NEW wood restoration resource!!!

[Toby Newell]

Hello everyone who knows me and those who don't.

Writing articles for my website took a lot of effort and time due to the sheer volume of information but the writing was easy. The self teaching of graphic design, photoshop, dreamweaver and website publishing was a little more difficult but NOTHING prepared me for the outright ridiculous difficulty of WordPress!!! I find it mind glowingly (SIC) staggering that something so popular is so difficult to edit.

As an aside, if anyone is proficient in WordPress I would give several arms and legs (not necessarily my own) for any help and advice they can offer, I have done so much and am weary to fully learn .php and .css.

As some of you may know my website is one of the most informative in the field of wood restoration on the internet and as such I get a considerable volume of enquires every month. I also have been known to give advice on here occasionally...

I am very happy to help where I can, time permitting. Obviously this can take up a lot of my time and I have found I have been repeating myself over and over again.

I decided that a more intelligent approach would be create a blog where I could post interesting questions the answers to which may be helpful to others and supplement this with interesting articles when I have the time. Hopefully this will avoid me having to repeat myself so often and create a more open, searchable resource which hopefully will prove helpful along with my published articles on my website. Some of my answers are searchable on here but on my blog everything will be in one place. The blog is also a cleaner way of answering questions without the extra verbosity and meandering side tracks.

If you have any wood restoration questions you can post them here at my blog:

http://newellwoodworks.co.uk/Wordpress/

When I have time I will answer in my usual comprehensive way. In the best journalistic tradition I will be using quotes directly from your enquiry and your first name, I will never publish surnames, addresses, email addresses or other identifiers. Using peoples names makes the blog more engaging. I appreciate peoples privacy and if for any reason you do not want your enquiry to be published please let me know and I will remove it from the blog.

As stated in my blog I do not pay for advertising nor allow linking, syndication or adverts on my website or blog my published articles and blog posts exist because I have a genuine interest in my craft. The breadth and depth of information serves two purposes, firstly it allows me to pass on my knowledge and experience to others which many people find helpful and secondly the sheer volume of content slightly improves my organic search ranking.

Although some new members of the forum may perceive this as 'advertising' I am sure the 'older' members of the forum, including Rob Tavendale will be able to assure them of my good intentions having expended hundreds of hours providing advice and writing articles published both here, on my website and via telephone or via email.

Period property is a fantastic resource and I frequently refer customers and others who contact me here to obtain help and advice with their period properties, I hope in some small way my blog may flower into a useful repository of information and advice half as useful as the forum here.

Please check it out, you can tell me whether it is working! I have no idea. I only have one post so far! And if anyone has any idea how Wordpress actually works and they think they have the patience to explain it to someone who is not a complete luddite I would REALLY appreciate it.

It took me years to publish my extended articles on my website and this blog has been on my mind for years also, the only thing stopping me has been my technical deficiencies, hopefully when I have worked out how to do things I can spend more time on producing feature posts and articles.

All the best

Toby

 

[malcolm]

It is good to see knowledge passed on to others. I run wordpress in completely standard form even without a picture at the top. I used to modify the software but a new version comes out every 5 minutes (normally for urgent security reasons) and it can be a real pain to incorporate your own changes in the new version. I don't feel they separate presentation from code very well.

 

[Toby Newell]

I taught myself dreamweaver, ftp, some basic html and css and photoshop from scratch, mostly through online tutorials and hundreds of hours, thousands probably of trial and error, I just don't have the energy to learn .php.

I am astonished that in this day and age the interface for editing wordpress is harder than designing and publishing a whole website from the ground up in dreamweaver! I assumed that in 2015 the world had moved on and I could just drag and drop and change fonts, colours and sizes by clicking on menus and resizing boxes.

Very, very frustrating when all you want to do is create content! I aim to keep it simple and functional, hopefully I will work out what I need to before my hair falls out.

 

[Penners]

Toby, I entirely agree with you about Wordpress. And I also find Dreamweaver extremely challenging. I have tried a number of software solutions for writing websites and, in my opinion, by far the most straightforward is Serif WebPlus. There is a free "Starter" version of the software that you download to try:-

http://www.serif.com/web-design-software/

I think you can also download the full edition (the current version is X8) to try before you buy.

Good luck!

 

[Toby Newell]

Thanks Penners, I am okay with dreamweaver and I could maybe even call myself an intermediate at photoshop its WordPress in particular that is so painful to do anything.

I am getting by like I used to with html, trial, error and several lorry loads of fudge. It appears to look okay now, I just need to check if people can post.

 

[Penners]

Ah yes - fudge can resolve so many technical problems (except when my grandsons shove it into the CD drive).

 

[mattice]

Toby, I can sympathise with your wordpress frustrations, I've just spent the last 2 weeks getting our website back online following a wp plugin security vulnerability that was exploited. It is inherently counterintuitive to update and edit, although admittedly I sometimes wish there was only me editing it as multi-users are difficult to manage.

The key to a successful site is a robust and simple theme, as standardised as possible. I'm sure you've discovered some of wp's new features for editing these.... still not the most user friendly. It looks like you are a lot of the way there. We've separated the blog page from the main template page, and used the main template as the static front page and parent for the other pages. Also, keeping the number of plugins to a minimum and installing a popular security plugin is highly recommended.

From what you describe, you're far more knowledgable in other areas of web design than I, but by standardising the theme, keeping the templates simple, it's possible to have a very low maintenance website. 2 weeks ago was our first period off-line since 2012, and frankly due to a 3rd party plugin that I hadn't spotted was discontinued.

If you have some specific questions by all means PM me, although I'll confess I've found the last two weeks a significant relearning exercise. Here's the website http://www.brmc-adventure.org.uk based entirely on wordpress with the exception of the phpbb forum.

 

[Keithj]

It looks good, Toby! There's an "overwrite" on the front page - maybe intentional - where Mark's message overwrites some of the links: this is what I see -

I went through the pain of learning .php a good few years ago, for an aircraft booking and logging website. I got it done (with help from some very capable people). Like banging your head on the wall, it was lovely when I stopped. I don't think I could do it now.

I use Dreamweaver for the church website - that's a lot easier. I particularly like .shtml for the ability to pull in common material such as toolbars and headers.

I tried a few "teachers" in the early days, but they would have taken a week to teach me to do a simple page. Such patience I don't have!

Wordpress is a closed book here, and from what you say is likely to remain so

 

[skier-hughes]

I have no such overwrite problem on my monitor, usually wordpress is quite good at sizing. What size monitor and resolution are you running Keith?
I have a 22" running 1680:1050

 

[skier-hughes]

I just need to check if people can post.

I've posted, is awaiting moderation.

Took a while to find somewhere I could post.

I don't like all the keywords being visible, I also find the very light grey link colours, on the RH menu, hard to read.

 

[Keithj]

I have no such overwrite problem on my monitor, usually wordpress is quite good at sizing. What size monitor and resolution are you running Keith?
I have a 22" running 1680:1050

Curiouser and curiouser...

My monitor is 24 inch (well, that's what my ruler says it is) running 1920 x 1080. Using Firefox (my usual browser) with a selection of security plugins, I see what I posted above. The links that are half-hidden don't work.

Using Chrome (which I keep for occasional testing, and which has no security stuff), it looks subtly different, and the links work:

 

[noj]

There's an issue with responsive bit of code - it's OK when the viewport gets smaller but the banner image doesn't scale at medium sizes.

This appears to be due to it having an absolute size set in the code (which the colorlib theme doesn't have)

Your code

<div id="logo">
<a href="http://newellwoodworks.co.uk/wordpress/"><img src="http://newellwoodworks.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/WORDPRESS_SPARKLING_BANNER_IMAGE1.jpg" height="567" width="1245" alt="NEWELL WOODWORKS"/></a>
</div>

The original theme code

<div id="logo">
<span class="site-name"><a class="navbar-brand" href="https://colorlib.com/sparkling/" title="Sparkling" rel="home">Sparkling</a></span>
</div>

So I reckon if you go into the home page in edit mode, chose 'text' view rather than 'visual' you may be able to see and delete the dimensions bit height="567" width="1245" and it should be automagically fixed

 

[skier-hughes]

I was using firefox Keith!
Glad noj is on the case

 

[noj]

Doesn't work! Wrong bit of code...

The logo bit is just for either text or a small logo at the top right of the page

The image needs to included in the page 'flexslider' bit and then it behaves (but sits under the menu) - here's an example, using your source code

http://ellipsis.co.uk/test/tn.html

 

[Toby Newell]

@Skier. Thank you. It works, of a sort! Another post on Linseed oil…

Yes. If I knew how to change the font and font colours I would, have no idea how they don't make it a drop down menu. I installed my fonts in one of the css file and only ubuntu showed up. I am sure I will find out how to change that one day.

The clicked link goes to light grey as well.

I actually like the keywords (if you mean the tags) as it's easy for people to search for posts (there will be a lot) and I am not sure how good the search function is, search ability is a big part of what I think makes this sort of thing useful but thank for your input.

@noj Thank you. I have no idea what you are on about. No. I know, the max size of my image is too large, it suggests smaller. You are correct, the colorlib example shows a large slider just don't know how to get that set up. Thanks for your help though.

@Keithj overwrite sorted. (I tried to move the slider above the menu as it was fouling as you say and accidentally disabled the slider by moving it in the header.php file, conflict avoided) Changed the busy header for simpler one.

@mattice sorry to hear about your problems and than you for your advice. I chose the sparkling them as it appeared clean and simple, all I want really is a banner, a slider is optional, somewhere to put two menus (one linked to my website and one for the blog) cloud tags and a search function and a static page. A two column set up is clean and simple IMHO simple one photo per post breaks up the text and adds colour and interest, personally I can't stand busy sights with 17 columns of social media icons and 58 images per page. I will check out your site.

Thanks everyone.

My objective now is to change the fonts, size and colour (when I find out how to do this)
Delete the header image and reinsert into a slider as noj says (ditto)
That's basically it.
Oh and load google analytics.

 

[Toby Newell]

From what you describe, you're far more knowledgable in other areas of web design than I, but by standardising the theme, keeping the templates simple, it's possible to have a very low maintenance website. 2 weeks ago was our first period off-line since 2012, and frankly due to a 3rd party plugin that I hadn't spotted was discontinued.

Modesty is obviously another one of your attributes.

Slightly jealous. My website is in its fifth or sixth iteration and it has taken thousands (literally) of hours of iterations and hair pulling to post a website that looks far less slick than yours (I do have a lot of content but anyone can type)

Knowing how un user friendly wordpress is and what knowledge of css and html you need as well as a possible understanding of php I think it is highly unlikely I have a fraction of your knowledge.

Wordpress make fantastic looking websites and they make it all look easy… until you actually try it!

Seriously, when I wanted my first website I bought 'html for dummies' and had the start of a website up and running over the weekend. Several years of experience later and it took far longer to create a wordpress page with one post!!!

 

[Keithj]

If you're looking to change fonts, size and colour in an HTML page, it's easy to do via the CSS file. We change the church website page background colours (when I remember) to the "seasonal" colour, with fonts to match. I have a selection of .css and just upload the relevant one.

In PHP it's a little trickier: it's a long time since I did that and my memory isn't what it used to be...

 

[skier-hughes]

I'm happy with keywords being used for search, but I'm sure you should be able to hide them from general view??

 

[Toby Newell]

@Keith, I can do the .css stuff in dreamweaver, php is different, I actually just don't know where to look.

@skier, you mean the popular tags? I like them semantically, I think some people may find them useful to browse, I think as it stands (not edited properly) they stand out too much compared to the ridiculously light grey, all that will change to a more legible and easier to read font just as soon as I work out (*press gang my girlfriends teenage son into action*) how to do it. Did you read my other post on Linseed oil vs Tung oil? If no then that shows you I need to get my slider working and sort out the fonts asap.

 

[noj]

The important thing with wordpress (and it's a bit of a pain because you need to ftp a couple of files, but lots of online examples) is to create a child theme - then any changes you make never get overwritten by an update. Plus you can always revert to the original if/when it all goes horribly wrong!

Then at least you can play with the php with impunity and just add a few css modifiers as appropriate. Wordpress setup is tedious but subsequent editing is pretty simple and very robust once you've got it behaving the way you want.

And if you're happy with Dreamweaver for css edits you can use it to write the changes and then just copy the modified styles into the wp child stylesheet (way simpler than hand coding - it's what I do :wink: ). And don't be afraid of looking at the wp php - most of it is pretty obvious and often well commented so you know which bit does what