Got a WordPress Question? Ask it here and get a PR5 link and an answer… all for free!

by Bradley on June 28, 2010

So I’ve been really slacking on the blog posts lately.  If you check out my archives, you’ll see that it’s been about 2 posts per month (except for a few months where I’d do 5 or 6).  That’s just not enough posting.

Part of the reason that it’s hard to post is trying to think about topics to post about.  And that’s where you come in.

For the next 30 days, I’ll be answering WordPress Questions for free (one post per day for 30 days)  and putting the answers on this blog.  So please submit your questions here.  First come, first served.  Also, if your question get’s picked, you’ll get a free link from this PR5 site.  So there are plenty of good reasons to ask a question.

To submit your question, just place it in the comments below.

Thanks and Best,

Brad

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  • http://www.kaisdavis.com Kai Davis

    Hey Brad,

    I’m curious about using WordPress as an e-commerce store. Are there e-commerce plugins out there other than WP e-Commerce? Outside of SEO and analytics, what areas do you recommend focusing on for deploying a WordPress e-commerce store? Do you have any recommendations for WordPress store themes free or paid?

    I saw this post on Hackernews. Thanks!

    Kai

  • http://socialstrategist.com Jay Neely – Boston Entrepreneur

    What’s the best way to make WordPress accept non-unique sub-category slugs?

    By default, WordPress ensures that every ‘slug’ portion of permalink URLs is unique, and is very savvy about using this to ensure you never see a 404 from omitting a portion of the URL. This means if my permalink structure is…

    http://site-root.com/category-name/sub-category-name/post-name/post-id

    Then….
    http://site-root.com/category-name/sub-category-name/post-name/post-id,
    http://site-root.com/category-name/sub-category-name/post-name,
    http://site-root.com/category-name/sub-category-name/post-id, and
    http://site-root.com/sub-category-name/post-name/post-id
    will all take me to the same post.

    But if that kind of fail-safe redirection is less important to someone than being able to have non-unique slugs (and nicely structured directories), I’m SOL.

    Let’s say I’m writing a restaurant review guide in major cities. I want my top-level categories to be city names, and the types of restaurants to be the sub-categories. So I create “Boston”, “New York”, and “Seattle”, then I add the sub-categories “Chinese Food”, “Italian Eateries”, and “Luxury Dining” to Boston. But when I try to add the same sub-categories to New York, even when I specify the URL slugs, WordPress starts forcing slugs like “http://[site-root].com/New-York/Chinese-Food-New-York/” — unnecessary repetition, and lengthening my links. This gets even worse if I want to have sub-sub-categories.

    I haven’t yet been able to find a way to force WordPress to accept non-unique slugs. How would you recommend I accomplish this?

  • http://wordpress-themes.cz.cc/ Robert

    How can I customize the blogs created by WordPress 3.0 so that when they install they have the theme, plugins and settings all the way I want them so I don’t have to change each new blog by hand?

    Thanks,

    Robert

  • Christina

    I’m just now paying attention to WordPress themes, and I’m going to cheat and ask two questions:

    1. Some premium WordPress themes use child themes, and some just seem to be stand-alone themes. What’s the advantage of buying a child theme like Lifestyle versus something that isn’t built on a proprietary parent theme?

    2. I’ve stayed away from WordPress because in the past, the CMS didn’t seem to measure up to corporate or ecommerce requirements — a WordPress site always looked like a blog. I’m looking at ecommerce sites built on WordPress, and am impressed by the functionality. But what about building things like password protected membership directories? Say a school or a church wanted to be able to offer a directory to its members, so folks can call for homework assignments or to iron out who’s bringing the coffee cake to the rec hall after church on Sunday? Are there plug-ins for this? I see plug-ins for newsletters, for email subscriptions, etc.

  • http://thesisthemehq.com Somone

    Once a self-hosted WordPress site gets a decent amount of traffic, the use of plugins and other scripts that run to show images, thumbnails, style sheets, etc can be very memory, cache and processor intensive for a shared server arrangement and an affordable annual fee.

    I find my site running quite slowly at the moment and am trying to work out if it is my layout, the different plugins, the number of images…causing the problem. What would you recommend somebody do when their WordPress site is listed by Alexa as ‘slow compared to others’?

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  • http://afmarcom.com Angelique

    Wow! I’ll probably ask a question per day! Here’s today’s:

    How do I do a constantly-rotating multimedia box slideshow like this guy? I thought the box only rotated when the page was refreshed.

    http://knowingandloving.infosaic16.com/?page_id=64

  • Hothan T

    Hello
    Please tell me how I can add custom HTML or more rows (taken from xml) after the search Result without touching the template files.

    Thanks

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  • http://www.laassociatesadagency.com Lynn Ashley

    Hey Brad,
    I changed themes a while back on my site and now I can’t get into it at all! I did not realize at the time the theme had no admin function (I was too busy looking at design and not functionality)! Can you help me get in there . . . I definitely want to change themes and start blogging and using the site for marketing of my business and for other folks.

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  • http://www.mushive.com Nabeel Ahmed

    I have seen WordPress used on all sorts of websites like eCommerce platform, Membership Directory, Buddypress social networking, Forums & many other. But I am still to see a website using WordPress as a Marketplace i.e a place where various users can sell their products. I asked Matt Mullenweg himself & he said he’ll also be interested in seeing that type of functionality of WordPress.
    Do you know any such website then please share it with us?

  • Pingback: How to Use Wordpress for an eCommerce Store

  • http://www.attenture.com Ian Goldsmid

    I asked this question on http://www.quora.com but didn’t get any answers yet:

    Are there any tools available for the WordPress ecosystem (e.g., extensions, plugins, etc.) that allow site owners to add game mechanics to their websites?

    Web services have recently emerged to enable the adding of game mechanics to websites (for instance, see http://bunchball.com and http://www.bigdoor.com).

    Are there similar tools in the WordPress ecosystem that are either open source or that have a pricing model that’s more suitable for SMBs?

  • http://theuniversaldesk.com Ryan Singel

    Brad,

    My copyediting service needs a way to handle user testimonials. I’d like them to be in a database so that they can be displayed across the site, including a javascript box on the front page that refreshes with a new testimonial every 15 seconds or so. It’d also be good to have a page of all of them in some sort of order.

    Any thoughts on how to do this without having to publish them as blog entries?

    Thanks,

    Ryan Singel

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  • http://happynessisachoice.com Dave

    I love your Landing Page theme.

    Do you have a solution for adding a Sales Page?

    I just want a simple way to add a way to allow registration for an event or subscription using PayPal.

    • Bradley

      Dave,

      Starting this week we are completely overhauling the WordPress Landing Page System so it’s not reliant on Thesis Theme any more. I’ll make sure to add an events section to the new system. In the meantime, I’d suggest using eventbrite, or you could also just use the Landing Pages theme to make a sales page for your event.

      Best,
      Brad

  • http://www.purinacoupons.org David F

    I am thinking of setting up hosting on Hostigator, but was wondering if setting up a blog will be as easy on Hostigator as on Bluehost. On Bluehost, I just assign the domain to Bluehost and then go to Simple Scripts and click install. Is it that easy on Hostigator — I did not see SimpleScripts in its CPANEL.

  • http://www.mackverma.com Social Media Guru

    I want to display all posts filed under the category (of the current post) in a post.

    for example I have a post http://www.xyz.com/category1/post1 which is filed under ctegory1

    when i click on the above link it should show me all the posts filed under category1 like it would have shown when i click on http://www.xyz.com/category1

    i do not want redirect the post url to category url .
    i want somehow to embed the content of the page http://www.xyz.com/category1 into the post

    please let me know how this can be done.

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