How to disable comments on WordPress.com’s image carousel

James Riddett 5 Comments

Jane asks…

“I have successfully turned off comments on all my pages. However, where I have an image gallery and someone clicks on an individual image (which I hope they will do, to scroll through and read captions), they are invited to comment in the image carousel. Aaaaarrrrrrgh. I have spent hours trying to figure this out. Any ideas?”

If you go to Settings > Discussion, uncheck “Allow people to post comments on new articles” and Save Changes, any images added after that, will have comments disabled.

Unfortunately, it won’t affect any images already there. For those, you’ll need to disable comments manually…  Continue reading →

Disabling comments and linking to social media

James Riddett Leave a comment

Jasmine writes…

“Love your theme!! I’m using it on my new website :) I’m a little stuck how to get rid of the ‘Leave a reply’ boxes at the bottom of every page!

Also I’d quite like to link it up to facebook and twitter — and maybe even have a twitter column where I can post spiritual quotes etc… Do you think any of this would work with me using your theme? Look forward to hearing from you when you have time…”

Thanks Jasmine but Motif isn’t my theme so I can’t take credit! :-) I was helping someone who was struggling with it and realised there were plenty of others struggling too, so I posted up a little guide.  Continue reading →

Do PDF downloads log on your WordPress.com stats?

James Riddett 5 Comments

Yes they do :-)

I knew that when somebody left-clicks a PDF link (so it opens in their browser), it logs on WordPress.com stats. But I wasn’t sure about those times when people right-click and download the PDF to their computer.

So I ran a little experiment earlier and yes indeedy — PDF downloads DO also log on your stats. This is good news because it gives you an accurate picture of how many views your PDF documents are getting, regardless of whether your visitor views them in the browser or on their computer.

All the best,
James

Understanding your WordPress.com stats if you have a static front page

James Riddett 7 Comments

If your WordPress.com site has a static front page (as we do at Happy Guide), you may have noticed something a little odd in your stats…

There appears to be two “home” pages logging! Here’s why…

One entry in the stats is the name of the page that is set as your front page. If you hover over this entry and look at your status bar (bottom left of your browser window), you’ll see it links to your static page’s original location.

This will be yoursite.com/home or yoursite.com/front-page, or something similar, depending on what you originally entered as the page’s permalink.

Then there’s another entry in the stats called “Home page / Archives”. If you hover over this entry and look at your status bar, you’ll see it links to your site root — yoursite.com.

So which one actually tells you the number of views of your home page? It’s the FIRST one — the entry that refers to your static page. Continue reading →

Your on-page SEO checklist

James Riddett 4 Comments

A question I’m asked a lot is…

“How do I make my content as Google-friendly as possible?”

In terms of on-page SEO (Search Engine Optimization), I believe the big stuff is…

  • Use your keyword phrase in the title of your post
  • Use your keyword phrase near the beginning of your post and then whenever’s natural

However, when writing a new blog post or article, it would be nice to know that you’re checking as many of those on-page SEO boxes as possible.

I just discovered this brilliant infographic by the very dedicated Brian Dean that serves as an “on-page SEO checklist”. You might like to check out the original post too, as he gives a little more information on each element…  Continue reading →