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At the bottom of my blog (Skeptical) in the bottom footer, there are three Featured Posts. These are duplications of three that are already showing at the top of the blog. When I typed those posts, I did not set them to be Featured Posts.
How can I not have any featured posts showing on my blog?
How can I set a preference for them to just disappear forever?
-Peregrine
The blog I need help with is raven500.wordpress.com.
I was referring to the Featured Posts at the bottom of the page in the bottom footer.
-Pere
Featured posts = sticky posts. If you don't want them, edit them and turn them to not sticky.
Panos,
I checked all of the posts I wrote. They are all selected/marked as Standard, not Sticky or Featured.
I am wondering if this is not something that the Skeptical theme does automatically. That is, to add the three most recent posts as Featured Posts in the Footnote. If it is possible, I would like to de-select that feature.
-Lorna
More info: I checked the Widget area. There are four footer widgets. I checked all of them, and they are all empty.
-Pere
I use Skeptical theme.
Also, in Settings, the default post format is set at STANDARD.
-PERE
Link to the blog in question please - the one linked to your username is using Manifest, not Skeptical.
Panos, I would like to email a question/comment to you. Do you have an email address for that?
(My blog is private with only one user read/write ability: My doctor.)
-Pere
Panos, wow, I just now clicked onto your gravator and saw PREZI DOCS. This looks like fun! I'd like to use that code sometime in the future for a regular blog other than my private one.
=Peregrine
That should read GRAVATAR, not GRAVATOR.
Panos --
I just now checked the specs on Theme (on the Theme pages). One description is:
"Footer
Skeptical has nice features in the footer. You can feature a maximum of three posts by marking them as sticky posts."
All of my five or six posts (so far) have been set as Standard Regular posts. Not Sticky Posts. Not Featured Posts. If that is so, then how is it that I have three Sticky Posts at the bottom footer?
-Pere
@lornakismet
As your blog visibility is set to "private" my suggestion is that you seek Staff support. Here’s the link http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/ and it will be active again on Monday, October 17th. After you use the searchbox, under the search results, at the bottom of the page there will be a section that says “Have you found the answer to your question?” You can choose either “Yes I found the answer to my question.” or “No I didn’t find the answer to my question and I would like to contact support for help.” The no option will reveal the contact form.
Unless Panos will give me a private email address, in which case I will send him the URL to my blog.
The question is actually not crucial. It is a matter of aesthetics and possibly avoiding my doctor, who will have access to my blog, from being confused with repetitious posts, which is what the three posts in the bottom footer are.
Thank you for the detailed response, Timethief. :-) If I have not solved this less-than-crucial question by tomorrow, when Staff returns, then I might send them a question following the instructions you offered.
-Pere
Unless Panos will give me a private email address, in which case I will send him the URL to my blog.
We Volunteers do not provide WordPress.com support by email and all email addresses posted here in forum threads are redacted by the software to prevent their collection by email harvesting spam bots.
@Lorna: Sticky posts aren't set in the Post Format module, they are set in the Publish module, under Visibility:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/post-visibility/
Go to Posts > All Posts and check: if you've got sticky posts, you'll see "Sticky" next to the post titles. If so, hover under the title, click Quick Edit, uncheck the option "Make this post sticky", click Update.
PS In case you have any doubts, timethief knows she's speaking for me too in the above reply.
Panos, I was referring to maybe your blog website/contact/Comment address. I once asked someone here a question in his blog and let him know in the forum here. He answered it here.
I would not want to intrude into your privacy by asking for a personal email address and that was a bad choice of words when I described it that way.
Thank you!
-Peregr
@Lorna: Sticky posts aren't set in the Post Format module, they are set in the Publish module, under Visibility:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/post-visibility/
Go to Posts > All Posts and check: if you've got sticky posts, you'll see "Sticky" next to the post titles. If so, hover under the title, click Quick Edit, uncheck the option "Make this post sticky", click Update.
___________________________
Panos, I did as you described, and none of my post titles have "Sticky" next to them.
So could this simply be something that is built into the Skeptical theme? That the last three posts are automatically put in the bottom footer? A repetition of what is at the top of the Home Page?
-Peregrine
"So could this simply be something that is built into the Skeptical theme?"
No. When (and only when) you set a post as a sticky in Skeptical, it will show up at the top of your main posts page (as in most themes), with the word "Featured" in place of the date, and its beginning or custom excerpt will also show up in the Featured Posts footer section.
"I did as you described, and none of my post titles have "Sticky" next to them."
Did you go past page 1 in Posts > All Posts? Maybe they're older posts.
Hi Panos, and thanks! This new blog has only five posts. I made them all last night and early this morning at 1:00 am. I had to write each post and date them according to real time -- going back to Oct. 4 and continuing thru Oct. 16.
Thus, with only five posts, there is only one short little page of "all Posts."
And I did not set anything to be Sticky or Featured.
..... so the mystery continues. :-)
--Pere
If you want custom email support, typically you'd have to pay for that. Volunteers in the support forum don't generally offer that sort of thing.
I'm not familiar with this theme, but some themes do set the newest posts as Featured. Newest comments are Featured as well. Why not try the old Sidebar Dodge, ie put a widget, any widget, in your footer and see if ti clears those out?
@rain: It won't. The Featured Posts footer section is a separate section, above the footer widgets.
@Lorna: My previous replies were given after I checked things (again) in my regular tests blog. Baffled by the "mystery" your latest reply confirmed, I now tried Skeptical in a newer (empty) reserve blog I had: I published a few regular posts, and lo I got the same problem. I tried every thing I could think of but cannot get rid of the bottom featured posts. If I set one post in that blog as a sticky, then that post alone will show in the bottom area, but if I unstick it, then again the bottom area will revert to displaying the latest three posts although they aren't stickies. This, I repeat, doesn't happen in my other blog. So you must report this to staff (as the Theme Showcase clearly says that "Skeptical has nice features in the footer. You can feature a maximum of three posts by marking them as sticky posts").
@Panos
I just came to post that I had done the same thing in my test blog loaded with Skeptical and got the same results both Lorna and you did.
Peregrine (lornakismet) - I have a private blog as well as my public ones. I just tried out Skeptical theme to see what might be happening and you're quite right: the three most recent posts appear in the footer area. I looked at all the settings, including theme options, widgets, and looked also on the all posts page and the post editor pages for them to see if any were set to sticky, and they're not.
So... either they are meant to be there because that's how the theme has been designed, or it's a problem with the theme that could be sorted out by staff. What I would suggest is that you contact staff about it when they come back after the weekend. Alternatively - just change to a different theme.
By the way, I tried Raincoaster's suggestion of putting a widget in there to see if it would clear it and it didn't. I tried it in the footer widget areas and I tried it in the side panel. Same three recent posts still show. I think it's the theme itself, because it's actually above the footer widget areas.
This is a link to WordPress's demo of Skeptical theme: http://skepticaldemo.wordpress.com/ If you scroll down the page there you'll see the featured posts. Bear in mind that it's only a demo blog with that theme. (You can find demos of all the other themes via the Themes Showcase: http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/
I know that in the theme description for Skeptical it says one can set a maximum of three featured posts, but I can't personally see anywhere that these can be changed, unless it has to be done via CSS and, if so, then I can't advise you.
By the way, all the people who are helping you on this forum, apart from any staff who might help later, are volunteers. And volunteers are not going to give you their email addresses, particularly not on the forum.
Hi again everyone,
I flagged this thread so it gets moved to the Themes Forum. There Staff can let us know (1) whether or not this is the expected behavior for the theme or if this is a bug, and (2) whether or not the Theme notation needs to be corrected in the Themes Forum.
PS I just did an experiment, like Panos and Timethief did, and made a sticky post. That changed the three featured posts to just that one. Then I did another sticky post and that showed those two sticky posts. So, I think that what they meant to say on the theme description, but just didn't word clearly enough, is that if you want you can have up to three featured posts (in the footer area) but that if you want to change them to less than three you have to set them as sticky posts!
May I make a suggestion? If you make yourself a third private blog, just keep it for your own eyes - ie, not invite anyone else into it to view it - and then use it to experiment with themes and learning how to use WordPress, because that way you'll learn as you go along, and you won't need to use the forums as much. Many of us do exactly that - it's one of the best ways to learn and, because you're discovering things for yourself, they'll probably stick in your mind longer. :)
@absurdoldbird (re your PS): as I said in my previous reply, this doesn't happen in my regular tests blog: no stickies gives me no bottom featured posts.
Panos, thank you. I honestly did check everything and click every link and nonetheless got those blasted featured posts.
So then what I suspected was (I guess!) true: It is a glitch perhaps in Skeptical.
Tomorrow I will lay out the problem to the Support Team.
Thank you for confirming what I believed but could not prove.
=Peregrine
@ Panos. Sorry. Misread. It's late where I am.
Dear Absurd Old Bird...
In fact, I do have a practice test blog that I used constantly to test out the other blog, but not all answers come from that kind of testing, and sometimes one short answer from someone with experience can solve a problem that could take a long time solving.
This particular problem, I guess could have been solved if I replicated this new blog of mine with Skeptical, but nice people kept offering suggestions and I was happy to test them all out.
By the way, I made my second test blog (for another blog) because I am in the habit of changing themes. I think that the longest time I ever stayed with any one theme was with Vigilance. The fascination of new themes and new looks and features, however, is stronger than a need for constancy. I use the dummy blog to compare the look of newer themes with the one I have more than for figuring out answers to problems within a blog.
-Pere
Dear AbsurdOldBird..... I just now re-read your comment about people giving out their personal email addresses. I used the wrong, wrong term in asking Panos for a contact.
What I meant and should have asked for was a Contact type of email address. I once used such an email to someone else in this forum support team. Those emails are public, meant for the public. I should not have called it a personal email address.
-Peregrine
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