Image: Keith Bacongo on Flickr.
The publication of election notices this week fires the starting gun on local election campaigns in many areas with hyperlocal sites often the go-to place for community information. Read more
Tag Archive for tips
Adding Tables To A Post
We occasionally get asked about how to create tables in posts like this
| column 1 | Coumn 2 | column 3 |
| row 1 | ||
| row 2 | ||
| row 3 | ||
| row 4 |
It is easier than it looks, you could create your table in your favourite word processing package and just copy and paste it in to your blog, but this will probably give you some strange results with fonts & text sizes that may break in different browsers.
The more elegant solution is to create the table manually so you get just the bits of code you need.
Unfortunately there is no easy way to do this in the in built editor on a wordpress.com site so you have to hand craft the code, but don’t panic this is not as daunting as it sounds.
To create the table above I used this HTML code:
<table width=”90%” cellspacing=”0″ cellpadding=”0″>
<tr>
<td>column 1</td>
<td>Coumn 2</td>
<td>column 3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>row 1</td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>row 2</td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>row 3</td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>row 4</td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</table>
To get it to work and so the code does not look like it does above, you must paste it in to the HTML tab of the create / edit post or page window. If you don’t then you will just see the code as it is above rather than the table at the top of the page.
A bit of information about the code to help you understand it better and to help you adapt it for your requirements.
<table width=”90%” cellspacing=”0″ cellpadding=”0″> <- this sets your table up to be 90% of the width of the page with no spacing or padding around the cells.
I always make the table less than the width of the page as it looks nicer, make sure you use a % and not pixel width. Pixel (a number without the %) is a set width and if you change your theme at any time the width of the table could be bigger than the width of the page and it will break and look ugly.
<tr> <- this tells the table it is a new row
<td> <- this creates a new column, what you put in here will show up in the first cell as long as it is before this -></td>
</tr> <- this closes the row
All you do is repeat the code for each row you need.
The number of columns on each row needs to be the same other it will start to cause problems.
Feel free to copy, adapt and use the bit of code above or you could ask Google to find you a HTML Table Generator.
You can of course go it to great detail with your tables and set rows to different heights or columns to different widths, add padding etc. You can find out how to do this by asking google
Using Asides
Got something to say on your blog, but don’t think it is enough to be worth a full post?
Why not use the Aside format for your post?
If you are using a theme that supports them, Asides, are an ideal way to add a short post to your site almost like a status update on Facebook.
What is an aside? Well when you have something to say that is not part of the main conversation you may lean in towards somebody to make your comment, it doesn’t need a big announcement as it is not part of the main conversation, just a quick comment between you and someone else, that isn’t private so it doesn’t matter if it is overheard.
Asides on WordPress are the equivalent of this, they are a post, just like any other but they are designed to be short. For example, say that the day your bins get collected has changed, you have written about this before and all the residents know, but you just feel you need to remind them? Well as you have written about this already you dan’t need to write a lot maybe just a few words like
Don’t forget bin collections have changed this week and it’s bin day tomorrow..
If you did this as a post it would look a bit sad, people would click on it expecting more. If you were to do this using the Aside format for your post, it would publish to the front page just the same as any other post but crucially without a title, so there is nothing for your readers to click to ‘see more’
How to use Asides.
Well it really couldn’t be simpler. Go to the post page, and create your Aside just as you would if it were a normal post, remember don’t make it too long, no more than a couple of lines, if you have your front page set to show summary rather than full posts, then it needs to be less than 55 words.
once you have created your post before you save or publish it look on the right hand side bar you will see an option called format.
In the format section there are 3 options.
- Standard
- Aside
- Gallery
Select ‘Aside’ here and press publish. When you go to the front page of your site you will see, your post published as normal but it will be missing one thing, the title which is the hyperlink to read the full post, as this is not a full post you don’t need that link. People can still leave and read comments by using the links below the aside post as normal.
And that is how to use the Aside feature in your wordpress.com blog. This will also work on self hosted blogs as long as your theme supports the aside feature. If your theme doesn’t support asides then the Format area of the right sidebar will not show.
If you really do want to use Asides on your self hosted WordPress blog with a theme that doesn’t support them, then have a look at the plugin repository there are a number of plugins that will add this functionality to any theme.
No WordPress activation E-mail? What to do
If you have’t received your WordPress activation E-mail don’t panic there are a couple of things you can do.
Remember it can take up to 30 minutes for the E-mail to appear from WordPress. Normally you will get the E-mail within a few minutes but there are a number of factors involved in E-mail delivery which means it could take longer such as
- How long it takes for WordPress to send it, they do have busy times when their servers can be slower to respond. To give you some idea of the scale of the WordPress estate have a look at http://en.wordpress.com/stats/
- How long it takes to wing its way across the internet.
- How often your mail host looks for new E-mail
First have you checked your Spam / Trash / Junk folder? Quite often WordPress E-mails can end up in spam.
If the activation E-mail isn’t in your Spam / Trash or Junk folder then there are a couple of things you can do. If you are using a corporate E-mail address it is likely that the IT or HR gonks in your organisation could have the WordPress domain blacklisted so you may have to go and speak nicely to them to get the mail released.
Profile Page – if you are still on the profile page of WordPress, you can check that you have entered the correct E-mail and update it if necessary.
You will see the E-mail that WordPress have sent the activation E-mail to highlighted in yellow. Double check that you typed it correctly if you didn’t then you can update it in the box at the bottom and press resend. You can also just press the update E-mail button and it will resend the mail anyway. If you haven’t received the activation E-mail on the second attempt then you might want to try another E-mail address if you have one. Just enter the new address in the E-mail box at the bottom of the screen and press the Update E-mail button, the changed E-mail address should then be shown on the page in the yellow highlight.
Support Page – If that doesn’t work then you can head over to http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/ and fill in the Resend Activation E-mail section.
One some or all of these tips should help you get your account activated, if for whatever reason you still don’t get the activation E-mail try a different E-mail address again if you have one or sign up for a Gmail account.