If I were thinking clearly…

I would’ve gotten before and after shots of many of the blogs that I’ve been helping make the move to word press…

But here are a few that I’ve finished this week…

click on the graphics to visit their sites…

Arianne has a brand new look thanks to Ruby and Roja…

Moe wanted to move from her current Blogger Blog to WordPress and she’s got a brand new look thanks to DCR Design

Juli is brand new to the blogging world and has her great new look courtesy of DCR Design

There are many more on the horizon… and I’m working on posting pictures of the other happy WordPressers in the near future…

WordPress Changes Lives

I’ll take a step back from teling you how good WordPress is to point you in the direction of this story I found on Pro Blogger this morning.

WordPress isn’t just a great blogging platform because it does things that other platforms can’t…

It changes lives.

Until next time…

Heather

Your Questions Answered: Changing the Font Size

A few days ago I posed the question on Twitter, “What do you want to know about Wordpress?” And surprisingly, people read my tweets because I got four good questions.

So I’ll start with the first.

The Bloggess wants to know how she can change her font size on her blog.

It’s a good question.  The themes we get come with certain font sizes and they may be too small for us to read, so we fear that our readers won’t be able to.

It might also be that we can’t stand Times New Roman 12, so we want to change it to Century Gothic 14.

What ever it is that you want to do, regarding your font size, color, and type, you can do so within your Stylesheet (typically the style.css file under Design->Theme Editor.

(Note:  For Wordpress.com users, you can also change the font size, color and type, but you will need to pay the $15 CSS upgrade charge.)

Each theme is different when trying to change the stylesheet.  Each designer calls various aspects of their stylesheet by different names and if you’re not able to spot sight it, then you have to get a little more creative.  (Or download Firebug for Firefox)

Using Firebug, I was able to see that the post content uses Gerorgia 12 pt font.  So, let’s say that she wants to make that 14 points.

She’ll find this section of her stylesheet (line 273, so you know that it’s a ways down the page):

.post-content, .page-content {

-x-system-font:none;

border-top:1px solid #BBC4A3;

font-family:Georgia,Verdana,Arial,serif;

font-size:12px;

font-size-adjust:none;

font-stretch:normal;

font-style:normal;

font-variant:normal;

font-weight:normal;

line-height:normal;

margin:3px 0;

padding:10px 0;

}

How to remove the generic title of your blog…

When you install your wordpress blog, the only things it asks you for is your blog name and your email address.

So you enter them.  Then you upload the fancy new “clothes” that you’ve just had designed for you and your blog title, appears in the header.

You do what seems the simplest fix and that’s to take it out of the Title line in the settings, but then you realize that your RSS feed doesn’t show your blog title.

And we can’t have that, can we?

Believe it or not, there’s a simple fix.

For most templates, you’re going to want to go into your header.php file and find the string that looks like this…

<a href=”<?php echo get_option(’home’); ?>/”><?php bloginfo(’name’); ?></a>

Take out the part that says <?php bloginfo(’name’); ?>

Save your changes and your Title should no longer show up.

That easy.

Find and Replace is a Gift from God…

Seriously.

You know it’s true.  How much time to we save when we complete a find and replace?  Alot.  And a lot of hassles and headaches too.

I know of so many people who, after blogging for many months, or years even, decided that they were going to stop using their children’s real names.  And so what did they do?

They went back, post by post, and edited them.

By hand.

Can you imagine how long that would take you if you decided to do that today?

You’re shuttering aren’t you?

I know.

Saturday night I had the distinct pleasure of helping Beth and Christy over at Ruby and Roja move their blog to Wordpress self-hosted.  They did an awesome job as the designers.  Because that’s what they do.  And they are good at it.

My job was to make it look like they wanted to within WordPress and then make it function the way that they wanted.  So we set up a test blog, got it all layed out the way we wanted it and then moved it over in the middle of the night.

However, when we moved it, all of the links pointed back to the test site.  All of the graphics.  All of the internal links.  All of the permalinks.

All 575 URLs that were contained within that site.

Lucky for me though, I remembered the plugin that Krissy told me about months ago, so I hopped over to her blog and started looking for it.  I knew she had blogged about it and I found it.  The Search Regex Plugin by Urban Giraffe.

Coincidentally, they were also the ones that told me that I had 575 links.

I installed the plugin, activated it and then did a search for the domain of the test blog and replaced with with rubyandroja.com

It took a minute, if that.

So, if you’ve got a mountain of terms or links that you need to change, I highly recommend this plugin.

And here’s another benefit of self-hosted WordPress… you could never do that with the other platforms… just sayin’.

And we have a winner

Heather’s the winner of the blog installtion and we’re tickled pink as she doesn’t have a blog… so we can get her off on the right foot.

Didn’t win?  Never fear!  We can still help!

Contact us and we’ll get you up and running!

Are you a control freak?

I do quite a few installations for Wordpress.com blogs and often times, I’ve noticed that they pay for both domain mapping and the custom CSS ability. That amount adds up to $30 a year (roughly) and for that they can basically make it LOOK like their site is on it’s own domain and modify the look of thier blog.

What I don’t understand is WHY they would choose this platform and pay $30 a year when they could spend the same amount and have a self-hosted WordPress blog?

For me, it doesn’t make sense.  The backend of Wordpress is the same whether you’re on self-hosted or Wordpress.com, so it’s not like you would have to learn anything new.

You have more control over your blog with self-hosted than you do on the wordpress.com site in that you can make your blog function like you want to.

You can add Javascript to your blog.

The list is endless as to what you can do.

But what I did learn at BlogHer this year in talking to people is that they are worried about losing subscribers if they make the move and here’s what I want to say…

If they don’t notice that you’ve moved?  If they don’t read your blog regularly now in that they miss the annoucement that you’ve moved, do you really care if you lose them?

If you’re a wordpress.com user, take some time to think about what you want to do with your blog.  Are there things that you wish that you could do, but haven’t figured out how?  Are there tweaks that you would like to make but can’t?

If you’re paying $30 a year for more functionality on your wordpress.com blog, why not pay $30 a year for a self-hosted blog and have comeplete control over your blog?

Of course, if you are happy with wordpress.com and it does everything you want it to do, then by all means stick with it.  Wordpress.com is not a bad service unless you want a little more control… like me.

::stepping down off my soap box::

Welcome to our first giveaway!

So….maybe you’re a new blogger and just don’t know what to do about all this stuff… or maybe you have a blogger blog, or wordpress.com blog or even a typepad blog that you don’t want to pay for anymore.

Regardless, if you’re looking to either start or move your blog, this is for you.

Included in this package is:

• Domain registration for 1 year. (Domain name after that will be approx. $9.95 a year)
• Assistance in choosing and purchasing the domain name
• 1 Year of free hosting (hosting after that will be $15 a year)
• Installation of Wordpress on your domain name
• Installation of a theme with a custom header design by a new designer- Healing Designs.
• Installation of 10 plugins of your choice
• 2 hours of Q&A/training for your new blog (i wouldn’t just feed ya to the wolves ya know?)
• Transfer of posts from blogger or typepad to the new blog

If I were still running my business and offered this package to a client, I would charge them $400. There are some more nitty gritty details that I’ll have to go over with the winner, but they aren’t that hard.

So here’s what you need to do.

• Leave a comment on this post before the clock strikes midnight on Friday (EST) and let me know what you hate about your current blogging platform.
• Links back to this contest will grant you an additional entry… so link away!

I’ll tell you why I’m an avid WP fan…

• it’s mine. Period. If blogger or typepad go belly up, you’re going to lose all your stuff. You don’t control it, and yes, I’m a control freak.
• You can do much much more with it. Seriously. There are so many cool things you can do that you just can’t do with blogger or the WP.com versions…
• It’s so easy… not only is there more power with WP, but it’s so simple to use. My 11 year old has been using it since he was 9. And he’s fine with it.
• With the exception of the domain name and hosting (about $25 a year) it’s free. Free is good

Now the fine print…

• Contest is open to anyone regardless of where you are geographically sit-chi-ated
• You must leave your comment by Friday at Midnight EST
• Only one comment per person…
• Winner will be notified on Monday and will have 3 days to respond.
• Winner must abide by the guidelines set forth by me when installing the blogs. Let’s face it, as cool as WP is… there are somethings that you shouldn’t do in the long run… and if i say that it’s not a good idea, it’s not… and i know this from experience only.
• Technical support is NOT included in this package after the installation is complete, however, I am a pushover and more often that not will help when asked… and then I’ll call Lisa B. in a panic and make her help me.

Ready? Leave your comment… and make sure you hit up all the other ones this week!

And after you’ve left your comment, check out all the other giveaways at Bloggy Giveaways!

Until next time…

I want a siggie too…

So, you see all these cute signatures that people all over the blogosphere have at the end of their posts and you want one too, but you can’t for the life of you figure out how to do it… perhaps you even saw my new signature over at Desperately Seeking Sanity… LOVIN’ the Scribble!

First, you need to get a signature and you can do this in a variety of ways.  You could make one yourself if you’re familiar with a photo editing program.  Simply chose the font that you want and make a signature.  Save it as a png or gif with a transparent background and you’re almost there.

Don’t understand all that?  If you’re not savvy with graphics programs, it’s okay.  There are those out there that are.  Like Karen from Simply Amusing Designs.  Or Beth and Christy from Ruby and Roja Designs.  Or Jo-Lynne from DCR Design.  I can stand behind any of those designers.

But if shelling out a little bit of cash for a signature just isn’t doable and you don’t know how to use a program, there’s another option… it’s simple and it’s free and it’s called My Live Signature All you need to do is type in your name, choose your font, size and color and you’re on your way.

Grab the code or save it to your hard drive to upload to your own server.

Now…

You can either copy and paste the html into the bottom EVERY time you post, which is a pain, or you can set it to post at the end of every post automagically.  I like that option better, don’t you?

And, if you want to get overly complicated, I can show you where within the code you would place this but why bother when there’s a plugin that will do all of the work for you?

Let’s take the easy way.

Simply download the Add Signature Plugin from Dagon Design and upload it to your server via your FTP site.

Activate the plugin, go to settings and then to DDAddSig and you’ll see a box that says primary signature.

Paste your signature HTML code in there, select where you want your signature to appear (on the index page, on post pages, etc) and hit update settings.

Viola!

You now have a quick and easy signature on every post.

And just a note, My Live Signature does offer a plugin however I’ve never been able to get it to work with the newest version of WordPress and I find DDAddSig to be much easier to use and navigate.

So, show us your signature…

Until next time…

Heather

I am still here…

So….

we moved.

To our own domain.

Because for search engine purposes, I really should’ve been on my own domain and not on a sub directory.  Or so the BFF said.

So I moved me.

But because I’m very disorganized with my SQL databases, the wrong one was linked and my posts are somewhere.

I’m not sure where.

So, we’re rebuilding.

But….

In the meantime, while on vacation/business trip… I’ve been helping some friends out…

you can take a look see here…

because there’s nothing HERE right now… which is kind of a problem, seeings how I go to blogher in a WEEK!

No rest for the weary…

stick around… we’re still here…