Archive for the ‘Wordpress Tips’ Category

Beware “Scammers”

If you have registered a domain name through Redback Graphics, do not pay invoices to any other company for domain renewals. Same applies for web hosting.

Scammers prey on the fact that some domain owners are not aware of the “tricks” some companies will use to get your money. A common “scam” is to send a domain owner an invoice for the purchase of a domain that is VERY SIMILAR to your existing domain. You do not need to purchase that domain. Renewals for your domain and webhosting will only come from Redback Graphics, anything else can be deemed questionable, so please run it past someone in the know before paying these invoices.

Domain renewals from Redback Graphics are $29.95 for 2 years registration.

“Scammers” can and do charge up to $280 for 1yr registration of a domain you didnt need or want (and that I could sell you for $29.95 for 2yrs registration).

Text hyperlinks

If you have a Redback Graphics installed CMS website.
Login to your Dashboard, under “Dashboard”, click once on “Pages”, then once on the page title of the page you want to add/edit a link.
In the editing box that contains your page content, double-click the text you want to link (or highlight the text with your cursor), then choose the icon to “Insert/edit link” (in line of icons above editing box), then insert the URL of the web address or page you want to link to. Then click the “Update” button to update the page. To link to an external website, while editing the link, choose from the “Target” options, “open link in new window” to make the browser open a new window for the linked website.

Adding an Email hyperlink
Select the text you want to create an Email link to, then choose the icon to “Insert/edit link”. Add link of mailto:info@redbackgraphics.com.au (your email address preceeded by “mailto:”, no spaces) and the link is done. Click Update to update the page as normal.

Tip 1
It’s always handy to have another browser window open to view the “public” side of your website to see the changes without having to log in and out of your Dashboard to see the public website. The changes will be live immediately. Use CTRL+F5 in your live website browser window to force a refresh of the web page you are viewing to see the updated link.

Tip 2
Always backup your website before doing any updates until you are very familiar with updating pages and images etc.
See backing up your website.

Adding widgets

If you have a Redback Graphics installed CMS website.
Firstly, what is a Widget? A Widget allows you to add, arrange, and remove tools, plugins or content from the sidebars and/or footers of your website. Widgets make it easy to customize the content of your website sidebars and footers. Typically used for Categories and Posts from a Blog, they can also be used for traditional website content including images, advertisements and News items.

This is to add a Widget Area to your sidebars or footer areas. Not all  websites have both sidebars and footer widget areas, but by adding a Widget you will quickly find out what areas you have available for Widgets.

Login to your Dashboard, under “Dashboard”, click once on “Appearance”, then once on “Widgets”.

On the far right side of your screen you will see all of your available Widget areas. Expand any Widget Area and drag and drop one of the “Available Widgets” into that Widget Area (ie “Right-1″ will be the far Right Sidebar). Adding a Text Widget is one of the most useful Widgets to install. You can edit its Title, and insert any text or html. Click “Save”, then view your website to see your new Widget in action.

If you want in insert images into your Text Widget area, see Inserting Images into Sidebars to get the html for any image you want to insert.

Tip 1
It’s always handy to have another browser window open to view the “public” side of your website to see the changes without having to log in and out of your Dashboard to see the public website.

Tip 2
Always backup your website before doing any updates until you are very familiar with updating pages and images etc.
See backing up your website..

SEO and Images

Redback Graphics

Adding descriptive Titles to your images will greatly increase your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). If you name your images with an exact string that you might expect someone to “Google”, your image (and your website) will then rank highly in any Google results. Making the Title specific, but also unique will give excellent results. For example, if you were to name an image “twitter free zone”, then anyone Googling twitter free zone would quickly find your website. Your challenge is to predict what people will be Googling (exact string), then include an image you can name accordingly. The more correctly named images you have, the higher the Google ranking for those strings will be. Do NOT try and trick Google by adding excessive images with blatant SEO Titles, Google will recognise that and blacklist your website completely. Just include relevant content, with relevant images with descriptive titles, and Google will love you, and people will find you.

Gallery images

Redback Graphics

If you have a Redback Graphics installed CMS website

To add an image to an existing gallery
Login to your Dashboard, under “Dashboard”, click once on “Media”, then near “Media Library”, click once on “Add New” button. Choose “Select Files”, locate them on your computer, select the file (or multiple files), select “Open” (or hit enter), wait while it “Crunches” the file/s (uploads). At this point you can (not necessary) edit Titles, description, captions etc. This can be done at any time, so no need to do it right now. Then click “Save all changes”. You will then be back in Media and can see a list of the images now in your Media collection.

Any image/s you just uploaded (you can upload several images at a time) will not be “Attached” to any particular page. In order for them to appear in a gallery on “a” page, they must be “attached” to that page. Check the select box for all images you want to “attach” to a particular page, then click “attach” for one of those images (all images with a check/tick will ALL be attached to the same page that you now select). In the “Find posts or pages” box, type a few characters of the page name you are looking for, then select “Pages” and “Search” to locate the correct page you wish to attach those images to. Select that page, and you are done. The image will now be added to the existing gallery on that page.

Tip 1
It’s always handy to have another browser window open to view the “public” side of your website to see the changes without having to log in and out of your Dashboard to see the public website. The changes will be live immediately. Use CTRL+F5 in your live website browser window to force a refresh of the web page you are viewing to see the updated image and link.

Tip 2
Always backup your website before doing any updates until you are very familiar with updating pages and images etc.
See backing up your website.

Tip 3
Adding descriptive Titles to your images will greatly increase your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). If you name your images with an exact string that you might expect someone to “Google”, your image (and your website) will then rank highly in any Google results. Making the Title specific, but also unique will give excellent results. For example, if you were to name an image “twitter free zone”, then anyone Googling twitter free zone would quickly find your website. Your challenge is to predict what people be Googling (exact string), then include an image you can name accordingly. The more correctly named images you have, the higher the Google ranking for those strings will be. Do NOT try and trick Google by adding excessive images with blatant SEO Titles, Google will recognise that and blacklist your website completely. Just include relevant content, with relevant images with descriptive titles, and Google will love you, and people will find you.

Images into sidebars

Redback Graphics

If you have a Redback Graphics installed CMS website
This is to add an image (such as a sponsors logo) to a sidebar, or bottom of page Widget area. This assumes you already have a Text Widget installed to a sidebar or bottom of page Widget area.

Login to your Dashboard, under “Dashboard”, click once on “Pages”, then create a new page or open a page that you use for “testing” that isnt visible to the public.
In the editing box that contains your page content, insert the image that you will want to appear in your sidebar (or bottom of page Widget). The image should be the correct size before inserting so you can insert at original size. It “may” be inserted and then scaled, but it is better to insert at exact size.

Make sure this page is “Excluded from Navigation” so that it does not appear in your menu/navigation. Update the page, and view the public version to ensure the image previews correctly. You can view the web page via its Permalink URL (shown under the pages title)

The changes will be live immediately. Use CTRL+F5 in your live website browser window to force a refresh of the web page you are viewing to see the updated image.

Once you are happy with the image size, and while still in the page editing box, note two tabs on the right hand side, just above the editing box. One labelled “Visual” and other “HTML”. Click on the “HTML” tab to view the html code for that content. Copy  (CTRL+C) the ENTIRE code for that image. That will include code “Tags” and will look something like:

<img src=”http://www.redbackgraphics.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/imagename.jpg” title=”Sponsor’s Name”>

While you have that code in your clipboard, go to “Dashboard”, then “Appearance”, “Widgets”, select the side or bottom of page Text Widget you want to insert the image into, open the content of the text widget and CTRL+V or Paste that code into the Text Widget. Click the blue Text Widget “Save” button, and your image will appear (if the code has been copied correctly, it must be EXACT).

You can also add hyperlinks to the image, so that anyone clicking on the image is taken to another web address (ie sponsors website). See adding hyperlinks to images.

Tip 1
It’s always handy to have another browser window open to view the “public” side of your website to see the changes without having to log in and out of your Dashboard to see the public website.

Tip 2
Always backup your website before doing any updates until you are very familiar with updating pages and images etc.
See backing up your website.

Clearing DNS Cache

Redback Graphics

If you are viewing a web page that you believe has been updated but you can not see the updated page, firstly try F5 or CTRL+F5 to force a refresh of that page. If that fails try clearing your DNS Cache:

Windows® XP, 2000, or Vista®
1. Open the Start menu.
2. Go to Run. If you do not see the Run command in Vista, search for “run” in the Search bar.
3. In the Run text box, type: ipconfig /flushdns
4. Press Enter or Return, and your cache will be flushed.

MacOS®
1. Go to Applications.
2. Go to Utilities.
3. Open the Terminal application.
4. Type: dscacheutil -flushcache
5. Press Enter or Return, and your cache will be flushed.

Image hyperlinks

Redback Graphics

If you have a Redback Graphics installed CMS website.
This assumes you have an image on a page, if not you might need to read adding an image to a page first.
Then, to add or edit the hyperlink to that image:
Login to your Dashboard, under “Dashboard”, click once on “Pages”, then once on the page title of the page you want to edit an image.
In the editing box that contains your page content, click on the image you want to add/edit a hyperlink to.
Click once on the image, then choose the icon to “Insert/edit link” (in line of icons above editing box), then insert the URL of the web address you want to link to. Then from the “Target” options, choose open link in new window to make the browser open a new window for the linked website. Then click the “Update” button to update the image, and then the “Update” button of the page to update the page.

Tip 1
It’s always handy to have another browser window open to view the “public” side of your website to see the changes without having to log in and out of your Dashboard to see the public website. The changes will be live immediately. Use CTRL+F5 in your live website browser window to force a refresh of the web page you are viewing to see the updated image and link.

Tip 2
Always backup your website before doing any updates until you are very familiar with updating pages and images etc.
See backing up your website.

Adding Email account

Redback Graphics

With your new Redback Graphics or Jamncream web hosting account, you (or your website administrator) may have configured one or more new Email addresses in your cpanel. To be able to send and receive from that new Email address you have to add that as a new Email Account to your Email software on your computer. In this example I will use Microsoft Outlook. Other Email software will be similar, use this information as a guide only. If you are not sure of what you are doing please do not proceed, but get someone who is familiar with adding new Email accounts to help you.

In Microsoft Outlook, choose “Tools”, “Account Settings”, then under the “Email” tab, choose “New” to create a new POP3 account.

Then choose “Manually configure server settings” at the bottom of that screen, then “Next”.

Choose “Internet Email” and use:

Email address: yourname@yourdomain.com.au (your new Email address)

Incoming Mail server: mail.yourdomain.com.au (use your domain name)

Outgoing Mail Server: Use the same setting as used in your existing Email accounts (your ISP provided).

If you wish you can set Outgoing Mail Server to mail.yourdomain.com.au but then you must also change the Outgoing Mail Server Port in “More Settings”, Advanced tab”,  to 587.

Username: yourname@yourdomain.com.au (your new Email address)
Password: yourpassword (as provided by you or your website administrator)

At this point you can “Test Account Settings” or proceed to “Finish” adding the new account.

Do not alter any existing Email accounts in Outlook, but you might need to view the properties of an existing Email account to see the existing ISP’s Outgoing Mail Server. If possible use this for your Outgoing Mail Server, if you have trouble with that, then try the mail.yourdomain.com.au with a Port change for your Outgoing Mail Server settings (as explained above).

Hint
It’s often helpful to view the Properties of an existing working Email account before adding a new account. Take note of the existing incoming and outgoing mail servers, but do not change anything in the existing Email account. You can have several accounts, all sending and receiving from the one computer. Once the new Email address has been tested and working, you can set your new Email address as the “Default” Email address, so that all outgoing Emails will be sent from that Email address in future.

Adding images

Redback Graphics

If you have a Redback Graphics installed CMS website

To add an image to a page
Login to your Dashboard, under “Dashboard”, click once on “Pages”, then once on the page title of the page you want to insert an image into.

In the editing box that contains your page content, position your cursor where you would like to insert the image.

Then, above the main editing box, you have a selection of editing icons. You can mouse-over the icons to see what they do. On the top line of icons, after “Upload/Insert”, the next icon is “Add an Image”, click that once. Then click the “Select Files” button and locate the image from your computer, select it, then it will “Crunch” to load, you can then edit the title of the image, change the URL that links to that image, or choose “None” to remove all links. You can choose to Align it left or right or centre, so that text will wrap around the image, leave Alignment on “None” to place the image just where your cursor was positioned.

You can choose to insert a Thumbnail of the image or insert it at full size. Do not select full size unless the image will fit on the page comfortably with your text.
Click on “Insert into Post”. You should now be able to see the image or its thumbnail (depending on which you chose) in your main editing box. You can Cut and Paste to move the image to another position on your page, or even copy it into another page. You can edit the images Title by clicking on it once, then click the “Edit” icon.

You can then click the blue “Update” button over on the right side of your screen to publish the updated page. It will be live immediately.

Tip 1
Prepare images to the desired size before inserting, using photo editing software. Inserting a large image, then resizing using the options available is not ideal, only because it will take more load time for viewers and use up unecessary bandwidth. You can resize it using the options available when inserting though, if you are unable to resize before inserting.

Tip 2
It’s always handy to have another browser window open to view the “public” side of your website to see the changes without having to log in and out of your Dashboard to see the public website. The changes will be live immediately. Use CTRL+F5 in your live website browser window to force a refresh of the web page you are viewing to see the updated image and link.

Tip 3
Always backup your website before doing any updates until you are very familiar with updating pages and images etc.
See backing up your website.