Where are my active widgets?

  • rogue417 · Member ·

    When visiting widgets I have a column of ‘available widgets’ and those already active on my ‘blog – or at least I should. However the widgets (Categories, Blogroll, Calendar) that came with this theme do not appear among those active. Adding them from the available list works; they then appear among the active widgets. However I then have two Categories, or two Calendars on my ‘blog – not needed. I want to rename some of those widgets that came with the theme, and eliminate others. How can I do so if they’re not appearing among the “active” widgets? Thank you!

  • vivianpaige · Member ·

    We cannot help without a link to your wordpress.COM blog. And if you are hosted here, link your user name to your blog as explained in the sticky, 8 things, at the top of the forums.

  • rogue417 · Member ·

    Thanks Vivian, I appreciate your assistance. Specifically I’m looking to affect http://mike4ward9.wordpress.com, my latest creation.

  • panaghiotisadam · Member ·

    The first part of what you’re describing is normal, because a theme’s preset sidebar items are artificially generated, not real widgets. The rest is quite unusual: normally those items get cancelled when you add widgets yourself. But your blog is protected – you should make it temporarily public so we can have a look at it. (Or at least tell me which theme you’re using so I can check it in my tests blog, in case it’s a quirk of a theme I’m not familiar with, or in case it’s a new bug.) Also, did you switch from one theme to another? (There’s a bug when you do that.)

  • steveblank · Member ·

    I have a similar problem. The theme of my blog is Digg 3 column. My blog is steveblank.com (which is protected, i will unprotect for a few hours…). I have a calendar in the upper right side bar. it came with the blog and is not listed in the list of widgets that I can remove. So (1) how do I remove it? And then (2) I want to use this same space (upper area of right sidebar) to add an image of my book with some words below it. Can you help me? thank you very much.

  • panaghiotisadam · Member ·

    @steveblank:

    1. When you haven’t added any widgets yourself, the theme displays its own default set of artificially generated sidebar or bottombar items. Once you add any widget, the default goes. So, to remove unwanted sidebar items, you go to Appearance>Widgets and simply add the widgets you really want. Don’t forget to click Save Changes. You can also rearrange the widgets by dragging them into new positions.

    Since the theme you’re using has two sidebars, note that in Appearance>Widgets you get the contents of Sidebar 1 by default. After you’re done with it, you need to access Sidebar 2: select it from the srolldown menu, click “Show”.

    2. You need a Text widget. Before I give more details: Have you uploaded the image in your blog? And is it small enough to fit in the sidebar or not?

  • steveblank · Member ·

    Wow! thanks very much. I WAS able to get rid of the calendar (though for awhile I lost all my links in Sidebar 2. They reappeared after 5 or 10 minutes.) i still can’t delete Comments RSS, but that is minor.

    SO i had added a TEXT widget before I read this, but I have no idea how to get an image in there. I have uploaded the image to the Media library, but i don’t know how big it is (you mean dimensions?) How can I tell that.

    also, we want the image to have a URL that it links to (book store). Beneath it we want to say “Read the reviews” and have it link to Amazon. so i need a way to insert a link to text and a link to the image in the TEXT widget, which I don’t see how to do.

    I can send you the actual links if that would help.

    my email is steveblankblog AT yahoo DOT com

    thanks again

  • panaghiotisadam · Member ·

    Text link:
    <a href="URL_HERE" target="_blank">TEXT_HERE</a>

    Image link:
    <a href="URL_OF_WEBPAGE_HERE" target="_blank"><img src="URL_OF_IMAGE_HERE"></a>

    In the theme you’re using, a sidebar image has to be no wider than 150px (you can check that in any image viewing/editing application). If your image is wider than that, you can use this variant of the code to display a scaled-down version:
    <a href="URL_OF_WEBPAGE_HERE" target="_blank"><img src="URL_OF_IMAGE_HERE" width="150" /></a>

    But it’s better to upload a properly scaled-down copy of it instead. Also make sure it’s in low resolution (72).

  • steveblank · Member ·

    Ok, i got the image to 144 pixels wide (Microsoft picture manager, i know, elementary.)

    Adding image and URL
    after an hour, I found how to find the URL for the image! i found one of your old posts, thanks!
    here is the URL of the image, which i cannot get to appear.
    I did get the URL i want to link to the image to work, however. it works from a broken image symbol!
    suggestions?

    This is the statement I am trying to add to the widget:
    <img src=”http://steveblank.wordpress.com/wp-admin/media.php?action=edit&attachment_id=200”>

    Adding URL to text

    I have tried many many times and cannot get the URL below to “stay” or get saved in the text widget. it keeps stripping out the URL of the book. I click DONE to close the Text widget, then save. I have also tried Save immediately before closing the text widget. in both cases, I lose the URL. is Amazon forbidden in text widgets? [i can get the words “REad the reviews.” to appear but they link to a file not found.]

    Read the reviews.

    thanks very much again!!
    http://www.steveblank.com

  • raincoaster · Member ·

    Amazon links are affiliate links and usually most of that code is stripped out here. We need to see the exact code. Paste it between backticks, those little apostrophe-like marks often on the same key as the ~

    So it’s:

    Backtick, code all pasted here, backtick.

    that makes it display all the code

  • panaghiotisadam · Member ·

    @steveblank: The code you’ve written in the text widget is wrong.

    – It has to be exactly as I pasted it above: you’ve introduced extra quotation marks.

    – In the ref part, you need to paste the exact URL of the page you link to, as copied from the address bar of your browser.

    – In the source part, you need the exact URL of the image (starting with “http” and ending with “jpg”): not an attachment page, not anything containing “admin”. You can only get the image URL via the post or page editor: click Add an Image, click Media Library, locate image and click Show, copy URL; if it doesn’t show in the link box, click File URL.

    (That’s also the way to publish the image in a post or a page – by continuing with “Insert into Post”, of course. If you can’t work the code out, publish the image so I can get its URL and tailor the code for you.)

  • steveblank · Member ·

    Panaghiotisadam,
    thanks again!
    the trick to finding the right URL for the image is to select the tab saying “File URL”– not the one that say “Post URL.” I have no idea why, nor is it intuitive that tabs even exist, but trial and error finally found it.

    the second trick was taking my sentences out of Word and pasting them into Notepad before I pasted them into the Widget Text window. If I knew how to use Livewriter, I hear that is excellent for blogs. but Notepad eliminated the problems of WordPress ADDING extra quotation marks,etc. Took a alittle bit of touch up inside the edit Text Widget box, but I got it. I was not adding those extra quotes myself! but when I saved the Text Widget, these extra marks appeared or words got stripped out.

    I wanted to type out the entire sentence or statement in Word first so that I knew i had it all.

    Is there a way to CENTER the image in the side bar?
    i found a version of the image i want that has a nice outline around it. I don’t know how to add that to this image myself (maybe in Power Point?). But the image is not centered.

    Thanks again very much for your help!

    http://www.steveblank.com
    i have 2 images of the book up now.

    I guess I’ll deal with the Amazon issue somehow. This is a link to a book this author published and wrote. we are linking to a small startup that sells the book (author makes no money either way, especially from Amazon). But Amazon has good reviews (helpful) of the book we want to link to.

  • raincoaster · Member ·

    Are you just trying to link to the Amazon page? Like, not signed in, not affiliated, nothing, just like any normal person looking up the page? It should work, then. No reason it wouldn’t. Can you paste the entire link here?

  • steveblank · Member ·

    Raincoaster asked about the link to the book reviews for the book this blog author wrote at Amazon. We want people to see the reviews if they want to.

    so the code I am trying to write has the words “Read the reviews.” and linked to it should be the URL for the book on Amazon.

    i’ll use Backticks for the entire line of code to see if that helps you see it. thanks!

    <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/0976470705" target="_blank">Read the reviews.</a>

  • steveblank · Member ·

    I got the Amazon statement to work!! Maybe putting it through Notepad first helped. Also, Word uses backwards and forwards quote marks, and your code needs straight up and down quote marks, which I can only get by typing directly into the Widget edit box.

    now I have one more problem (for now!)

    I want the Read the Reviews sentence to be below the book image, and i can’t get it there just by adding spaces in the Text edit box. what should I do to get it to move down?

    thanks very much again!!
    Kris

  • raincoaster · Member ·

    Yes, never ever use Word when it’s going to end up on the Web. It’s malicious, what Word does to your code. Glad to hear it’s working for you.

    You can enclose the Read the Reviews sentence in p tags

    <p>your code and sentence here</p>

  • panaghiotisadam · Member ·

    1. The WP editor doesn’t add any junk – Word does that:

    Why not to use Word

    Word doesn’t speak internet language: never paste directly from it. If you like to prepare your material, use a simple text editor (such as Notepad). And if you do have to paste from Word, do it via the “Paste from Word” or the “Paste as Plain Text” buttons.

    2. The tabs exist to give you options as to what happens when one clicks on a published image: link to the real-size original alone (File URL), or link to a temporary blog-like page with the image in it (Post URL), or no link at all.

    3. To create a black border, add this after “img” (with a space before and a space after):
    style="border:1px solid black;"
    But your image needs some cropping left and right.

    4. You must also add this between the two image codes, so that the images won’t be stuck to one another:
    <div style="height:20px;"></div>

    5. To center the complete content of the widget, enclose it in this code:
    <div align="center">CONTENT_HERE</div>

  • steveblank · Member ·

    Wow, black border worked first try! and so did the spacing between image and text. I did not try the Center yet.

    One more question: can we rename PAGES to something else in this Theme? (the Digg 3 theme)?

    thanks again!

  • compassionateconsiderations · Member ·

    Hello could anyone please help me?

    I am migrating my blog from wordpress.com to a self-hosted domain.

    My wordpress blog is compassionateconsiderations.wordpress.com
    I am now transferring the widgets as well – and they seem to be working well except for the BLOG STATS. I need help in transferring the BLOG STATS but I could not seem to remember the counter site that I subscribed to so that I could get the codes. I would hate to start back at zero when I have more than 9,000 hits at this time.

    Could anyone please help?

    Thanks!

  • raincoaster · Member ·

    Blog stats do not transfer from one blog to another.

  • The topic ‘Where are my active widgets?’ is closed to new replies.