Author Archive for Emma

How To Set Up Featured Articles In WP-Smooth

In order to use the Featured Articles Section in WP-Smooth you need to set up a category called featured, you also need to make sure the category slug is called featured. Before this function will work you have to make sure your permalinks are modified. They can be set to anything other than the default setting and the featured category will work.

You can change your Permalinks under Settings, Permalinks. I usually set mine to custom /%postname%/.

After that just click on the featured category for any posts you want in the featured box. By default your six most recent featured posts will be displayed in this box. You can change this number on your WP-Smooth settings page.

If you want to know how to turn the auto scroll feature for the featured articles on or off see option 8 in this post; How To Install and Set Up WP-Smooth.

Popularity: 29% [?]

How To Use WP-Smooth

One of my favorite themes is WP-Smooth by Solostream. As far as premium themes go the selection at Solostream is amazing. WP-Smooth is my 3rd premium theme by Solostream and chances are if you have purchased a site from me this is the theme I used because I try to always purchase a developers license whenever I purchase a premium theme. That way I can use it on as many sites as I want and I can customize the theme and sell it as well.

If you have purchased a site from me that uses WP-Smooth,  just click on the WP-Smooth link above, and scroll down to WP-Smooth 1.0 and click on theme demo, setup, and tutorials. There you will find tons of information and examples on how to edit your theme and get the most out of it. But the real beauty of WP-Smooth is the customized theme backend that allows tons of changes and customizations without ever having to know how to code.

I think all of the Solostream Themes are brilliant, and they all have the easy to customize interface. If your are in the market for a real premium theme, check out what Solostream has to offer. Most Solostream themes come with your choice of three licenses. The Basic license is a single use license for one site, the Premium license is for use on multiple sites owned by you, and the Developer theme gives you the license to use the theme for your own sites and sites that you sell. You just can’t sell the theme on it’s own. I usually prefer to purchase the developers license when I find a theme I like. But with Solostream you can purchase any license and then upgrade later.

Like I said before you can get most of your WP-Smooth questions answered from the demo on the Solostream site. But I will be making some tutorials as well.

Popularity: 31% [?]

How To FTP Using FileZilla

Most seasoned webmasters are very familiar with FTP, but sometimes people new to the web are a little intimidated by using FTP.  After awhile this will become second nature. But for those people just getting started here is a brief tutorial.

First off you need to download an FTP client. I would recommend FileZilla, it is free and works really well. FileZilla has recently come out with a new server edition of FileZilla but the client version is all you really need at this time.

If you want to learn more about using the Server edition of FileZilla you can read this tutorial by LifeHacker, but keep in mind that FTP is not secure so you will want to run your server over a VPN, you can do this with an application like Hamachi.

Once you have FileZilla installed, using it is a breeze. The first thing you do is enter your Host Name which is simply yourdomain.com you can also use your site’s IP address. Then you enter your cPanel user name and your cPanel password. Some people get this mixed up with their WordPress user name and password, but it is your cPanel info.

If you are not using cPanel hosting then it is the ftp user name and password of your site. Usually the port is port 21, so you can just leave that blank and it will default to port 21. Click on Quickconnect and you should be connected to the server where your website is hosted.

Another way to log in to your site is to use the Site Manager. This is my preferred way because the site manager will save your info and automatically log you in to your site just by clicking on the sites name in site manager. When you have multiple domains this is definitely a time saver.

If you would like to save your login info using the site manager, click on the site manager icon. Then click on New Site. Enter the name you want to use to identify your site. Then enter yourdomain.com into the host name, change the logontype to Normal, and enter your cPanel user name and password. Click on connect and you will be connected to the server your website is hosted on, and the info will be saved. So next time you want to access this server just click the scroll down arrow of the Site Manager and click on your sites name.

Once you are logged into the server of your site it is just a matter of finding where you want the file to go on the left side of the screen and finding the file you want to transfer on the right side of the screen. You can just drag and drop the files you want to transfer. Another nice thing about FTP is the files you move are copies so the original file stays intact. You can use this to edit files on your server.

Just drag the file you wish to edit to your desktop, make the necessary changes and then when you drag it back to the right side you will be prompted to overwrite the original file. Just say yes. The dragging and dropping is pretty simple, but I have been experimenting with Jing a little, so I made a quick screen cast.

Hint: For better viewing click on the full screen icon in the bottom right corner of the video. To exit full screen hit the escape key.

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Popularity: 27% [?]

How To Move A Blog

Moving a WordPress blog, can be a little more complicated than moving a static site, because of the WordPress database.

If  your current blog is on cPanel, the easiest way is to use cPanel to create a full backup, and then have the hosting company of the new user install it for you.

You may be able to ftp it to your pc, and then email it to them, or even better remote ftp to a file on their server. Unless you have a dedicated server and shell access, you won’t be able to install the files yourself.

Another easy way is to give your hosting company access to the cPanel of the site you want to move. That way they can download whatever files they need to do the transfer.

Once the site files are transferred then you can change the dns of the domain to point to the new hosting server.

If you are not using cPanel, or want to do the install yourself you can follow these steps:

1. Download the site files (everything in public html)

2. Download database tables using PHPmyadmin http://web.archive.org/web/20080822132551/http://www.clearpointsystems.com/wp04/?page_id=18

3. Create an account on the new host.

4. Create a new database on the new account.

5. Write down the new database name, user name, and password.

6. Import the tables from your backup into your new database.

7. In the site files you downloaded find wp-config.php, edit this file so that the database name, user name, and password are the same as the ones you wrote down for the new database. Also make sure the db host matches with HostGator it will be localhost.

8. Upload these site files to the new server. When the dns changes you will know if it worked.

This will work in most cases. But there is a limitation to the size of the database you can transfer this way. So if it is a very large site you will still have to email your hosting company and have them install the database for you.

I usually use DreamWeaver to edit wp-config.php but you can use a text editor such as notepad, then use ftp to overwrite the old file.

Popularity: 34% [?]