Let’s start with some basics: Keep your WordPress installation and your plugins updated. Keep your version of WPFolio updated (and put your changes to code in a child theme).
Now, step back. You might be frustrated, confused, or stymied. It’s ok, this is a chance to learn. Others before you have met similar problems and there are solutions. Let’s find them…
Step 1 – “RTFM” aka Read the _______ Manual
On the internet there is a saying, “RTFM.” You probably figured out what it means but here’s the RTFM wikipedia entry just for fun. The point is, be sure you read through these pages and watch the videos. The answer may already be here. Use the tags and search on the site to find what you’re looking for. If it is here, you’ll save yourself and others the trouble.
Also, if you’re reading this looking for support and haven’t yet read New To WordPress – Where to Start on the WordPress Codex, stop reading and click on that link. Browse around, read through and come back later. You’re not going to learn this by magic after all!
Also, if at first you don’t understand everything, keep going for a bit and let it wash over you. It might become clear as you gather more context.
Also the Digging Into WordPress book is very detailed and an excellent resource.
Step 2 – Google Skills
Did you do Step 1?
Google Skills are more valuable than your college education. Search your question on Google and someone has likely had that question before and posted the answer. Here’s some resources for quickly increasing your Google Skills in just a few minutes.
Step 3 – the WordPress Codex, WordPress Support Forums, and WPQuestions
Did you do steps 1 and 2 yet?
The WordPress Codex and WordPress Support Forums are tremendously valuable. Here is where thousands of people are posting questions and answers. Because everyone on the forum is a volunteer, be courteous and search the forums before posting a question as your question has likely already been answered.
Also, when you post your question:
- be as clear as possible about your issue
- mention that you have read the codex and the WPFolio site looking for an answer
- that you did a google search and were not able to find an answer
- don’t complain or ramble on about how frustrated you are. Everyone is a volunteer and they don’t care about your frustration, they just want to know how they can help with your WordPress problem.
- Tag your request WPFolio as we monitor the forums for posts including this tag. We might not answer, but we’ll see it.
WPQuestions is like the WordPress Forums, except it adds capitalism. You can place a bounty on your question and experts will answer it. You pay prize money to the person (or people) who answer your question. Answered questions are public and free, so it’s a valuable resource even if you aren’t posting questions. If you need an answer fast, this is the place.
WordPress on StackExchnage “is a free, community driven Q&A for WordPress developers and administrators” and another good forum for higher level WordPress questions.
Step 4 – Find a Friend
Someone in your network probably knows WordPress and can help you. Trade dinner or a drink for some help. Trade a skill you have for their skill with these issues. This might be the time to send out a request for help on Twitter or Facebook, or just meet some people face to face and have a little geek session where you work on this stuff.
Our mailing list is your friend. Make sure you are signed up on our mailing list for updates on WPFolio.
Step 5 – Post in the comments on this site
Notice this is the last step. This should be rare and only happen if you have done steps 1-4. Comments are generally for discussion, not support requests.
Please comment under the relevant topic area.
There’s really only one, maybe two people checking comments here on a semi-regular basis. The resources above are far more rich and can offer you so much more and much faster. We’re busy folks with lives. We want to help, so we made this. But, unfortunately, we can’t hold your hand.
What if I find a bug?
Be pretty sure it’s a bug in the WPFolio code then submit us a fix on github. If you don’t have a fix, put it on our ticket system. The ticket system is not a support forum so if you make a support request, we’ll just close your ticket and refer you to the support page on this site. The ticket system is a to-do list for those contributing code.
Why don’t you just answer my question, it will only take a minute?
Because that’s not true.
WPFolio Tutorial Requests
If you want to write a post for this site with instructions or clarification on something WPFolio specifc (not WordPress) you can post a note in the comments of this post. If you have better instructions, we’d love to incorporate them. This site has wiki functionality so contact us or sign up as a user and we’ll give you access.
Can I just pay someone to do this?
Yes! Some of the people who contributed to WPFolio are available for hire. Contact them through their websites:
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20 Comments
Help. I really want to use this theme, however I added some widgets and then I got this error and I have no clue how to fix it!! I am not a techie at ALL. I hope someone can help.
thanks so much.
o Catchable fatal error: Object of class WP_Error could not be converted to string in /home/danbar44/danabarbieri.com/wp-content/themes/wpfolio/functions.php on line 539
You skipped step 3.
I’m looking over some notes I made when setting up my WPFolio site and there are some things I think should be in the user manual and I’d be willing to write something short for it if you think it’s helpful.
1) A section on adding audio, including needed changes to php.ini for large files
2) A brief section on how to include PDFs. It’s kinda obvious, but when I was setting up my site, I wasted a lot of time figuring this out and other should be spared that time suck.
3) A note on the Readings settings in the dashboard. If you have several works they all won’t display unless you have this set right and it is mysterious that this is what controls it.
4) You might consider a recommend pluggins section. I have a couple that I think make sense for artists, but getting a “basic set” should be something that is part of this manual (analytics, share this, SEO…). I could make a couple of suggestions, but someone with more experience should write this post if you think it should be written.
Best,
Dread
I love this theme.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out how to have more thumbnails available on the year archive page. It always seems to only show the latest 10 thumbnails.
I looked through some of the templates, but I can’t figure out what to change. I would like to have the yearly archive page show a thumbnail of all the posts. So if I clicked on 2010, I would see a thumbnail for everything.
Thanks for any help you can give me…
You skipped Step 2 and Step 3.
Hi Steve,
Not a bug or anything, but I wanted to get your input on how to go about something.
I’m interested in replacing the static background with an HTML5 element. I haven’t found too many examples or resources on this (I suppose it’s possible that it just can’t be done), so I wanted to get your input.
This is definitely a nice-to-have on my end, so if it just isn’t workable that’s totally fine.
Thanks!
Try Step 3.
Configuring Widgets Instructions Correction
“Sidebar is only enabled on pages that are titled News, Latest, Blog, etc. ”
Seems that Sidebar is only enabled on POSTS in a CATEGORY named exactly ‘news’, ‘latest’, ‘updates’, ‘blog’, or ‘notable’ . At least that’s what I read in category.php and found the behavior to be.
Could be clearer about pages, posts, and categories to use the Sidebar widget.
Thanks for that clarification!
Hi Steve, I’m getting no joy with the wp forums and am not very good at coding. I was using your 1.5.3 version on a web server and was having very little problems. I decided to take the plunge and take it live, followed your advice and am using the child theme but its seems to be giving me more problems. Here are the issues:
1. The header image is showing twice. Image size is 600 x 105.
2. I have created a static home page called “home proper”. There is a second “Home” appearing on the nav menu, how can i remove this. This may be also causing the issue 1 above.
3. I have added the plugin “WPML Multilingual CMS” and have configured it to show on the sidebar and footer. It is not showing on the sidebar at all and is showing in the footer but not as it should.
4. Post “Laundry”, image is large although set as thumbnail. Also comments showing although set to not show.
5. Tagline appearing on header image.
I appreciate any guidance you could give me. Thanks. David
This is a lot and unfortunately I can’t give this kind of individual support (especially for free) and develop the theme (for free) and do my own work. If the WordPress forums don’t help try WPQuestions (there’s a link to the left). Also, try more searching. For some/all of these, the answers are out there. You’ll get it…
When I click on medium sized thumbnail it first links to leave a reply page rather than directly to large image – how to get rid of leave a reply detour page?
thanks
Is it possible to do dropdown menus?
yes.
have you removed your WPFolio form WordPress?
no.
I’ve started using the excellent WPFolio theme for an artist site and I have a couple of questions which I’ve posted on wordpress support but got no response. My test site is at http://sussexcontraband.com/test/
1. Sidebar widgets – I (think I) understand the concept of using categories and posts to provide a searchable reference to the content. In my test site these posts pop up in a menu item called portfolio. But if I want to use the category or tag search widget in a sidebar sidebars only display in a page entitled, news etc. not on the post pages in my portfolio menu item – how can I get sidebars to show on all or most pages?
2. If you drill down through my portfolio menu>installations & exhibitions>eco-art>dust to dust ashes to ashes – we have a big pic of a single work. How can I add descriptive text to this picture?
3. Same place.. how do I get rid of the comments counter (I’ve turned off comments site-wide)
4. The menu system only allows me to scroll horizontally across images in that post. is there a way of adding an ‘up one level’ link? It’s not convenient to have to go right to the top level and then come down again.
Thank you for any help.
1. The theme is designed to work this way. Changing that would mean modifying code. Which you’re welcome to do, but I cant explain in comments.
2. If it’s a post, just add text.
3. Turn off comments for that post.
4. You can code that, but it’s not in the theme.
I am posting here as I have posted these questions in the WP forum but got no response. Well I did actually, someone told me to go and learn some CSS. Fair enough I’m doing that gradually but my problem with the theme is that I have no idea which bits are controlled where in CSS. So these are some problems I’m having with a website I’m building for a friend..
http://chrisdrury.evodev.net/category/exhibitions/ Why have the thumbnails shifted to the left? When there are three thumbnail items only they are nicely centred but as soon as I add the fourth they go to the left. How do I get them back centred? Also could I make them 4-cols?
http://chrisdrury.evodev.net/category/works_outside/cloud_chambers/ when I add more than 10 items to a category they are displayed on a second page so in this example I have an orphan entry accessed with the Earlier link at the bottom. Why is this happening? Can I change this behaviour?
http://chrisdrury.evodev.net/category/works_outside/ This menu item has 2 sub-categories (Cloud Chambers and Commissions). They are set as sub-categories in both the menu and the category hierarchy. When I played around with WPFolio originally to try it out I’m sure I had just 2 thumbnails at this level (one for cloud chambers and one for commissions), now I have all the thumbnails mixed up. Can I get just one thumbnail for each level below?
Thank you for your help! I’m finding the lack of a WPFolio support forum a bit frustrating – the only theme I’ve used before is Atahualpa which of course has an enormous support network. That’s not a complaint, just a comment on the difficulty of supporting and using a specialist theme. If I can’t answer these sorts of questions myself or find someone who can then it is very difficult to use the theme with confidence.
Hi Ian,
You can use an Inspect Element tool like Firebug to find the styles you need to change with CSS. Here’s good tutorial about it. It’s not a problem with the theme, just a matter of finding the correct styles to change.
Re: Thumbnails columns – there is a gallery setting for four columns. I think the default is three columns, so you’ll need to go into the gallery settings to change that.
Re: # posts per page – go into Settings -> Reading and change the “Blog Pages show at most” setting to however many posts per page you’d like.
Re: Sub-category thumbnails – do you mean you want only one thumbnail per page? You can insert a picture individually with a thumbnail size.
Most of these issues are just a matter of getting to know the WordPress interface. Also, about WPFolio support, if you tag your posts ‘wpfolio’ on the WP forum, myself and a couple other people who watch the forum will definitely see them. It’s a good idea to have a WPFolio specific forum though – I’m looking into it. Be sure to vote for it on the poll in the sidebar.
Good luck!