If you’ve followed all of my steps in the second edition of Sites that Soar! and images still aren’t showing up on your homepage, here’s the first thing to check.

Which Branford Magazine version are you using?

If it’s 2.6, the one released in December 2008, change the Custom Fields URLs.  (Mr. Oeser, the designer of Branford Magazine, changed something very important.  If you update your Branford site to 2.6, this will be a problem.)

In your Custom Fields, the second edition of my book tells you to use a relative URL that looks like this:

2008/12/yourimage.jpg

Instead, use the absolute URL… the full URL of the image.  It will look like this:

http://yourdomain.com/yourWPname/2008/12/yourimage.jpg

However…

If you’re using an earlier version of Branford Magazine, do this:

Place your cursor over the area on the homepage where the image should be.  Usually, it’s a little box with the Custom Field word in it.  (That is, “featuredarticleimage” or “rightcolimage” or “leadimage”.)

If you’re using a pc, right-click and select “Copy Image Location.”

In your browser, open a new tab or window.  Paste the image location into the area where the URL should go.

Go there.

Can you see the image?  If so, something’s not working in your WordPress files.  Frankly, I’d reinstall WordPress as if you’re upgrading.  (They explain how to do this, step by step, at the official WordPress.org site.)

But, if the image doesn’t show up — and it usually doesn’t — look at the URL that you pasted into your browser.

Does it look like this?

http://yourdomain.com/yourblogname/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/imagename.gif

If so, the image didn’t upload properly.  Try again.

Does it look like this?

http://yourdomain.com/yourblogname//somename/root/yourdomainname.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/wp27a.gif

See that extra set of forward lines in the URL?  Look again.  You’re looking for something in the middle of the URL that looks like this:

//

That tells you something important:  The image URL is resolving to the wrong location.  It’s almost always a database issue.  If you know how to work with your database and you have access to it at your hosting service, you can fix it.

In most cases, either you won’t know how to fix it (I don’t) or you don’t have access to the nuts-and-bolts of your database.

Contact your hosting service.  Tell them what’s going on.

Be sure to include the long URL of the image, with the extra set of double lines (forward slashes) in it.

It should take your hosting service just a few minutes to fix the problem.

It’s a database issue, and it happens to a lot of people.  Out of about 25 websites that I’ve installed at HostGator (where most of my sites are hosted), two had this problem.

So, it’s not your hosting service’s fault… unless they don’t fix it, of course.

Until the images resolve to the correct URL, there’s no point tearing out your hair, trying to fix the missing images.

And, I’m sorry, but there’s also no point in writing to me about this, either.  Your hosting service can fix the problem; I can’t.

Yes, I posted about this in my previous Featured entry, No images on WordPress homepage?

It’s also covered in the lengthy comment thread at No Images? Weird placement?

Apparently, people aren’t reading those posts and/or comments. So, in this post, I’m trying again.