alliwagner

# March 10, 2009 at 1:27 pm

Hey all,

as stated in the title, this is my very first design/build of a WordPress powered site:
[img]http://www.alliwagner.com/headleysite.jpg[/img]
http://www.headleycommunity.org

Any and all feedback/criticism is greatly appreciated.

One thing I know I need to take care of off the bat is I need to figure out a way to add a link to the "blog" section in the navigation (which are actually just the pages styled). I havent been able to figure this out yet (my only solution has been to link the entire header to the index where the blog resides)

Thanks for your time in advance friends!
Allison

apostrophe

# March 10, 2009 at 2:34 pm

First Wp site? I am genuinely impressed, a rather regal look.

Ok, the first thing you should do is configure your permalinks /?cat=3 is not very search engine friendly or particularly helpful to users. You can do that from the wp admin panel under settings – permalinks, hit the radio button for custom structure and type something like /%postname%/

As regards adding a link to the blog, I presume you are using wp_list_pages for your nav? If so, create a new page (not post) name it "Blog" (or whatever you want to call your blog eg. "news", "latest" etc.) leave the rest blank and publish it. Now go back to settings – reading and there where it asks for the posts page, select your newly created page from the dropdown, save changes and presto it will now appear in the nav list.

I would suggest some kind of rollover effect for the main nav items and something to highlight the current page, even if it’s only an underline.
Perhaps make the footer stick to the bottom of the window. It looks great on the long pages but not so hot on the shorter ones when it appears half way up the screen.

All in all, nice job ;)

alliwagner

# March 10, 2009 at 4:10 pm

a thousand thank yous for your help and suggestions– Im on it! :)

alliwagner

# March 10, 2009 at 5:10 pm

Havin some trouble with the permalinks issue–

I set it up for /%postname% as suggested, however when I do this the site falls apart

How do I go back and set names (or slugs I guess?) for each page that serves as the sites navigation etc?

apostrophe

# March 10, 2009 at 5:27 pm

There should be a backslash after %postname% as well as before. Here is a pretty good article on wp permalinks http://www.homebizpal.com/blogging/wordpress/understanding-wordpress-permalinks/ otherwise check that you have a .htaccess file and that it is write-able.

The names of the pages come from the page titles.

Hope that helps.

apostrophe

# March 11, 2009 at 9:11 am

Ok, I’ve just run your xhtml through the W3 validator http://validator.w3.org/#validate_by_input. You have 4 errors on your home page and 9 on your single post pages so you might want to address those issues first.

I also noticed that your sidebar div is sitting inside your comments-container. As is your footer text which should surely be inside your footer div?

alliwagner

# March 11, 2009 at 9:38 am

Thanks mister!

I’ll address all those issues today!

Your time is so very appreciated :)

alliwagner

# March 11, 2009 at 11:57 am

sidebar div weirdness fixed- check
footer div weirdness fixed- check
permalink restructured- check
rollovers for nav- check (although I do want to rework them so they are all the same width)

still need the darn code to validate- boo
still need to have current page highlighted- double boo (athough I saw a plugin offered that may make my life easier)

One last thing– my "entries-nav" links are not working (newer entries and older entries nav)
here is what my code looks like :

Code:

< ?php comments_template(); ?>

• < ?php next_post_link('« Older Entries') ?>

|

• < ?php previous_post_link('Newer Entries »') ?>

< ?php endwhile; else: ?>

also, I implemented a sticky footer technique but unfortunately my moniter is too small to check– is it working? :)

thanks!

apostrophe

# March 11, 2009 at 1:35 pm

Try putting the "wp-credit" div above the the "footer-wrap" div but keep it inside the "footer".

You really need to fix those xhtml errors before you can be sure about your sticky footer. You have at least one extra closing div in there. Your sidebar is still inside the "comments-container" on the single posts page. So you need to fix index.php, page.php (if you are using it) and single.php. And validate your code!

Re. "entries-nav" Why the ul? Those span tags around the pipe character can’t go between two list items, thats one of your errors right there. Better make the whole thing a paragraph and stick a line break in there if you want them on different lines.
This should make the links work:

Code:

< ?php previous_post_link('« %link') ?>
< ?php next_post_link('%link »') ?>

alliwagner

# March 11, 2009 at 1:52 pm

ignore my semi-celebratory post above— I still have work t do, Ill get back to you :)

apostrophe

# March 11, 2009 at 2:08 pm

Re. Current page highlighted.

Check your nav in Firebug. WordPress does it for you.

Code:

Code:

Just add the CSS.

alliwagner

# March 11, 2009 at 3:17 pm

ok so my code validates– but this sidebar in the comment-container is killing me.

I went through index.php, single.php, and page.php and I couldn’t find anything (but I also dont really know php so I’m not too sure what to look for)

page.php:

Code:

#date {
padding: 0px 0 5px 0;
font: italic 14px Georgia, “Times New Roman”, Times, serif;
}

single.php:

Code:

< ?php get_header(); ?>

< ?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

< ?php /* This is commented, because it requires a little adjusting sometimes.
You'll need to download this plugin, and follow the instructions:
//binarybonsai.com/archives/2004/08/17/time-since-plugin/ */
/* $entry_datetime = abs(strtotime($post->post_date) – (60*120)); echo time_since($entry_datetime); echo ‘ ago'; */ ?>
< ?php the_time('l, F jS, Y') ?> at < ?php the_time() ?>
< ?php the_category(', ') ?>

< ?php if (('open' == $post-> comment_status) && (‘open’ == $post->ping_status)) {
// Both Comments and Pings are open ?>
Comment

< ?php } elseif (!('open' == $post-> comment_status) && (‘open’ == $post->ping_status)) {
// Only Pings are Open ?>
Responses are currently closed, but you can ” rel=”trackback”>trackback from your own site.

< ?php } elseif (!('open' == $post-> comment_status) && !(‘open’ == $post->ping_status)) {
// Neither Comments, nor Pings are open ?>
Both comments and pings are currently closed.

< ?php } edit_post_link('Edit this entry','','.'); ?>

< ?php comments_template(); ?>

< ?php previous_post_link('« %link') ?> | < ?php next_post_link('%link »') ?>

< ?php endwhile; else: ?>

Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.

< ?php endif; ?>

< ?php get_sidebar(); ?>

< ?php get_footer(); ?>

alliwagner

# March 11, 2009 at 3:18 pm

"apostrophe" wrote:

Re. Current page highlighted.

Check your nav in Firebug. WordPress does it for you.

Code:

Code:

Just add the CSS.

sweet I will!

apostrophe

# March 11, 2009 at 3:36 pm

Single.php

Try switching these two lines :

Code:

< ?php get_sidebar(); ?>

So that it reads:

Code:

< ?php get_sidebar(); ?>

and your single post page is still not validating.