Update#2 3/12/11:
Per the earlier update today – The page-redirect template is working wonders and saves any further worries about incompatible plug-ins to achieve the needed action. The aforementioned instructions to hard code a guestbook page also works wonderfully and once again eliminates the incompatible plug-in issue. Unfortunately up to this point finding a similar resource for a contact form or a plug-in that doesn’t cause me to lose admin access to existing posts when activated has proven impossible. Since I’m a very persistent person I may yet make it work one way or another but the coding for a form isn’t quite so simple to create as that for a guestbook and I’ve spent the better part of three days working on these other two features at the expense of many things including writing book reviews which is one of the primary purposes for this blog in the first place.
Update 3/12/11:
I finally managed to regain the original navigation feature I had for categories and pages to appear in the menu just below the header. Thanks to some heavy duty searching and experimenting I added a manual copyright notice to the end of my posts. With a similar amount of searching and thanks to Dave Stewart at Adventures In Keyframes and Code I was able to download (see link for directions which contain a link to the template file) a pre-set template that allows me to point a page to posts from a specified category which rebuilt the navigation feature I have. Next is to use Andrew dela Serna’s instructions at Alleba.com/blog to build a guestbook using templates and tweaks on the assigned page. Then it’s time to attempt to find a contact form alternative. And yes I’ve hit those brick walls I mentioned Thurs, scores of them so far. If I get this all sorted out it’ll be back-up time so I don’t lose features again when WordPress issues their next upgrade version.
Update 3/10/11:
Ok So now I’ve managed to get my theme and WP3.1 to play together but a good portion of the navigation and added features are still MIA since the plug-ins won’t play with WP3.1 to have my post categories available as pages or to add the guestbook and contact form pages I had previously. Will be continuing to work on this until the situation is resolved or I hit every brick wall known to man and then some trying to regroup. In the meantime, you’ll just have to bear with me and this learning curve. For now most of the links at the top of the pages will come up either blank or with errors but if you scroll down to a post with the category you are interested in you can click the category link to see more posts from that category.
Well here’s hoping I can at least post to my blog to let readers know I’m working on getting things back to a regular schedule. Other than a month and a half since the last post that is. That’s my own fault with a roadtrip of about 600ish miles to move closer to family the end of January and then the subsequent unpacking and such reading and the blog have been on a back burner. I’ve got a stack of books waiting for reviews to be posted but already read as well as the usual TBR piles I seem to acquire.
Ok so back to what’s up with the blog. WordPress just released 3.1 and although my other upgrades went relatively smoothly once I followed directions to the letter – 3.1 hasn’t affected your side for the most part but as the Admin I seem to have been “locked out” of my own blog. All previous posts as well as drafts which served as my basic templates for various posts don’t show up from the Admin side of things in order to edit or any other access to them. I also think some of my posts may have “evaporated all together” though can’t really be sure of that since the dates in question are right in the middle of my “move” and prior to the 3.1 update of WP.
I am trying to find out what the problem is and resolve it. If I can’t get it sorted out this weekend I’ll try to find a way of reverting the WP version backwards in the next couple weeks. I appreciate your patience and hope you’ll bear with me till I get Bibliophile’s Retreat back to functioning “normally”.
