Petz Plus

Registration is now open again! The link at the top and on the right side column do not work properly so until I fix them
if you want to register and become a member, click here.

Sorry for any inconvenience!

Sorry that the site was down for a few days. I was working on updating the entire site. You may notice some changes with your own sites, sorry if it interferes with anything. If you have any questions, just ask!

There is also sort of a new look. Nothing special, but it saved me a lot of time during the updating process. I may tweak it in the future.

For now, I disabled new user registration. I was getting way to many spam accounts, and the more I deleted them the more I got! So if you want to become a member so you can make your own petz site, email me with what you want your user name to be and I will set you up.

My email is larissa {at} petzplus {dot} net.

Sorry for any inconvenience!

There has been a lot of questions floating around regarding how to take advantage of posts vs. pages. I thought it would be a good idea to create an in-depth tutorial on how to set up your blog so that it would feel more like a regular petz site.

Keep note that I am using the tester blog for this. Let’s begin!

Getting Started

First things first, let’s get the basics of the site done.

1. Navigate to your site admin. You can do this by using the grey PetzPlus toolbar at the top of any page, click on “My Blogs – Your blog name – Dashboard”.

2. Now you will see a toolbar on the left-hand side of the screen. About the fifth category down you will see “Pages”. Click on the down arrow next to it to expand the list, if it is not already expanded. This will reveal two more options. Click on “Add New”.

3. This is where we are going to write the content for what is on the home page of your site. Generally, in the title people will put “Welcome to my site!” where ‘my site’ is the name of your site. Put whatever you would like.

4. Next, start typing the text that you want on your homepage. You can add your own photos, tables, text, whatever. Have fun with it. If you want advanced editing options, check out the tutorial on TinyMCE Advanced – this is a plugin that you can activate.

5. Once you are finished customizing your home page, you will want to publish it. So click the “Publish” button on the right-hand side of the page.

6. Go back to “Pages – Add New” to create one more page. This one will be where the posts that use to be on the homepage will go. An idea of what to title the page would be “Updates” or “Latest News”.

7. You will not need to fill in any content for the page, unless you really want to – this would be an introduction for example.

8. Click “Publish”.

Making the Blog a Site

1. Now we want to make the page we just created the actual home page. Looking at the toolbar on the left side of the screen, scroll all the way to the bottom and you will see “Settings”. Click here.

2. The first thing we will do is name your blog. Fill out the Blog Title so that it is appropriate for your site, and if you wish, a Tagline. Keep in mind that the tagline does not appear on all themes.

3. If you wish you can fill out the other information on the page, such as select the formats for dates and times that you like best. I always  like to switch the day the weeks starts to Sunday, but this is a personal preference.

4. Once you are done customizing on this page and save your changes, we want to navigate back to the Settings toolbar, but this time click on “Settings – Reading”.

5. This is where we get rid of the blog feel to make it look more like a site. The first thing on the page is the Front Page displays. You will want to switch it from “Your latest posts” to “a static page”. From the Front Page drop-down box, select the page that you just created.

6. For Posts page you will want to select the second page you made, for me it is called “Updates”.

7. Feel free to change the other settings if you would like. I would suggest not to touch the “Encoding for pages and feeds” section.

8. Save your changes. Now we want to view our progress, so visit your blog. It should now look more like a site than a blog.

Working With Widgets and Sidebars

1. Widgets can be a bit confusing for those of you who don’t really have an idea of what they are or what they do. Using the left-handed toolbar, navigate to “Appearance – Widgets”.

2. You will notice two different columns. One labeled “Available Widgets” and one “Current Widgets”. Most themes only have one sidebar, but if you  have two (that are widget ready) you will have the option to choose the correct sidebar. So under “Current Widgets” you will see a drop-down box. It may say “Sidebar 1″ to start with, so this is where we are adding the first widgets.

If you do not see sidebar 1 anywhere, click on the drop-down box. If you still do not, then select one of the options that best suites where you want to customize. Then click “Show”.

3. Now we simply drag and drop the widgets to the sidebar. I am going to drag the “Welcome” and the “Pages” widgets over. Once you drag all the widgets you want, click on “Save Changes”. Do not remove any widgets or switch their orders before you click save.

4. Now you can drag the widgets that are on your sidebar to the correct order, if you wish. To edit each widget, simply click on the “edit” link next to the title of the widget.

For the Welcome widget, I am simply going to add some text. You can add html tags if you wish to customize it even further. The images will have to be from a different address however. And make sure you put in the full location to the image. Such as “http://www.sitename.com/image.gif”. Images hosted on Flickr would be one example of where to store these.

5. Click “done” on the widget when you are done editing.

6. Do this for each widget you want to edit. Then save changes.

7. Preview your site again.

Finishing Up

1. Now your blog should look a lot more like a petz site instead of a blog. Feel free to add as many pages as you would like, such as adoptions, shows, and links.

I have added a few new Petz themes for you to use for your sites. They are all titled Petz Theme – and then the theme number, this way you will not have to browse through every page looking for it. As of right now they are on pages three and four of the themes.

Enjoy!

For those of you who want a petz related theme, you can create your own design and I can code it for you. Only for a limited time though, so get designing!

We are brand new so there is still a lot that needs to be done. Please be patient while the kinks are worked out!

You will notice test users as part of the community. Please ignore these as they are a way for me to view the site from your perspective and fix certain things. They will be removed in time.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, head on over to the Suggestions Group and fill me in. If you want to do it more privately, just send me an email or a private message. I am open to everything.

There are a few themes that will let you change the header of your blog. The one that I will be using in this tutorial is the default theme that you blog started with.

To get started, navigate in the User Admin to “Appearance – Header Image and Color”. Once here, you can see that it gives you the option to change the Font Color, Upper Color and Lower Color. Revert will change it back to the default colors, so if you make a mistake or want to start over, click on Revert.

If you  have specific colors in mind, click on the Advanced button and you can type in or paste the hex number.

Some blogs may also let you upload your own header image. The two that I know of are Ambiru, Amusement, Anubis, Blix, Contempt, Cutline, Fauna, KU, MistyLook, My Puppy, Ocean, Regulus, SeaShore, StripedPlus (also allows you to change page colors) and Tarski. The option to upload it will appear under “Appearance – Header Image and Color” or it may have it’s own section either titled the theme name or something related to customize.

Groups are a fun way for Petz Members with the same interests to get together and share those interests. If you want to create a new group, it is very simple.

Simply use the top toolbar to and select “My Account – Groups – Create a Group”. You must be logged in to do this.

You will now be asked to add information for the group. Follow the steps to create your group.

Please not that forums is not activated yet. I hope to incorporate this option in the future.

Widgets are simply addons that you can have on your page’s sidebar and is located under “Appearance – Widgets”.

Once clicked you will be taken to the correct page. On the left-hand side it says “Available Widgets” and on the right-hand side it says “Current Widgets”. Make sure you have the correct area defined under Current Widgets and simply drag any of the widgets to the area.

Before you edit any of these widgets or switch their order, make sure you click “Save Changes”. Otherwise, it may mess up your widgets.

If you don’t like the generic blog template, I have uploaded several themes for you to choose from. More will be added in the future, including Petz specific themes. If you know a lot about WordPress and how to create your own theme, just email me and I can upload one for you. Or, if you find a free theme that you like but isn’t listed, you can also email me a link to the download. Just remember that any theme you want me to add will be available for all members. The option to edit themes may appear in the future.

For now, to edit your theme click on the “Appearance – Themes” tab on the left menu (make sure you are logged in to your site admin). You may have to click on the arrow next to Appearance to see this option.

Now you will see a number of themes. To preview a theme, which does not always work correctly I have come to find, simply click on a thumbnail. This is also how you activate the theme. When the preview box pops up, there will be the option “Activate” in the upper right-hand corner.

And that is all you have to do to switch your theme. Easy enough.