jay pick

Combining all your CSS into one file shouldn't break anything, unless of course you have styles that are present in multiple stylesheets. Just make sure any conflicting styles are addressed and you should be fine.

I've used this before to create a user managed events list http://www.problogdesign.com/wordpress/how-to-make-a-wordpress-events-list/. It's pretty easy to set up. There are a couple of things I'd say straight away regarding the loading speed of your site. Firstly, condense all your CSS down into one stylesheet. The server then only needs to make one http request for all your styles. You are also using quite a few external scripts on your site. You really need to organise your header more efficiently. For example you have several stylesheets (needs to be 1 ideally) and you are loading in JS files for your plugins in the footer. Get all of this out of the way in the header, as this is what will load first. A think a better overall structure of your code will definately help with reducing loading times. Hope this helps Jay

Go to http://validator.w3.org/ to validate your pages. Definately not ads. Its not just a case of filling space, you need to look at your design.

It could do with some work if I'm honest. I suggest making the design of each page unique.. maybe mix up the content layout or get some nice looking banners in there. It definately needs something like that.

I have to agree with Daz. You need to nail the design first as it looks like your in the process of developing something that is being put together as you go, hence why its lacking visually at the moment.

Magento is the perfect solution. I use NuBlue hosting for Magento sites and their support team are great. Its maybe worth looking into hosting your shop with them http://www.nublue.co.uk/web-hosting/ as I'm sure you want to do the job properly. Jay

Hi Jack, I've had quick look and it appears to have something to do with your Related Posts plugin. Its not only those 2 posts that are displaying the duplicated comments, there are others too and all related to either or both of the posts you mentioned above. I would recommend disabling this plugin first of all just to confirm this. See what the deal is with the comments after that and go from there. There are a few different plugins you could try instead (if this is what is causing the problem). Hope this helps you mate. Jay

Hi Jordan, not a bad start at all. I think maybe you should look to make the design 'tighter' i.e. look at your paragraph spacing and possibly your font size and just bring all the elements in the design a little closer together. That way each element in the design has a relationship with the other elements rather than being text and images on a page. Justifying your paragraphs or switching to a 2 column text layout may help with this. Jay

Right, yeah, so your header and nav would be hard coded. The widgets area is usually controlled from a loop in the sidebar and you can drag on your widgets and configure them in the backend, so thats cool. You may want to bring that loop into your template if not using a sidebar (obviously depends on what theme your using). With regard to the two editable regions, I would use this custom field template plugin http://www.kevinleary.net/advanced-content-management-wordpress-custom-field-templates/. It allows you to set up various editable regions on your wordpress pages that can be edited from the backend. You put a line of php into your template where you want the content to appear and then all else is controlled through the CMS. I'm aware that there are probably other methods of doing similar things out there that people may know of, but I've used this plugin in the past and its pretty flexible in terms of what you can do with it. The page you want to create doesn't look too complicated at all so I would recommend this personally. Hope you get on alright mate. Jay

No worries Jim, I'll take a look and let you know what I'd do Jay

Hi Jim, Templates will allow you to edit the page content in the CMS, they just dicate the design and layout i.e. where the content loop sits. I guess it depends on what features of the page you plan on being able to edit from the backend (not just the written content). Have you heard of / thought about using custom field templates or custom post types? If you let me know exactly what part of the page you want to be able to edit in the CMS and how much of the page will stay untouched in the template, then I may be able to suggest what the best course of action is. Jay

Not at all. For bespoke page layouts in Wordpress you can create new templates based on page.php in your theme folder. In the backend, when you create a new content managed page, you can select using a dropdown on the right what template you want it to use. By default, this is page.php. You can check out the Wordpress codex here http://codex.wordpress.org/Pages which goes through how to create customised page layouts. What you can actually do with the page really depends on how good you are at coding. Hope this helps.

It depends what type of account your client has. I know that 1&1 supply 1 mySQL database for Home package users and I think its 3 for Business. There should be a MySQL Administration tab which will allow you to add a new database. You might be best to contact 1&1 support and give them the clients 1&1 account number. They should be able to get hold of the details you need. It may require your client to upgrade their account.