How to create a map on your location
A lot of websites should have a map to help visitors find your brick & mortar building. Whether your site supports a church or some “business,” you may wish to have visitors come to your physical location. Fortunately, building a map to your location is a VERY easy process on our system.
To create a map on YOUR website, just visit the ADMIN function (the dashboard for your dashboard). Under SETTINGS, click on “MapPress” and fill in the blanks. If the “MapPress” option is not available, click on POSTS – PLUGINS, then find the MapPress plugin and ACTIVATE it. THEN visit the SETTINGS – MAPPRESS page and complete the settings.
GOOGLE MAPS API KEY: You are welcome to request your own key from Google. It is free and takes just a couple minutes here: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html
After you complete the setup and save your configuration,
- Click on the PAGES/ADD NEW.
- Name the page whatever you like (we used MAP).
- Type any introductory information in the content entry box.
- Enter the desired address in the “MapPress” box (just under the content entry box) and press “Add location”. (you can preview the map below the MapPress box).
- Click on the “Insert map shortcode in post”
- Type any additional info you wish below the shortcode (word “mappress” in square brackets)
- Click PUBLISH.
Here is a sample of what it can look like:
Site getting SLOOOW to load?
First, due to the cache program, users who are NOT signed in as an administrator will see pages & posts load much faster than an admin (pages are normally NOT cached for administrators.) So, it may not be a problem at all. To check, just log out, flush your browser’s cache, and then visit your website — without logging in. The first time you visit a page is probably going to be the slowest – while the system builds the cache for that page/post. After that, the cache page will load much faster.
If the site is STILL sluggish you may indeed have some problems. First possibility is too many plugins loaded on your webpage or too many large images, etc. As a new blog owner, it is tempting to turn on every plugin that is available. However, that is NOT a good plan!!
Plugin authors do not always follow good programming rules and, while their plugin may work fine in some blogs, it may not in others. This is often the result of a CONFLICT with another plugin. The results can be as dramatic as a “FATAL ERROR!” which will shut down your site and require you to contact Tech Support to get it turned back on. Or, the plugin may refuse to load when you first activate it.
More often, a plugin conflict will just cause your site to DRAG and seem to never load.
Here are some helpful ideas on how to troubleshoot your slow-loading website. Work through the list until the site loads quickly again. (You will have to reload/refresh your browser each time.) When the site returns to normal load times (much faster), then assume that the last thing you changed was the problem.
Visit your site’s DASHBOARD and use the menu on the left side to:
- Appearance / Widgets: Move all the widgets into the “Inactive Widgets” area (at the bottom of the page). This will temporarily disable them and still retain their settings for re-activation later.
- Disable any cache plugin that you have installed. If the cache is misconfigured, it can easily slow the site – rather than speed it up.
- Disable all plugins. In the dashboard, select POSTS/Plugins. Click the DEACTIVATE box for each plugin and then check the speed of your site.
- If the site is fast again, then reactivate the plugins one-by-one (most important first) until you experience a slow down again. You can safely assume that the last thing you changed was the culprit.
If you discover a plugin that does not “play well” with the others, then please leave a comment for me. Report your findings here and/or in the forums so that others can benefit as well.
Ray
Calendar 4
Use your Google Calendar on your WordPress Blog
In this article, we will show you how to import your Google Calendar into your WordPress Blog. In the previous article, you copied data from the settings page of your Google Calendar into a document file. You will now use that data to create the Calendar Page and/or Widget for your blog.
The process involves using a PlugIn to WordPress. The “AmR iCal Events List” plugin does the magic. So, here are the steps to use it:
- The first thing is to install & activate the AmR iCal plugin
- Visit the Settings page for the plugin & add any needed info. The only item that normally needs to be changed is the “date localization” – I recommend the “none” option. Press “Update” to save any changes.
- Visit the Appearance / Widgets page & drag the AmR iCal Widget to the desired sidebar of your theme.
- Add a Title for the Widget and then SAVE.
- Visit the home page of your site and assure that the sample events are displayed properly.
- Revisit the Widget’s Settings & erase the link in the URL field then PASTE the “ICS Address” into the field (The address is found in the document that you saved at the previous article – or from the Google Calendar Settings.) Be sure to SAVE the widget settings.
- Return to the home page for your site and assure that YOUR calendar’s events are displayed.
- You may also add a second calendar by placing it’s ICS address (url) in the field after your own calendar’s url. (Suggestion: include the calendar of your host community.)
That will complete the widget’s function! Enjoy. You can edit the manner that the events are displayed by making slight changes to the configuration. Visit the plugin homepage for instructions.
You may wish to include a PAGE on your site to provide a bigger and more complete display of your events.
- Visit your site’s dashboard & click on Pages / Add New
- In the Title field, enter your name for the page. E.g, “Events”
- In the window, type the open square bracket character and the letters “iCal” followed by a space and the “ICS address” used in the widget above. Add another space and the text, “
days=100 events=10" and the close square bracket. - The final text entered in the window will look something like:
[ iCal http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/btlcog@gmail.com/public/basic.ics days=100 events=10 ]
(Delete the space after the open bracket and before the close bracket. This is the data for the BLCOG calendar.)
- Continue from step 4 above, you must revisit the settings for the AmR Widget (Appearance / Widgets) and enter the name of your page (from step 2 above) into the “Calendar Page URL” field. NOTE: only enter the name of the page (e.g., “Events”) and not the entire URL.
- Save the widget and close
- Visit your home page and your new “Events” page should be available. Click on it to assure that it works.
As with the Widget, you can edit the manner that the events are displayed by making slight changes to the configuration. Visit the plugin homepage for instructions.
Finally, we can create another page on your blog that displays the calendar much the same as the online Google Calendar page. Here are the steps to do that.
(NOTICE: With the newest version of WordPress, this function does not seem to work. Whenever you press “Save Draft” or “Publish” button, the code disappears and the page will not be displayed. I will return to this article when I find a resolution to the problem. In the mean time, if it works for you, enjoy. If not, just delete the page.)
- Sign in to the dashboard of your blog & click on PAGE / Create New
- Enter the Title for the page… e.g., Calendar
- In the editor, click on the HTML tab
- Copy the “Imbed Code” from the saved document & paste it into the window
- Click on the VISUAL tab & you should see your Google Calendar in the window
- Click “Publish” and you are finished.
You should see the page listed when you visit the home page of your site. Click on the Calendar page and it should display.
linkscolor = “330099″; highlightscolor = “FF0000″; backgroundcolor = “FFFFFF”; channel = “none”; 
Built & maintained by the BISHOP!
bigray
Ray
