faartals

I have installed the Tiny MCE Editor in an attempt to improve the posting experience .

Personally I don't like emoticons as I have a reasonable vocabulary, but we now have them and can also change the colour of text using the Select text color button.  There is also a less useful Select background color button.  You can combine the two if you really must.

Users must update their User Profiles to ensure that the box next to 'use the visual rich editor when writing' is unchecked.

1. You use the left hand (yellow) 'Insert Image' icon to upload from your PC.
2. Click on the lower 'Upload' button, the one right next to the filename, once you have Browsed to the image (I am not sure what the upper one does).
3. You can then drag the image into the Post or better still,
4. Click on the Image for a menu of options and decide just what you want to insert – although some don't seem to work.
5. If you select the image and click the right hand (tree) Insert/edit Image icon, you can set alignment although there seem to be some minor issues there e.g. bullets can overlap an image – my numbering here is manual.

There don't seem to be any problems with text alignment around images.

The Problem

The WordPress editor seems to be full of bad ideas about how to format what you have so carefully typed in, so at times it is worth delving into the HTML version of the text to attempt a clean up.

The sort of HTML the editor produces is rather like the code that a word processor uses to ‘markup’ the text you enter, making it appear formatted. The tags are invisible in the editor and output, but they are there in the background.
You can experiment as much as you like at your own risk and can’t do too much harm, but remember that basic HTML formatting instructions should have both opening and closing tags – the latter having the / to cancel the format effect. There are however plenty of exceptions and quirks.

I can’t show you tags here accurately as the editor would interpret them, so I will use [ and ] where ‘real’ tags would have the left and right angle brackets (aka ‘less than’ and ‘greater than’ signs).

[strong]bold text[/strong] will appear as bold text.

What to do about it

You will mostly want to remove unnecessary tags that the editor puts in to your posts e.g. extra centering tags.

Here are two methods, basically the same, but the second is more cautious.

Method One – Reckless (but I do it all the time)

1. Manage the post in question through Site Admin.
2. Click on the HTML button to display a window revealing the HTML code behind your text.
3. Strip out the tags shown here in bold [div align="center"]keep the text though![/div]
4. Be careful to avoid the similar ones with the image details.
5. The tags should come in balanced pairs as stated above – i.e. before and after text (could be left/right or above/below) BUT sometime there are extra spurious opening ones with no balancing closing tags.
6. Click on the Update button to update the HTML.
7. Check the results in the preview window before saving the post.

Method Two – Slightly less Reckless

1. Manage the post in question through Site Admin.
2. Click on the HTML button to display a window revealing the HTML code behind your text.
3. Click in the HTML window and select all the text (Ctrl + A or use the mouse)
4. Copy all the text (Ctrl + C or use the right-mouse menu)
5. Paste the text into a fresh Notepad document that you remembered to open before you did anything else (Ctrl + V or use the right-mouse menu)
6. In the Notepad window, strip out the tags shown here in bold [div align="center"]keep the text though![/div]
7. Be careful to avoid the similar ones with the image details.
   
8. The tags should come in balanced pairs as stated above – i.e. before and after text (could be left/right or above/below) BUT sometime there are extra spurious opening ones with no balancing closing tags.
9. When you think you are finished, reverse the process by
• Selecting all the revised text in the Notepad window
• Copying it
• Pasting it into the WordPress HTML window
10. Click on the Update button to update the HTML.
11. Check the results in the preview window before saving the post.

Notes

• You could even save the code posted to Notepad in Method Two / 5 as a backup file.
• You might even create posts in Notepad, but I think you will still have to add the images with the WordPress editor and it will probably undo you good work when you do!

Backup

19/01/2010 Belay the post below.  After the 2.9.1.upgrade, couldn't get WP-DB Manager to work.  The plugin reported the need for exec(),passthru() and ().

Removed and reverted to the more basic code to be found under the Tools menu.

http://ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup/ 

22/03/2007: The default backup plugin (WordPress Database Backup) has been deactivated. A new, more comprehensive, plugin, WP-DB Manager has been installed in replacement. It is accessible from options on the the Database tab Perform regular (at least monthly) backups Optimise Perform at least once a month from the Database/Optimise DB tab

The Archives page currently lists posts by month and by category.

Adding and Maintaining Links
Instructions

1. In Site Admin, create a new link by clicking on the [Links] menu item and then the [Create Link] tab. You can also update existing links using the [Manage Links] tab.
2. Start entering details on the form with the URL or web address e.g. http://www.amazon.co.uk/
3. Enter a Link Name e.g. Amazon
4. Enter a Short Description e.g. Online book shop
5. Choose an appropriate Category for the link from the drop-down list e.g. maps
6. In the Advanced section, you will normally want to select the radio button for _blank as the Target i.e. you will want the linked website to open in a new window. This does not always seem to work, and when it doesn’t users will have to use the browser back button to get back to the FAARTALS site
7. Check your handiwork
8. Click on the [Publish] button
9. Click on the (View site>>) link in the header to check it on the site if you like

The Links Page
This is for listing hyperlinks to other websites.

The page uses two special plugins

1. runPHP – a general plugin designed to allow PHP code to run on posts or pages. The Links Page has use of this this option enabled.
2. iMP Links – s specific plugin that groups the links by category on the Links Page.
   The actual PHP used is the default:
3. [?php iMP_Links();] (note the opening and closing angle brackets have been replaced with [ and ]

Changing the text on the Links Page almost inevitably destroys the plugin code leaving the links page linkless. So the Links Page is best left alone.

Note: The actual appearance varies according to browser viewing the page. Internet Explorer is better than ’strict’ browsers such as Firefox.

This image is 760 pixels wide and 200 pixels deep (high).

It is saved as …/wp-content/themes/pixelgreen-10/images/headerphoto.jpg

Note: Only njb can change the image, as this cannot be done through a WordPress Site Administration function.