Uploading Photos to Your Blog

When uploading a photo to your blog, be sure that you had it resized specially if you are going to display just the thumbnail of the photo. In this manner you are saving a lot of web space. Another reason why you should resize your images before uploading them is because your blog will load faster. A blog that needs to display a 3.2MB photo will take more time to load compared to a blog that only needs to display a 150KB.

If you are afraid that your images will lose vividness and colors when resizing, then you are not using the right software. Photoshop is an excellent software. It has a more major purposes but it is also great for resizing photos. If you don’t have the budget for the software or if Photoshop is too complicated for you, there are other photo editing software in the net that that you can download for free. Don’t depend on Microsoft Office Picture Manager when to resizing your photos because is an awful software for this purpose.

The above photo is resized using Microsoft Office Picture Manager and below photo is resized using Photoshop.

Switching to Wordpress?

I started this blog to give short Wordpress blog tutorials to my friends who just started using the Wordpress platform. I was actually the one who installed their blogs for them and because I didn’t have enough time to teach them individually, I created this blog and I told them to visit this blog every now and read about how to use their Wordpress blogs.

But after a few times of logging in to their Wordpress blogs, they told me that it wasn’t difficult at all to blog because the platform is user friendly. They find it as easy as using MS Word and I agree. I think that it doesn’t take a scientist to use Wordpress. As long as you are not afraid to navigate the platform and as long as you can easily learn from your mistakes, learning how to use Wordpress for blogging should be a piece of cake.

Wordpress is the best blogging platform out there because other than it is user friendly, it is also flexible. Free themes are scattered all over the net and there are free plugins for each purpose.

So if you are unhappy with your blogging platform, don’t be afraid to switch to Wordpress.

Start Your Blog in a Paid Hosting

Many would say that creating a blog in free blog hosting sites is ideal for first time bloggers for them to get their feet wet but for me it is the best to host your own blog early on. Why? Because when you think you are ready to move from a free hosting site to your very own paid hosting and paid domain name, you’ll feel a great loss for having to leave your blog which you have exerted a lot of time, effort, and creativity in.

If you are afraid of not knowing how to start your blog in a paid hosting, you’ll find several “how to” articles about it in the net. Plus there are also a lot of web hosting plans that offer a ready to install wordpress blog. At Web Hosting Choice for example, they offer quick start guide for first time webmasters and bloggers. And normally, Web hosts have their 24/7 support to cater to clients questions. And there is also the option to hire somebody to do it for you but you need to be extra cautious when finding somebody to do it for you. Normally, web hosts have this service too but if you prefer other people to do it, it’s better to research about them and carefully check their portfolios before hiring them.

Starting your blog in a paid domain and paid hosting can be scary and difficult at first but it is worth it to have 100% control of your blog.

Embedding Multimedia in your Blog

If you are not embedding enhancements such as music, pictures, and videos in your blog then you are left behind. Multimedia has been in the mainstream blogging since the rise of YouTube and free photo hosts like PhotoBucket and Flickr. More advance bloggers even create podcasts and vblogs to voice out what they normally just write.

Now since this blog caters to beginners, I will explain how to embed videos and photos to your wordpress blogs but first there are two things you need to know. When you go to “Write”, you’ll see that there are two tabs on your editor’s page. I’ve explained use of these tabs earlier in one of my posts so I suggest you should read it as well. Now going back to our topic, you should click on the “HTML” tab (or “CODE” tab in earlier wordpress versions) and paste the third party codes there. DO NOT paste the third party codes in the “VISUAL” tab.

What are third party codes, some might ask so below is a photo showing where you normally get third party codes. YouTube or Photobucket provide these codes for users to easily embed the multimedia in their blogs.

Wishing for Some Development

I wanted to renovate Blogleafs.com. I wanted to make a home page and and a separate blog page. I also wanted to add another page to show the feeds of my friend’s blogs plus typical pages such as contact page, about, etc. But after mulling over the idea and trying some stuff for two days, I realized that my knowledge of HTML and CSS is not that broad yet.

The same goes with ViennaLopez.com. I wanted to make the homepage to a personal page then another page for the blog and one more for a gallery. I have been looking around for ready made website themes but I cannot find something that has a personal page, a blog page, and a gallery page. Maybe what I want is too complicated. But I have seen a great website (LarissaMeek.com) that has these so I am sure that it is possible. It has a gallery page, artwork page, and blog page. The homepage is the blog not a personal page like what I want but something similar to this is what I have in mind for ViennaLopez.com. I want a separate gallery for the selection of photos I’ve taken.

But these are not yet possible at the moment. I have to either learn how to design my own pages or hire someone to do it for me. The first one will take time and the second one will need a lot of money and I don’t have both.