ProPhoto - Premium Wordpress Theme for Professional Photographers - Single Column, big pictures - Blog Template

Q: I embedded a YouTube video or ShowIt video (or something else) and my blog broke and is all messed up. What happened and how can I fix it?

A: Sometimes when you embed a YouTube video or occasionally something else (I’ve seen it happen with a ShowIt slideshow, although these usually work just fine) your whole blog “breaks” the text flows off to the side and onto your background.

This is caused by WordPress’ visual editor interacting poorly with YouTube (or ShowIt) embed code. To fix it, recreate your post. Click on “code editor” when you are ready to paste in your embed code. In the code editor, paste the code and save or publish the post FROM WITHIN THE CODE EDITOR. Do not go back to the visual editor after you’ve pasted the code in. It should work now.

Do not edit this post once it is working, as this will open it up in the visual editor and corrupt the code.

P.S. I think this is less of a problem with WordPress 2.5

Q: Can I embed a ShowIt slideshow? How do I center it?

A: Yes, just paste the embed code generated by ShowIt Web into the CODE EDITOR section of your posting admin panel.

If you want the slideshow centered, after you’ve pasted in the code into the code editor, add this tag before: <p align="center"> and this tag after:</p>.

NOTE: if you can’t see the controls of your ShowIt slideshow after embedding it, it’s probably a background color issue. For example, if you normally have your ShowIt slideshow web pages with a black background, ShowIt will make the controls WHITE so you can see them. However, if you paste the embed code into a blog with a white background, now you won’t be able to see the controls even though they are there. To fix this, just create an additional showit web page with the same background color as your blog, and use the embed code generated when making that page.

NOTE #2: Sometimes people get a problem when embedding ShowIt slideshows where the whole blog kind of breaks, and text below the show flows off into the background and everything looks weird. Click here for fix.

Q: I can make my own fancier flash header movie, or I know a guy. How do I embed it?

A: First, you need to grab this file and upload it into your prophoto folder. (You may need to right-click it and choose “save file as…” or something like that.) This file will help you embed the movie in such a way that doesn’t produce ugly borders when you hover over it in Internet Explorer. (Why are you still using Internet Explorer? Slap yourself and then get Firefox.)

Next, you’ll need a .swf file with the dimensions of 980px x 250px. Save it as exactly: “flashmovie.swf” and upload it into your prophoto folder. Then open your “header.php” (may be called just “Header”) file from the Design (’Presentation’ in WP 2.3 and earlier) –> Theme Editor. Right BEFORE where it says:

</head>

add a new line and paste in this:

<script src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory') ?>/AC_RunActiveContent.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Then, look further down in the “header.php” (aka: Header) file for these two lines (there’s a bunch of code in between):

<div id="header-masthead">

(…a bunch of code in here…)

</div><!--end div header-masthead-->

DELETE everything between those two lines of code and then INSIDE those two remaining tags, copy and paste the following code:

<script type="text/javascript">
AC_FL_RunContent( 'codebase','http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,19,0','width','980',
'height','250','title','','src','<?php bloginfo('template_directory') ?>/flashmovie','quality',
'high','pluginspage','http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer','bgcolor','#FFF','wmode','transparent','movie',
'<?php bloginfo('template_directory') ?>/flashmovie' ); //end AC code
</script>
<noscript>
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,19,0"
width="980" height="250">
<param name="movie" value="<?php bloginfo('template_directory') ?>/flashmovie.swf" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<embed src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory') ?>/flashmovie.swf" quality="high"
pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="980" height="250"></embed>
</object></noscript>

Save the changes and check your work.

Q: I would like a scrolling or moving header like I saw in some of the example sites. Is that included?

Yes and no. The newest version of ProPhoto does come with a built in functionality to create a fading slideshow header like this one. If you want a side-to-side scrolling header or something more complicated, you will have to create and embed a flash movie (.SWF) file yourself.

Related Post: How to embed a custom Flash header

I don’t want to use a logo image. Can I delete it? How do I get rid of the text that shows through when I delete the logo image file?

The best way to get rid of the logo is just to upload a blank white (or whatever your background color is) JPG image into the correct spot.  Name it header-logo.jpg, make it 397pixels wide by 108 pixels high, and upload it into the “images” folder inside of your “prophoto” theme folder.  This will also cover up the text below.

Sometimes, when you install WordPress and ProPhoto, and try to edit your theme files in the Theme Editor for the first time is says something like: “You need to make this file writable before you can save your changes. See the Codex for more information.”

This is caused by permissions set wrong on the files WordPress is trying to edit. Sometimes during the process of FTPing files, permissions get messed up. To fix this, change the permissions on the files that aren’t working to “777″ or “0777.” You can do this within FTP programs, or in your file manager. You can see how to change permissions in the end of this video about using a file manager.

Yes. Bludomain does allow to FTP files to your hosting account, and will also give you access to your webhost cPanel to create a mySQL database. Email them and ask for your FTP information, and how to log into your cPanel. It should be something like: http://mybluwebsite.com/cpanel or http://mybluwebsite.com:2082/ with probably the same login info as your FTP.

Sometimes, after you’ve installed WordPress and are trying to upload a picture for the first time, you’ll get an error that says something like: “Unable to create directory /home/user/public_html/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/02. Is its parent directory writable by the server?”

This error occurs occasionly and is basically the result of a permission problem. For some reason, WordPress doesn’t have permission to create the folder needed to store your uploaded picture or imported blog. The fix is pretty easy. First, if using your FTP access or your online file manager utility from your CPanel, create a folder inside of “wp-content” and name it exactly “uploads”. Then try again. If this doesn’t work, again using your FTP program or online file manager utility, set the permissions for the folder “wp-content” to 0777 temporarily. Try it again. Assuming it works (it should), change it back to 0755 and try again. If it still works, then leave it like that. If it won’t work after you change it back, change it back to 0777 again and leave it.

If you’re having trouble changing permissions, call your web host for help. Act dumb and happy. (Acting dumb and happy really works. It’s gotten me far in life.)

There is also some info and a brief demonstration of changing permissions in this video, and in this one.

Because a WordPress blog is a dynamic, database-driven site, there’s not a simple place to insert the Google Analytics tracking code. Fortunately, however, some clever people have created free plugins that will insert your Google Analytics code everywhere it needs to be without you ever touching the template files. The plugin I use can be found here, but you can also google “wordpress plugin google analytics.”

If you use the one I linked to above, just extract the folder and upload into your “plugins” folder, inside your “wp-content” folder. NOTE: with that particular plugin, you need to use the “legacy” urchin.js tracking code, not the newer fancier one. In your google analytics control panel there will be an option to copy the urchin.js version or the newer one. Make sure you use the urchin.js one for this plugin.

Once you’ve uploaded the plugin, activate it from within your WP Admin area under the “Plugins” tab. Then, under “Settings” (”Options” if you’re on an older version of WordPress) and you should see a “Google Analytics” link in the submenu. Click on it, and past your code into the box and then click save.

Related Posts: Uploading and Installing a Plugin, Adding Statcounter tracking code to your blog

When you’re inserting your image, in the small box-like window where you upload and insert the image, there is a little button that says ‘center’ next to the word ‘alignment’, as shown below.

Just click that before you insert the image.

If that doesn’t work for you, you probably purchased ProPhoto before July 30, 2008, when I fixed a little bug.  See here for simple instructions on how to get this working.