the author posts instead of the author info. There is a new version on the accounts control panel that sorts out the author details widget. The styles for the 404 page should also look nicer now The post thumbnail can be grabbed from media uploaded inside a post so if you want to remove it entirely you should delete the image that was uploaded in the media library. Hopefully that will sort it out. Not sure what the error is with the custom header upload error. To be honest that system creates non stop problems, and it's all part of WordPress itself. I have been considering writing my own version, at least then I would know what is happening and how to fix it. One thing you need to remember is to go to the admin control panel and tick the "use custom header" box. |
|
|
Hi Ben, thanks for the quick reply. Everything but the "Post Author Details" works perfectly. Since I updated with the latest files a few minutes ago, "Post Author Details" does not work at all anymore. Now it has also disappeared from my normal post pages. a) I tried removing it from the sidebar and adding it again; Nada. Volkher P.S.: I did tick the "use custom header" box (in regard to that header image problem) already shortly after installation. No go. Not a big deal for me though. I have a dashboard widget that holds my change notes for themes and compared to all the other themes that need hundreds of lines, the only one for "Elemental" just says: "Remember logo update (logo.png) in lib\images." Believe me, that is a positive record if I've ever seen one. :) |
|
|
doh - sorry about that. The Post Author Details should be sorted now (fingers and toes crossed). |
|
|
't must've been the toes! Thanks! |
|
|
OK, one more weird thing (my fault?). If you cycle through my pages via the top menu, the first one (index: 1), "Mosaic Discographies" does not show the widget. What could be the problem here? All pages that were created before I installed "Elemental" are based on the same template (main page: no parent - default template). Volkher |
|
|
OK, I've made some changes and tried some stuff ... the "Post Author Details" still don't work quite right. Everything else does. I put all my widgets into the "main sidebar" area now and have kept all the other sidebar areas empty (no widgets placed there). I will add a footer today. The "Post Author" widget does not display: a) on the home page It does display on all the other pages not listed here. Volkher |
|
|
I think what it's doing is intentional but let me explain how the post author widget is meant to work. Essentially the post author widget is meant to display the details about the post or page author, so if there isn't a specific author on a page (eg search results) then nothing will display. This widget is most useful on blogs that have multiple authors. From the sound of it you want to have a widget that adds your info to every page which is slightly different. Perhaps what you need then is something that would allow you to chose which user to display (the admin on single author blogs) and display their bio. The easiest way to do this would be to just add the data in a text widget but perhaps we could alter the existing widget to be a bit more flexible. I will think about this one and get back to you. |
|
|
Thanks for the reply Ben. In light of what you said above though, the mechanics don't seem to be too-well thought out by WP. There's absolutely no reason why it should show up on some pages and not on others since all of them were written by me. That it doesn't show up on search is OK, but it should then show up on my "Mosaic discographies" page (which is in fact one long post) because it does show up on the "tags" page, where it probably shouldn't (that would classify more as an "author-less" search page). It also does show up on the contact page (where, I guess, the "author" isn't really important) and then again on my "Impressum" page (=About) where it perhaps matters again. Not very logical. I do believe that the only way around all of that would be a widget that allows you to post some author and post details that are pulled from a custom field or two from each post/page and which automatically detects where it resides via page and post ID. That again would bloat a blog unnecessarily, I guess, especially for lots of people who don't need that kind of functionality. So, it would have to be a downloadable add-on widget for those who can use sth like that. **** (latest version of Opera): One more thing (and I took a screenshot ... see link below). It doesn't bother me much but I was wondering if this could also be happening elsewhere and wanted to alert you to it. I guess this used to be called "fouc", "flash of unstyled content". This is what happens (my interpretation): a) I load my rather long "Mosaic Discographies" page or any other complex page. Here's the screenshot of what happens if you don't have a connection that is super fast. It's only visible very briefly but quite distracting because the colors are so different: http://www.deus62.com/linkto/fouc.jpg Opera is a browser I use once in a while to check pages because it's so damn unforgiving at times, but I don't know if any Mac or Linux browsers are that strict (or sluggish ... or dumb) as well. That's why I'm giving you the heads up here. Might be sth that could be fixed? I faintly recall - when I was still active with this kind of stuff in my youth ;) - that there was some easy way around that (either a hack or by ways of somehow ordering the load sequence; the latter, one or two of these standardistas were on about years ago ... that much I remember ... don't know if anything ever came of that "solution".). I hope you're happy that you got me as a customer, someone to make sure that you don't have a free second anymore. ;) Love the theme and it's here to stay. Cheers! Volkher |
|
|
BTW: I wasn't implying above that you should write that kind of widget. Besides, maybe there's sth around the plugin sites that already does what I want it to do. :) |
|
|
Found this and will give it a spin ... |
|
|
OK, I've made progress ... and foud a grave error that I produced myself. Apparently, a permalink/post slug error prevents the "Post Author" widget from showing up. If you enter "Mosaic Discographies" into Google.com, my page shows up as the second link. If you then switch back and forth between pages while on my site, it disappears again when you go back to the "Mosaic Discographies" page. As far as I recall (dumb me), I changed the post slug twice from "mosaic-discographies" to "mosaic" and back again. That was weeks, if not months ago. I've tried to find a solution to the problem but don't have time to read a million forum posts over on WP etc. right now. a) I've tried changing the permalinks to sth else and then back again to make the changes stick (the slug was manually changed back by me to what it once was, "mosaic-discographies") ... no go. I don't really have time right now but I'm sure the problems we've been talking about here are related to this pertmalink/slug problem. Why sure? The widget-logic plugin behaves the same way. I can target just about everything else, but simply not the Mosaics page, neither by slug name nor by ID. It's as if it wasn't there. But, I checked my DB tables and the ID is 352 and the slug is "mosaic-discographies." Both are in there. Mind-boggling. Volkher P.S.: Sorry for spamming around here, but maybe someone else runs into the same problem one day? |
|
|
And one more ... Google is fast (I guess it just read my site map). If you now check the search results for "Mosaic Discographies", you can see that there are (for now) two different links: livingwithmusic.com/2009/05/24/mosaic-discographies/ The first one makes the widget show up. That means to me that my internal permalinks structure is somehow screwed up (for that page only ... all the others work now as they are supposed to). Time to take a break. |
|
|
Hm. I think I'll a) Make a new page with a slightly different name which then That should fix it, I hope. It will throw Google off for a while, but direct links to that page that I'm aware of are only available in some forums where I'm a member, so I can change that there myself. After a while, via sitemap and Google webmaster tools, things should straighten out again. In a worst-case scenario, I would probably have to redirect from my .htaccess, but I don't think that will be necessary. Before I do that though, I'll just switch the page to the full-width template and try some other stuff tomorrow. P.S.: Sorry about the stream-of-consciousness technique here but, again, I hope my thoughts might help someone with the same problem further on down the road. |
|
|
Don't worry about the stream of consciousness technique :) I find it often helps to express my thoughts when faced with a problem as it makes everything clearer. Your problem is certainly unique (at least no-one else has mentioned it) and I am not sure what we can do as a solution but I do have some ideas for improving the theme as a result and they will make it into a future version. |
|
|
Thanks for being so forgiving. :) I think I'll simply go the "new page" route, just because I'm curious to see what will happen. As far as I understand Wordpress' inner workings, that should fix it. If not, it's "Houston, we ...", you know the line. By the way. Did you spot the "fouc" link above in this letter soup here? Volkher |
|
|
Ben, a) I created a new page (default template) from the old one. It has the slug "mosaicdiscographies" (never used before) The last thing I'm going to try now is change the order of the pages to see if it has something to do with being index "1". If not, I'm at a total loss for an answer. |
|
|
OK, no go. I now started pages at an index of 2 (Mosaic) to 7 (Impressum) after having tried 1-6. None of the two solutions worked. That only leaves three possibilities: a) It is the title (not the slug) that is "stuck" somewhere and produces mangling in WP. I just can't test if it works with another theme (I have several installed) because I can't test for that widget. I'm giving up for now. |
