by Juliet Rich What is a 404 Page and Why Do I Want a Custom One?
A 404 page is the page that’s displayed when someone tries to access a page on your site that doesn’t exist. Maybe it once did and doesn’t now. Maybe it moved. Maybe it never existed. Whatever the case, the visitor to your site is lost and needs a helping hand.
The default page that shows is pretty boring. It’s not entirely unhelpful, because it still shows your header and sidebar(s), but it’s not as helpful as it could be.
One excellent use for a 404 page is to direct users to little-trafficked content that you still think is very, very good. Maybe you want more love for that post you wrote about your fluffy bunny (so fluffy!). You can add a link to it on your 404 page.
Now, if Atahualpa was as user-friendly as it usually is, there would be a spot in the theme options to edit the 404 page. But. There isn’t.
In fact, Atahualpa doesn’t even have its own 404.php file, which is the heart of the matter.
So, here’s the trick. (You’ll need FTP or shell access.)
Short Version
* Copy the […]
by Juliet Rich Google Pagespeed Insights is a WordPress plugin that was supposed to tell me about the load times on my pages and give me “insights” into how to speed things up.
Well, after fiddling around with it for 45 minutes or so, I finally hit a brick wall.
To save others the pain, I thought I should write it up!
* Install Google Pagespeed Insights plugin – check! Easy, fast, no problem.
* Give it a Google API key. Stumbling block.
* Go to Google Cloud Console. Attempt to get an API key. Be unclear as to which API key you’re supposed to be using — server or browser. Try first one API key, then the other. Wonder what all this talk of ‘billing’ is and if you’ve somehow signed up to get billed for things, even though Google doesn’t have your credit card info (or does it?). Figure out you have to turn Pagespeed ‘on’. Turn it on. Try again. Fail.
* Find detailed instructions for finding the API key. Try to follow them. Fail, because Cloud Console is different now and there’s no such thing as ‘Simple API key’. Try to find new instructions that say ‘browser’ or ‘server’. […]
by Juliet Rich As you may know, this site is running on WordPress. I had installed a plugin that was new to me, All in One SEO, which is supposed to help your search engine ranking. It does a lot of stuff automatically, but also gives you fine-tuned control over things like keywords.
My site shows up in Google now if you search for “juliet rich” — not that a lot of people are doing that just yet! — however, it was showing for a description the first sentence of my most recent post. Well, that’s not terribly helpful! It talks about Amazon Prime, which is only tangentially relevant to the site as a whole.
So I just went into the All in One SEO settings and set a site description. It’s a variation on my ‘About’ text.
I hope that will show searchers something a little more succinct and relevant to them than the start-of-a-post ramblings that they’ll see now.
So those of you with sites, I have made the mistake and learned the lesson for you as well as myself.
by Juliet Rich WordPress can do really weird and obnoxious things with blank lines. It will add them when you don’t want them, and more often, strip them out when you do want them. No matter how many times and ways you tell it — blank line, blank line!! — as soon as you hit that ‘Preview’ button, they’re gone.
What theme you’re using and what plugins you have installed can also affect it. Switching from Visual to Text editor can screw it up. If you have a plugin that gives you more controls in TinyMCE (the visual editor), that may make things easier or harder!
Here’s what worked for me. It should work most of the time. So, try it out, and my fingers are crossed for you.
Just add the HTML code for a blank space to each line you want blank.
That will trick WordPress into giving you a non-blank line with a blank space. So it’s blank.
Never has nothingness been so frustrating!
by Juliet Rich Are you having trouble getting your favicon to show up in WordPress using Atahualpa? Read on for my trials and tribulations! Or just use one of these two solutions:
Solution #1 – Just stick a file called favicon.ico in the root directory of your website, above the wp-content/ folder.
Solution #2 – Put your file called whateveryouwant.ico in wp-content/ata-images/ and then go to Appearance->Atahualpa Theme Options->Add a Favicon and tell it what name you want. (IGNORE what it says in there about where to put the file. It’s lying to you. Check out Atahualpa Theme Options->Image Locations to see why.)
Solution #1.5 and #2.5 – If you’ve done one of the above and it’s still not working, try clearing your cache, or restarting your browser. Be firm with it! Browsers are often quite reluctant to do it, even after you tell them to.
Keep reading for details on how I arrived at my solutions.
This site is currently running under the Atahualpa theme, Atahualpa 3.7.12 . I ran into trouble trying to get my own favicon to work. I had grabbed an .ico favicon from a website and colorized it to purple the way I wanted it. Turns out […]
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About I created this site to help others write, publish, and sell their ebooks. With a background in IT, library science, and writing, it all seems to fit perfectly in my wheelhouse. I share tips, tricks, pitfalls, failures, and successes. Come join me on the journey.
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