Technically Challenged?

What I learnt in a month of fiddling with wordpress.

Bertie’s been a great help.

If you want to read “forwards” on post, category or tag pages, or let others read your posts chronologically (e.g. stories), add this to the browser address:
?orderby=date&order=ASC  (Thanks Tony Hirst.)
?order=ASC  also seems to work. (Thanks happy accident :-).)

To do a double selection by tags use
blog.wordpress.com/tag/tag1+tag2. (Thanks wordpress guy.)

To open a new window with sidebar image link, see my copyright dog on the right, don’t use the image widget, but the text widget. Draft a post with the image and link, switch to html view and copy the code from there to the text widget. (Thanks alrodyssey.) The caption code needs to come after the image source, else it will display on top.

Enjoy the wysiwyg of the visual editor, but use the html editor for real control: to insert line breaks without paragraph space (return or <br />), manipulate tables (colspan etc.).

If you use IE and the images are distorted, try the compatibility view.

If you want an uncluttered look, use a custom menu.

For links to specific places in same or other posts, use page jumps:
Add  anchors in the html editor with: <a name=”label”>Text</a>
Jump from same post is <a href=”#label”>Jump</a>
Jump from another post is <a href=”<post url>/#label”>Jump</a>
When you jump, the actual anchor point is often hidden (e.g. by the wordpress-bar), so set the anchor in the line above what you want to show. The “anchor text”  looks like a link, so I use an empty tag just before the end of a paragraph. …qed<a name=”label”></a>.</p> In the visual view of the post edit screen you still see a little anchor, but a cheat-sheet of labels you’ve used can make things easier. (n.b. If you copy the code, retype the  quotation marks. )

To use full column width for an image, use advanced settings to control width and alignment. On “Dusk to Dawn” that is 588px wide (though the column width is officially 474/222 or 810, header 870), and align -30 on left. Align -50 on top to close up to featured image, which displays below the header if you don’t use a custom header image.

If you think “there’s got to be a flag for this!”, try the Screen Options in the top right corner of your screen. When all else fails: Google knows everything.