Wordpress Tips & Tricks | WebsByAmy.com

Archive for Wordpress Tips & Tricks

Shareaholic ‘Sexy Bookmarks’

I've been getting a number of questions about adding a Google +1 and/or Pinterest buttons to a WordPress site. And to tell you the truth, I've had to help several clients recover from plugins or script add on's that add these buttons as a standalone that end up conflicting with other plugins.

So, it got me to thinking how much I love and use SexyBookmarks on my Ustamp4fun blog and I actually use it myself to post my articles to Facebook and to Twitter. So in answer to people who are having trouble linking their articles from Facebook… this is also a solution for you.

The only drawback was that SexyBookmarks didn't have a Pinterest button… which got me to asking Uncle Google… and I found two things 1) WordPress.org Plugin Repository no longer carries SexyBookmarks by Shareaholic and 2) the latest version DOES have Pinterest, BUT can only be downloaded via www.shareaholic.com.

If you are reading this on my site, you can watch the video below on how to download and configure Shareaholic. I strongly suggest that you create an account from the beginning so that you can get more information about the information being shared.

By posting this video, I do not claim to be an expert and cannot help you with the plugin if it does not work for you… you will have to contact Shareaholic for that.

Making Your Own Sidebar Widget

Many of you are very confused when it comes to your sidebar widget.

Some widgets are ‘pre-made’ such as ‘Categories’ or ‘Archives’ and you can just drag them, but what if you want your own sidebar widget with a photo and text and links, etc.?

I have created a video that shows how you can use a WordPress post to create a custom sidebar widget and then use the HTML generated from it to drop into a text widget.

Clear as mud? Watch the video!

Video – NextGen Gallery

I am very excited about making this video and I think that a LOT of you have wanted the ability to create galleries of your work on pages or in posts.

This video shows how to import and use the NextGen Gallery plugin for your WordPress site and use it immediately.

This plugin is capable of way more than I am showing, so I recommend that you get to know it better by going to the website provided by the plugin designer, meanwhile, see how easy NextGen gallery is to use right out of the box!

Embed a YouTube Video in Your WordPress blog

One of the awesome things about WordPress is the ability to drop code in to a post or page without needing any special ‘plugins’. Just remember to drop it in in HTML or CODE view (depending upon your WordPress version).

And I realized after I made the video that I spelled YouTube wrong (I typed it as two words, LOL!). So, trust me on the method (if not my spelling)!

I will be featuring more videos in the coming week(s) on most asked questions… so send me your questions!

Adding a Photo To Your WordPress Sidebar

This is entirely overdue, but I have finally created a tutorial about how you would get a photo and/or a link (or a linked photo) into your WordPress sidebar using a ‘text’ widget.

You can view this tutorial here as made from screenshots of actually uploading a photo and using html image tags to make it appear.

As a re-cap to the video, the hyperlinking tag is:
<a href="URL">link text</a>

Image tags:
<img src="URL" />

Remember the URL is the address of the destination (or the photo) on the web. For example www.websbyamy.com is the URL (or address) of my site.

WordPress 2.7 Tips

Saw this fabulous article at Noupe.com and learned a thing or two about the new WordPress 2.7 that I had missed! (Okay, so what I don’t know could fill a book).

The first thing I noticed (in Point 1.2 of the article) is the ability to "stick" a post using the Publish tab (see fig. below). Many of you miss your ‘Sticky Post’ plugin that appears to not be compatible to 2.7.

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