Since not everyone has Photoshop, is there a way for someone to re-size a large picture to be used on a website or to send via email without jamming the recipient’s inbox? Yes! With Google’s image tools, Picasa and Picnik, there’s an easy way to work with your images to resize them online and then use them however you need.

Step 1: If you don’t have one already, get yourself a Google account.

I love a lot of Google’s free services. There’s gmail of course, which enables me to receive emails on my phone with no hassle and gives me over 7,000 megabytes of storage. Then there’s Feedburner which allows me to offer subscriptions to a web site via RSS. Google Analytics is also another great tool to take advantage of. For this tutorial though, we’re going to look at two media tools; Picasa and Picnik. So go to google.com and sign up for account if you don’t have one already.

Step 2: Now that you have your Google username (email) and password, sign in and get started with Picasa.

Your Google account's top toolbar as seen from Gmail window

To find Picasa, sign in and then you will see more on the far right of the top toolbar.

Click that to open a menu where the last item is “even more”.

Click on Even More down at the bottom

Under the Media section, you will see Picasa on the left and Picnik on the right.

Google's Media Products

TIP: The direct url to your Picasa account is https://picasaweb.google.com/home
You should probably bookmark this page so that you don’t have to go through Google’s admittedly convoluted click-throughs every time.

Saving a bookmark in Firefox

Now you can get to Picasa without jumping through Google’s hoops!

Easy one-click access!

Step 3: Create your album and upload pictures.
If you decide to just start to upload photos that’s fine. Just understand that Google needs to sort them into albums so if you upload a batch of images today, Google will prompt you to create an album with today’s date (you can always give it a custom name).

Step 4: Once photos have been added to an album, select one to resize.

Link to your existing albums on Picasa's home page

Click on the album to open it

Click on a photo to open it

Click on the album that contains your images to open it. Then click on the image you need to resize. Once the image is in its own window, you will see a toolbar at the top with a little landscape icon at the top. Click on that to launch Picnik.

Click landscape icon to launch Picnik

You can also click on Actions and then select "Edit in Picnik"

TIP: If you want to bypass Picasa, you can just launch Picnik right away and upload photos directly from your harddrive. I just suggest uploading to Picasa if you are fairly mobile and you want to get the whole process done on the web as opposed to being chained to whatever computer has your images. Also, once the image is resized, you can always add it to your site via its URL on Picasa.

Step 5: Edit your image with Picnik.
Go to Re-Size on the leftside toolbar. Then simply enter in the dimensions that you would like the image to be to use on your site.

Editing toolbar in Picnik

Depending on the layout of your theme, maximum size can vary, but for the sake of example, I usually save my images at 450 pixels wide as the maximum width. Make sure you choose to retain the proportions as well.

Original photo's dimensions. Too big for a blog!

Enter in the new dimensions (width and height in pixels)

Step 6: Save your image and either download or get url.
Picnik will allow you to save your edits and then you can either download the image back to your computer or, on Picasa, you can get the url of the image.

Save to your Picasa album

Now you can download the re-sized image to a folder on your computer

Then, when you add an image into your WordPress post or page, it’s simply a matter of pasting that images url into the add-image pop up window. If you choose to download the re-sized image, then all you need to do is add your images the regular way and the smaller file size will take a load off your server!

First and foremost, a web site is powered mainly by great content. A web site exists to inform the user about something, whether it be the different products or services a business offers or expert advice. So the most important thing about running a WordPress-powered site is knowing how to add content in a way that makes sense and is an efficient use of a site owner’s time.

Step 1: Page or Post – What kind of content is it?

In the beginning, WordPress was developed as a blogging platform. People logged into a “dashboard” and created “posts” which were then displayed on the site in the order that they were created. There was an archiving system that grouped posts by 1) Publish date and 2) Category they were assigned. Then, a separate system was developed as part of WordPress that enabled people to create “pages”. Pages are a way for a site to have content that is always in the same location in the site’s navigation. That way, people who were looking for information about your site quickly, could always find it in the same place instead of having to hunt through the archives.

So how do you know which content should be a “post” and which should be a “page”? There is no definite rule, but the advice I give people is that “posts” should be considered like a press release that you would send out about an event, or a sale, or some item of news about your business or subject, and “pages” are like a brochure that gives a reader more “static” information such as hours of operation, mission statement, location etc.

Step 2: Getting the writing done.

Everyone has a writing process; a way of creating that they are comfortable with and helps them think things through. Lucky for me, I just open my site’s dashboard, select either Post > Add New or Page > Add New and start typing away. Other folks need to write it out long-hand and then edit from there. A lot of clients I’ve worked with are so used to creating content in Microsoft Word that they find their words flow better by opening a new document and going from there. All very valid approaches, but trying to “pour” the content into the dashboard editing window and end up with the correct result is reliant on a few simple practices.

Write Early, Write Often.

Put up a post about your business’s upcoming event, new client or special sale as soon as possible.  And keep your audience informed about things as much as possible.  You don’t need to post new content every five minutes, but you will find that if you keep up a pace that works for your audience, they will remain loyal and even bring in more readers.  Pages don’t require as much upkeep, but it’s always a good idea to give your site’s pages a quick read-through every few months.  That way, you can see it with a fairly fresh eye and decide what needs tweaking.

You’ve Got Competition, Make It Interesting.

Since a picture can say a thousand words, let that work for you.  There are quite a few decent online stock image resources that can really keep a reader glued to your content.

Step 3: How To Create A Post

Think of the 6 tenets of journalism; Who, What, Where, When, Why and How.  Write the specifics down on paper if it helps.  Then, go to your site’s sign-in page (http://yoursitesname.com/wp-login.php) and go to Posts> Add New. You will see a page that looks like the picture below:
The first step is to create a title.  Keep if brief, and try to use words that people are likely to use in a search for similar content.  For instance, if your post is going to be about an upcoming sale your business is having on lawn furniture, you could title it: Lawn Furniture on Sale During September!

Now it’s time to start creating the body of your content.  Take a look at the top of the editing panel:

The 3 areas circled above are key to creating a post or page.  From the left, there is the Upload/Insert media panel, the “Kitchen Sink” toggle button and the “Visual” or “HTML” selection.  It’s a good idea to view a post or page you want to edit in HTML mode before you start to work.  Sometimes there may be code that you don’t want to type over by accident that’s only visible when you look at the HTML of your content.  If you click on the button in the far right of the toolbar, you will see the extra editing choices available in “Visual” mode.

To read a more detailed account of what the various buttons at the top of the editing window can do, check out: How To Use WordPress Part 1.

Tip: If you want to see what your content will look like “live” on the web, you can click “Preview” either in the top right corner of the edit window in the “Publish” panel, or next to the update notice that will appear above your title after you have saved your draft.

Step 4: Making Your Post Easy To Find

Posts are different from Pages not only in what they contain, but how they are organized on your site.  They are automatically displayed in chronological order on the page designated as your Posts page (Settings > Reading).  However, you don’t want your readers to have to hunt through your posts month by month to find something.  This is where Categories and Post Tags come into play.

Categories are what I like to think of as the Big Topic labels for your Posts.  Think of going into a library and having to look for a book about the Civil War.  You know that you need to look in the History Section (Category) under American History (an example of a sub-category).  If the library is well-organized into categories and sub-categories, you probably don’t even need to go through a card catalog right?

Try to come up with a system for creating categories before you put up too much content.  If people find your posts easy to find, they’ll keep coming back for more!

Whenever you write a post,  one of the last steps before hitting “Publish” is to either select a relevant category(s) from a list of the ones you have already created, or, to create a new one by clicking “+ Add New Category” and saving it.   Once you have added a Category, your new post is automatically assigned to it.  Categories can also have a hierarchy so you could have a Post entitled “Musings on the Battle of Bull Run” under both History, American History and Civil War history.  Then, if a reader wants to find Posts specifically about the Civil War, they can select from the Civil War category or if they want to find all the Posts about history, they can select History.

Tags are an even more detailed way to organize your Posts by “tagging” them with keywords.  To continue the analogy of a library, you can have very specific topics within the category of the Civil War such as “Bull Run”, “Manassas” and “Shiloh”.  In order for readers to find posts that are about specific things, it’s always good to create a tagging system based on keywords that you think readers are likely to use to search for your content.  I am always a big fan of the Tag Cloud, a widget (sidebar feature) that displays your Tags in a cluster of words sized according to how often a Tag is used.  For example, I do a lot of writing about WordPress for this site, so the tag “WordPress” is featured in big letters in the tag cloud you see to the right of this post.  If you can’t remember if you have used a particular tag before, you  can always click on “Choose from the most used tags” to see.

Step 5: Creating and Editing Pages

Pages differ from Posts in a few basic ways:  1) They stay in the same “location” of your site as components of your site’s navigation bar (such as the one running across the top of this page).  2) They can be organized into Parent Pages (for example: About) and then Child Pages (such as About Jenn).  3) Pages do not have Categories or Tags assigned to them.

To create a new Page, you simply go to the left toolbar of the Dashboard and select Pages > Add New.  The editing window that appears is basically the same as the one for Posts so no need to go into too much detail here.

To edit an existing page, you can access it a couple of ways.  If you are logged into the site, you can see a small link on each Post or Page called “edit” (when you are looking at the site itself).  Click on “edit” and you can go immediately to the edit window for that page.  For my clients’ sites, I usually use a plugin called “Dropdown Page Manager” that installs a list of all a site’s published pages under the Page section of the toolbar.  Then it’s just a matter of clicking on the title of the page you would like to edit.

However, if you don’t have that plugin installed or, you want to work on the draft of a page you began in an earlier session, click on “Pages” at the top and you will see a list of all your site’s pages, including drafts.  You can either click on the title of the page to open it up, or you can click the Edit link that you see when you hover over the title.

Quick-Edit is another feature that pops up when you hover over the Page title (or Post for that matter) and it can be useful when you want to change certain things about the content.  Clicking the words Quick Edit will open a small window directly on the same page where you can change the title of the Page, its place in the Page hierarchy (for example, selecting a Parent page so the page will now appear in the navigation’s dropdown selections) and other features as well.

You could change the template a page has assigned, if you have other ones available, whether to allow readers to comment on what you have written, the status to Draft, Pending Review or Published and even the date something was published (handy for when you don’t one one post appearing before another chronologically).  Password or Private is used for content that you may only want to be accessible for people with the right credentials.

Coming soon: Part 2: Images.

Not only was I going to my first meetup but I had been invited to be one of the presenters which was a really nerve-wracking fun experience. The theme was a WordPress BakeOff between Thesis, Headway and Suffusion. Each participant was assigned a framework and then given a design to re-create using their theme. As the Suffusion contestant, I found that it really helped to have an outline of all the features so you can see that here.

On a side note, this is where I am going to be working on a new look for my own site, so bookmark this if you want to follow the progress of my own Suffusion-powered site renovation!

Once DeathWish Piano Movers owner Greg Keane stepped in front of the cameras for the Travel Channel’s new show, DeathWish Movers, he realized that his company would need to update their website to a more dynamic version that would also function as their online storefront. Since hoisting Black Sabbath-worthy mixing consoles and antique Steinways out of Boston loft spaces and brownstones can be a little time-consuming, DeathWish wanted to find a method to easily keep their site fresh and current. Luckily, I had met Greg’s wife Lissa through my local BNI chapter and with her and Greg’s input and Kevin Keane’s graphic design skills, a WordPress version of their previous site began to come together.

One of the biggest design hurdles was creating a CSS/Javascript-driven navigation bar that not only looked like a piano keyboard, but had to show the keys going down as the user hovered over the link. Not only that, but they also wanted the actual note to play. Luckily, I have done some other custom navigation in which the background image changes when the user hovers over the link. The sound, however was a different story. After a bit of searching, I found an excellent library of piano note samples and with a bit of javascript, was able to get the effect to work.

The next order of business (literally) was to find a way to easily integrate a shopping cart provided by Sage Virtual Terminal with the wordpress site. Developers beware! If you are working with a client that thinks they have an Authorize.net account, do whatever you can to ensure that that’s what they do have early in the game. I didn’t find out that Authorize.net wasn’t included as part of the client’s Virtual Terminal account until I was really close to purchasing what looked to be a great plugin. So the moral of the story is, whenever e-commerce is involved make absolutely sure that everyone involved knows exactly what you need to enable e-commerce and make doubly sure that you know exactly what you are getting to work with. This story has a happy ending though- the virtual terminal interface gave me urls for each product (and product variation) and I got to design my own buttons and simply wrap links to the specific urls around each.

The DeathWish Movers show has had two episodes so far and the site is getting a good amount of traffic. So set your DVRs to DeathWish Movers every Wednesday at 10pm est on the Travel Channel. I’m hoping that it gets picked up for another season because, as someone who moved about 8 times when they lived around Boston and worked as a set dresser on a lot of Back Bay sets, I know how hard these guys work!

This is the previous home page:

And here is the new design, which was based on the Mystique theme by Digital Nature. I went with their theme because it offered a good choice of options, while giving a more code-minded designer like myself “under the hood” access to the template files.

I really liked their design framework for the dropdown menu at the top. I felt that the original site’s navigation didn’t include the right architecture and the user kept having to go back to the home page for links to Financial Advice and a few other items.

The original image theme of the site was lighthouses, which tied nicely into the logo and the concept of the company being a guide to financial safety. However, the photos I had originally taken now struck me as a little cold and distant; probably because I had first created the site during the winter of ’07 and I would have needed a boat to get close enough to get bigger images. So I decided to find images that seemed warmer and more engaging. I found this picture for the Long Term Care Insurance page on iStock.

The sidebar was another area that was ripe for improvement. While the old site had pages where potential clients could request a quote for whatever insurance type the page was about, Beacon decided that it would be easier all-around if they had one standard “Request a Quote” form in the sidebar where it was easy to find no matter where you are on the site. I used the CForms II plugin by Delicious Days here.

The other feature I wanted to upgrade was the location map. It’s become one of my pet peeves when a website has a static image of a map on a page when embedding a Google map of a business’s location is so damn easy. The list under “Insurance News” is a simple list of the site’s blog categories.

By converting the old site’s newsletter-style Insurance Updates pages into blog posts it killed two birds with one stone. The new site could be launched with a full blog already built in and, any new updates that a Beacon agent wanted to write would be easy to fit into the existing set of categories.

Last but not least was one feature that I really love to use on sites: the Subscribe via Email form provided by Feedburner.

A lot of clients want to have some way to contact their client base/readers without a lot of fuss. Unless they really have the resources to manage a full html newsletter service such as Mailchimp or Constant Contact, this is really an elegant solution. While some readers might understand what the orange rss icon means, there are so many still unconverted to the wonders of feed subscription that offering them a way to sign up to receive an email whenever a blog is updated with new content can be very handy.

It’s nice to come full circle with a client and re-visit an earlier job. I needed to come up with a fresh approach and I hope the new site will work well both for Beacon and their customers!

One of the design requirements, is that there had to be an image that would change every time one went to the home page. Not a bad idea, but one of those concepts so deceptively simple that it was lost in a sea of over-elaborate plugins promising to do everything short of picking up your drycleaning.

Finally, I located the Random Image plugin, but was a little skittish about the “freshness date” on the plugin’s WordPress page. It did work with 3.0.2 though except for one small issue: the code that generated the random image only worked on the template side of things, meaning, I could insert the php into the template file that the page was set to , but not on the actual page’s editing window.

I tried putting it into the no-sidebars.php file that I was using and saving it as a different template, and the random image would display, but the sidebars would show up! What’s a girl to do?

Short Code Exec PHP to the rescue! Once installed, you can input php code into the editing window (located in Settings>Short Code Exec PHP). Just be sure to leave the initial and ending php tags out. See below:

Then, I went to the page I wanted a random image to appear on and put the short code by using the random-img short code tag I had defined in the Short Exec settings.
And, just like that, I have a random image generated every time I load the page. This is great for when a plugin creator doesn’t have short code instructions available!

At least something is going right today…

jennsweb.blogspot.com

Recently I looked at my client list and realized that I now have quite a few whose sites include a blog.  Some of them update the blog on a regular basis and send out an email to all their subscribers to let them know there’s something new to read.  Others put a new post up once in a while and then there’s the ones who wrote 2 or 3 posts in a rush when their site was first launched and haven’t updated since then.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being taciturn.  Hey, in New England it’s practically a virtue, but with so much online customer/company interaction these days, having a blog and never doing anything with it is like hiding in the stockroom when a customer walks in the door.

I think a lot of it has to do with the sheer vastness of the blog-0-sphere.  There’s a dizzying array of blogging platforms, services, widgets, feeds and gadgets out there that can make any busy business owner throw up their hands and retreat back into their snail-mail newsletter shell.  So, hopefully, I can help by breaking this complex idea down into its basic components.

Why would I want to have a blog in the first place?

Because it’s fun!  It really is.  Whether it’s finding a great site that would help your customers find useful information, great photos from your company cook-out, or even the news that someone at your firm had a baby, it’s a good feeling to put it out there for everyone to see.  It’s also a way to turn a problem into a positive thing.  When I’ve had to spend an entire afternoon searching for a solution to an issue on a client’s site, putting a post up that shows how I solved the problem not only helps me to have it “on-file” for the next time the issue comes up, it’s good karma to provide an answer where none existed before!

Some other great reasons to have a blog for your business are:

1: It’s good for the environment.  Remember the mailed-out newsletter?  I still get one from AAA every quarter and I’m usually so busy, it goes right into the recycling bin.  Instead of all that formatting and list merging, envelope-licking and stamp buying, a blog post, set to be emailed via RSS to a client who has opted for email updates, has a much better chance of actually being read and doesn’t use any paper!

2. It’s free advertising.  Sure, you could spend hundreds of dollars on print ads, even more on an Adwords campaign, but perhaps the most effective way to gain new business is to provide an online resource for customers to find out more about your business.  People are always happy (and grateful!) to receive free information.  Informed and happy is how you want people to feel when they come to you for business.

How do I get a blog?

There are many blogging “platforms” out there, but the 2 I am most familiar with are WordPress (which runs this site) and Blogger.  WordPress offers 2 options.  If you don’t want to deal with signing up for your own self-hosted (published under your own site name on a hosting company’s server) blog, then you can go to WordPress.com and get a blog going there.

Your WordPress Blog "dashboard"

If you have your own site already and you just want to add the blog to it, you can either install WordPress in a subfolder of your site (and call the folder “blog”) and then just add a link to it in your navigation (example: jennmearswebdesign.com/blog), or you can set up your entire site in WordPress and assign a page to contain the blog portion of the site.

(Editor’s note: Blogger now has a Pages gadget to add static pages to your blog.)

Blogger is now a service offered by Google.  A blogger.com blog’s URL looks like this:

http://salemliving.blogspot.com

If you have a Google account, just sign in and go to Settings, then Google Account Settings.  Blogger is listed there along with other great (free!) tools to enhance your blog.

Your Blogger Dashboard

By the way, getting a Google account is a very useful overall step to take a business owner.  It allows you to create a Google Maps listing for your business and get easy-to-access online email as well as being a foundation for many cool blogging tools such as Feedburner.

Feedburner lets you provide a way for readers to follow your blog.

What do I write about and how often?

For a straight-up business blog, it’s best to focus your writing on information related to your business.  For example, I have a client that’s a lawyer and their blog consists of posts about various court case rulings that affect their area of practice.  If you are in the medical field, it may be a good idea to write about medical studies and other news related to your particular area of medicine.  A blog is your opportunity to give your clients useful information that is tailored just to them.  You know your clients and you know when things need to be put into layman’s terms and phrased in ways that they will understand.

Of course not every entry needs to be cut and dry information about your field.  Posts can be about things that are happening in your life like how much fun you are having coaching your daughter’s softball team, or a great new restaurant you ate at the other night.  Having a month-long special in your store?  Put up a post on your blog and then publish updates throughout the month about how sales are going.  I publish a new post when I launch a new website and it lets people know what kinds of clients I have and how I approach different web design situations.

How often should you write on your blog?  This is a pretty open-ended question.  The best answer is to sit down, think about your schedule throughout the week, and try to find 15-30 minutes somewhere that you can use for updating your blog.  Blogs that are updated on a steady basis are the ones that quickly develop loyal followers.  It’s not quantity, it’s quality.  A single well-written post with cool pictures and links once a week is 10 times better than a gaggle of half-baked, info-light random blurbs.

Good tip: If you are worried that you will end up staring at a blank editing window, come “blog-time”, take some time to write down at 10 different ideas for posts and save them for a rainy day.  I keep a notebook throughout the day when I’m working and it really helps when I have writer’s block to flip through and find the different ideas scattered throughout the pages.

How can I get people to read my blog?

Tell people that it’s there! If you already have a client email list, then send out an email with the link to the blog in it. Just be sure you are comfortable with how your blog looks first and you’ve got at least 2 or 3 (proofread!) posts on the home page already.

Be sure to include a way for people to subscribe to your blog via email. (By default, all blogs offer a way to “check in” for updates via an RSS feed but unless your audience is particularly tech-savvy, they won’t likely choose to do so. Also, most people check their email at least once a day. Your blog’s feed service will check your blog periodically and send out an email to a subscriber if you have posted new stuff.

Also, if you are on any social network that lets you post a profile, add your blog’s URL to your profile. Provide a “feed” of your blog on your Facebook profile or page and people can visit your profile and get updated on your blog in one visit.

Basically, the easier you make it for people to read and follow your blog, the more your blog will be read.

Best Blogging Practices

Be succinct

Title your posts wisely.  Web crawlers look for keywords primarily in page titles which, for a blog post is the title of the post.

Pictures keep people reading.  Just make sure you are using them legally.

Keep your content organized and easy to search through.  Using tags and categories (basically assigning relevant keywords to a post) will make it easier for readers to browse your blog (and keep browsing!)

Open a dialogue with your readers.  Was this post helpful for you?  Not anything you didn’t know already?  Do you have more questions?  Send me some feedback below!

Once you have downloaded, installed and activated the NextGen Gallery Plugin, when you go to your WP dashboard, it appears at the bottom left like so:

NextGen's Location in the WP Dashboard

Clicking next to the plugin’s name will open a list of tools and settings for NextGen:

NextGen Gallery Tools and Settings

Here’s a quick guide to the various areas of the NextGen toolbox:
1: Overview
2: Add Gallery/Images
3: Manage Gallery
4: Album
5: Tags
6: Options
7: Style
8: Set Up
9: Roles
10: About

1: Overview

Opens a page that contains general info about Next Gen. You can see a count of your albums, galleries and images, the names of recent donors to the plugin’s author (some nice exposure in exchange for a little support-these things don’t write themselves), updates from Alex Rabe’s blog, related plugins (good to check out for ways to extend Next Gen) and your Graphic Library settings.

Step 1. Click on Upload Images

2: Add Gallery/Images

Fairly self-explanatory, this is where you would go to create a new gallery or add images to an existing gallery. Click on “browse” to select an image from your computer. Then, select the gallery they will be uploaded to.

Step 2. Select your images

3. Manage Gallery

This brings you to a list of all your galleries. Click one of your galleries to edit the following settings:

Title: The title your gallery will have when it’s displayed on a page.

Description: A brief summary of the gallery’s content

Path: The file path for your gallery.

Page Link To: When the gallery is displayed as the content of an Album, choosing a page here will create a linked image and title that can be clicked on to go directly to that gallery’s page.

Preview Image: Lets you choose which image will be displayed when the gallery is shown in an Album.

Author: Lets you show the Gallery’s author.

Create Page: This feature allows you to create a page for the Gallery if you need to.

Below those options is a dropdown menu of Actions. If you need to make changes to several or all the images at once, this will save you time:

No Action: the default

Set Watermark: Allows you to embed text onto the image to mark it as yours.

Create New Thumbnails: This is what you need to use if you have changed your Thumbnails settings under Options (see below).

Re-size Images: You may need to re-size images to fit your site’s style.

Delete Images: Allows you to perform a batch delete on selected images.

Import Metadata: Allows you to import metadata (e.g. EXIF, IPTC, or XMP data) from images and set it in the alternate title text field. (Thanks Dave!)

Rotate Images Clockwise/Counter-Clockwise: Fairly self-explanatory.

Copy To: Lets you copy the selected images to a different gallery.

Move To: Lets you move the images from one gallery to another.

Add/Delete/Overwrite Tags: Allows you to batch-edit tags-keywords associated with the images that can enable the images to be selected by keyword-based searches.

If you have selected one of these actions, just click on Apply to put the changes in effect. You can also choose to Sort the Gallery which takes you to a page where you can re-arrange your images. To return to the Gallery editing window, just click Return to Previous Page on the far right. Also, if you did change anything, make sure you click “Save Changes” to put all your edits into effect.

The bottom of the Manage Gallery page contains a list of all that Gallery’s images. If you just need to edit one image, or, if each image needs individual editing, you can do that here.

4. Album

If you need to sort your Galleries into categories, then you need to create Albums. The analogy at work here is that you can have a family album entitled “Vacations” and perhaps another entitled “Weddings” and into those albums you would put collections of photos (or galleries) called “Disneyworld09″ and “Phyllis & Mike”.

Click and drag an album from the right window to place it in the left window for editing.

Once you have selected which album you want to edit, just drag it over to the far left window to add galleries via the drag and drop method.

Click Update to place the Galleries into the Album selected.

5. Tags

This allows you to edit existing tags, re-name tags, delete tags and also edit the tags’ slug (the way it will be written into the page’s URL). For example: if you had tagged an image as “Family Vacations”, the slug could be specified as family-vacations. Choosing your slugs wisely makes you site more “search friendly”.

This makes the image likely to show up in a search for the terms "home" AND "interior".

6. Options:

This is where you go to control the following settings:
General: set the gallery path, delete image files (check to remove the images from the database when you remove a gallery, activate permalinks, select a graphic library, activate an rss feed for your images and activate some Javascript effects for your galleries to create certain displays of images. Another feature you can edit here is how your images can be attached to posts that shares certain search terms, either by categories or tags.

Thumbnails: Here you can set the dimensions and the quality of your galleries’ thumbnails. Just be sure to go to Manage Galleries > Select a gallery > Actions and select “Create New Thumbnails” after you do this.

Images: Here you can edit your images’ size, quality, enable caching of images when someone browses a gallery and also clear the cache folder in case you change certain image settings.

Gallery: You can set a large array of options for your galleries here. Deactivate a gallery page’s link, set the number of images per page, set the number of image columns, integrate Slideshow settings, choose to show either a slideshow or a list of thumbnails, simply show the imagebrowser, add hidden images, enable Ajax pagination and choose Sort options.

Effects: This is where you can set the way images will be displayed once their thumbnails in a Gallery are clicked. Note: the only two options that will work automatically are Thick Box (which displays the image with a thick white border over a sheer gray background) and Shutter (similar display but with no border). Highslide and Lightbox effects can only be generated when certain javascript is inserted into your content folder. For an example of the Highslide effect, click here and then click one of the images under Galleries.
To see what the Lightbox effect is go here and select one of the images.

Watermark: Here you can edit your settings for displaying watermarks such as whether yo want to use an image or text to protect your images from theft.

Slideshow: Set your slideshows’ appearance. Note: you will need to download an auxiliary plugin named JW Image Rotator to get the slideshows to function.

7. Style:

Style allows you to choose from 7 different stylesheets for your Album and Gallery displays as well as customize the CSS to suit your site’s look and layout. The available readymade styles aren’t radically different from each other, but here is a series of screenshots with the various choices in effect.

Gallery displaying the default style

Black Minimalism Theme

DKret 3 Theme

Hovereffect Styles

K2 Theme

Shadow Effect

Shadow Effect with Description Text

Not stunningly different in appearance I know, but, look at things this way. You can select a style, customize it any way you like via CSS and then, if things get hairy, you can always select another style to revert your design to something similar to its original state.

8. Set Up:

This page gets a little lost in translation for me. One would expect it to contain info about folders and ports and such but this is actually where you go to fully remove any images/galleries/album info from your database. That first line you see:
“You don’t like NextGEN Gallery ?” always reminds me that awkward moment when you have to tell your mother-in-law “No thanks” when offered a helping of her special “Spam ‘n Cheezwiz Surprise”. I wish this section was called “Uninstall” instead.

9. Roles:

This is a nice touch. If you run a site that has several administrators/editors/contributors (the basic WordPress roles), this is where you can assign different levels of access to the NextGen galleries for different people.

10. About:

Here’s where the credits roll. If you are burning with desire to see who contributed to this plugin’s development and/or economic survival, then this is the section for you. And, if you find NextGen so fabulous that you want to throw some cash their way, there’s a “Make a Donation” button right under the heading “How to Support?”.

Related Links:

Hungry for more? Here’s a list of links to other NextGen-related articles that I have gathered in the course of working with the NextGen plugin:

Vuthy.com: Guide to Using NextGen’s Albums and Galleries

Scotproof’s: Inserting a NextGen gallery or slideshow in a custom field

Narasopa Media’s: Adding Title and Description to NextGen Gallery Thumbnails

And stay tuned for the next article in my NextGen series: “Customizing Your Gallery”!

When Katharine Navins, Tallow Studio’s owner needed a WordPress developer to bring her site design for Lovejoy Designs to fruition, she came to Jenn Mears Web Design with the page concepts and site architecture wonderfully laid out with a great eye towards color and balance. Utilizing a theme called Silver Dreams, I was able to re-create Tallow’s design and developed some page templates to match the various looks through-out the site. The biggest challenge came with the desire to present the Portfolio and Featured Products sections with an interactive gallery that allowed the user to click on thumbnails to view a full-size image on the same page. I decided to use Alex Rabe’s NextGen Gallery plugin with some extensive modifications developed by Arafatbd.net and several other members of the WordPress community. After a few late nights and some wp forum stalking, the site finally came together. Love Joy Designs is a Boston-based interior design firm owned by Phoebe Lovejoy Russell, a designer with a great flair for color, form and function. Her throw pillow designs were especially fun ( a great bonus when you are tweaking a gallery of them at 1am!) and her blog, Design Lab, is sure to inspire readers everywhere.

5 Reasons to have a blog for your business

1. It’s environmentally friendly. Unless you are running a blog about your helicopter hunting/timber logging business venture. But not only is it green for the environment, it’s green for you. It takes up much less of your company’s business day since you no longer need to drive to cold calls, print out newsletters and manage mail merges.

2. It’s extremely cost-effective. Even if you feel the need to (ahem) hire a professional designer to “tweak your template” (more on that later), you should still save a ton of dough by not needing to do as much print advertising.

3. You will have an “auxiliary engine” to drive traffic to your company’s site. Put a link back to your company’s site. Use your blog profile tool to find local sites and bloggers and ask them if they are willing to trade links.

4. It can generate customer feedback and communication. Run a contest for your readers. Ask people for their opinion on your review of a local restaurant. Let people know you welcome comments by making that link more visible.

5. It’s fun! It’s a low stress way to promote your business without feeling like you are out there on a soapbox. Write what you enjoy writing about and they will come.

4 Do’s and Don’ts

Don’t be too negative too much. If you had a tough time with a client, or your favorite team/american idol contestant/politician lost, write about what you learned from it and respect others’ privacy and/or opinions.

Try to find a rhythm and stay with it. One interesting post a week is better than 7 entries that vary on “My Starbucks-Fueled Mini-Rant”, but keep your content as fresh as possible without sacrificing quality for quantity.

Be useful, or funny, or ahead of the crowd or any combination. Being creative doesn’t hurt either. Think about what kinds of questions your clients have had lately and how you can answer them.

Don’t blitz your readers with “bells and whistles”. We’ve all been to that site where so many “awesome”(bandwidth-hogging) features needed to load that we didn’t go past the home page.

3 Blogging Terms to Know

RSS: Almost synonymous with the term “Feed”, RSS stands for (in my opinion) Really Simple Syndication. It’s an easy way for your readers to keep up with your blog and make sure that they know when you have something new on the site. Of course, it’s up to your readers to decide to follow your blog, but putting a widget in your template (see below) suggesting that your readers to subscribe really helps things along.

Template: This is the term blogging services use for your blog’s layout and overall design. If you really want a distinctive look for your blog, such as colors based on your logo and custom backgrounds, etc, you should the editing options for your template before you go with it.

Widgets/Badges: Basically, those “bells and whistles” I was warning you about earlier. Like a good spice, use them only if necessary and they will work for you, not against you. Some examples of widgets are “Archives” that list your posts in chronological order, and Google’s Adsense which will place text ads on your blog by “sensing” the site’s content. (Which still doesn’t explain the Maalox ad that kept appearing on Jennsweb a few years ago.) Badges are items such as Flickr, which can display your Flickr images in a little window, and Twitter, which can display your most recent updates on your Twitter account.

2 FAQ’s

What should I blog about?
Almost anything. A post can be a photo, a story, an interesting link or all three combined. Don’t cast your net too wide. Think about the blog’s description (that little phrase underneath a blog’s title) and see if your entry would be something that someone finding your blog would find interesting as well.

How much time should I devote to this?
If you run a business, then you know how the word “busy” got in there. The best approach is the one that fits around your schedule. Blog on your coffee break if you want. As long as you get in the habit, don’t obsess over how much time you spend on it because…

#1 Rule: Have fun with it!
Remember, it’s not the annual report to the stockholders. Because who gets excited about reading those?