A couple tips for Wordpress newbies
Mar 18, 2008 Blogging, Wordpress
While tweaking, putting together and getting my HaloVidz site to look just how I wanted it, I decided there were a couple things I wanted to do without plugins, if possible. The first thing was to put together a decent looking links page. I know there’s a ton of blogroll and links page plugins for Wordpress, but they all seem to lack one thing or another, making me an unhappy camper.
Fortunately Wordpress offers a Codex, filled with great solutions to just about anything you can think of. It’s perhaps a bit confusing at first, but I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with the site and its resources. You could end up saving a lot of wasted time, searching for plugins, when you don’t actually need them.
Anywho, as I was saying I wanted to have a nice looking links page which would be categorized, alphabetized and include descriptions for each link. Thanks to the Codex I was able to put together exactly the code I needed, after a bit of reading and learning. Here’s what my links page looks like on HaloVidz.
This was achieved by simply using the list_bookmarks function, which is basically code that’s already built into Wordpress. To create a links page which looks similar to mine above, you’d use the following code:
Click here for a text file containing the code which you can copy and paste.
You simply drop that right into your page and then save the changes. It should be noted in order for this to work, you’re going to need to be able to execute PHP statements within pages. The exec-php plugin will take care of that.
By the way, this is what the CSS style for my links look like, in case you’re wondering:
The second thing I really wanted to include on HaloVidz was a way to resize images in posts automatically. The reasoning for this is simple. If I have an image that’s a bit too large to fit properly inside a post, it will resize to a designated maximum size. Fortunately this can be achieved very simply via a tiny bit of CSS. Here’s all you need to include in your stylesheet:
As you can see I have my code set for a max width of 520 pixels. You’d want to adjust your number according to the post content area of your Wordpress theme. By the way this code wasn’t included in the Wordpress Codex, though it ought to be. It’s very handy!
That concludes our lesson for today, kids =)
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Tags: codex, help, newbies, Tutorials, wordpress tips
March 20th, 2008 at 12:53 am
Very cool post! I had a blogroll page while back I wrote, but of course I had to manually update it by hand – which was a pain. Believe it or not, I had numerous complaints from readers saying they felt like their link was buried on some hard-to-get-to page. It was listed clearly on the top of my site! Haha…isn’t that crazy? When I get in the mood to do this, I’m glad you provided me the step-by-step directions. Thanks Mike :smile:
Bobby Revell’s last blog post..Iraq Blogswarm
March 20th, 2008 at 1:14 am
Haha..maybe they were just upset that you didn’t put them in your sidebar? ;P Glad this post will help ya out, buddy! Occasionally I like to share little tips if I think others might find them useful =)
March 22nd, 2008 at 1:27 am
Very informative post Mike. I recently started a wordpress blog,its still very Kubrick looking but finding the time to play around with the code and blog everyday is the hardest challenge for me! I like you links page, might do the same on my site.
Stanley’s last blog post..Fridays hid-N-gems
March 23rd, 2008 at 10:53 am
[...] from Things By Mike posted the extremely useful A couple tips for Wordpress newbies. As you may know, there are several plug ins for a blogroll / links page available for self-hosted [...]
March 23rd, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Oh, this is pretty cool. I’m currently using one of the blogroll plugins, and I agree with you, it works well, but there are still a few things I wish it would do.
@Bobby, I hear you on the blogroll page thing .. although, to be honest if I link to someone and they complain about where it’s located, I might have to question whether or not I’d keep their link in the future. I think when I redo my blogroll, I’ll divide it up into two sections – a separate page for useful blogs that I read, and a shorter sidebar blogroll for for people who I’m actually friends with.
Todd Morris’s last blog post..Domain Name Giveaway
March 24th, 2008 at 2:39 am
Hi! your blog is great! i found it through the do follow blog roll… i already subscribed to your blog… i hope i would be able to install this do follow plugon in my blog Free Guitar Ebooks too… more power to you and your blog….
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March 24th, 2008 at 2:58 am
@Stanley: I hear ya. I have a few blogs and finding time for them all can be quite a challenge ;) Good luck putting your links page together, should ya decide to do it!
@Todd: I think that always seems to be the way with plugins. They do great things, but it always seems like something is missing ;P
@Nikolai: I’m not positive but I think there may actually be a way to do “do-follow” on Blogspot. I swear someone told me they found a way once.