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June 23, 2013 at 1:03 pm in reply to: How To Make Landing Pages Like Studiopress & Copyblogger?? #47303SummerMember
I posted a reply to this with links to a tutorial... did it get caught as spam?
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkJune 22, 2013 at 2:39 am in reply to: How To Make Landing Pages Like Studiopress & Copyblogger?? #47155SummerMemberMany of the current child themes come with landing page templates, and Brian Gardner has a tutorial on his website on how to create one: http://www.briangardner.com/create-landing-page/
Both would be places I'd start.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberMy background was as a Unix systems administrator, and I fell into specializing in firefighting (fast resolutions) and Internet protocols and applications and customer support (all Mac and Unix, no Windows, no router jockey skills, and that unintentionally narrow focus landed me in the untenable position of being irrelevant with 25 years experience on the resume).
Before jumping into website design, keeping websites up and running and responding fast was first order of business, and WordPress allowed me to put something together that would allow the content makers to play with their website and leave me free to track down problems on the server and the network and fix them to keep the systems humming along. So I have a deep appreciation for things that work as they are supposed to, without causing me to pick through log files and sloppy code to figure out how to fix what shouldn't have come out the box broke to begin with 🙂
I found out quickly that not all WordPress themes were created equal. Like Derek, I started out with Brian back when it was Revolution Themes, and I decided to check that out because of what I'd seen another early podcaster, JC Hutchins, had done with his website (he was using Revolution Black at the time). I liked what I saw and have been a fan/customer ever since.
Over the years we powered our sites with themes under Revolution, Revolution Two, first gen Studio Press and now Genesis. In starting up a freelance website business and with maintaining our media sites, the Genesis framework has been my default install for at least the past 2-3 years, and the handful of times I've gone with themes from different brands, it pains me how much extra work it is picking through code I can read has mistakes in it and not knowing enough to fix all of them on my own adds to the frustration.
There are other themes that I try out because they fit a need I haven't found in any Genesis child theme, from Studio Press, Appfinite, Themedy or ZigZag. Yet time and again, after being elbow deep in customizing templates and CSS for a week, I find myself wishing I could convert them to Genesis child themes 🙂 In that I have to agree with @maroontech about stuff under the hood that is either broken, or doesn't make sense, or that I won't ever need. I haven't tried Elegant Themes, and don't know if I ever will, but I'm having similar experiences with other theme houses.
Those frustrations make me appreciate the sensibilities in Genesis ever more every day, but I also wouldn't mind having a few more flashy child theme options, like a few video blog/channel themes, or when I look at Stretch or Minimum I wish I had the time to figure out how to make one of those the base for a flashy parallax scrolling theme.
I want to put together a site, get the client up to speed with being comfortable managing their own content, and move on to the next project. Genesis has proved over and over again that I can do that faster with their products than I've been able to do with anyone else's. Major selling point for me, and one I point out to clients as well.
Now if I could only figure out how to hack a few Genesis plugins to make my life easier, Summer would be a really happy camper 🙂
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberI was also wondering how long it would be before that plugin gets fixed/updated.
For me, I only needed it in a few places, but in most other areas where i was using it on the sidebar, I switched to using Twitter's own widget. I like their new one a lot better than their old one.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberWould Stretch be a good starting point for you?
http://demo.studiopress.com/stretch/
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMember@BruceM, are you saying that you wouldn't want to make your new design be a custom Genesis child theme, or did I misunderstand the question?
I have sometimes been frustrated at the lack of diversity amongst Genesis child themes, and sometimes when I find a different one, it doesn't stay on the market long or needs a lot more under-the-hood work to bring it into full Genesis-powered goodness.
But then whenever I venture out of the playground to use a WP theme by someone else, I get smacked upside the back of the head in a harsh reminder why I love the ease of use and peace of mind that comes with using Genesis child themes. It's the biggest reason I ran away screaming from WooThemes after their shoddy coding caused me to lose money on two projects about a year and a half ago.
If I were a stronger PHP coder, I'd be tackling the idea of converting a theme I bought to upgrade one of my video sites to be a Genesis child theme and thereby cut the bloat and the errors that are all throughout that otherwise very cool theme. I'd also be customizing Metro 10 different ways from Sunday to use on everything 🙂
I guess I don't understand why your developer would charge you more to convert a PSD to a Genesis child theme than they would to a standalone theme... the principle's the same, and outside of the custom CSS, you might actually have less need to create all the various templates with a child theme than with a standalone theme.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberSorry... I started to go get examples to add last night, and got distracted by the problem.
Turns out, I didn't have enough "variety" of rich media on the new site I'm converting over from a really old theme to a Genesis theme. I was checking out the video embeds of two different posts, both of which were behaving the same way, just displaying the URL to the YouTube video instead of embedding the video.
What are the odds that both videos I was trying out on the one site had been changed to private on YouTube? grumblefrack... this is what I get for not sleeping on it 🙂
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMember@Bill, I don't know what to tell you, but I experienced that problem repeatedly between WP 2.9.2 and 3.2.1, as I was converting a bunch of sites to use Genesis. I had custom rules in between the # Begin and # End that were "erased" from existence, and I had them outside the # End and they still were obliterated, both scenarios leaving me with the "default" rewrites to handle the permalinks and nothing else.
It happened so much I changed the permissions on the file so that it couldn't be overwritten by WordPress. So the permalinks rules were being written, if that's what you're suggesting, but I also had my custom rules (the comments ones and the ones to prevent image hotlinking) wiped out of my .htaccess files on as many as 6 different websites several times over a 2 year period. I just got into the habit of keeping a copy of my rules in a separate file, and just pasting them back in whenever I had to click "Save Changes" in the permalinks section.
I'll test it out eventually, but I'm in the middle of a couple of projects and in no rush at the moment to debug. Sounds a lot like my wp-uploads settings problems that no one else but me had, either 🙂
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMember@Bill, in WP versions prior to 3.2, I can confirm through experience that having those custom rules before the WP rules didn't save them from annihilation 🙂 Having that happen more than four times was what caused me to move them.
My biggest question was why did they stop working outside the WP rules section, when they worked just fine separated in previous versions?
Normally I enjoy setting up more demolitions testing on one of my demo sites, but I don't have the time this weekend!
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberI've been using this method for several years successfully, but several interesting things happened with this .htaccess technique when I updated to WP 3.5.1
I used to have those rules outside of the #END WordPress block, because that code would vanish any time I updated something that updated the permalinks... all my .htaccess customizations would be erased and I'd be back to the default WP .htaccess and I'd have to paste all my rules back in.
But after updating to WP 3.5.1, all .htaccess rules outside of the WordPress block were ignored by WordPress... my spam blocks, my image hotlinking preventions, all stopped working with WordPress until I put them back inside the WP block.
I discovered this when I had to uninstall the MP Spam Block plugin because it wasn't playing nicely with WPMU's Comments Plus, and wham, I started getting over 500 spam comments a day without fail. When I put the antispam rules before the #END WordPress line, it started working again, dropping down to a more manageable 200 spam comments per day, and I still had to add Deny rules for a couple of specific IP addresses. When while using MP Spam Block I was getting 5-10 per day maybe, but I realized it was also blocking all trackbacks, including legit ones from my other sites, so maybe it was TOO good.
Same for the image hotlinking rules... they were ignored by WordPress until I moved them inside the WP block, so make sure you keep a backup of your .htaccess just in case you do something where you have to update permalinks... my guess is those customizations might still "vanish"... I haven't tested it out to see if that's still the case, though.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberConfirming what Bill says, yes, you must do all the redirects from the old site to the new one... can't work the other way around, and if your old domain is going to remain online and not go away, all the better.
If editing the .htaccess makes you a bit skittish, try the plugin. I was using my own frame of reference from comparisons between having used the plugin on several sites, and having had to create a .htaccess file a few years back to redirect over 350 URLs from a hand-rolled HTML site originally created in 1998 to not just its own new WordPress edition but also a several other sites where some of the content had been split off to.
N I G H T M A R E, and I had no one to blame but myself since it was one of my own pet project websites. These days, it's running a custom mod of Backcountry, in fact 🙂
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberIn the past, when moving posts from one site to another, I've used this plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/quick-pagepost-redirect-plugin/
Eliminates the need to maintain a few hundred links in your .htaccess (something I once had to do long long ago)
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberFor that, I'd recommend using the Dynamic Widgets plugin, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/dynamic-widgets/
I'm currently using it on several sites, and it's very easy to control which widgets are displayed on categories, pages, etc.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberActually, the Feedburner API was shut down back in June or July of last year, which was sort of the green flag dropping for them to shut down the service entirely. All plugins or add-ons that used their API just stopped working back then. With Google's recent announcement that they're killing off Reader, my guess is that Feedburner may well be gone by the end of the year because of how people using Reader are likely subscribed to Feedburner feeds. And Feedburner metrics and statistics on subscribers (and downloads for audio/video podcasts) has been sketchy at best the past several years, another not good sign.
If you don't need or want stats on subscribers to your feed, just use what WordPress gives you. If you have a mailing list or you want to track subscribers to your blog's feed, I can recommend FeedBlitz for anything EXCEPT podcasts... they're are clueless to a fault about podcast tracking and stats, and their latest "improvements" to make themselves more attractive to the people abandoning Feedburner for podcasts was a bonehead manuever of colossal proportions (and their tech support hasn't responded to me in 2 weeks about it), so I'm in the process of moving all our show feeds to Podtrac (which I regret not having done in the first place 6 months ago)
So unless you really want stats, and want to figure out the many hoops you need to jump through to get feed stats into Google Analytics (they claim it works, but I'm skeptical), you may well be better off going with your naked site feed.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberThis is something I ran into when one of my clients upgraded to WP 3.5 the day it came out without checking with me first 🙂
You used to be able to have a blank top menu item, and the dropdown items under it would work as normal, but with the upgrade to 3.5, those blank top items no longer worked 100%. They would work fine on computers, but you absolutely had to put a blank anchor in there or they would not function on any mobile devices at all (not sure why that updated behavior was forced onto everyone, but there you have it).
It seems to be a popular expectation with older people, seniors, so one client told me... in his experience with older clientele, they are used to seeing a dropdown menu and assume that since there are items that drop down, the top menu item isn't actually something they need to click on, so it shouldn't have a clickable action, else they might miss some info.
The reasoning still boggles me, but that's how more than one of my clients like it, and the WP 3.5 upgrade broke a lot of menus for a lot of mobile devices.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberdo you have the ability to look at your database tables from your hosting control panel, see which tables are the largest?
You could have a lot of entries in your options table from old plugins, or you could have a metric ton of spam comments just hanging around (it might be just me, but Akismet doesn't seem to be as efficient as it used to about deleting old spam comments, that or the spammers have become more persistent)
Once you know what info is abnormally outsized, that would make it easier to track down the cause.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberI used to use the Paparazzi app on the Mac to take full page website snapshots, but when stopped working I was lost.
Now that I can use Chrome, I do like using the Screen Capture extension; gives several options for visible window or full page.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberWould you believe we sometimes get more interaction with the 160px skyscraper ads than we do with the 300px square ones? So the skyscrapers are going to stick around, but I do plan to look into making them spaced a little better... just not a hgh priority at the moment.
I am a little stuck in making the Paypal buttons and the WP-Polls look right in Metro. Right now they look awful (and that's why the Paypal donate buttons are in the bottom widget for now 🙂
The slider is the Genesis Responsive Slider.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberThanks, I'll check that.
I had a lot of fun playing with LayerSlider WP on this one. And playing with the timing of the layers can be as easily addicting as any game 🙂
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberThe demo for the newest version of Time.ly's Event Calendar looks really slick. It's on my list of tools to play with soon 🙂
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
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