Tag Archives: wordpress

Power your photo blog with Flickr

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 Everybody loves pictures

Wordmark of Flickr

The old saying “a picture’s worth 1000 words,”  has held true through the ages, yet many small business don’t see the real value of publishing pictures of their products and services.  Whether it’s a cleaning service, custom manufacturer, realtor, or provider of very specialized services, a picture of what you do, make or sell is almost always more appealing and memorable that a paragraph or more of descriptions.

cotton gin

Seeing what happens in a cotton gin is more interesting than reading about it

Flickr is the best online photo management and sharing application; and it’s free.  You can also upload videos and manage them in the same way as your photos.  Google has a long way to go with their photo system to catch up, but that’ a topic for another post.  I will leave it to you to explore Flickr’s simple interface.  You may even want to upgrade to the PRO version as you become a heavy user.  You can even make all your images private, and still use all the great Flickr management tools.

For me, Flickr’s best feature is Sharing.  Not only can you share individual pictures, galleries or slide shows to the major social media platforms but you can post directly to your blog/website, directly from Flickr. Simply link to your favorite blogging platform, Blogger, WordPress, etc. in the options, the locate a photo you want to add, and one click posts on the blog of your choice.  I seldom have to do anything with my Memphis photoblog,  except add keywords.  Posts come straight from Flickr.  Here’s an example  photo post to this blog.

This quick screencast will give you an idea of how easy this process is.

Whether you are a business person or an individual proud of your photography, a photo blog is a very effective way to showcase your work  and get your message out there in a visual medium; and Flickr makes the process a breeze.

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WordCamp is for WordPress lovers

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WordPress
Image via Wikipedia

I find myself thanking my friend Brian Copeland in back-to-back posts for being the brains behind not one, but 2 stellar events in Nashville this week. I just posted about Tennessee’s first REBar Camp on Wednesday, 4/28. That was followed on Thursday by a WordCamp – a day devoted to the very popular blogging/website platform – WordPress.   If you are a blogger or if you have a website you should consider WordPress for a number of reasons, which I won’t go into in this post. (I still refer to my copy of  WordPress for Dummies )

The “camp” featured speakers ranging from geeky WordPress design, plugins, etc., to blogging legal issues, to internet and site security, analytics, and other topics revolving around this primo platform.  Like REBarCamp the day before, there was a lot of excellent and useful information as well as an incredible level of sharing.

Thanks to everyone who helped pull this WordCamp together.

6 must-have WordPress plugins

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I am little more than a rank beginner in WordPress, but like so many others, once I tried this popular blogging platform, I was hooked. WordPress plug-ins make the blogger’s life a lot easier, and developers are coming up with new ones all the time.  Of the hundreds of plug-ins I have checked out, and the scores I have in use, these are my favorites.  You can find them in the search for Dashboard|Plugins |Add New – just search the names and install directly from the “Install Plugins page”. See the video for visuals.  That is the easiest way to install.  Links below lead to plug-in info or development sites.

Apture allows you to add contextual images, links, maps, music, news, video and other media on the fly as you write your post.  2 Icons in the toolbar of your WYSIWYG editor let you find material to either link or imbed in your post.  The resources are comprehensive, and differentiate between copyrighted and permitted use material. [I used Apture to find and add media to this post]

Easy Adsense –Looking to monetize your blog?  Easy Adsense allows you to paste the ads you create in Adsense into the admin panel, choose where you want the ads to appear (location within the post, on pages, in widgets, etc.) and never have to think of them again until you want to change the parameters

Google Analyticator – If you use Google analytics, this plug-in adds a new dimension.  One very cool feature is that you can see stats for your blog on the blog’s dashboard when you sign in.

Lifestream – Lifestream for business, for your friends, or as a dynamic newsletter.  The lifestream plugin draws from your activities in any of your social media accounts that you choose to display, so the output might be very personal, very business-like or a mixture.  One very simple piece of code lets you make a Lifestream page.  You can also publish your Lifestream as a RSS feed and publish a daily or weekly summary as a blog post – a great substitute for an e-newsletter.

What Would Seth Godin Do– Worth clicking the link to see an explanation of how this plug-in came to be.   Options allow you to automatically add a small note at the beginning or end of a post to thank new visitors to your site.  There is a separate option to thank and engage returning visitors. [see the box at the bottom of this post]

Yet another Related Posts Plug-in -  Ever wondered how much trouble it was to note related posts, even old ones at the end of a blog post?  It’s incredibly easy with YARPP… after a little setup, the plug-in recognizes categories, content and keywords, weighs them and finds similar posts which are automatically linked below the current post.

I have some more favorites I will share in future posts.  Any suggestions?

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