If you just started your first Wordpress blog, or are thinking of joining the Wordpress bandwagon, there are a few things that you may want to keep in mind. They aren’t particularly important to your website’s integrity, but they can be a tad annoying when working with your site. Wordpress has a few gotchas in terms of how it presents the website, and if you’re a stickler like me, you want to fine tune your website to the smallest details. You don’t have to be extremely tech savvy to understand and correct most of these, though knowledge of HTML and CSS do help.

At the time of this post, this covers gotchas from Wordpress version 2.3.3. However, they were also present in previous versions. Also, most of these tips only apply to people that are self-hosting their own installation of Wordpress, and not using Wordpress.com to host a free blog for them.

Confusing pagination links

If you have any common sense, you would keep pagination links at the bottom of every blog page that lists your posts, so that people can browse through your past posts if they choose to. But I have ran across some blogs that keep the wording ambiguous. Consider the common “previous/next” text links, which at first glance might tell you where you are leading to. But it seems that not everyone thinks alike. When I see “previous”, I think of the previous entries that were posted chronologically. And it turns out that they really meant the previous page that I visited in the list of pages. So clicking on “next” would take me to the older posts, not the newer posts.

Word your links properly, and keep them in good form. Instead of using “previous” and “next”, say “previous entries” and “next entries”. Or better yet, “older entries” and “newer entries”. This keeps your visitors from clicking back where they once visited and thinking their browser’s history is screwing with them.

Unchangeable background images

Your website’s look should stick to your audience, and it’s what tells a person “oh, it’s THAT site”. This is where your name/brand should shine. Wordpress makes changing the page background a tad confusing in the default theme, especially if it’s your first time using it.

Included with Wordpress is the Wordpress Default Theme, or the “Kubrick Theme”. For designers, it’s an OK theme to start working with, but it could be much better. One of the key points is with how the page background is styled with CSS. Your first instinct might be to dive into the style.css file to find the background style and change the parameters within. You save and refresh the page, but the theme goes “Can’t let you do that, web designer”. It hasn’t changed. Why? Because there are styles in header.php that override the styles declared in the main stylesheet. So what is going on here?

<?php
// Checks to see whether it needs a sidebar or not
if ( !$withcomments && !is_single() ) {
?>
#page { background: url("<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/kubrickbg-<?php bloginfo('text_direction'); ?>.jpg") repeat-y top; border: none; }
<?php } else { // No sidebar ?>
#page { background: url("<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/kubrickbgwide.jpg") repeat-y top; border: none; }
<?php } ?>

If you don’t know a bit of PHP, let me tell you what is happening. First, as the comment points out, the code has to know whether it’s displaying a page that needs the sidebar. If it does, it assigns one image to the background, and if it doesn’t, it assigns a different image. That’s all. Most blogs I see always have some sort of sidebar for consistency with their look. Regardless, remove this code anyways and assign your sidebar style individually in the CSS file. When hunting for themes, watch out for ones that override styles in this manner.

Another solution, and the one I recommend, is to use this empty Wordpress theme and let your designer go to town. It’s not filled with superfluous styles; you create them as needed, and it’s also well-commented. Sorting it out this way, it’s will be easier to change the code when you decide to update the look of your site.

Changing the “Blogroll” title

It’s one of those common questions that Wordpress noobs often search the support forums for. Contrary to what some people think, you don’t have to dig into the main Wordpress code and manually change this. It should be obvious to click the Blogroll tab of the admin area, but it’s not clearly explained that you can change the title. Once you’re in the Blogroll section, click on the Categories tab and edit the category named “Blogroll”. Change the name to whatever you like, and that’s all you need to do.

Letting your readers see their comments

This is optional, but some bloggers don’t care for moderating every single comment that lines up in the queue, so let your visitors see their comments right after posting them. Again, this is an issue that only comes up when starting a new Wordpress blog. Most people often don’t know about this until they log into their admin panel one day and see one or more pending comments for moderation. It can be a chore to check off every comment you want to moderate when your blog gets a lot of readers. To never do this again, go into Options and then the Discussions tab underneath. Uncheck “Comment author must have a previously approved comment” which takes of the 1-comment requirement to post something without having to undergo approval.