Widget woes
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I am using the Day Dream theme that doesn’t have much space for widgets. So far I have tried to add a blog roll and a search bar. Problems are: 1) there are two search bars instead of one(and I can’t rid of one of them) and, 2)the blog roll looks ok on IE but kind of garbled on Firefox and a friend says that it looks garbled on her Mac too. So how do I neaten up my widgets? TIA
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There’s no widget “space” problem in Day Dream: if you add more widgets the bottom bar will expand.
The search box is part of the theme, so you mustn’t add a search widget. This is what causes the “garbling”: your blogroll is ok, but the superfluous search box overlaps it.
So just remove the search widget and then you can add whatever other widgets you want.
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Ohhhh, thanks. Will do that immediately.
Another blogroll question: how can I arrange it so that clicking on the links open new windows instead of opening new websites? TIA.
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Go to Manage > Links, click on name of link, scroll down to “Advanced Options – Target”, select “blank”, click Save. Same option when you write a new link.
If you want the same for links within the text of a post or in a text widget, then instead of this:
<a href="URL">NAME</a>
use this:
<a href="URL" target="_blank">NAME</a> -
I’m not having any luck getting html code to show up using the Text widget. Or does it take a bit of time before new code becomes visible on the blog page?
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It does not, but that’s an unrelated issue. Try a search of the forum and/or FAQs. It’s a relatively common problem.
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I don’t even know what a text widget is so back to my blogroll question.
As panaghiotisadam suggested, I set the Advance Options-Target for “blank” for all links, and saved the setting, but clicking the link still opens a new website, not a new window. And while I’m at it, why would I want my blog name to appear on my own blogroll?
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When you say that clicking opens a new website rather than a new window, I’m not sure what you mean. It will open the new website in a new browser window; it will not open a smaller window within your blog in which the new website loads. Am I missing something? The links are working perfectly for me.
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@buyathread: I don’t understand either; that’s exactly what the links are supposed to do, take you to another website.
By the way, the links you have are not blogs, so you’d better go to Manage > Link Categories, and rename “Blogroll” into something more pertinent (and note that you can have more than one link categories).
As for your other question, I don’t know how it occured to you – of course there’s no point in having your own blog in your blogroll.
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There’s a lot that I don’t understand but, for starters, what do the three different Advance Options-Target settings DO? I have set and saved each one and the very same thing happens when I click a link, regardless of what the setting is.
Also, the words “links” and “blogrolls” seem to be used interchangeably on this board. I want to call my links, links (I know they’re not blogs), but don’t know how to re-name the heading.
My own blog name appeared by magic in blogroll list this morning, and since this whole subject has me so bewildered, I thought I’d better ask, stupid as it sounded.
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The title on the links widget is based on the category you have assigned the links to. Under manage>links, you will see the category that all of your links are assigned to. Under manage>link categories, you will see the link categories themselves. The default is blogroll but you can assign the links to a category called links and that is what will show up on your blog.
Someone else will have to explain the three options. I use target_blank myself, because even though it is not net-correct, I don’t want people leaving my site ;)
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I’ve been trying to sort this out all day unsuccessfully. I tried to add a “Links” category but there doesn’t seem to be a way to either replace “Blogroll” on the actual page, or to add names of sites that I want to link to. The list of available widgets for my theme says “Links: blogroll” and I don’t know how to change that.
I don’t want people leaving my site either but every one of the three settings that I tried takes the viewer to the links’ site and away from mine so it’s time for a glass of wine and maybe this will all look clearer tomorrow.
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A link will ALWAYS open the new website. The only question is whether it opens in the same window (which closes the window for your site) or in a new window (which leaves the window for your site open). For example, when I click on your first link, it opens in the SAME window, meaning I can’t readily get back to your site. The second link opens in a NEW window and I can just go back to the window where I had your site open.
I didn’t mention the widget, I mentioned the CATEGORY and even gave you the location to see what CATEGORY your links are in: go to manage>links in your dashboard. There you will see the category that each link is assigned to.
If you want a category called “Links” go to manage>link categories and add it there.
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@buyathread: I’m having a glass of wine at the moment, too, so we’ll make good copmany!
As you know by now, “blank” means that the link will open in a new window (which I think is generally preferable because it doesn’t really take your visitors away from your blog). The other two options, “top” and “none”, are identical as far as I can tell – perhaps someone more experienced might enlighten us both.
You can forget the Links widget once you’ve added it: you don’t do anything in it, it just adds the links functionality. To change the name “Blogroll” you go to Manage > Link Categories, click “Blogroll”, erase it and type another category name, click Edit Category. To add a site you want to link to, you copy its URL from the address bar of your browser, go to Write > Link, paste the URL at “Web Address”, type the name you like at “Name”, tick the appropriate link category or add a new one, click Save.
Cheers!
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Well, panaghiotisadam and vivianpaige, thank you for your patience. It’s been a long slog but unless something has changed in the last 15 minutes, my blog now has three LINKS — not blogrolls — and they all open in separate browser windows.
Now on to another question if I can’t find it in FAQs.
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If you have something to suggest for FAQ and glossary, please add in this thread:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=31496&replies=23
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