redhousepainter

Thanks for the quick response, scribu.

I’m using a template called ‘limau orange’. It’s somewhat less comprehensive that other templates I’ve used. Almost all of the changes I’ve made have been to the css file.

I’m fairly new to this and I’m not quite sure what ‘the loop’ is! Also, how can you tell that I’m missing the </div>? I mean, how can I tell in the future?

Thanks!!!

Thanks very much Otto!

I’m going to go over the code again in a day or so. I’ll post again if I run into any other problems!

P

Thanks for the swift response, iridiax!

My problem isn’t so much that I can’t see the source on the W3C website, but that I don’t know what file each bit of code is in on my server.

Also, as I mention above, it seems to want me to change odd things like sidebar widget titles as well as ad and plugin code.

Hi Lee,

A few things…

There are a tone of free templates around. On Phauxshow I uses Mimbo and on another site I have, I used Barecity as I needed something clean and simple. I felt that Phauxshow was getting so involved that I needed something easy on the side.

Before I used Mimbo I used Seashore, which I still love. In fact, anything by Sadish is great.

I just looked at your site again and it really looks good! I love the header and background.

One plugin I would recommend is Sociable. Have a look here to see it in action. I have it set so that the icons only appear if you click on the post – that way you don’t clutter the front page with share/save buttons – as no one will want to save anything that haven’t ready or seen fully.

I hate to sound like a broken record – or worse, an insane person monologuing to the wind but here I go again…

I tried to create a bbPress template that resembles my WordPress theme. I tried and I failed.

Now I would like, instead, to go back to calling the header somehow. The problem is that every time I try using one of the posted methods all I get is a blank page.

Is here a simple way to require the WordPress header into bbPress?

Thanks!

Thanks Lee!

Zenphoto isn’t a plugin. It works well with wordpress but you have to set it up as an individual installation and create a page in wordpress that points to it.

It’s easier than it sounds.

1. Go to your wordpress folder in cpanel
2. Put the entire zenphoto folder inside the wordpress folder
3. Name the zenphoto folder something like ‘gallery’ or ‘my art’
4. Create a database for it (your host can help you with that)
5. Follow the Zenphoto installation process (you’ll find this on their site – they also have a forum)
6. Create a page with no body – just a tittle that corresponds to the name of your zenphoto folder. You may have do change your permalinks structure to may everything work and look nice in the urls.

That sound like a lot but it’s no harder than setting up wordpress. It’s great gallery software.

Good luck!

Lee,

I had a look at your site and thought that I would share mine with you as it uses a tone of gallery/image plugins that you might find helpful.

You can see it here.

On the sidebar I use NextGen Gallery. The Gallery is built with Zenphoto and there is some flash content throughout the site. I also use a rotating header plugin for the site logo.

As it is an art site I tried to keep every other element of the site clean. This site is about 2 months old and basically built by banging my head against the wall until I got each of the thousand parts to fit. My advice to you would be to completely strip your site of clutter and place all of your emphasis on the art. You don’t need an entire post called Technorati or two log in links on your front page! If your goal is to sell your paintings you could have an individual page for prices.

There is a wealth of well designed art sites. Choose a few that you like and try to recreate their style.

As far as getting people to your site is concerned – well your off to a good start by posting here! You could look into Google Adwords and check out the various art forums that exist.

Good luck!

Okay, tomorrow I’m going to try to create a bbPress theme that looks like my WordPress theme. I found this tutorial in the bbPress forum. Does anyone foresee any issues with it?

How I did it… Please back up everything before starting.
You need to find a theme close to your WP to make it easier.

1. BBPress side,I renamed the style.css to styleold.css
2. Copied over the WPress style.css over to BBpress
3. Open both files at the same time. You want to copy over some of the codes from styleold.css to style.css. You might need to play with it. Do not copy “body”.
4. Open both header.php. On the BBpress header copy over from WP header everything after <body> tag. Replacing whatever is there.
5. Open both footer.php. This one is a little tricky.
You can just copy over the whole thing and make sure you have <?php do_action(‘bb_foot’, ”); ?> in the file. You will lose the designers info though OR You need to see on WP side if there is any closing tags. bring that over and delete any closing tags on the BBPress side.
6. Sidebars: depending where the <?php get_sidebar(); ?> tag. For example my <?php get_sidebar(); ?> tag is IN the footer.php Others the <?php get_sidebar(); ?> is in the other php files right before the get_footer tag or after get header tag.

that’s it.

make sure in your bb-config.php
there is

‘$bb->WP_BB = true;
if (file_exists(‘../wp-blog-header.php’))
require_once(‘../wp-blog-header.php’);
else
if (file_exists(‘../../wp-blog-header.php’))
require_once(‘../../wp-blog-header.php’);

after <?php tag.

Oh forgot. In the header I put just’

<li class=”page_item”>Forum
after the page tag. It’s either going to be in front of all your pages or behind.

Joni,

Thanks so much for your reply. I had a look at your sites. So on Pixelita, you have designed the forum to resemble the rest of the site instead of calling up the WP header? I’d be happy to do this but I also want to include the functions of the nav bar, the rotating header image and ad!

I think that things could get more that a little confusing for such a novice as I am!

Is there no simple way to just call the WP header into the Forum? This is how I did it for the Zenphoto gallery…

<?php require($_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’].’/phauxshow/wp-blog-header.php’); ?>
<?php
// add the zen css to the wordpress header
function addcss() {
global $_zp_themeroot;
echo ‘<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”‘.$_zp_themeroot.’/light.css” type=”text/css” />’;
}
add_action(‘wp_head’, ‘addcss’);
?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

<?php db_connect(); // reconnect to zenphoto db ?>

And then for the footer…

<?php $wpdb->select(DB_NAME); // reconnect wordpress db ?>

I would love any feedback!

Sorry to bounce this but I really want a forum!!!

Ivovic, I spelled your name wrong! Sorry

Thanks for all of the great tips. And Ivivic, thank you for taking so much time to look at my site. If you ever need an image called ‘5’ I’m your man!

Everything everyone has said makes sense. Ultimately, I have to take a serious look at how I am including my images. This is my first web project and it’s just over a month old. I’m not being lazy with the gallery – I seriously didn’t know about any of this! Also, the image names are somewhat out of my hands as the artists call them what they want. And, I understand the point about having no relevant content on the image page.

So I have a lot to do!

I suppose, more than anything I was just concerned that none of the images were showing up rather than thinking that they all might. I think for my site I will benefit from searched for the artist rather that image.

I’m going to look into creating tags right away.

Everyone, thank you!

Ivovic,

That’s what I’m talking about. I need to know if I am not doing something I should be! Now when I mouse over an image in the gallery the title comes up. Isn’t that enough for indexing. If not, I will look into adding descriptions or captions.

So is that what is needed for Google image indexing?

Thanks,

P

Anyone?

Well, I monitor my site using analytics and stat press so I can say for sure that I have never gotten a google images hit.

I use ‘all in one SEO’ and ‘XML sitemap’ for SEO stuff, neither of which seem to help out for images.

There are plenty of search terms that reach my site, however none ever reach the images. What I’m wondering is if there is something very basic I am missing as none of my images are being indexed?