I know it’s hard. All that typing. So tedious. You’re a designer, not a data entry monkey,right?
Well tough. Type it out, mofos. Or I will scoff at your work.
Worse than my scoffing is the fact that your pretty website is inaccessible and that’s elitist,man.
Category: Technical Blog
Your WordPress theme code is out of date
Theme code not fit for WordPress 2.3.3 can be dangerous. I found this out the hard way.
Yes, it matters. You cannot simply upgrade the core files,you must also make sure tags and hooks in your theme are compatible as well. I’m afraid you are sort of on your own there,though.The WordPress Codex is not the most up to date batch of articles and it is from there that I have been gathering my little bits of theme info.
Which makes me wish there was a comprehensive list of tags and hooks and etc that have been definitively depreciated so that I can be sure not to use them ever again.Well of course they tell you what’s been out since 1.5 and 2.1 but not much else…
The best I could tell you is to grab a copy of an approved for 2.3.3 theme and explore its guts, comparing the code you tend to reuse with their’s and try to get up to date.
Or just keep triggering errors and wondering why, God, WHY?
I was able to find an answer in the WordPress forums despite the fact that it seem as though 98% of the questions go unresolved. But this is only because no one ever bothers to search the forum threads so the same questions get asked over and over and it tires the experts out to keep answering it.
I’m not absolutely sure that this is right but I’m pretty sure the theme code in the 2 default themes that come with every WordPress download are up to date. I hope so because I usually rely on Default for help.
New site (almost) completed
Trisha McBride Dance
Still not validating on the shop page,there’s one error caused by one of those lovely wandering paragraph tags right before a div tag placed by the WP-Shopping-Cart…darn it.
I may be able to get rid of it by rewriting a product description so there isn’t any whitespace(that’s usually what causes a misplaced p tag in WP).
You are not allowed to wrap a div in a p tag! So there is that error.Pesky.
All nerdy moaning aside the site looks swell if I say so myself.
We didn’t know what to do with the home page for ages.
You know it’s getting tough when you can’t decide what to do with the home page.
But it came together in a snap when the owner sent me a gorgeous photograph that, once placed, made everything else seem just about right.
The reason the home page caused trouble as far as deciding what should go there is that it’s not a blog site– although the owner is not deadset against having a blog–it’s a website for a dancer who teaches classes and leads workshops. Most websites I have seen in this genre have been less than inspirational,although a few have been pretty good(the ones who stayed away from font-family:Papyrus).
I still need to find an elegant solution to showing an excerpt from the events page(we’re using this instead of a blog for now) on the home page. I’m thinking of setting up a post category called homepage news and using a query to include it on the home page…But the rest of the site is done.
I don’t really love the turquoise color for the menu links but the site owner wanted them that colour and I want to dim the white of the floral pattern in the bg image…it’s a little too bright and it distracts the eye. Style is all very nice to have but you want site visitors to click links not stare at your bg image.
We also kind of want to stay away from the bulletin-board effect and leave the home page spare yet elegant.But most important is having keywords in that intro paragraph in case folks do searches for dance teachers and dance instruction,whatever,they may find her website…
I’ve used the Add Meta Tags plugin but woe:it doesn’t add them anywhere there aren’t posts..again yet another reason to use a custom query!
Conflict with Next Gen Gallery and WP-shopping Cart
When I was setting up my friend’s new site I installed Next Gen Gallery.
Then she needed to be able to sell stuff so I installed WP Shopping Cart.
Then the madness began!
Thumbnails were doing cartwheels and somersaults or not opening at all.Or double images were appearing for each thumbnail.Was it a Poltergeist? A Gremlin? Nope: just 2 copies of scripts doing things together and doubling up everything! Not good.
Why was this happening?
Both plugins use thickbox.js,thickbox.css and lightbox.css.You only need one copy of each installed or you will experience odd performances of the lightbox window when clicking on a thumbnail image either on your shop or gallery pages.
My solution is probably not the best but it worked.
I went to wp-content/plugins and opened the wp-shoppingcart folder.I found thickbox js and css and also lightbox.css and just erased the code from all files,leaving the blank file in the folder.
I thought about deleting these files but then I decided to be on the relatively safe side I’d just leave them but empty.
I should say that separately both plugins work fine,at least when it comes to using the lightbox window).
Problem Resolved.
I should state just for the sake of the easily befuddled that if you do not have both plugins but are still experiencing trouble this solution will not work for you.This is just for trouble had when BOTH plugins are installed into one WP installation!