How to correct error in customized posttype WP site

[catherine-279388]

Hi folks

Can anybody help me.  I foolishly, dogedly followed  a Lynda.com tutorial for developing an 'online portfolio in WP'.  Little did I know that my initial assumption - to use the 'twenty twelve' rather than the 'twenty eleven' theme would land me in such deep water.

I was attempting to learn php on my own.  All went well, until, --- the index page for the customized post type.

Now I have two beautiful customized posttypes, 'companies' 'coverage' and no idea how to create an index page for either.  I can't do the next step!  I have tried every permutation - changing the permalink settings, changing them back, desperately searching for any handle to the nebulous links within the menu section.  The only thing I can do (and have done for now) is to link the menu item 'company' and the menu item 'coverage' to a single post.  Then the poor visitor has to scroll through the posts individually.

I tried contacting the tutor and Lynda.com, to no avail!  I have searched forums and found this is a common problem, but because I am so confused and novice to php they might as well be speaking Chinese.

To compound my problems, looking through 'Wordpress SEO' for Yoast, I am painfully aware I can't go to the first basic step and fix the peramilinks to 'Postname' as that just makes my flakey menu collapse like a pack of cards.

Help!

[catherine-279388]

Thank you Dan:)

I'll do as you advise.

[evolvingSEO]

I forgot to mention WordPress has a really good forum where there may be someone who can help you more directly http://wordpress.org/support/

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Catherine!

At this stage I think your best bet is to reach out to someone who can assist you directly, as it's a little tricky to work out the troubleshooting in the Q&A. You could contact Geoff (from Distilled) who is the person who developed the plugin http://geoffkenyon.com/ or I'm not sure if you know of any developers who could help with the technical stuff? Moz has a really good list of recommended companies as well! http://moz.com/community/recommended

-Dan

[catherine-279388]

Well - at the moment I just have list of the of titles under the page title and txt (see attached url) - what I'd like to do is make it more like http://sugarrae.com/reviews/ - with image and some of the post's text.  I've no idea how to go about achieving this.

I do know to get the plugin to work I had to set 'the page template for category pages' to 'Front Page'.

Sorry if I'm being dim!

Thanks for replying

Catherine

?cat=21

[evolvingSEO]

Catherine

When you say customize, what sort of things would you like to do with it?

-Dan

[catherine-279388]

Hello Dan

I have finally managed to get near to the examply you posted.  I've failed totally to find any help documentation however and so for my test site 'www.seoherts.co.uk' I've got a test customized category page minus anything other than the titles.

Could you be even kinder and direct me to some help for customizing the plugin?  You help  has really been amazing, you actually helped me back out of a corner.  Now I'm nearly home an dry.

Thanks Dan

[evolvingSEO]

Let us know how it goes!

[catherine-279388]

Ahh, it took me two weeks, but you could be right....

I probably would have been better off talking to you before I started!

That's what comes of teaching yourself.  I'll give it a try tomorrow.  Will let you know - and thanks again Dan!

I will have to give up the Recent 'Coverage' Recent 'Companies' list in the footer (which I was rather proud of!)

Catherine

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Catherine

Really sorry to hear there's still trouble with it I see what you mean, the custom posttypes have their own categories apart from the normal blog categories? Can you scrap the custom posttypes and create the categories as normal?

-Dan

[catherine-279388]

Hello Dan

I did as you suggested and got the options for categories of my 'blog'.  The problem is that I've got these posttypes with their own categories.  I'm probably asking too much of the plugin - but it doesn't give me the option to set up a page template with these as it doesn't recognise they exist.  I seem to have lost them deep down in WP...

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Catherine

Thanks for the additional details and site name (being able to see the site helps). Unfortunately as a Moz Associate we are not able to accept account information - but I think I can help you anyway with what you provided.

Is all you are trying to do is have a "customized category archive"? For example, "Coverage" is a category with blog posts in it, and you want to customize that page so it's unique and has additional info?

For example, this page is a category, but it is customized and you see the list of posts below: http://sugarrae.com/reviews/

If so, all you need is this fairly new plugin WordPress Custom Categories. I think that may get you what you need without any custom coding etc. Let us know!

-Dan

[catherine-279388]

Thank you David

I will try again, but I have told them three times over the course of three months.  I was told to first contact the tutor, which I did.  I got no response!  I contacted them again two more times and got no response at all!

[catherine-279388]

Hello Dan

Would it be ok for me to send you the login details?  I'm finding it hard to explain because as I was lead by the nose by the tutorial I was a little lost in the woods in the process.

What I was aimming to achieve was to create two additional dynamic content pages i.e. 'companies' and 'coverage'.  My client and old friend is successfully getting new businesses and national coverage for them on a daily basis!  The 'online portfolio tutorial' on lynda.com appeared to meet the need.

In the tutorial (using twenty eleven) the tutor takes you through setting up two different posttypes, 'recipes' and 'one other, I've forgotten now'.  I basically followed doggedly setting up these two seperate posttypes and ended up with 'companies' and 'coverage' which actually do work.

The problem came when I tried to display these as a list - as you do with a blog page.  In the tutorial you simply had to change the default permalinks, then somehow magically the option to select the url for this illusive list appeared in the Menu option.  This doesn't happen when you follow the same set of operations in twenty twelve, and I know it is to do with a change in function somehwere in the php.  As I don't really understand php to this level I ended up with a terrible fudge as you will see at www.maxwellcomms.com.

If it is appropriate and if you are able to help would you like me to send you login details?  I will totally understand if you think it's too big and ask.

I have tried hard to get help from Lynda.com but they only insisted I contact the tutor, he didn't respond!  Ahh....

[evolvingSEO]

Catherine

Hi! I'd like to offer some suggestions, but second the request for a little more info or screenshots etc? By index page, do you mean an archive page listing all of the posts in each category?

Thanks!

-Dan

[ToughTimesLawyer]

I'm not sure what you mean by "index page."  Do you mean a static front page like the index.html page in a regular website?  If so, that is set using the Settings==> Reading Panel.  However, you can only use one static front page.  You may be able to customize the content of the index page by using PHP to call different content in response to a given condition.

Also, I am a Lynda user.  The best thing to do is contact Lynda directly.  They are good about responding.  It sounds like the issue is that the tutorial is outdated, which is usually something that they want to know about.