I’ve always wondered how some bloggers manage to have only a portion of their post on a page and then the word ‘more’ that links to the rest of the post. And now I’ve found that not only is a long post a bit more intimidating to read sometimes, but the blog slows down and doesn’t load as quickly for people. Good reasons for me to learn how to do it. So here I go ..Now if I did this right, you had to click on ‘more’ and you’ve come to a new page. Yay, I did it!  I think this is only for WordPress, but I’ll tell you all the hard technical details.

First you decide where you want to break up the post you’ve started to write, then look up at the toolbar above your post dialogue box. On the right side, you’ll see a little button that looks like it has two white boxes, one above the other. On my toolbar, it’s to the left of the spell check button. Anyway, click that button with the boxes (says ‘Insert More tag’ when you hold your cursor over it) and the job is done.

As you can see, it took me longer to explain it than to split your post. If for some reason you can’t see the buttons in the toolbar, check that the tab for Visual mode is at the front and not HTML.

Now aren’t you feeling like a techie after doing that? Just don’t tell my husband I’m not as smart as I keep telling him I am!

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I have to thank Hostgator tech support for helping me to ward off a panic attack yesterday. I went to my company home page and it was gone!  The theme was still there, as were all the category titles, but no content. Absolutely none!

I’d put a lot of work into this site and was more than upset that it was gone. I went to the Hostgator site and clicked the ‘live chat’  button. Within a few minutes I was texting back and forth with a wonderful and patient technician. For over an hour he worked with me, telling me where to find things in my cpanel, what to click next to repair my WordPress database.

Once I finally understand what to do, the repair was fast and easy. And all my content was back up. Thank you so much Kevin and I hope you got a raise!

Technorati Tags: WordPress repair, Hostgator support, customer service excellence

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Since I’ve got a fair bit of content on this blog now, I wanted to be able to show related posts that I’ve done in the past. There are a few different WordPress plugins for that. The first I tried was the Related Post plugin, but I wasn’t sure how to make it work. Non-techy that I am, I need easy, easy, easy.

So I deleted that one (two similar plugins would have caused problems) and I tried the “Yet Another Related Post” plugin. Much easier to set up, but I couldn’t for the life of me see any related posts. Then it dawned on me, maybe I had to click on a specific post to read it. And yahoo, there was a listing of other posts. Most of them seemed to be related and I’m very pleased. If you want to try it, the plugin link is listed as well.

Two other pluses I found. When my blog updates are sent by email to my subscribers, the related post links are mentioned as well. And when my site shows as an RSS feed on another one of my blogs, those related links are also shown. Don’t ask me what RSS feeds are. I can explain them about as well as I can tell you how electricity comes into my house. I just know to switch on the light!

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More WordPress trials and lessons learned these days. First, my WordPress template clashed with a plugin I’d added and wouldn’t work anymore.  The solution was to have the information installed in the template code and now it shows on every page at the top and in the sidebar. Not quite what I wanted, but I’m leaving well-enough alone.

Then, there were too many themes in my WordPress themes folder and they were weighing down my blog, so I had to go through and delete some of them. 

Now, my WordPress blogs are exactly where I want them. But do they behave like good little children and stay that way? No, they do not. Today I am having trouble with the videos I’ve inserted in some of my posts. The last time I looked, there were the videos, looking sharp and intelligent. This afternoon, in their place are buttons that go nowhere when pressed. I’ve managed to fix one, I think, but the other has run away to Florida. Guess it’s even too cold here in Canada for videos!

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For any of you who are using the old adhesive plugin with your WordPress blog, once you upgrade your WordPress, the plugin won’t work anymore. But there is an update called the Sticky plugin.

When I first installed it, I thought it wasn’t there, because it didn’t show up in the Publish Status field anymore. Now you have to scroll down, down, down to the bottom of your page and you’ll find it listed under Advanced Options.

So I found it and selected “Sticky” and then it worked, right? Of course not – this is a computer, remember? Next I tried selecting “Announcement” within the Sticky options and it put my post right at the top, just like I wanted it to. Again, I have no idea why this is. If anyone can tell me when I would use the Sticky selection in options, please let me know.

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