I received an email from Google a few weeks ago saying I had reached my threshold of £60.00 so my first cheque would be released. Got it through the post last week!

For those of us who don’t know, Google Adsense is a revenue system for webmasters where Google places relevant ads on your site and you get paid every time someone clicks on the ad. You might get one visitor, out of hundreds who visit your site, who clicks an ad and you get paid (usually pennies per click) once the click is verified as genuine. The majority of people never make ANY money of it simply because the number of clicks required would in-turn require a huge number of visitors to your site. (You can see my ads on my homepage in the right-side grey sidebar, underneath ‘Related Ads’).

I can remember seeing pictures of the big-timers with their revenue cheques for hundreds of thousands of pounds and dollars. People who were getting 50K+ visitors to their blogs per month. Seemed like a ‘mission’, as they say in my hood. I was envious but understood the time and effort required, and the acute possibility that I would be another ‘one click wonder’ who tried Adsense and then gave it up after a couple of months of earning pennies.

Me, my blog and my cheque - 'just the three of us..' (shot is a re-enactment of my reaction at the moment of revelation)

I first set-up this site back in late-2009, when I was getting my feet wet with WordPress and it’s capabilities. In fact, ArtbyHerbie.com was my first EVER wordpress installation and I’ve never looked back. Since then I have had numerous other client sites and personal projects using WordPress. It’s simply too good. I installed the code and ads in mid-2010 once I had launched the site and was regularly sharing ideas and posts. Since then it became my personal beacon to the world in regards to my work, thoughts and ramblings. It took me six weeks to get my first click!

At first, I would religiously check my Adsense total every day, but I soon got sick of it after seeing no clicks and played around with ad sizes and placements. I then placed a single ad on my homepage to be visible site-wide, and then two ads on the top and bottom of my blog posts. I noticed a trickle of pennies come through but I knew I had to concentrate more on the content of my blog to draw more visitors in. So I did!

The cheque itself, although quite ‘boring’ in appearance, doesn’t even have the Google logo on it, just their addresses in Buffalo, New York and Dublin, Ireland. However, it’s something that most of us will never see, hence the big ‘hoo-haa’. For me, it’s value is close to £60K! If you’re thinking, ‘Why the fuck is he getting so excited over a cheque for £61.94?’, then you simply do not understand how the web and online marketing works. (no offence, but I’m relying more on the techies to relate to here).

The 'glory'..

My blog is nowhere near even the top 80%. I’m still small-time. My Alexa rating is (at time of press) 3,262,842 (hmmm). Dudes like John Chow, Darren Rowse of Problogger and Pat from The Smart Passive Income Blog are ‘big in the game’ and have done well through blogging. Pat even gives a detailed rundown of his monthly earnings! You’d be surprised.

However, most of these blogs blog about making money blogging(!) Making money online through internet marketing and various other means is one of the most searched for terms in the search engines. That’s a reason why these blogs are the most popular. Mine was never about money but my work and business, and everything else thrown in between. It’s a channel of expression and personal space where I can reach out and share shit. Ya know? I only added the most basic income streams and Google Adsense is THE first-stop for EVERYONE. That’s why any income from it is an added bonus, since that is not it’s primary aim. On the journey I’ve met cartloads of other bloggers who, like me, love blogging about what they do. Katana Barnett, an artist, author and illustrator from Los Angeles is one, she lives at Katanaville. Check her out.

I started writing from the heart and tried to convey my eccentric personality through my writing. Just being me, fuck it, be who you are, write the way you are and people will connect with you more. It worked! I stopped trying to write for the search engines (for SEO reasons) and adopted the attitude that I was me, and ArtbyHerbie.com was me, so my writing style reflected this. I also started regularly updating my portfolio which added more fresh content on a regular basis (to me it’s like a pet, gotta feed it).

I noticed a steady stream of people reading my posts and the Google Analytics traffic count went up too. This resulted in me earning a jaw-dropping £5.87 in my first month after this change.

Since then, a few clicks every month took me to £60.00 in just under 12 months! Woohoo! Google sent me an email telling me my first cheque was released once I had reached £60!! I nearly ejaculated upon reading it. I’ll leave to your imagination my knee-jerk reaction when i finally had it in my hand(!) (forgive the terrible pun).

Another shocking re-enactment..

I wish I had more time to blog as I love sharing my work, ideas, trials and tribulations with you great people, my fans and readers. This cheque just made it all worth it. No, it’s not gonna buy me a house on the hill, but it’s the principle that is worth more to me.

To the millions of amateur bloggers running Adsense out there still waiting for their first cheques, remember ‘Head up, chest out, eyes open – you’ll get there in the end!’ Stick to what you do and the web traffic will come.

I’ve always wanted to say this (c’mon, I gotta milk the situation right?) even though my blog posts and site have a good standing with Google already, but ‘You don’t know who I am? Google my name, soldier, GOOGLE my name!!!’

I’ll cash the cheque in this week. Any ideas on what I could spend the £61.94 on? Maybe buy myself a new hat? Your suggestions are welcome in the comments section below.

Salute! Here’s to the next one!

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1. Web Design and SEO: Grade Your Website or Blog
2. WordPress and Contact Form 7: Blank Emails from WordPress Blog
3. Portfolio Update: June 2011 – Custom Clothing

Facebook allowed integration and development of applications using it’s own version of HTML called FBML. It was great for a time and developers flocked to understanding and mastering it, only to find out early 2011 that Facebook had decided to pull the plug on it and that all webmasters and Page Admins should revert their FBML tags and code BACK to HTML. Bit of a silly merry-go-round but, ya know, it’s not as if we have a say in what Zuckers and Co decides to do. This resulted in a cartload of information on the internet referring to FBML which is now defunct, useless, space-sucking, call it what-you-want. So, I’ll reveal the most up-to-date way of achieving it, using an iframe tab and HTML.

Dedicated landing pages are used to steer your page visitors to a single image or page. This page can be used to further promote your brand, product or service, remind your visitors to ‘Like’ your page and anything and including therafter, dependent on your coding skills. Most pages go straight to the wall or photo albums, which is boring because it’s the default view, so this little tweak will make your page shine out amongst the cannon-fodder(!)

I just changed mine, here’s what all non-fans and first-time visitors see:

A little reminder for all non-fans and new visitors...

Then, to all the wonderful homies who ‘Like’ my page:

...then a little 'Thanks!' for all those who 'liked' my page.

Yeah, yeah, I know. You may be thinking ‘that design is f****ing awesome, ha ha ha, Herbie you are just too sick!’, but ya know, don’t wanna blow my own trumpet and all that but, yeah, I knocked the images up in a few minutes whilst juggling eight tennis balls, lickin’ a Cornetto ice-cream and balancing on my head – all at the same time. Who says it’s only women who can multi-task?

See, Dick? It’s pretty simple but a very slick trick(!) Here’s how you do it:

1) Install ‘Static HTML’ App on Your Page

You need the ‘Static HTML: iFrame Tabs’ app for your page. Go to https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=190322544333196 and click the ‘Add to my page’ link which can be found on the bottom left of the application’s page.

2) Create and Upload Images

This is important. The width of your images can only be 520px. This will ensure you use all the allocated space whilst keeping everything flush and neatly positioned. The height can be anything you want. My images above are 739px in height. Export your images as gifs, pngs or jpegs. Use 96dpi pngs for optimum web performance and appearance.

Save your image(s) in your own web directories or by using the many free image-hosting services available such as Flickr and Photobucket. Make sure you know the full directory paths to your image(s).

3) Enter App Code

Click the new ‘Welcome’ tab you see on your page after you have installed the app. You can decide here if you just want one image to show everyone, or two images to show non-fans and fans alike. Be slick like me and go for the double-combo meat-fist sandwich (ie. two images). Enter the following code into the boxes:

<style type='text/css'>
#wrapper {
width:520px;
height:739px;
margin:0 auto; border:0; padding:0;
position:relative;
}
</style>
<div id="wrapper">
<div style='width:520px;'>
<img src='YOUR IMAGE URL HERE' /> <!-- This image will be displayed to non-fans -->
<!-- You can also add any HTML that you want displayed to non-fans -->
</div>
</div>

Make sure you enter the correct image dimensions in the code and also the url to where you saved your images. Repeat this step in the second box if you wish to show a different image for users who have already ‘liked’ your page. Click ‘Save and view tab’ at the top right corner and view your new welcome page in both forms, as a non-fan and also as a fan.

As a final check, go to your page> Edit Info> Manage Permissions and ensure the ‘Default Landing Tab’ is selected to ‘Welcome’. Get your Facebook rudies to check your new welcome tab and report back. Everything should be working smooooth!

Here’s what mine looks like on my page:

'Live and kicking'

4) Become Overwhelmed With The Flood Of New Fans(!)

That’s it! Now your page stands out from everyone else’s and reaches a new-level in the ‘slickness chart’. Notice all the big boys and pros have already had this sussed. Welcome to the ‘Player’s Club’ homie! My page received a humongous SIX new likes within the 24 hours since I created my new Welcome tab, and I salute each one of my new fans. I have an earth-shattering 102 likes on my page now and I’m proud because each one of these people actually acknowledged my shizzle by clicking the ‘like’ button.

Now, to everyone else who HASN’T liked my page, what the f….??!! Us bloggers share secrets, tips and tricks for the benefit of others who may not have the skills we do. The LEAST you can do is ‘like’ my Facebook page here….jheeeeze!

Till the nex’ time, kids!

PS: You can comment using your FB profile below, without having to enter email address etc. Let me know what you think.

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1. Facebook Display Picture – Introducing ‘Bookface’
2. How To Automatically Update Your Facebook, Twitter and Myspace Profiles via Your WordPress blog
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One morning whilst checking my emails I noticed a ‘phantom’ email that had come from my blog which was just blank. Yep, as blank as plain paper. It just said ‘From: WordPress’ and ‘To: You’, which doesn’t really give that much away. I pondered a bit, and just proceeded to delete it and think nothing of it. I just put it down as a random harmless side-product of the various php-crunching algorithms, xhtml and css code whirring away under the bonnet of my blog.

The week after, I got another one. Again, I just deleted it and didn’t bother to investigate further. I usually get a daily email from the WP Database Backup Plugin I use, and even fobbed the anomally off as something to do with this plugin.

Enough Blanking, Already!

This carried on for about a month and on my sixth random email, I opted to open the bonnet and have a good poke around. What was causing these random gremlins to pop-up in my inbox every-so often? I try to keep my blog bullet-proof with all the security loopholes closed and all plugins and themes updated, but this was bugging me now.

I likened the situation to a pristinely-engineered and finely-tuned F1 car running good and working as it should, but spitting out a massive blob of oil from the back, once every forty-or-so miles. It HAD to be sorted.

Contact Form 7

F1 - highly engineered, but still precarious...

Voila! Literally seconds after I logged into my email client, I got a new message in my inbox. Yes, it was blank, my F1 car had just spat out a blob of oil and I had personally orchestrated it. I felt a sense of relief at diagnosing the problem but also a sense of curiousity as to the cause. I re-tested to be sure.

I headed into the settings for Contact Form 7 and viewed my form. Everything seemed fine, all the tags and code was correctly in place and the form worked on the site, but I noticed the ‘Message Body’ area of this particular form (I have a few!) was blank. I couldn’t remember changing anything myself so I just re-entered the tags in the ‘Message Body’ section, saved and re-tested the form. It worked fine, no more blank emails! :)

I put it down to maybe a plugin update somewhere had stripped the code from the section, but I can honestly not say what caused the data to be wiped from the ‘Message Body’ section of the form. I suppose I had become accustomed to the plugin working great in the background that I didn’t notice when the handful of enquiries I get through it every month dried up! The remedy was quick and painless, but what isn’t is that I will never know who them six blank emails were from, and what wierd and wonderful projects/work they required me for.

So…

To all others who use Contact Form 7, I recommend it’s worthwhile just giving it a quick check-up in the settings every week, because as like what happened with mine, the contact form itself could be working fine, except you’re not receiving the details when the moment comes!

To the potentially six ‘lost clients’ who filled and submitted the form and were excitedly expecting a reply from me, now you know why you didn’t get one. Please re-submit if this has jogged your memory. A deep and heartfelt ‘sorry’ from me. No matter how highly-engineered the technology, sometimes it spits out blobs of oil(!)

You can find the Contact Form 7 plugin here.

Salute.

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Optimize!

Also, SEO can be rather expensive if it’s outsourced, for the ‘average-Joe-dude’, so doing it yourself can pay big dividends if you’re not a complete moron by way of intelligence(!) Web-based software can allow you to have control of your SEO like you do, say, your hosting account.

There’s also a paid-for version of it’s service that gives you a ‘live-panel’ including tools for search engine optimization, business blogging, website content publishing, lead tracking and intelligence, marketing analytics, and competitor analysis. However, for the majority of us, the free report available can be enough to point out to us things/bugs/errors we may have missed otherwise.

Compare it to your usual Google Analytics or subscription-based traffic data. It also points out useful tid-bits like any alt-text you may have missed from your images or even some meta-data.

Check out Website Grader and Blog Grader.

Let me know if you found it useful!

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The Power of Socializing

Grow your circle

Ok, so it’s obvious that the more posts you write, and the more frequently you update your blog, the better chances you have of receiving tons of traffic and subscribers. ‘Content is King’, after all and it’s great for SEO. During the early days of my blog, when I was still perfecting the functionality, features and navigation, I wasn’t writing that many posts. Maybe, one a week. I was concentrating more on the workings of my blog and other stuff like static content (pages), SEO, security, feeds and a whole other cart-load of stuff. I wanted everything in place and working properly so I could concentrate on writing interesting and unique posts frequently.

So, whenever I wrote a new post, I would manually log in to my Facebook and Twitter accounts, and drop a link to the new posts on my profile pages. This, or I would use the Sociable plugin’s icons at the bottom of my posts to post the content to my Facebook and Twitter profiles. It was always an ‘extra’ task to complete but ‘Hey, I thought, only takes a couple of seconds!’.

Manual to Automatic

However, it soon dawned on me that this would be a laborious task when it came to the point where I was posting new stuff on a daily basis. Having to manually enter the post permalinks and even using the Sociable icons was a task I could have done without. Streamlining turns me on, you see. Saving time is saving money, right? So I started hunting for a suitable plugin that would do the job cohesively in the background. Within milliseconds, as soon as I published a post, I wanted the title, excerpt and hyperlink to the new post on my social profiles. I’m not one for installing plugins willy-nilly, but for this task I accepted the fact that a plugin would be the best option. Trying to make it a native WordPress function just seemed like more work than the functionality of the desired feature.

The Socialite Plugin

The answer to my problem was a neat little plugin called Socialite. You can find it here. It doesn’t use a lot of memory so it won’t slow your blog down. The plugin is easy to configure and runs quietly in the background. Rest assured your new posts will be published to your Facebook, Twitter and Myspace profiles, within seconds of u clicking that ‘publish’ button. Features include:

Install, configure and get posting!

Installation is straight-forward, like nearly ALL WP plugins. Either use FTP or install through admin>. This shall integrate the plugin to your dashboard, find it and open for initial configuration. Be careful, for each of the three social networks, you can configure the plugin to create a link on your profile each time a post is EITHER created, edited or published. Having all these options enabled can result in useless links being posted to your profiles. If like me, you have a load of posts still in ‘draft’ mode, this will create a link every time you add content or edit a post, before it being published. I configure each to only create a link when a post is published.

Once you’ve installed and configured the plugin through admin> settings>, you can simply forget about worrying if your social network profiles are being updated simultaneously with your blog. As soon as you publish a post, your social networks will be automatically updated to allow your readers, fans and stalkers(!) to click through from your social profile to your blog and enjoy your immense writing skills. This usually happens within seconds and is one hell of a time-saver.

This whole blogging lark, to me, is a project without a forseeable end. That’s because I want my blog to be an extension of my life and adventures within. Techniques that improve efficiency, time and give me wider exposure are always welcome. So, that’s why this little gem gets a ‘thumbs up’ from me.

Your Comments and Feedback

Do you use the Socialite plugin on your blog? What do you think? Do you use a different plugin to achieve the same task? I’d love all your feedback and responses to this post. If you’re from Nelson, Burnley, Colne or the surrounding areas, or even if you’re half way across the world, your comments are much appreciated.

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Design

The old www.artbyherbie.com website was a simpler affair than this one. Back in early 2008, I registered the domain name because I wanted to showcase my wall art. I was becoming renowned as a ‘shit hot’ wall artist around my neighbourhood and felt a web presence was mandatory. I was already a confident web designer and I started jotting ideas down for the site.

As a creative designer, I wanted something unique and eye-catching whilst allowing the user minimal input (clicks, scrolling blah blah blah) so that they could view my portfolio with ease. The old site is still ‘live’, albeit on a sub-directory of my domain and you can see it here. I stopped updating it around September 2009, when I started developing www.artbyherbie.com V2.0, using WordPress. Click the picture below to see the old site.

Layout – Inline Frames

I used to rely heavily on DreamWeaver as my HTML editor. I would create full websites and then publish them through DW’s onboard publisher, or FTP. Back then before I delved into the world of php and content management systems, it was simply a case of laying out my pages in my graphics software, and then transferring the images and layout using div tags and inline frames. Aesthetics and graphics always looked great, but functionality and user interaction was limited. I opted for a single index page, within which there would be FOUR inline frames. I chose this idea because it meant my users wouldn’t have to navigate different pages. Instead, the content area of the various inline frames would change.

The layout I decided on was a bit ‘unorthodox’, but hey, creative design is exactly what I’m about, right? I created a 900px by 150px image of a wall with the ABH logo, with abstract sillouettes of a graffiti artist and his equipment. I decided to use this as the footer graphic, with all my content and navigation above it. This eliminated any user scrolling. Yeah I know, I’m a genius.

Page Content

This was a static site, not at all dynamic and interactive like the new one. All my various pages content would show in the far-right inline frame. Only this area of the screen would change depending on which navigation button was clicked. I had to save each page as a seperate HTML file, and then link all the pages to the inline frame.

Thumbnails

I created thumbnails of each and every image to be used in my portfolio. These thumbnails were aligned in a list format on a separate HTML file and then called from the inline frame which displays the thumbnails. I had to make sure the scrolling element of this frame was active because I wanted all the thumbnails to be available by scrolling down, as only three or four would be visible in the space. When clicked, the left inline frame would show the same corresponding bigger image. This was laborious as I had to create two sized images for each portfolio photo, and my dimensions were strict so that everything would fit in the allocated space.

Old versus New

I had been reading about content management systems such as WordPress around the time I was developing the old site. Deep down, in my heart of hearts, I knew this was the way to go in regards to new technology and Web 2.0. However, my wordpress skills at this time were basic and php was new to me. I opted to go with what I knew and went ahead and created the site in DreamWeaver. Updating meant adding new photos and content, as and when needed.

It’s been four months since I dove head first into the new site, this one you’re on right now. To say the least, the learning curve has been steep! WordPress, xhtml, php, template files and the blogging world in general was new to me. However, I am so glad now that this site is shaping into the creature I so much want it to. The benefits are HUGE. Users are able to post comments and links to me and I have a lot more functionality and features. There’s so many advantages such as better SEO and exposure on the web.With plugins attached, anything is possible. For me, this was a HUGE step forward from ststic websites. I say to anyone looking at WordPress or any other CMS as a replacement to your old web development methods – ‘What the hell have you been waiting for?’

Herbie Hysteria

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You see, webmasters in the UK have a legal obligation to provide tooltips for images, so that these can be converted to speech for blind internet users. Also, more and more people are choosing Chrome and FireFox to browse the web, as opposed to Internet Explorer. The fundamental difference is that the IE engineers made an error in their execution of the HTML spec. They programmed the browser to read alt tags so that they would appear in this ‘tooltip’ manner, when hovered above the image. Back when IE was King and everybody used it, it was, therefore, considered normal for alt tags to provide the ‘tool tip’ or ‘hover’ behaviour. It was simply a case of it being the most popular browser, therefore, it was the ‘standard’ in regards to behaviour and user’s experience with it.

Now with all these new browsers available, the ‘actual’ HTML spec, that was supposed to be written into Internet Explorer has been used by their engineers. This means webmasters have to also go back to using the ‘correct’ tag. This is actually the title="blah blah blah" tag. The alt tag was primarily created to be shown only when the image was unavailable, as a replacement. The tag you need that shows the text if you hover the mouse over it is the title tag. These are two different functionalities. Of course, you can use both in the same img tag.

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2. Out With The Old, In With The New
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Meta tags aren’t what they used to be. A few years ago, they were a mandatory task in a web developer’s project. They helped with search engine placement, recognition and provided the browser with important bits of information. However, they’re not as widely used anymore because of the fact that many people abused this functionality to gain unfair advantages. Still, although a lot of search engines don’t use them anymore, you can still benefit by including meta tags in your blogs core files.

There’s two ways you can do this. The manual way, which means editing template files, or you can just go download a plugin that will do it all for you. Hmm, in this case, I opted for the manual coding. The reason for my decision is that I like to keep my use of plugins as low as possible. Having a lot of plugins running in your installation can increase load times, and for such an activity as adding meta tags, I thought a plugin just wasn’t worth it.

Available Meta Tags

Following is the syntax for the most common meta tags:

1.
2.
3.
4.

Putting Meta Tags Into WordPress

If you want to put some static meta tags back into your wordpress blog, put them in header.php of your theme’s template files. At the top, after the DOCTYPE tag you should see the tag. Put your meta tags in underneath this. This should be suffice if you have a basic website/blog and your meta tag information will be the same for every page and post.

Dynamic Information

Content on web pages and posts is always different and dynamic. Therefore, having meta tags that give the same information for every page limits you. A good idea is to use ‘generic tags’. Again, these go into your header.php file but the main difference is that these tags, such as ‘description’ and ‘keywords’ are aimed at describing ALL your pages and posts. So, for example, your ‘keywords’ meta tag could contain keywords appearing across all your site.

Using Meta Tag Plugins

There’s some great plugins available too that can do all this for you in real time. I use the All In One SEO plugin because it’s one of THE most popular plugins for wordpress blogs. You can customise the page title, description and keywords of each page or post in a very convenient area allocated at the bottom of your admin screen. Sometimes I do wonder if a plugin for my meta tags is justified, but I think it’s very important because the All In One SEO plugin is favoured by seasoned professionals.

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What is The .htaccess File?

The .htaccess file is a set of server commands that instructs your server to behave in certain ways. Any version of the Apache web server running Unix or Linux will support it. You can do all sorts of great things with it like have custom error messages, password protect files and redirect users. Your web host might allow you to use it, or they might not – it’s better to just email them about it. Anyway, you’re probably wondering what it’s got to do with anything.

Pretty Permalinks and .htaccess

Well, I needed to move my blog from a subdirectory to the root of my domain, www.artbyherbie.com. Also, I was coming around to setting my ‘pretty permalinks’ structure and wordpress needs to be able to write to the .htaccess file when settings are saved. So, I learned that wordpress ONLY creates the .htaccess file, when ‘pretty permalinks’ are enabled in Admin> Settings> Permalinks>. Thanks, I spent a day trying to hunt down this elusive .htaccess file. I use FileZilla 3.3.1 as my FTP client, it’s free and I think better than paid-for rivals such as CuteFTP. Anyway, first I checked my wordpress directory, nothing there. Then, within FileZilla, I went to Server> Force show hidden files>, thinking it was a hidden file on my server. Still, nothing. After some reading around I learned I could call a ‘raw directory listing’ of files within FileZilla, ‘if it’s not listed there, it doesn’t exist’, I was advised.

So, again within FileZilla, I went to Edit> Settings> Debug> and checked ‘Raw directory listing’. FZ spat out the files and guess what, no .htaccess file. Hmm, I thought, little bugger. After some further reading in the WordPress Codex, I learned that the .htaccess file is only created by wordpress once ‘pretty permalinks’ are activated. I WAS hoping to tackle permalinks later on in my project, but I went ahead and added a permalink structure.

I chose the month, year and post/page name structure and saved my settings. This action, I thought, would force wordpress to create the file. However, after looking for the file, I was stumped. It was STILL missing. Smoke was beginning to come out of my ears(!)

File Editing

I even tried another hack, to ‘trick’ wordpress into creating the file. I edited my vars.php file in wp-includes by changing:

$is_apache = (strpos($_SERVER['SERVER_SOFTWARE'], 'Apache') !== false |
to:
//$is_apache = (strpos($_SERVER['SERVER_SOFTWARE'], 'Apache') !== false |

I commented out the command by adding two slashes infront of it. I then added the following line, underneath:

$is_apache = true;

I saved and uploaded vars.php. Still, this didn’t even work. This elusive .htaccess file was proving to be a mystery. A ‘ding dong’ went of in my mind and I had a thought. My blog was functioning fine and the permalinks were pretty, like they should be. Maybe I didn’t really need this file, after all? So, I started questioning the importance of this file. However, in the process, I learned how to create one, anyway.

How To Create A .htaccess File

In wordpress, it’s best to set your permalink settings to default before proceeding. Save a blank .txt document as ’1.htaccess’. Notice the file name is just the extension itself. Save it as a ’1′ for now on your desktop. Open the file and add the following code:

# BEGIN WordPress


ErrorDocument 404 /index.php?error=404
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]


# END WordPress


SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off



Save and upload via FTP to your wordpress installation’s directory. Once there, rename it to take out the ’1′ so you end up with just ‘.htaccess’. There should only be ONE WordPress rule within the file. Nothing else. Now go to your web host’s control panel and change the file write permissions to make it writable. After uploading and assigning write permission (755), go ahead and set your permalink structures. Once you’ve done this, go back and set the file permissions to make the file non-writable (644).

The ‘Choke Slam’

Well, by this time, I had still not moved my blog and was confused as to the next step. Until I recieved the following kind message from my web host:

I have consulted with our administrators on the matter, and it seems that the recent versions of the WordPress script do not require .htaccess file, and the permalinks are actually working with it and that is why .htaccess files are no longer included in the installation of the script. Of course, if you wish, you can at any time create a .htaccess file and enter additional rules in it, but the default permalinks no longer depend on that file.
If you wish, you can find a .htaccess file from older WordPress versions at their support forum.

You can probably guess my reaction was a mixture of surprise, frustration and relief. I trusted the man’s knowledge and went ahead with the move.

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1) Go to your theme’s single.php file.
2) Copy:

3) Close single.php
4) Open page.php
5) Paste code into page.php and save

Your pages SHOULD show the comments box now. This is the standard fix and should work for most themes.

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Therefore, when I came across the TinyMCE editor within WordPress, I wanted the same control over layout and formatting as DW gave me. The onboard editor would re-arrange HTML so that elements would not appear correctly. It’s a standard feature on wordpress which seems to add various <p></p> tags to your code and generally ‘shuffles it around’(!) More about this further on down. So I, decided to create my pages in DW, and copy and paste the relevant HTML code into the ‘Edit Page’ area in the WordPress Dashboard. It was the start of a VERY frustrating week.. here’s the highlights ;)

PS: Another important reason why I opted to use Dreamweaver to create my wordpress pages was because, as you can see from many pages on this weblog, there are TWO sidebars on the right. One with the various widgets, and the other narrower grey one next to it. See? OK.

The theme I chose for my weblog only came with one sidebar. Hmm. I needed a second ‘non widgetised’ grey column that would act like a second sidebar. In this I would add various links, text and images, or whatever else I wanted. However, editing my theme to create a second sidebar was a bit too tampering, lets say. It meant editing such files as functions.php, index.php and creating other files. I like to keep my themes php as standard as possible, and only add to it if necessary. Anyways, I only wanted this sidebar to show up on my pages, and disappear on my posts. So I opted to merge the sidebar into each one of my pages. The ‘technical journey’, started with tables:

Using Dreamweaver Tables to Layout WordPress Pages
The page contents would fit snugly within the content area, which was about 650px wide, of my theme and screen. So I proceeded to create a table consisting of three columns, with a total width of 630px. I divided the column lengths 500px for the content area, 20px for whitespace and 110px for the grey sidebar. Yaay, I thought. Easy. So I added the content for the homepage and the associated images. Spaced everything nicely, previewed it in IE and FF, validated the code. Leaving out the doctype and meta tags, I copied the content markup and pasted it into the WP editor. After updating the page, I viewed it and well, the results looked good in Firefox. However, in Internet Explorer, the column widths had changed and the text and images were not aligned properly. I huffed a bit, and puffed a lot and started searching for an answer. The problem was with the way IE formatted table spacing, it was a browser error. So the tables approach was slung out the window.  Somebody suggested using AP DIVs in DW because they were ‘cross-browser friendly’ and faster loading, apparently(!)

Using AP DIVS and CSS to Layout WordPress Pages
So I did. Straight into DW, Insert> Layout Objects> AP Div>. I edited the CSS rule so it had a 0px top and left, 500px width and transparent background. (AP means ‘absolutely positioned’ by the way). I added a second ap div with width 110px, background colour light grey and a left-margin of 15px to act like whitespace. ‘There’, I thought, ‘..that’ll fit snugly within the content area of my WP theme’. Well, not really, everything that was supposed to show within the page content area of my theme was overlaying everything else to the upmost left and top of my screen. Hmm, I thought – very strange.

Using DIVS and CSS to Layout WordPress Pages
After some serious head scratching, room pacing and screaming at my monitor screens, I was still lost. So I turned to the wordpress.org forums. I’ve always been a fan of online forums because Ive learned so much from other people over the years, so I put my dilemma to the wordpress. org gang. Here’s the link to the thread:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/344212?replies=14

After trying a couple of suggestions and still seeming more lost than a fish in a desert, I submitted another thread, this time with the title ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?’ It’s true, I was at my wits end with these div tags and it seemed I was getting nowhere. This seemed to get people’s attention and before no time, I returned to see a couple of helpful suggestions from professional coders. Here’s the second forum post:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/344622?replies=11

I met a nice person with username alaetra (I’m ashamed to say I still didn’t catch the gender of him/her. sorry, alaetra!). He/she replied that the reason my page layout was overlaying my theme was because I was using absolute positioning in my divs. This was causing the HTML to override my wordpress theme and displaying the page contents to the left of the page instead of within the allocated content area of my theme. She recommended I use divs that were relatively positioned instead, and to float my divs to the left, also.

I did as she said and started over. This time however, I created a container div which housed everything else within it. I styled all the divs using CSS and arranged the layout precisely, making the content area div have a height of ‘auto’ so it adjusted to its contents only. I also gave the container div a height of ‘auto’.

I then added all my content, such as the six graphics on the homepage, saved it in Dreamweaver, copied and pasted the code, deleted the doctype etc that I didnt need and updated my WordPress page. WHAM! There it was, perfectly aligned, exactly how i wanted. All my pages used this template and I am ever so thankful to the wordpress.org forum members who helped me with this little ‘bug’, I would say.

Your’s ‘originally’,
Herbie Hysteria

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