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How to Adjust the Margins on Disqus Commenting

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I run a myriad of WordPress blogs.  On most of them, I utilize a commenting system called Disqus.  It’s just cool.  There’s one thing that I was troubled by when I first implemented it.  When enabled, the comment section seemed to be aligned flush with the width of my content, leaving no aesthetic margin to delineate a separation in design.  Thankfully, using Firebug, I was able to inspect the Disqus comment area to find the class identifier so I could modify the design slightly to fit my site.

Notice the following image.  The dark gray background and the Disqus comment area butt up against each other.  Not cool.  The right side of the comment form (not shown) also squished against the right hand side-bar.  Not attractive at all.

Simple Fix

There’s a very easy CSS style that you can apply to your Disqus settings for a given website and you do it from the Disqus website:

  1. Simply login, choose the site profile that you need to address.
  2. Click the settings tab, then click Appearance on the left.
  3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and paste the following into the Custom CSS box:#disqus_thread { margin: 0px 20px 0px 20px; }

Save your settings, and re-load your blog.  The setting above essentially squeezes the entire Disqus comment section by 20 pixels on the left and the right sides.  You can modify this to suit your needs, but it should help you line up your comment box with the other content on your site.

Here’s how it looks now:

Hope that helps.

WordPress Visual Editor Problems

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Plagued.  That’s how I’ve felt today.  But I finally solved the problem, and it had nothing to do with installing any plug-ins or uninstalling any plug-ins or the server, or anything like that.  However, for good measure, I’ll lay out the basic steps that I took before I actually solved the problem.

The problem at hand deals with using the visual editor to write your posts in WordPress.  It’s a feature that allows for quick formatting using a toolbar above your composition area.  If you are unable to switch between Visual and HTML editing modes (tabs in the post editor) then you’ve got the same problem I had.  Your mouse may appear to recognize that there is a link when you roll over Visual or HTML, but nothing happens when you click.  It’s a very annoying problem.

Sometimes solving this problem requires Safely Reinstalling WordPress to ensure the latest files are uploaded to your server.  If you aren’t familiar with this process, please read my article on how to do this.

If you don’t want to do this, then I can’t guarantee that you will solve your problem.  After all was said and done, I actually didn’t need a complete re-installation.  I narrowed the problem down to one simple silly problem.

There was a space between php?> and <?php somewhere in one of my files.  It turned out that my custom_functions.php file ( I use Thesis as my theme ) had a few empty spaces after the end php tag ( php?> ) in a few different spots.  Once I found those and removed them, the problem was gone.  It helped to have installed a fresh copy of everything, but it was more time consuming.

If you aren’t using Thesis, the culprit may in fact be another file in your blog folder structure, most likely a plug-in.  You should deactivate all of your plug-ins in order to troubleshoot this issue.  Deactivating all of them is okay now because they’ll all be lumped in a “recently active” heading which enables you to bulk activate them when you’ve found the problem.

Of all of the solutions that have been offered, the only one that I have found to fix the problem is removing blank spaces from within php code.  If you suck at code surfing, you may have trouble with this, but I would bet that if you’re self-hosting your WordPress blog, you have probably picked through your php files to figure out some things here and there and will be able to figure it out.

How to Reinstall WordPress Safely

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There may be a time when you need to re-install WordPress on your server due to some sort of compatibility error, or server change…you name it.  It’s a good idea to practice this process if you’re running multiple blogs and/or managing blogs for other people.  If you have one blog, and you don’t use the self-hosted version of WordPress, then you might just want to stick to using WordPress.com to host your blog.  There are advantages and disadvantages to using the hosted vs. self-hosted versions.  For this tutorial, you’ll need to be one of the self-hosted adventuresome bloggers.

When WordPress releases new versions, sometimes things go wrong with older plugins.  Prior to upgrading, just to be safe, I backup everything. How you backup is up to you, but the basics of backing up WordPress involve saving a copy of your wp-config.php file in the root of your blog, and the wp-content folder (and all sub-folders) which contains your plug-ins, themes, uploads, and any other special files that are specific to your blog.  In addition to backing up your WordPress files, you also need to backup the database that WordPress is reading and writing to and from.

If you don’t backup your data, you are at risk of screwing everything up.  I’ve done this many times, unfortunately, but will never have this problem again.

Basic Steps to Reinstallation

Stage 1: Backup and Deactivate

  • Backup your WordPress files, themes, plugins…basically everything in the wp-content folder AND the wp-config.php file in the blog root.
  • Backup your Data.  I use SQLyog to export my data in a long SQL statement to a text file on my desktop.
  • If you don’t have the original version of your blog stored on your computer, download your entire blog root and sub-folders and keep them safe just in case you need to revert to the old version.
  • Deactivate all of your plug-ins just to be safe.

Stage 2:  Delete The old Crap

  • Delete the entire blog root, except for wp-config.php (yes, you backed it up, but why add a step later?)
  • Delete the entire wp-admin folder and the entire wp-includes folder.
  • Rename wp-content to wp-content_old (for extra redundancy)

You now have a dead blog, but you’ve preserved your important configuration and data.

Stage 3:  Upload WordPress

You’ve already “installed” wordpress (which involves creating a new database) so all you’re doing at this point is uploading the newest files in place of where your old blog was.  Upload everything you unpack from either version 2.6RC1 or the latest version to your blog root.  Overwrite everything.

Stage 4:  Restore Your Theme and Plugins

  • From the folder you renamed to wp-content_old, using your favorite FTP client if you’re remote, or windows exploder (explorer) if you’re on the server itself, drag all of the folders under wp-content_old to the new wp-content folder that you just uploaded to your blog’s root.
  • Your wp-config.php file should have remained where it was in the blog root through this entire process.

Stage 5:  Run the Upgrade Script

  • This is easy and always will be.  Point your browser to www.yourblog.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php and follow the instructions.  This is why you backed up your data.  If this process fails, you have a backup.

That’s it.  You should now have a completely backed up prior version, a completely backed up data set as of the date of your upgrade, and a brand new installation, ensuring all new files are uploaded and no overwrite errors occurred.  It’s always possible for there to be a problem when you upload a new version over an old version which is why I always do a fresh upload of the entire structure.

Finding the Right Look and Feel

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I’m not a programmer by any means. I’m good at setting up systems that work towards a purpose. I can dive into a mechanism clear it out, and put it back together so I understand how it works. Creating it from scratch will be left up to the programmers, the geniuses.

When I adopted WordPress a few years ago, I migrated from MoveableType, a site that I was turned on to by Michael Parrish of Oblivio.com, who I found after searching Google for [Read more…]

The Apprentice Theme Part One: Inspiration

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Approximately 4 weeks ago I threw in the towel on other people’s themes.  While there are hundreds, maybe thousands of fantastic themes in the world, none of them were just what I wanted, which is probably why there are hundreds of themes.  The proliferation of themes for WordPress is a byproduct of that very freedom to create.

So, what to do?  Well, the most obvious choice was to design my own theme.  But what would it look like?  What features would it have?  Would it continually evolve?  Would I get so lost in my own code and design that I wouldn’t know where to go next?  The answer to all of those questions turns out to be..#$@#(*$&!

Building a theme is tough work, especially when you’re migrating from basic knowledge to more advanced knowledge of WordPress.  The hardest part has turned out to be styling the site with CSS, which I am still doing, daily.

I figured I would call it Apprentice.  How fitting, right?  Why not.  I also thought that I should come up with a fairly consistent color scheme.  After all, branding, while not as critical in a slow market (see the article at teamforty.com about social networking) is important.  Especially when it comes to consistency.  The first step I took was to create the name, get the domain, and create the logo you see at the top.  The rest is history.

It’s known that imitation is the best form of flattery, so I set out to imitate one of my most influential blogs by Darren Rowse called problogger.net.  I used his site as a model, but I made certain to force myself to build the layout by trial and error, rather than copying code.  I knew that I would learn more that way, and 4 weeks later, I have learned some very basic lessons about CSS and applying what I see in mind mind quickly to a design style sheet.

During the process I found that I wanted a myriad of features.  I found myself saying, “If only I could have this or that.”  Now, I have this or that, and believe me the list is long and detailed.

Stay tuned for part two of this series where I’ll outline a list of features that I implemented throughout the design of this theme.  If you’d like to be notified automatically, use our subscription box to subscribe to our updates and we’ll send you an e-mail we post the follow up story.

WordPress…coolio…

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For those of you wondering what I’m using to blog with, I’m using WordPress, which runs on a database system at the hosting provider of my choice. The nice thing about it is that I have complete control over it and the data within. Hopefully I’ll become even more proficient at this stuff and be able to exploit my God-given talents for all the world to see.