jrav001

You want the link name to be the same as your post title?

<a href="url"><?php echo get_post_meta( $post->ID, 'link', true ); ?><?php the_title(); ?></a>

To move it beside the ShareThis, just keep it within the same p tag.

The second one in your list is using this:
https://www.wpthemes4free.com/764-wordpress-theme-detour-10/

The url is not correct. You have:

https://www.peacefulsilkworms.com.au/public_html/wp-content/themes/atahualpa342/images/sidebarimage1.jpg

but it should be

https://www.peacefulsilkworms.com.au/wp-content/themes/atahualpa342/images/sidebarimage1.jpg

I did a clean install of 2.8.6 on xampp yesterday and did not have this problem. Is email working in your xampp?

Have you added anything to your sidebar? Go to Appearance, then Widgets and drag something over to your sidebar on the right side of the screen.

If that’s not the problem, post a link to your site so we can see?

If you post a link to you site, we may be able to offer advice.

Holy doodle that’s a lot to read….can you post a link to your site?

You have the url wrong. It should look more like
<img src="https://www.example.com/images/sidebarimage1.jpg" width="150" height="400 alt="textalternative" />

Could you add WHERE $wpdb->posts.ID != '17' to exclude a post? (Post with ID #17 in this case)

You have your menu inside the while loop, so it is displaying the menu for each instance.

Move this part.

<ul>
<li><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>" title="Home">Home</a></li>
<?php wp_list_pages('title_li='); ?>
</ul>

Above this line:

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>

…because you will want your menu to display even if you don’t have any posts.

It looks like the lightword theme used cufon for font replacement, so you will have to disable cufon.

Try…

<?php the_content("? Continue Reading..." ); ?>
<?php the_title(); ?>

If you post a link to your site we can probably figure this out….otherwise, you are limited only to those who read this forum and use the same theme as you.

For the paragraph text, in style.css on about line 156:

.post p {
font-size:14px;
padding:10px 0 5px;
}

The blockquote is on line 117 of styles.css. Currently it is set to:

.post blockquote {
border-left:3px solid #CCCCCC;
color:#777777;
font-family:Georgia,"Times New Roman",Times,serif;
font-size:16px;
font-style:italic;
line-height:1.8em;
margin:10px 20px 10px 30px;
padding-left:10px;
}

You want to adjust the line-height, if you want less, try 1.4em to giveyou an idea of how much difference fractions of an em make.

You edit header.php in your themes directory.