If you have customised the WordPress default theme, all of your changes will be over-written the next time you upgrade WordPress. So you need to protect them now by creating your own custom theme.

1. Using FTP (or whatever file management tool you have available), download the wp-content/themes/default folder to your machine.
2. Rename the downloaded folder “mytheme”.
3. Using a plain text editor, open style.css in this new folder and, at the very top of the file change:

   Theme Name: WordPress Default
   Theme URI: http://wordpress.org/

   to

   Theme Name: My Theme

4. Upload the mytheme folder to wp-content/themes on your server.
5. In WordPress, navigate to Appearance / Themes and you should see that the My Theme is now available as a separate theme. Activate it.

Your customisations are now protected against over-writing during an automatic upgrade.

1. Within the WordPress Administration area, navigate to Appearance / Editor.
2. Select single.php and change:

   <div id="content" class="widecolumn" role="main">
   

   to

   <div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">

3. Then change:

   <?php get_footer(); ?>

   to:

   <?php get_sidebar(); ?>
   <?php get_footer(); ?>

Repeat the last 2 steps for archives.php, links.php & image.php

Who are you going to turn to?

The WordPress Support Forums.

But your chances of getting an answer will be significantly improved if you follow a few simple points:

• Search the WordPress Codex first. There is plenty of documentation available and it is being constantly updated. Use it!
• Search the WordPress forums. Don’t just post a question without checking to see if it’s been answered before. The forums are extremely busy and no-one is being paid to help, or answer, you. Do some of your own research first.
• Don’t post questions or complaints relating to free wordpress.com blogs. The WordPress Support forums are primarily for self-hosted blogs, so you won’t find much in the way of help there.
• If you can’t find an answer yourself, read the Forum Rules before posting.
• Post your query in the most appropriate forum. Don’t post the same question in multiple forums. That’s just one way to cause severe aggravation and reduce the chances of receiving any responses.
• Give your post an accurate Topic Title. A title of “Help!” isn’t much use.
• If your problems relate to a specific theme or plugin, tag your post with the theme, or plugin, name.
• Remember to indicate what version of WordPress you are using.
• Post a brief summary of your problem — including any troubleshooting steps you’ve already tried. Include the address of your site, if possible — not a link to a theme. There are currently more than 850 themes in the WordPress Themes directory. Funnily enough, most people aren’t intimately familiar with every one of them…
• Don’t include huge chunks of code in your post. For larger blocks of code, use the WordPress pastebin. It makes life easier for everyone.
• Don’t bump topics. Those with a single post are prioritised, so bumping is a one way of ensuring that your topic will be pushed down the queue and your question may not be answered at all.
• Don’t ask people to completely re-design your theme for you. Many of those who help out on the forums are professional web developers. Asking them to work for free simply isn’t on.
• Don’t complain if the answers you receive are technical. Sometimes the only possible solution involves coding of one sort or another.

  If you are running a self-hosted WordPress blog, you will probably need to undertake some coding at one point or another. So you can either roll up your sleeves and dive in. Or you can pay someone else to do it instead.

How do you start to track down and fix the problem?

1. Plugin Issues

Plugins are the most common cause of WordPress problems. Especially if you’ve recently upgraded to WordPress 2.8 or installed some new plugins.

Deactivate all of your plugins to see if this resolves the problem. Yes – we know that you can’t live without every single one of your plugins. But what do you want? Lots of essentially useless plugins or a working blog?

If the mass plugin deactivation resolves your problem, re-activate the plugins one by one – checking the site thoroughly after each re-activation. Eventually you will find the problematic plugin(s) – at which point it will be time to look for a compatible replacement.

If a mass plugin deactivation didn’t work or the problems are so severe that you can’t even access your Dashboard, try resetting the plugins folder via FTP or phpMyAdmin. Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems. If you can manage the phpMyAdmin approach, use it. Experience suggests that it offers the best success rate in eliminating problematic plugins.

2. Theme Issues

The more feature-rich the theme, the more likely it is that one or more of the features can cause problems elsewhere.

Switch to the default theme to rule out any theme-related problems.

If the problems are so severe that you can’t even access your Dashboard – let alone change themes, rename your current theme’s folder using FTP. You'll find it in wp-content/themes/theme_name. If in doubt, rename all theme folders except default and classic.

Your blog should automatically switch to the default theme. If this resolves your problem, then it was theme-specific. Delete your old theme and find a new one.

3. Permalink Problems

If your Page, Post or Category links are all broken, reset your custom permalinks back to the default setting via Settings – Permalinks. If this works, then it’s likely that you mis-configured your permalinks. Ensure that you understand how to set up custom permalinks before trying again.

4. Known Browser Issues

If you’re using Firefox 3 and have Google Gears installed, deactivate/delete this add-on. It’s not compatible with Firefox 3 and can cause problems in WordPress.

5. Research The Problem

Search the WordPress forums. Don’t just post a question without checking to see if it’s been answered before. The forums are extremely busy and no-one is being paid to help, or answer, you. Do some of your own research first.

If I make two posts on the same day, the older post doesn’t show a date whilst the new post does. Is there any way I can make the date show up on both posts?

Try editing your theme files and changing all references for the_date() to the_time().

Likely candidates for editing include:

• index.php
• home.php
• archive.php
• category.php
• tag.php

Plus any custom page templates present in your theme.

If you use the the_date(), the full date is only shown on the newest post on a given date. Using the_time() will ensure that the date is displayed on all posts – the date irrespective of how many posts you publish in any one day.

I’m the Administrator on my WordPress site but my name doesn’t show up as an Author option when posting

Occasionally, WordPress hiccups and loses the Administrator’s name in the Author dropdown. The fix is simple — if a little long winded.

1. Set up a new, temporary, Admin user and make a note of the new username and password.
2. Log out
3. Log back in again as the new user.
4. Navigate to Users and select your old Admin profile.
5. Reduce your old profile down to Subscriber and save the new settings.
6. Update your old profile back to Admin again and save the new settings.
7. Log out
8. Log back in again using your old Admin username.
9. Check that you can now see your name in the Author dropdown in Add/Edit Posts.
10. If all is well, delete the temporary Admin user. You no longer need it.

I’ve just downloaded a new theme and want to apply it to my WordPress blog. What do I have to do?

If you’ve downloaded the theme to your own computer:

1. Unpack the theme on your local machine.
2. Upload the complete theme folder to wp-content/themes on your server using FTP (or whatever file manager is available on your hosting account.
3. Login to the WordPress Dashboard and navigate to Appearance/Themes
4. Select your new theme
5. If the display in the popup window looks, OK, activate the theme (link in the top right of the popup window)
6. If the display in the window is blank, do not activate the new theme. It’s almost certainly incompatible with your version of WordPress.

If you’ve downloaded the new theme via Appearance/Add New Themes in your WordPress Dashboard, skip straight to Step 4.

How do I add a graphic to the top banner in the default WordPress theme?

If you amend the Default theme, the next time you upgrade WordPress, your changes will be overwritten. To avoid this happening, create a new customised theme and carry out all of your changes on this copy.

Copy the default theme folder and rename the new folder ‘mytheme’.

Edit style.css in the new folder and change:

Theme Name: WordPress Default

to

Theme Name: My Theme

Activate My Theme and then make the changes below:

1. Create an image 760px by 200px,
2. Save it as kubrickheader.jpg
3. Upload your new image to wp-content/themes/mytheme/images

Remember to press CTRL and F5 simultaneously when viewing the updated site. This should ensure that your web browser fetches a fresh copy of the site rather than serving up an out-dated copy from your own cache.

The date isn’t being displayed on some of my posts!

The default behaviour for WordPress the_date() template tag is to only display the full date on the first post on a given day. Subsequent posts from the same day only display a time stamp.

To ensure that the posting date is always displayed on all posts, edit your theme files and replacing the_date with the_time. The list of files that you may need to edit may include:

• index.php
• archive.php
• search.php
• single.php
• tag.php
• category.php (and any custom category template files)
• page.php (and any custom page template files)

I’ve made some changes to one of my Posts/Pages but, when I view the site, the changes aren’t visible. What did I do wrong?

Chances are that you’re viewing an old copy of your recently updated page.

Always press Ctrl and F5 simultaneously when viewing an updated Page or Post.

This key combination (also known as a “hard refresh”) should ensure that your web browser fetches a fresh copy of the page rather than serving up an out-dated copy from your own browser cache.