Recently James has adjusted the OM4 platform to remove a little known (but often confusing) WordPress feature.

If you’ve been used to uploading images and inserting them in to your WordPress posts and pages using Add an Image, you may realise you can turn images into links using the Link URL field.

You can type any link into the Link URL field. By default WordPress offers you three buttons underneath this field – None (which clears the field), File URL and Post URL.

Clicking the File URL button will put in a link to the full sized image. So if you display a thumbnail, clicking the thumb shows you a full sized version of the image. Which is what is required for 99% of the time.

The Post URL button … that gets more funky, and it is the Post URL button that we’ve removed from our OM4 theme. You can still use the WordPress feature if you want, but you’ll need to do it manually.

What the Post URL button does is a mystery to most WordPress users I think. On WordPress.com, their help page just says ” Click the Post URL button to have the image linked to its attachment page.” Say what?

What happens if you use the Post URL link is that WordPress will automatically create a virtual page for the attachment. It displays the attachment image, title AND description (this is one of the few places where the mysterious WordPress Image Description is used), and then provides a Comments section allowing visitors to comment on the image. Whew!

In practice, using the Post URL:

• suppresses the ‘click to display full size’ functionality, which we implement with Shutter Reloaded
• creates duplicate URL issues that often interfere with attempts to display the image or attachment itself

Because it is such an infrequently used facility (and so little understood), and because of the problems it creates, we just switched it off to avoid the confusion in the first place.

Removing the WordPress Post URL button

It’s been a month since all OM4 websites were upgraded with a new dashboard design and features, and I’d like to ensure that you’re getting the most from the new and improved visual editor.

The new editor has two tabs – Visual and HTML. If your text editor doesn’t have the Visual and HTML tabs (on the top right of your editor), then you probably don’t have visual editor support enabled for your user account. To turn it on, log into your Dashboard, then click on your name at the top right of the screen and  tick the Use the visual editor when writing checkbox. Save your profile, then you’ll have access to the visual editor.

Visual Editor

The visual tab allows you to more easily edit and format your blog posts and pages, and includes useful buttons on the toolbar such as bold, text alignment, improved image handling and many other features.

By default there is one row of toolbar buttons, but if you click the Show/Hide Kitchen Sink button on the right, you’ll be shown another row of useful buttons.

Another useful feature is the editor’s fullscreen mode. Clicking the Tooggle Fullscreen Mode button will expand the text editor to full screen mode – very useful for those large posts!

HTML Editor

The HTML tab allows you to manually edit the post or page’s HTML code. Chances are, you won’t need to use this unlesss your post or page needs to contain advanced HTML code.

Questions?

A great screencast showing the new features of the new editor can be found here.

If you have any questions, please post them on the OM4 Support Desk.

Are you using the new and improved visual editor?

One of the difficulties with operating your own website is ensuring that it looks consistent across all the popular web browsers.

For example, your website may look and behave correctly in a recent web browser such as Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 3, but it may not look quite right in older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6.

We are always on the lookout for cross browser compatibility issues, and apply fixes to our style sheet when necessary. For example, today I noticed a situation where floating columns don’t look the same on IE6, so I have made a slight change to the OM4 theme in order to fix the problem.

According to W3Schools, Internet Explorer 6 is still being used by 26.5% of internet users, so it is important that your website displays correctly in a variety of different web browsers.

Invalid HTML code is another common cause of browser incompatability. You can check your website contains valid HTML code using the W3c’s Markup Validation Service. For OM4 website owners, you can validate a page on your website by clicking the Validate link in the footer of your website.

A great way for you to see how your website looks in multiple web browsers is to use Browsershots.org. If you notice that your web site looks strange in one or more browsers, feel free to contact support and we’ll try and help you out.

Is Your Website Cross Browser Compatible?

Participants of our latest Blog School classes have been keen to get started and publish their first blog post. I thought it would be helpful if I explained how to get started and publish your first blog post using WordPress.

There are 4 basic steps to writing and publishing a blog post.

1. Log into your site’s Administration Panel.
2. Click on the Write tab.
3. Enter your post’s title and type your post in the edit box:

   Enter Your Post’s Title
   The Title text field is where you enter the title of your blog post.
   Try to keep the title short (4 – 8 words), whilst at the same time making it eye catching enough to make your audience want to read it.

   Enter Your Post’s Content
   The Post text field is where you enter the content of your blog post. You can enter as much or as little as you want here. A few tips:

   • Write in Small Paragraphs
     Having your content in small (several sentence) paragraphs makes it much easier for your visitors to digest.
     To use paragraphs, finish your sentence and then press the enter key twice. You can then start typing again.
   • Use Pictures
     A picture is worth 1,000 words, provided it is relevant to what you’re posting about. Pictures also make your posts more interesting. We won’t be using any pictures in your first blog post, however we will later on.
   • Save Your Post Regularly
     The last thing you want is to lose your post if your computer crashes or your internet connection has problems. Your post is automatically saved every few minutes, however we also recommend clicking the Save and Continue Editing button every now and then too.
4. Click Publish.

So come on, don’t be scared. Give it a try!

How Did You Go?

Did you find it difficult, or was it just as easy as using a pen and paper?

I suspect that for a majority of first time bloggers, more detailed instructions are required.

I have written a more in-depth article on how to publish your first blog post. Click on the link. Alternatively, you can find it (along with many other useful articles) in our OM4 Client Resources section.

What’s to Come?

In the near future, I will be blogging about the more advanced aspects of writing blog posts. In the mean time, I recommend checking out the OM4 Client Resources section, which contains an ever expanding list of topics.

How to Publish Your First Blog Post