Blogging Sueblimely

My pick of the best ten free WordPress Photo themes are all built to work with WP 3+ and, as well as being able to change the menu and backgrounds, all have extra features built in. There is a wide range of design and layout options here. Some of these photo themes have feature post sliders and others gallery views which you can set to be your front page.

Even if you do not intend to blog, WordPress can be used as a very easy way to build a website without any coding knowledge.  With a little bit of learning you can easily change the colors to suit yourself and  create something unique so that your photos or artwork stand out.

Boldy

Theme Site Demo Download Documentation

• Nivo Slider
• WordPress 3.0 Menu Management Support
• Easy to set up – Theme Options Page
• Latest Tweets Built-in Widget
• Built-in Pagination
• JQuery PrettyPhoto Lightbox
• Ajax based contact form
• Dropdown Menu

Journal Crunch

Theme Site Live Preview Download Documentation

• WordPress 3.0 Menu Management Support
• Easy to set up – Theme Options Page
• 9 Shortcodes
• Built-in Latest Tweets Widget
• Built-in Pagination
• JQuery PrettyPhoto Lightbox
• Ajax based contact form
• Dropdown Menu

Minimatica

Theme Site & Download Demo

• Clever image gallery slider supporting default photo sizes.
• Gallery & Blog View
• Post Thumbnails
• Post Formats
• Audio & Video playback
• Clean, organized & documented code
• Child themes can be easily built upon it
• Support via Forum

My Corporation

Theme Site & Download Demo

• minimalistic business and/or portfolio website
• custom post types and admin options for complete control over the homepage layout

Photoria

Theme Site & Download Demo

• SEO Options
• Localization ready
• jQuery Slider
• Custom Widgets
• WPZOOM Theme Options Panel
• Custom Templates

Quik Gallery

Theme Site & Download Demo

• Gallery style homepage/category/search page layout using featured images
• Built-in NivoSlider
• Blue, green, pink or red color options.
• Header ad spot
• Slimmed down CSS
• Optional Widgetized footer
• Custom logo option

Rocket Wood

Theme Site & Download Demo

• Flickr and Fancybox Integrated
• 30+ Shortcodes
• 14 Page Templates
• 9 Custom Widgets
• Custom Logo and Favicon
• Upload a Custom Favicon
• jQuery Drop-Down Menu
• Working Contact Form
• Twitter Integration

Shaken Grid (Free)

Theme Site & Download Demo

Elements are arranged vertically then horizontally according to a grid resulting in a gap-less layout even with posts of varying heights.

• Two Color Schemes – light and dark.
• Theme Options panel to change the color scheme, your favicon and add a stat
• Uses CSS3 (font-face, transitions, drop shadows, rounded corners) and jQuery but displays fine in older web browsers and Internet Explorer 7+
• Widgetized Sidebar

Simply Delicious

Theme Site & Download Demo

• Free blogging theme based on mmminimal.
• Minimalistic theme features big images, clean styles and easy browsing
• This theme heavily relies on big 640px wide images.

Tech9

Theme Site & Download Demo

• Options panel
• Custom cufon fonts
• Sliders
• White/green color scheme.
• 2column fixed layout

WP Folio

Theme Site Download

• designed by artists to meet artists needs
• minimal design that emphasizes your images (at 900px wide!)
• Features separate design for your portfolio and a news/blog section
• widget-ready sidebar
• automatic rss feeds so users can subscribe to updates to your site
• Theme Options for cusom colors and fonts
• uses the latest web standards
• Allows you to choose thumbnails to represent your project
• Sample Child Theme included to keep your tweaks independent of the parent WPFolio theme.

Are you confused when it comes to photo/image dpi, kbs, ppi and pixel size?  Do the words Image Optimization mean nothing to you?  You are not alone.

Have you uploaded photos to the web to display to family and friends on such sites as Facebook and Flickr to find that it takes forever to upload or the page freezes before the upload finishes? Have you sent emails with image attachments that take  a long time to send.  If so, it is important to know the basics about image sizes for the web.  If you are displaying images on your own website or blog you will need to understand in more detail.

Images that are slow to send, upload or load have large file sizes. In general this also equates to the actual size of the image but two photos that look the same size can have very different file sizes depending on their quality.

Although faster internet speeds mean that you can now use larger file sizes than a few years ago you still have to cater for those people using dial up connections and for those whose speeds have been reduced because they have used up their allotted allowance of bandwidth.  Even with faster connections large size image files can take too long to load on a web page. You are likely to lose your reader’s interest if they have to wait too long to view your image.

What does image file size mean?

Here I am talking about the size in bytes, kilobytes (kb) or megabytes (mb).  To get an idea of the file size of images stored on your computer:

• Windows users can open windows explorer (not internet explorer) to view their files. If you are in thumbnail (large icon) view, hover over an image and its size in kb or mb will show up in a pop up box. If you are in detail view you will see the kb size in the size column.

• How to view image sizes on a MAC if they are not already showing;  Select list view from a Finder window,  then open “View Options” from the View menu (or hit Command+J). Select the checkbox next to “Calculate all sizes”.

Photos taken with my camera have a file size of about 3-6 mb or roughly 3000-6000kb (1024kb=1mb) whereas the 125×125 square images in my right sidebar are all under 20bytes (0.020kb) The original file size of the photo below was 4044kb but the reduced size shown here is only 33.3kb. A huge difference isn’t it? The quality of the image as seen on the web has not suffered at all.
 

Why can you reduce image file sizes so much for the web

A computer screen is still incapable of displaying images at the same quality as your camera saves or your printer prints. Your camera may save an image at  over 300dpi (dots per inch) or higher but your monitor just cannot display it at this resolution.

Pixel Size

For monitors it is the pixel (px) size that counts when displaying images and the pixel size depends on what resolution your monitor is capable of displaying. Pixels are the tiny square or rectangular dots that your monitor uses to display text and pictures.  PPI refers to the number of pixels per inch.  On  a higher resolution monitor, the pixels are more numerous and smaller, so what you see on the screen  also appears smaller and more items fit on the screen.  According to a January 2011 survey by w3schools http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp 85.1%  of computer users now use screens with a resolution higher than 1024×768 pixels . If your webpage content is larger than this scrolling is needed.

Although you can now display images with many more pixels than a few years ago you still have to be concerned about upload time and webpage loading times. Here is an example of three images (click thumbnails to see full size ) all the same pixel size, but they have been saved at different quality.

100% file size 553kb

50% file size 91.7kb

25% file size 61.6kb

As you can see the image saved at 50% quality still displays very well, when it is saved at 25% it is not good enough (see all the waves in the sky). The file size saving is also much less between the 25% and 50% images than between the 50% and 100%. The 50% image looks fine on my  screen and I would consider that it is optimized for the web.

For a website I suggest you use images of lower pixel size than the 91.7kb I have used here, as it still takes a while to load (far too long if you have a number of images on the same page).  As I have done here, you can display a smaller size image or a thumbnail on the main page which links to the larger image. Keep in mind that the better quality your image the more likely people are to copy it, even if you have a copyright notice on your site as the images will print out better. I would not normally use images of this pixel size in a post as they would be too wide for this blog column which is only 515px wide.

Here  are close ups of the images – (click on the thumbnails for the larger images). You can clearly see the pixels here. Again at 50% there is not much difference, at 25% the colors start to smudge.

100% quality

50% quality

25% quality

When you are deciding what pixel size to use for your image you need to consider the issue of displaying information “above the fold” (within the area you see without scrolling).  Information (text, image , video etc) that you want to be noticed the most should, where possible, appear above the fold. This way they are likely to stay on your page longer and to click on any buttons or links you have placed there.

Tools to check web page loading speeds

Free online tool – Web Page Test

Page Speed online or use with browser extensions for chrome and Firefox

There are many programs that can reduce your image sizes for you and I will cover that in a future article.

Following up from my last post about tasks to complete before and after publishing a blog post, Post Writing a Blog Post Post, as promised I am going to talk about my favorite tools that you can use to automate or speed up this process:

Spelling and Grammar

To automatically check your spelling and grammar “After the Deadline” is available as a stand alone plugin for WordPress or as an add-on to the Tiny MCE plugin, as an add on for Firefox and Chrome and as an OpenOffice.org extension.

Keywords and SEO

A WordPress SEO plugin is a must have to ensure you have the optimal information and keywords to help your post be listed and found. I use either WordPress SEO or All in One SEO.

Layout

I write and preview my posts in Firefox but to make sure that nothing is breaking the layout in the, not yet totally compliant, Internet Explorer I use the View in IE Firefox addin. This adds a “View in IE” item to the right click menu; click on this on any webpage and IE opens with the weppage loaded.

Sharing/Bookmarking a Blog Post

There are many tools available for sharing your post on bookmarking and social networking sites; some are browser toolbar buttons, some full toolbars. Use of a button or toolbar is a matter of personal preference although too many toolbars can slow your browser down and reduce your viewing area although Buttonizer for Firefox hides/displays your toolbars easily. I like the functionality of toolbars but only add a few and use different profiles with different toolbars for different internet uses (personal and business).

Don’t forget to make full use of tags where they are available to further enhance your keyword optimization.

• OnlyWire If you take the time to join up and add the supported bookmark and social networking sites this tool automatically sends your posts to all your services. A great time saver. The disadvantage is that if you are a free member you have to add the OnlyWire share button to the bottom of your posts. but you may have other share buttons that you prefer to use. OnlyWire works with most blog platforms by using a script and there is a plugin that adds it for you in WordPress.
• If you use WordPress and don’t want to use OnlyWire you can add a different share this type button that shows on each of your posts. You can make full use of this yourself and submit your own post. I am trying Tweet, Like, Google +1 and Share as well as OnlyWire on this blog right now. Shareaholic and Add This for Firefox are other tools that allow you to submit your post to a wide range of sites at the click of a button. For links to these and to more resources for Firefox only please visit my Firefox Collection Sueblimely Social Networking Tools. This includes bookmarklets, toolbars and utilities for Stumbleupon, Digg, Facebook, Twitter and more. Please bear in mind that certain sites such as Stumbleupon do not approve of you submitting too much of your own content.
• I use the bit.ly url shortener service and their toolbar bookmarklet to share posts on Facebook and Twitter. Creating a free account allows you to add your FB and Twitter accounts. Clicking on the bookmarklet when on your post page will open bit.ly with your post title and the short link already entered in a box that you can add to or edit.. Click on publish and your message will be published to your choice of the FB and Twitter accounts you have set up.
• Delicious bookmarklets for all browsers and a toolbar. There are also various Firefox add-ins that have functions such as showing your bookmarks in the sidebar.
• Diigo tools – bookmarklets and toolbar available for FF, IE Chrome
• The Rockmelt browser had many social networking tools already built in to it. I use the browser although, because of the inbuilt updates from my friends, it can be a distraction if I am working.

Social Networking

Visit your blogging friends and contacts and leave a comment. This is one of the most pleasant sides of blogging. You get to know other bloggers, read content that interests you and, signing in to comment, automatically adds a backlink to your site. To speed up this process you can add a browser bookmarks folder or RSS reader folder that includes these blogs. Blogs that have a higher ranking are the most useful to comment on (such as this one with a rank of 3 – it was 4 until the latest Google update). I will do this for SEO purposes but most often comment on a blog because of its content and author. I enjoy giving encouragement by commenting on brand new blogs too.

Most of the blogs I look after have target markets and there are specific and individual ways that I promote their new content.

After being away from regular blogging here, I have had to remind myself of  various essential tasks and promotional methods; that used to come just naturally after I had written a blog post.

I wrote them down as a reminder to myself and to share with you:

Before publishing the blog post

1. Check spelling and grammar.
2. Look at the post and paragraph length and alter if necessary. Can I make better use of lists to emphasise points and make the post more easily readable
3. Have I put in too many links to external sources? If so could I reduce these.
4. Can I add any links to my previous posts to bring them to readers and search engine attention again.
5. Have I been keyword aware -
   • Am I sure that the relevant keywords are in the content and have I got the main ones at the beginning of the post? If I am not sure then I will use a keyword suggestion tool.
   • Have I categorized and tagged the post correctly?
6. Make sure the post appears as I want it in Search Engine Listings by using an SEO plugin tool to tweak titles, add a description and meta content.
7. Check the final draft to ensure the layout is what I intended and images are aligned and sized appropriately.

After Publishing

8. Create a short link to my post – I use a personalized bit.ly url.
9. Submission - (By this I do not mean giving up all hope that the post will be found and read). Submit my post to bookmarking sites delicious and diigo and to relevant diigo groups. You may have your own favorite bookmarking sites that are more suited to your niche.
• Share on major content submission sites such as Stumbleupon and Digg or ask friends to submit them for you.
• Share on my own personal pages on social networking sites such as Facebook, my Facebook Page, Google Reader.
• Share with groups  and forums I belong to where it is in context, where posting of links is acceptable and where the post is likely to be of the most interest to its readers.
10. Let it sing like a bird – Tweet it.
11. Let my closest blog contacts know that I have published a new post and ask kindly for their help in promoting it. Email them or leave messages on sites they frequent the most.
12. Visit other blogs and comment to let them know that I am still around. (I have been so busy with other matters lately I have neglected my blogging friends and for this I apologise)
13. Follow up. Repost a tweet, maybe using different but still content appropriate text. Answer any comments on my blog and any other place that has elicited a response.
14. Feel satisfied that I have completed the tasks involved in writing and publishing a post. This one is only for those of you who are suspicious over the number 13.

This sounds so time consuming doesn’t it and I hope I have not put off any beginning bloggers. In practice there are lots of tools to speed up the process. I will talk about these in my next post, but to get you started you could check on my post Firefox Collections and Social Networking

Now this post is written it is time for me to complete my tasks. I am looking forward to number 14.

I have recently been researching the online money making business.  I have always been sceptical of so called get rich schemes and hate those never ending one page, badly designed, garish, splash pages for MLM, PPC and worthless digital products. I wanted to look past these to see if there was anything worthwhile. After days of research, to my surprise, I found a couple of programs that took my fancy. I took the plunge and money is slowly but surely starting to come in but more about that another day.

I am going to share some of my findings but some warnings first. Please be careful before spending any money and view the fine print. I got caught by a training program that seemed to cost a mere $1 a month only to find this was the first month only: $29 per month thereafter. (I was able to cancel my subscription easily after only spending the $1 and I did know this before I signed up). Although I am only going to recommend programs I have had success with, you have to be prepared to do some learning and put in some work.

When researching I ignored the forementioned splash pages, as the overhype and overmarketing makes me cringe and I am sure they are bad for my mental health.  I decided to do my research through social networking, review and scam buster sites.

Cautious as usual I did not want a lot of links to sites Google may not take too kindly to on this post so please find my reports on my subdomain

Some of  links I mention are my affiliate links but I only add them so that you can connect with me, I make no money from you doing so unless you decide to join up yourself, rather than being a free member. All of the programs I mention to date are free to join, at least at the basic level. I am cautious when it comes to spending money on such things as I would be mortified if I fell for the hype and got caught in scams. I also refuse to join programs that require me to send out multitudes of spammy, scammy emails to get referrals. However, my specially set up gmail address is full of these from others, a result of my research.   I suggest if you decide to dabble then you too set up a separate gmail account.