Here’s a great article for anyone wanting to start a blog but is worried about not being a “good enough” writer.  Blogs aren’t just for “great writers” and can be used in a variety of creative ways.  You can use a blog to feature your art and/or photography and let the visuals “speak” for themselves.  Or you could use your blog to collect and organize information and articles that you know your clientele/audience is interested in.  The possibilities are endless….

For more inspiration on how to start a blog when you aren’t a great writer, check out the article below.

How to Blog When You’re Not a Writer
by Mark Hayward

Related Posts:

• No related posts where found.

Click here to learn more about the All in One SEO Pack.

Here’s a screenshot of the All in One SEO Pack fields available for each post and page in WordPress – found at the bottom of the page/post editing screen.

How to use it

Here is a list of the most important on-page ranking factors and how they are addressed by this WordPress SEO plugin. You might want to visit the Options screen under Settings for the All in One SEO Pack to tweak the default options before getting started.

• Titles
  The text that you see in your browser’s window bar is one of the most important things *on* your page to search engines in knowing where to place your pages in their search results. Make sure your titles are optimized by using the title field (see figure above) to write a custom 10 to 12 word title describing the content of the page or post.  If your blog post or page titles don’t contain your most precious keyword phrases you want to rank for then tweak them using the custom title field will help keep your title tag optimized.
• Descriptions
  Once your pages and posts rank in the search engines your description (aside of course from your title) makes a potential visitor want to click through to your page, or not.  I try to write compelling descriptions of a sentence or two that provide whatever extra detail is needed (that won’t fit in the title) describing what is on the page or post and why it is unique and of benefit to the visitor.   If you don’t want to invest the time and write a description for every post at least let them be auto-generated (check this option in the settings area).
• Keywords
  Hopefully you have a customized keyword report for your business when you are writing blog posts and content for your website.   Be sure to include the relevant keyword phrases that have been identified on your report within the keywords field (see figure above).   The keyword tag doesn’t hold as much weight or value as it once did, but I believe it is still good practice  to include a few targeted keyword phrases for each page and post.

There are quite a few options in the settings area for this plugin that you can play with, however following these basic tips and using these three fields will help keep your WordPress site optimized for your targeted keyword phrases.

Related Posts:

• No related posts where found.

A bit about Shadowbox:

Shadowbox is an online media viewer application that supports all of the web’s most popular media publishing formats. Shadowbox is written entirely in JavaScript and CSS and is highly customizable. Using Shadowbox, website authors can showcase a wide assortment of media in all major browsers without navigating users away from the linking page. Shadowbox is an online media viewer application that supports all of the web’s most popular media publishing formats. Shadowbox is written entirely in JavaScript and CSS and is highly customizable. Using Shadowbox, website authors can showcase a wide assortment of media in all major browsers without navigating users away from the linking page.

To install the Shadowbox plugin from WordPress, simply click on Add New Plugin and search for ShadowBox.  Once the plugin is installed and activated here’s how to use it.  Or if you want to download Shadowbox  manually, go here.

Samples of ShadowBox in action:

Island Hemp Clothing (click on a thumbnail image)

Kauai Sea Riders (click on a thumbnail image)

How to use the Gallery Feature in WordPress:

Before you get started you’ll need to have all of your images sized and optimized for the web, target size should be about 600 pixels wide at 72 dpi.  For more information on free web-based tools you can use for image sizing and editting, check out my post on Aviary and Gabby’s post on Picnik.

1. Go to a post or page in the WordPress dashboard, click on the “upload image icon” where it says “upload/insert”.
2. Click on “select files” and choose the series of images you would like to feature in the gallery, wait for them to upload and then click “save all changes”.
3. You should notice that a “gallery” tab shows up in the add an image function box – click on the “gallery” tab.
   
4. Now click on “insert gallery” and you’ll notice a yellow gallery box shows up in the post or page.  Save or update your post or page and preview it.
5. If you’d like to add captions to your photos, click one time on the yellow gallery box and then click on the “edit gallery” image icon in the upper left corner.  For each photo click on “show” and you will be presented with the option to add a caption, a description and even a URL/link if you desire.
6. After you have added all of the image information to each image in your gallery click on “save all changes”.  DO NOT click on “insert into post” – this is for adding a single image into a post, not working with a gallery.

The gallery feature inserts rows of thumbnail images into your page or post.  When these thumbnails are clicked on it launches the Shadowbox gallery which offers a larger view of your images with controls for the user to click forward, back or close the window.  If you would like to adjust the number of images you have per row, visit the gallery settings area.

Have fun building your new WordPress Shadowbox galleries!

Related Posts:

• No related posts where found.

If you’d like to permanently have more space to write your posts, go to “Settings” and choose “Writing”.  Then at the top you’ll see a setting for “size of the post box”, change that to 30 lines instead of 10 and you’ll end up with more space to “breath” when you are creating your new posts.

Related Posts:

• No related posts where found.

To build a free WordPress blog, visit www.WordPress.org.

Related Posts:

• No related posts where found.

1)  Adjust color
If your photo needs some adjustment to make the colors more vibrant, choose:

Filter, Adjust Color, Choose “levels”….
Adjust the slider bars below the histogram to be lined up evenly with the starting points of the histogram on either side.  Then begin adjusting further (make sure “preview” is on so you can see the changes “live”) and adjust the image to your preference.  When you are happy with the adjustment, click “ok”.

2)  Crop the image
Cropping an image can give it more impact and provides a means of eliminating any unwanted image data in a photo.  Click on the crop tool (see image icon below), then click and drag on the image,  starting from the upper left corner of where you want to crop from moving towards the right and down.  Once you have the crop area the size you need you can click on the canvas again and then position the crop box precisely over the image – when you are ready to apply the crop, double click within the crop area.

3) Sizing & Optimizing for the Web
When working with images for the web it is best to set the image resolution to 72 dpi.  Typically images taken with a digital camera are at 300 dpi (which is a great setting for print).  Photos used for websites can be a variety of sizes from 50 pixels wide up to 600 pixels wide (on average).  Change the dpi setting for your image first and then adjust the pixel dimensions for the width and make sure to choose “constrain proportions” which will automatically adjust the height to be proportionate to the width.

4)  Sharpen the Image.
Now that you’ve cropped and sized your photo, it’s time to sharpen up the image, as some quality has been lost in the sizing process.  Choose “select all” and then “filter”, “sharpen”.  You should visibly see the image get clearer.

5) Save the image for the web
Save your edited image with a new file name as a jpg, medium quality is fine.  Avoid using spaces or special characters in the file name.

Now your image is ready to upload into your content management system.

Add an appropriate title for every image, set alignment and in some cases you can add a border around the image if desired.

Related Posts:

• Batch Processing of Images in Photoshop
• ZeppOS Tips & Tricks
• ZeppOS Member Group Functions
• Free ZeppOS Online Training
• ZeppOS Virtual Walk Thru