How to correct error in customized posttype WP site
-
Hi folks
Can anybody help me. I foolishly, dogedly followed a Lynda.com tutorial for developing an 'online portfolio in WP'. Little did I know that my initial assumption - to use the 'twenty twelve' rather than the 'twenty eleven' theme would land me in such deep water.
I was attempting to learn php on my own. All went well, until, --- the index page for the customized post type.
Now I have two beautiful customized posttypes, 'companies' 'coverage' and no idea how to create an index page for either. I can't do the next step! I have tried every permutation - changing the permalink settings, changing them back, desperately searching for any handle to the nebulous links within the menu section. The only thing I can do (and have done for now) is to link the menu item 'company' and the menu item 'coverage' to a single post. Then the poor visitor has to scroll through the posts individually.
I tried contacting the tutor and Lynda.com, to no avail! I have searched forums and found this is a common problem, but because I am so confused and novice to php they might as well be speaking Chinese.
To compound my problems, looking through 'Wordpress SEO' for Yoast, I am painfully aware I can't go to the first basic step and fix the peramilinks to 'Postname' as that just makes my flakey menu collapse like a pack of cards.
Help!
-
Thank you Dan:)
I'll do as you advise.
-
I forgot to mention WordPress has a really good forum where there may be someone who can help you more directly http://wordpress.org/support/
-
Hi Catherine!
At this stage I think your best bet is to reach out to someone who can assist you directly, as it's a little tricky to work out the troubleshooting in the Q&A. You could contact Geoff (from Distilled) who is the person who developed the plugin http://geoffkenyon.com/ or I'm not sure if you know of any developers who could help with the technical stuff? Moz has a really good list of recommended companies as well! http://moz.com/community/recommended
-Dan
-
Well - at the moment I just have list of the of titles under the page title and txt (see attached url) - what I'd like to do is make it more like http://sugarrae.com/reviews/ - with image and some of the post's text. I've no idea how to go about achieving this.
I do know to get the plugin to work I had to set 'the page template for category pages' to 'Front Page'.
Sorry if I'm being dim!
Thanks for replying
Catherine
-
Catherine
When you say customize, what sort of things would you like to do with it?
-Dan
-
Hello Dan
I have finally managed to get near to the examply you posted. I've failed totally to find any help documentation however and so for my test site 'www.seoherts.co.uk' I've got a test customized category page minus anything other than the titles.
Could you be even kinder and direct me to some help for customizing the plugin? You help has really been amazing, you actually helped me back out of a corner. Now I'm nearly home an dry.
Thanks Dan
-
Let us know how it goes!
-
Ahh, it took me two weeks, but you could be right....
I probably would have been better off talking to you before I started!
That's what comes of teaching yourself. I'll give it a try tomorrow. Will let you know - and thanks again Dan!
I will have to give up the Recent 'Coverage' Recent 'Companies' list in the footer (which I was rather proud of!)
Catherine
-
Hi Catherine
Really sorry to hear there's still trouble with it I see what you mean, the custom posttypes have their own categories apart from the normal blog categories? Can you scrap the custom posttypes and create the categories as normal?
-Dan
-
Hello Dan
I did as you suggested and got the options for categories of my 'blog'. The problem is that I've got these posttypes with their own categories. I'm probably asking too much of the plugin - but it doesn't give me the option to set up a page template with these as it doesn't recognise they exist. I seem to have lost them deep down in WP...
-
Hi Catherine
Thanks for the additional details and site name (being able to see the site helps). Unfortunately as a Moz Associate we are not able to accept account information - but I think I can help you anyway with what you provided.
Is all you are trying to do is have a "customized category archive"? For example, "Coverage" is a category with blog posts in it, and you want to customize that page so it's unique and has additional info?
For example, this page is a category, but it is customized and you see the list of posts below: http://sugarrae.com/reviews/
If so, all you need is this fairly new plugin WordPress Custom Categories. I think that may get you what you need without any custom coding etc. Let us know!
-Dan
-
Thank you David
I will try again, but I have told them three times over the course of three months. I was told to first contact the tutor, which I did. I got no response! I contacted them again two more times and got no response at all!
-
Hello Dan
Would it be ok for me to send you the login details? I'm finding it hard to explain because as I was lead by the nose by the tutorial I was a little lost in the woods in the process.
What I was aimming to achieve was to create two additional dynamic content pages i.e. 'companies' and 'coverage'. My client and old friend is successfully getting new businesses and national coverage for them on a daily basis! The 'online portfolio tutorial' on lynda.com appeared to meet the need.
In the tutorial (using twenty eleven) the tutor takes you through setting up two different posttypes, 'recipes' and 'one other, I've forgotten now'. I basically followed doggedly setting up these two seperate posttypes and ended up with 'companies' and 'coverage' which actually do work.
The problem came when I tried to display these as a list - as you do with a blog page. In the tutorial you simply had to change the default permalinks, then somehow magically the option to select the url for this illusive list appeared in the Menu option. This doesn't happen when you follow the same set of operations in twenty twelve, and I know it is to do with a change in function somehwere in the php. As I don't really understand php to this level I ended up with a terrible fudge as you will see at www.maxwellcomms.com.
If it is appropriate and if you are able to help would you like me to send you login details? I will totally understand if you think it's too big and ask.
I have tried hard to get help from Lynda.com but they only insisted I contact the tutor, he didn't respond! Ahh....
-
Catherine
Hi! I'd like to offer some suggestions, but second the request for a little more info or screenshots etc? By index page, do you mean an archive page listing all of the posts in each category?
Thanks!
-Dan
-
I'm not sure what you mean by "index page." Do you mean a static front page like the index.html page in a regular website? If so, that is set using the Settings==> Reading Panel. However, you can only use one static front page. You may be able to customize the content of the index page by using PHP to call different content in response to a given condition.
Also, I am a Lynda user. The best thing to do is contact Lynda directly. They are good about responding. It sounds like the issue is that the tutorial is outdated, which is usually something that they want to know about.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Site appears then disappears from Google
Hi, This is my first post to the Moz community. I hope someone can help me, as I'm at my wits end 🙂 Since mid to late April, my client's home page keeps dropping from Google rankings on and off on the desktop in incognito and non-incognito browsing. It seems to always be visible on mobile phones though. One day it's on page 4, the next day it's not anywhere to be found (even though some of her other pages rank). The site is here: evgeniaribinik.com I have done some blog writing (just text) for this client over the last few months, and recently she asked for some SEO help. After looking at her website, I noticed that she had a plugin called WordPress SEO on her site. She wasn't using this for the blogs, however. I don't think she did much of anything with SEO, but she did say that for the last few years, she was always on page 3 or 4 of Google. In mid/late April, she saw that she wasn't ranking at all for the keyword "boudoir photography nyc" anymore, despite a few years of ranking for it. I told her Yoast would be good to use. However, after she installed it, the same issues keep happening. Right now, she has Yoast and WordPress SEO plugins installed (I'm not sure if this is causing an issue as well). But I really can't figure out why she keeps going on and off page 4. She also asked me to optimize older blogs that she wrote herself for SEO. When I look at them, they don't have meta descriptions, good titles or good keywords. I realize this is hurting her, but why would her site be fine for years and all of a sudden not now? Thank you in advance for any help you can give me! Jill
Web Design | | lobeng770 -
May open the site's homepage...?
In mobile search results, many of my inner pages show the title tag, but the link is removed. And instead of showing the meta description, there is the following: May open the site's homepage
Web Design | | Dino64
Try anyway | Learn more Both "Try Anyway" and "Learn more" are links. Try anyway used to link to the homepage, but after we removed a redirect plugin and got rid of all the html mobile pages (now we're just using the Wordpress responsive layout), the link is now going to the correct page. So, it in fact, does NOT "open the site's homepage" any longer. But, we're still seeing this on mobile searches for our inner pages. It's been almost 3 weeks now. Any ideas on how to get this back to normal?0 -
Do Google Fonts Slow Down Your Site?
Hi Guys,
Web Design | | jeeyer
I just did a webpage speed test on http://www.webpagetest.org to see how our site is performing.
I noticed that an exteral URL called fonts.gstatic.com has a "huge" impact on our sites loading time. See a screen here: http://monosnap.com/image/z6drzC2ELoJ48d1rM0Tmtuszl3pFpH#
An overview can be seen here: http://monosnap.com/image/9hofUpr5Ld8D7mi7zyaJmGFIGhpBsY# All our scores are green and A (finally!) but I was a bit concerned when I saw the outcome of the pagespeedtest regarding the fonts.
When I load a page on my pc I indeed notice that the text content is usally quite slow in showing up, pops up afer a few seconds. Is this a know problem and Is this something I need to fix? If so what is the best approach? Looking forward on your thoughts!
Joost1 -
Site structure and blog tags for local with five locations
I have a client who has five locations. Their current web site was structured very well for the pre-penguin and Panda world. However it does not seem to do as well after these changes. I believe it would serve them both with their customers as well as on Google if they localized the site for each location. Currently all the content on the site if focused on one location that is in the largest metro. On the content side we have a plan to produce local content and blogs for each location. My questions are how to go about structuring the site map and blogs to provide the most local juice. I was also wondering how to properly mark up a site with a main trunk and five local branches. I am also trying to figure out how to structure the tags on the blog. On the site map itself I was planning on maintaining all the content as well as the older blogs in the main trunk of the web site. Under this trunk there is a locations page that currently goes to five pages that simply have an address as well as a bulletin board of upcoming events. The blog is directly off the main page with no tie to any location. Here are my thoughts on what I think we should do: I believe we should create a mini web site starting at the location page that has specific content and navigation related to each location. That the content should focus on the specifics of that area and what would serve that clientele the best. We should add to each branch location based on the key words and competition in that area. The blog off the main web site should continue to house the general categories that are already there as well as any other general posts. I think we should add a link to each store page with a location specific blog in each mini location site. Each mini location site should have it's own blog with specific blogs targeted towards the local market. This local blog would also feed in the general blogs from the "trunk" as they are posted. Relating back to my original questions: is what I outlined the right approach or is there a more effective way to do this? Is there any special mark up I should do to tell the directories what to do? How do I structure the tags for the blog? I was thinking of a structure like this: General blog/category/subject under the main structure : local blog/category/subject Any ideas of input on this? Ron
Web Design | | Ron_McCabe1 -
Looking for feedback on our nonprofit site
I work for a nonprofit org which of course means a low budget and paying out of pocket for things (such as training). Our current website is done by a 3rd party vendor and although it looks nice, we can't make any changes to it without paying for it. (We can only upload documents). I'm wondering if anyone in this group will give their feedback on the site in terms of SEO and recommend a platform that would be relatively easy for a small shop to manage. Our site is www.coastalcommunityfoundation.org Thanks in advance
Web Design | | TinaA0 -
Ajax pagination and filters for ecommerce site
Hi There, Is it ok to use ajax for product filters and pagination? In this case url doesn't change when you navigate to 2nd or 3rd page also when you filter by colours, etc. If not what's your advise?
Web Design | | Jvalops0 -
How WP Themes work with Navigation Structure for SEO and JQuery Headers?
I am trying to find the best WP Theme for our company. I noticed most of them do not offer a left hand side navigation on the home pages, and usually are on the right side on the inside pages. I always thought that Home Page links were very important for SEO. Currenly we have a left drop down navigation with all of our product catagories, keyword optimized. The structure follows for all the pages. Is this not as important to Search Engines anymore? Is it better to have a products link, to all the products and then the inside pages, have just a navigation bar, for that particular catagory? This seems to be very common on all the templates i am seeing. I also noticed, and really like the JQueary Tabs. I would use this for displaying, PDFs and Specifications Charts. Also, some home page images are using a jquery slider with some text, linking to a page. Is Jquery the new javascript and do search engines see what is in the code? I also noticed they all have footers that have links and some other information. Is this a SEO must have?
Web Design | | hfranz0 -
How long does Google take to re-cache a site?
Specifically, I just redesigned my site. I'm reading Danny Dovers book, and learned about checking the cache version of the site to see what google is REALLY seeing . . . . . . which evidently is my old site. Obviously, my sites not going to make any real progress with SEO as long as the site is out of date. It says it last checked the site on 5/5 and I launched the site on 5/9. Obviously, it does not do these things immediately, but anyone have any ideas on how long it should take before google starts to show me some love?
Web Design | | damon12120