New Gal on the block - some basic set up questions

robynann · Post by **robynann** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 3:24 pm

Hi I'm the new gal on the block here I guess and I'm a beginner to all of this blogging and setting up blogs..

I have been trying out blogs for the last two weeks and I am totally frustrated.. I first of coarse went to Word Press, I got so confused with php and css and all of that coding jargon. I asked questions on their forum, trying to basically set up. I got answers telling me that wordpress org. was not for me..

okay I went to Nucleus - great tech support and I learned alot but not so user friendly to a beginner.. everytime I want to change or add something seems I must go to the techs..

installed my hosts own version using word press.. was great but no widgets, plugin or any tweaking can be done...

now totally frustrated I come to serendipity.. I managed to already get a custom banner up.. woooo hoooo that took a tech telling me what to do in nucleus!

and even managed to install a plug in - major major celebration

but now I'm stuck.. can I add things like a) Slide shows, b)music and
most importantly I need someplace on the sideboard where I can c) link many many different blinkies of other blogs like myself . It is our way of advertising. also with that in mind I want on the sidebar d) a section for my favorite sites.. all clicable links

I want to be able to do these codings without the expert help of a tech every single time I have a new blinkie to put up or come across a great site..

Hope I have made myself clear about what I need, someone to direct me how to do these things and once done let me do it, don't make it so complicated that I won't be able to just put in simple html code and yes that is what I would like to work with if at all possible, html

I have been told to use Blogger, Word Press.com or accept what my host has.. because I am so inexperienced in CSS and PHP. Is there not a place that is willing to take us newbies in and explain in english, slowly what to do and then let us do it? No one has the patience nor do they remember when they too didn't know a thing..

okay off my soap box.. am I able to have the things I mentioned and someone please explain to me what PermaLinks is in words I can understand please.. I keep reading what it is but the words go over my head, zoom around and don't land anywhere near me..

sorry but I am so frustrated, we have been trying to launch a business and this has stopped us in our tracts for a while now..

Thank you very much
Robyn

Post by **garvinhicking** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 3:45 pm

Hi!

Sorry to read you've went through so much frustration. I know how painful it can be to get started with new grounds. I hope we will be able to help you, but since you already were able to setup and use Serendipity, the chances are good.

but now I'm stuck.. can I add things like a) Slide shows, b)music and
most importantly I need someplace on the sideboard where I can c) link many many different blinkies of other blogs like myself . It is our way of advertising. also with that in mind I want on the sidebar d) a section for my favorite sites.. all clicable links

Serendipity has a very easy way to add content through the so called "HTML Nugget" sidebar plugin. You can install it through your s9y admin suite, in the "Configure Plugins" section, when you click on the Link "Click here to install a sidebar plugin". There you scroll to the "HTML Nugget" plugin and click on the install icon next to it.

This will then forward you to a page where you enter the title of the sidebar plugin and then you can copy+paste any HTML you like into it. If you use "heavy" customized HTML, be sure to disable the option "Apply Markup transformations", because that could serously mess up your beautiful raw HTML code.

So, this is the easiest way to go if you know your HTML. If you don't know HTML, there are certain plugins for dedicated functionality, like the "Link List" plugin. Such additional plugins are not distributed with serendipity itself, but are hosted on a Service called "Spartacus". You can see the plugin listings on spartacus.s9y.org - download the plugin you like, and upload it via FTP into your blog's "plugins" directory.

There also is a "Spartacus" event plugin distributed with serendipity. You can install that, and if your server allows it (read: is not firewalled) you can easily download the plugins from WITHIN serendipity and don't even need to start up your FTP.

Once the link list plugin is downloaded and installed, you get a new admin link in your interface "Link List". Click on that, and there you can start maintaining your link lists.

As for music and slideshows: There are some ways to go. The hard way, using PHP and XML to show slideshows of the serendipity media database. That is a bit for advanced users though, so maybe for starters you should better go with free javascript widgets like available through flickr or other pages (http://www.ditii.com/2008/08/21/flickr- ... ow-widget/ -- and you might want to google for 'embed slideshow javascript' or something like that).

Once you have the javascript code, you can easily put it into one of the fabulour HTML nuggets, or even embed it into your blog postings, if you like the content to stay there.

The same applies to music, this is basically just a variant of an embed, just like you use youtube videos.

I have been told to use Blogger, Word Press.com or accept what my host has.. because I am so inexperienced in CSS and PHP. Is there not a place that is willing to take us newbies in and explain in english, slowly what to do and then let us do it? No one has the patience nor do they remember when they too didn't know a thing..

The core problem is that free time of humans is limited. The things we do for free (like I do support on this forum) use up time, that is often precious to use - like for families, enjoying life or earning money. It can be very hard to explain things to newbies, and easily take up hours of your time.

There are few people left that really go through this ordeal to spend their own time, and actually get no "real" reward other than maybe feeling good. So often people try to go halfway between: Help as much as possible, but more to enable people to help themself, instead of chewing everything up for the user. This is what I try to do: Empower people to help themself.

This often requires the persons to pay the same amount of time that others pay to them, to themselves. They need to get themselves familiar with the application, with certain code aspects. Once cannot expect others to do their own work for them, you always have to give at least that back what you receive: Time, motivation and effort.

I do see those things in you, and I'm sure you already know most of what I wrote. But I think it's simply important to remember that free time is a rare and limited good, especially if the people are experts and have many people to help for. The more expert you become, the less you have the time to describe the most basic things, because you specialize.

I, for example, could easily help you in complex PHP coding or regular expression debugging, because that is a very centric, detailed problem. The more global it gets, the more time it takes.

That's actually why people write books about those topics - to start as global as possible and give people some guidelines. I did that with the german s9y book, but sadly it is not available in english yet.

okay off my soap box.. am I able to have the things I mentioned and someone please explain to me what PermaLinks is in words I can understand please.. I keep reading what it is but the words go over my head, zoom around and don't land anywhere near me..

"Permalinks" sound really complicated, but they are really simply: A permalink identifies content on a webserver uniquely. A URL is a permalink: http://www.google.de/ is just the same of a permalink like http://blog.s9y.org/archives/198-The-Fu ... ipity.html

A permalink always is there to allow people to access the SAME content. The content of such a link should not change, so a startpage is actually only a permalink, if the content is static and does not change. Like the google frontpage.

But a blog'S frontpage changes with time, so if people see an interesting article on your blog and they come back later, they would never again know where the article was they liked. Thus, each entry has an associated permalink: If you remember this URL (you get it by clicking on the entry title) and bookmark that one, you will always be able to get back to that content.

HTH,
Garvin

robynann · Post by **robynann** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 4:04 pm

Omg! Garvin I think I found a home! yup most certainly and will you marry me! nah just kidding rofl.. my hubby would kill me..

Thank you thank you , I understood most all you said and can work thru what I didnt I'm sure of it. Like you said I don't want to take up your time from family , and other addictions. I just want some basic understanding then I can go on to do it myself. I enjoy doing things myself in fact once I grasped html I created my whole main site. Its a huge mess I'm sure but its works.. Looks good and I will learn from others little by little the mistakes I did make.. with that said your explanation of Permalinks was a gem, the meaning now has a place of understanding inside me instead of roaming around with words I couldn't understand. Thank you.. How easy that was, and I understood totally right away now why couldnt others say it that way.. duh and duh.. lol

won't hold you up much longer , till the next time.. I'm off to jolly bloggin land where I'm going to go play with the plugins..

Really Garvin, thanks so much... I will be making an announcement to my Scrapbooking Design Team that we found a home..

oh geez one more thing I didnt see a way to make a link for my designers to register to be able to do their own blog posts. I need this as my designers need to make their own posts and post their own previews and download links for our scrapbook kits we design.. is it another plugin?

sorry I was so sure I'd hit another brick wall I forgot to ask that important question..

Thank you once again
Robyn

Post by **garvinhicking** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 4:44 pm

Hi!

robynann wrote:Omg! Garvin I think I found a home!

Make yourself at home.

Feel free to write up any questions you have. The more precise your questions are (like those about permalinks), the better I (or others, for that matter) are able to help you. And before you know it, you'll get addicted to serendipity and help others as well!

oh geez one more thing I didnt see a way to make a link for my designers to register to be able to do their own blog posts. I need this as my designers need to make their own posts and post their own previews and download links for our scrapbook kits we design.. is it another plugin?

There is a plugin, but I'm not sure if it totally is what you want.

Serendipity is basically a "One Installation, One Blog" system. There are ways for experts to bend those barriers, but in last instance, one blog can only power one site. So you cannot use Serendipity to allow your users to instantly create their own blog.

But I believe this is not what you wanted, instead you might simply want to have "co-Bloggers" that write inside your own blog, and whose entries are shown on the same place like yours. This is doable.

For that you need to use the "User Self-Registration" plugin that is also available through the spartacus plugin repository. With that, you see a sidebar plugin that allows others to enter their username, so that they can be authors on your blog. As the admin, you have control through the plugin configuration, in which user groups those new people will be, and you can give them privileges to only do what you allow them to do.

Best regards,
Garvin

robynann · Post by **robynann** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 4:53 pm

yup and yup you answered exactly what I was asking..
as to having multiple blogs that is something I would want if my womens organization gets off the ground, but that is something to worry about down the road.. and who knows you might offer that too at a later date.. I am happy for what I have now.. in fact tickled..

Thanks so much Garvin for your time
Robyn

judebert · Post by **judebert** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 5:07 pm

If you have a small group of designers, you might want to maintain tighter control over who gets to create entries on your blog. With the "User Self-Registration" plugin, anybody can request an account. You still keep control, since you can reject the request; but you still have to examine all those requests all the time.

Instead, you can simply use your admin panel to create accounts for each of your designers. It's not too hard, you're just creating new users and putting them in appropriate groups. They can change their own passwords later. You seem to have a pretty good handle on computer use, I don't think it'll be a problem for you.

Skipping the plugin also keeps your installation leaner, faster, and less complicated. If you do decide to go with the plugin, keep in mind that it's an EVENT plugin. Those are listed under the SIDEBAR plugins.

Welcome to the community!

robynann · Post by **robynann** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 5:23 pm

okay yes I see what your saying. I will go take look at that in the admin panel.. Thanks again .. Got my work cut out for me today

I guess there is one other thing one of the gals just brought up.. Its not really the template, thats fine, but a skin. I know you don't have different skins so if I want to change the look it would have to be a template, am I right? or is there evan a way to maybe make the backround a pattern instead of solid color and small changes like that..something that might match my banner. I am a graphic designer so can do the imaging myself once again the coding gets to me.. it kills me! lol I did see something I cant really remember as I was looking at serendipity about two days ago before I dove in today and started playing around. It was a template called "Faith" with pink I believe daisys on a wedding theme. Made by someone that does have a few of his templates as your ready made ones. forget the name sorry..

any ideas here will help as I have to make these ladies happy, their mean and they beat me daily...

Thanks so much
Robyn

Post by **Don Chambers** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 5:35 pm

Robyn - welcome to the s9y community!

Changing the look of your template is really just a matter of modifying its stylesheet(s). If you want to post a link to your site, and ask a very specific question, we can try to accomodate your request.

As a graphic designer, I presume you are comfortable with photoshop.... for something like a textured background, ideally what you want is a very small slice of a graphic that can be repeated - horizontally, vertically, or both.

judebert · Post by **judebert** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 6:03 pm

Don's right, of course. Unfortunately, the stylesheet is the "CSS" that you were worried about earlier.

A 'template' or 'theme' in Serendipity inherits anything it's missing from the default template. So a new template can be as simple as just a stylesheet.

Since you can already create the background graphic, I recommend editing your stylesheet. CSS isn't really all that tough, and it's a good thing for graphic designer to learn.

Download the template's stylesheet. The easiest way is to FTP to your blog, then go to the templates/your-template's-name/ directory and get the style.css file.

Find the #mainpane block. This defines the attributes of the one-and-only-one item with id='mainpane' assigned to it.

Remove any background- stuff it has right now.

Add your own background with the line:

Code: Select all

background: url({TEMPLATE_PATH}/your-background-file.png) top left repeat;

Upload both your background image and the modified style.css to the template directory.

Reload the page in your browser, refreshing the cache (use shift-reload, for instance).

Done!

You can see the whole list of CSS background attributes at w3schools.com.

judebert · Post by **judebert** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 6:05 pm

If you want to do the same thing in a different place, you've just got to find the right place in the style.css file. For instance, to set the background for the entire page, you want the block that starts with "body".

robynann · Post by **robynann** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 6:07 pm

Hi again.. I just deleted the dummy site I made to experiment in and am thowing this one together real fast for the gals to see.. Then I'll work with it.

http://www.charmedscrapzare.us

I work in photshop, elements and paint shop pro 9 and 12photo.. I am familiar with making a tile if that is what you are talking about.. I did notice in some scripts they have teeny tiny little graphic when enlarged becomes a
background.. is that more what your saying..

to be more specific. I saw a template named "faith" it was created by David Cummings I believe.. we could us that maybe or tweak the one I put up..

any ideas would be appreciated.. as I might be biting off more than I can chew in installing a new template

Thanks so much
Robyn

robynann · Post by **robynann** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 6:14 pm

oh wow sorry didn't see that new post before I put mine in. That doesnt sound that awfully hard. I know some CSS but a total external style sheet on my own is something I'm learning about now.. will have that down in a month or so. lol

okay kewl thank you so much once again..

Robyn

if you take a peak at the site I threw the banner I had premade already up. I really need the proper dimensions to get it to fit right. The Template I chose for now was the Bulletproof one...

.

Post by **Don Chambers** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 6:26 pm

I like your banner!

BP loads multiple stylesheets - the last being specific to the colorset you select, which at the moment, is purple.

You will see this in purple_style.css:

Code: Select all

body {
    background: #3f1a3c url('img/purple_body.jpg') repeat-x;
}

What I did there was create a 1 pixel wide, by 800 pixel tall gradient fading from a light purple, do a dark purple... specifically hex value 3f1a3c. That image is repeated across the entire screen width... when the page reaches the bottom of the image at 800 pixels, the background color of #3f1a3c takes over.

You could replace this css with whatever image you wanted using a similar technique...

robynann · Post by **robynann** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 6:34 pm

oh wow! great! will do..

Thanks all of you for your time this morning.. I really do appreciate it.. Now I will most assuredly leave you's alone. well at least for the next couple of hours. lol.. the day even.. oh darn, the dimensions of that header anyone know??

Robyn

Post by **Don Chambers** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 6:42 pm

robynann wrote:the dimensions of that header anyone know??
Robyn

The width of the banner is the same as the wrapper, which is 944px. The height of the banner is defined as 136px. These, of course, can be changed to suit your tastes:

Code: Select all

#wrapper {
    width: 944px;
    font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
    font-size: 69%;
    background-color: #ffffff;
    border: 1px solid #823995;
    margin: 0px auto;
}

#serendipity_banner {
    height: 136px;
    margin: 0;
    border: 0px;
    background: #823995 url('img/purple_header.jpg') no-repeat;
}

New Gal on the block - some basic set up questions

New Gal on the block - some basic set up questions

Re: New Gal on the block - some basic set up questions