Web Site How-To « Company K Media

Three Favorite WordPress Photo Plugins

March 29, 2010 by Kerri Karvetski

This is the second in an occasional series of posts on how I publish and manage this Web site.

Cute, right? My daughter used to put ALL of her stuffed animals to “sleep” by laying every one of our towels, placements and napkins on them as blankets. This Tweetie bird photo is one of our favorites from that era.

I plucked Tweetie from my Flickr stream. I plucked the fun photo below from my Facebook photos.

Photos and images help you tell your story and drive home your point. They make your words more memorable and help readers scan and digest content quickly (you’re not actually reading this post cover-to-cover, are you? You’re likely scanning).

Most social sites like Facebook, Flicker, and WordPress play nice with each other, letting you share and cross-post content.

Plucking photos and images from Flickr and Facebook for your WordPress post (or page) is seamless thanks to a few free plugins.

Not a photographer? Don’t worry. There are thousands of free-to-use photos on Flickr via the Creative Commons license. And yes, there’s a plug-in for that (keep reading scanning).

Here are three WordPress photo plugins I actually use.

Facebook Photos Plugin for WordPress

Chances are you’ve uploaded photos on Facebook. Go get ‘em with this app! Remember, after you download the plugin, upload it and activate it, you STILL have to authorize the connection. Go to Settings>Facebook to authorize.

Once everything’s set up you’ll see a little Facebook icon in your WYSIWYG editor. Click on it and a window will pop up with your Facebook albums.

WP-Flickr

This gives you access to your own photos on Flickr – Favorites, Photostream and Sets. After uploading the plug-in, remember to authorize the connection. Go to Settings>WP-Flickr.

I couldn’t find this plug-in when I first installed and authorized it. When you’re crafting a post, remember to scroll down to see the plugin.

Photo Dropper

Photo Dropper searches for Creative Commons licensed photos – images that are licensed for shared use – and lets you drop them into your posts – right from your dashboard with just 1 click (it installs a little icon in your WYSIWYG editor).

If you are not familiar with Creative Commons licenses, among them are a licenses that let you use photos and content for free, as long as you give attribution. Photo Dropper will only search for photos you can use, and it drops in attribution automatically.

I did a head-to-head search test between Photo Dropper and the Flickr Web site (using the Advanced Flickr search with the Creative Commons filter checked). I found many more photos directly on the Flickr site.

That said, Photo Dropper is worth it as a quick first line of attack when searching for Creative Commons photos.

It’s important to remember that these three apps are a one-way street. They let you pluck but not post, purge or otherwise interact with the content.

Happy plucking!

Tags: Facebook, Flickr, photos, Wordpress
Posted in Blogging, Web Site How-To | Comments

Web Site How-To: WordPress

March 24, 2010 by Kerri Karvetski

This is the first of an occasional series of posts on how I publish and manage this Web site.

Last fall I bit the bullet. I decided to pay for help re-launching my Web site. I had managed enough client Web site launches to know that my tired old site wasn’t cutting it.

About 2 years ago I migrated from Squarespace to WordPress because I wanted a content management system that I could muck up spruce up with widgets and plug-ins and fun things. Squarespace is good for straightforward publishing, but WordPress is much more widget-friendly and the user community is larger by orders of magnitude, which mean lots of free advice and experimentation (just like Beaker).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeneilson/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

The WP user interface is very clean. Some folks fear WordPress sites will look, well, WordPressy, like a template. That’s not always a bad thing.

In the hands of a good designer and Web developer, however, you can do amazing things with WordPress. I wouldn’t use it for large sites, but for small sites and microsites, it’s just the right combination of power and simplicity, blog or no blog.

See the advocacy microsite for PBS-NY that I launched last year using WordPress. The site’s been reduced to one page because the campaign is over, but it went up in a week and helped push 5,000 letters to the governor and state legislators.

Planning & Design

For my old WP site I used a simple off-the-shelf WordPress theme – they are as many as the stars. But it never reflected my personality. It was limited. It was plain. I need FLAVOR!

I drafted a simple site map and used Gliffy to create wireframes. Gliffy is OK, but I’ve since discovered a few other wireframe products that look promising. I’m still fiddling.

I am no designer. Fortunately, my friend Nadine Robbins is. She created this unique design. (And she’s is a passionate portrait artist. Please peek.)

She created two designs and this was the clear winner. We iterated a bit on the home page. I struggled with how much stuff to put on the home page. I love home page slideshows and needed to show off my social media activity and connections.

Right now I’m pulling in my Twitter feed, my Delicious bookmarks and my Delicious tagcloud.

You tell me, how’d we do?

I wanted big social media buttons, and the pack from Aquaticus fit the bill. The only button I needed that they didn’t have was the Slideshare button. I grabbed my Slideshare button straight from Slideshare and think that it does the trick.

I love my site. It’s me, and reflects what I do and where I am today as a consultant.

Development

Next came Joe, my coding hero. He’s a Web developer extraordinaire at DNL OmniMedia, a local firm that can handle Drupal, Joomla and WordPress, plus I’ve thrown Democracy in Action and MailChimp custom work at them. They are a certified Convio technology partner. They do excellent work.

photo credit: racheocity