Need help learning some of the basics or even more advanced features of WordPress?
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Category Archives: Documentation
Customizing WordPress page and post titles
I have previously written about customizing WordPress using a custom field function to change the title that displays at the top of a page allowing you to have, for instance, a link in the side bar to the home page called “Home” but a different title on that page such as “Welcome” instead of “Home”.
That was handy but took some modification of the theme template files. If you changed your theme you had to carry over those changes to the new theme to retain the custom page titles.
Now there’s a simple plugin that does all the work for you and adds the ability to customize the display titles of posts as well which I had not included in the original method and makes changing theme template files unnecessary.
The plugin is called WP-Title-2 and is one more tool in my WordPress as a CMS tool box.
For more plugins that help transform WordPress into a more powerful CMS platform you may be interested in my post: WordPress as a CMS and plugins that help.
A proper fix for PodPress in WordPress 2.6
The powerful PodPress plugin for WordPress seems to have a problem with the new post revisions feature of WordPress 2.6. For many the solution has been to disable the post revision feature — but I happen to think that the post revision feature is a good thing.
Go here for a post by Andrew Ozz that explains how to fix the problem. Note that if you’re using PodPress version 8.8 you’ll find the fix in the comments section of that post.
WordPress 2.6 gallery shortcode
One of the things that so nice about WordPress 2.6 is the ability to easily insert a mini photo gallery into your post. There’s also some handy gallery shortcode that give you options for the number of columns, the size of thumbnails and more.
WordPress video tutorials
iThemes has some helpful WordPress tutorial videos.
What is a blog?
This is a great, short “video” explanation if you are wondering what a blog is.
Video courtesy Common Craft
Free Ministry Websites
I often get questions that go something like a variation on this theme:
Is it possible to get a website for our ministry that’s free of cost?
We really can’t afford to pay for web hosting right now and just wondered if there’s something we could use for our growing ministry that is free.
Quality web hosting is fairly inexpensive these days and a domain name can be had for less than $10 a year, but I do understand that sometimes money is tight. I also understand that many people don’t have the know-how to run their own website and can’t afford to hire someone to do it for them.
In cases such as this, my short answer is usually WordPress.com.
For those who don’t know, at WordPress.org (notice the .org) there is free software that can be downloaded and installed at a web host where you are paying for web space. But at WordPress.com that same software is already installed on a server and free accounts are available for anyone who would like to start their own blog.
Yes, WordPress.com is a place for free blogs, but the beauty of WordPress is that it has some great features that lend to it’s use to maintain a traditional website where static content is maintained. And should you wish to use the blog posts feature in WordPress you can make a blog easily a part of that site as well.
But with it’s ability to have individual “pages” for static website content as apposed to “posts” for blog content, it easily fills the bill for driving a ministry related website — and at WordPress.com it’s free.
The free WordPress.org software drives this site but requires the user to pay for web space, install WordPress themselves and maintain it with regular updates.
WordPress.com is the best free option I know of today for personal or ministry sites. Some flexibility is lost when using the free WordPress.com site as apposed to the free WordPress.org software, but what you gain is the ability to have an easily updated website at no cost, and you may be able to get by without the flexibility and extras you gain by running WordPress on your own web space.
The one thing I’d suggest paying for is a domain name, which helps people remember where to find your site, and you can purchase that for about $10 per year. Otherwise your WordPress.com web address will be something like “yourname.wordpress.com”
The best way to get started is to go register for a free WordPress.com account now to discover the power and ease of building your own ministry website.
What is RSS? What is a feed?
You’ve seen the link to an 
RSS feed like this one before, right?
RSS feeds make it easy to track when your favorite websites are updated without having to go and check each one. Our tool of choice for tracking all the sites we follow is Google Reader. Give Google Reader the link to the RSS feed of the website you wish to follow for new content and Google Reader gives you the new information whenever it’s available. All you have to do is log in to your Google Reader account when you wish to see what’s new.
Here are a couple of resources that will help you understand RSS feeds.
- What Is RSS? RSS Explained — at WhatIsRSS.com
- Also helpful is the article What is RSS? at ProBlogger.net
- And this 3.5 minute video is just what you need if want a quick and simple explanation of “RSS” or “feeds”
Video: RSS in Plain English
Video courtesy Common Craft
WordPress visual cheat sheet