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How to make pictures look better

Written on Tuesday 3 May 2011 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

In my last post you learned how to put a picture into a post. But there’s a lot more to pictures than you think, how they are positioned, creating padding around them, making them readable for the search engines – even understanding how to prepare your pictures beforehand.

When I started working for my boss and her newsletter provider, I was astounded how her staff struggled to prepare the pictures so they were suitable to be inserted. Her newsletter system was very particular, and could only cope with jpegs that were below 30MB, and the software available to use was Paint, which didn’t even work on my computer!

It took me a while to persuade my boss to buy Photoshop Elements, but once purchased, transforming pictures became a doddle. I taught my colleagues about dots per square inch, and that 72dpi is the most suitable for the web. I showed them how to crop a picture to show the best subject matter, how to reduce it in size without distortion, and how to to save it within the required size-frame. I even showed them how to collect images from different sources and convert them into jpegs so they could be used appropriately.

Suddenly the newsletters started to brighten up, look more interesting and attract more attention. And the same can be for your blog.

Click on your newly inserted picture, and you’ll get these icons:

It’s obvious that the red circle on the right means delete, but if you want to edit your picture, click on the left icon and you’ll get this menu:

Here you can change the alignment of your picture, whether it is placed left, right or centre within the page (from where you place your cursor) and the text will be automatically wrapped around it. (If this doesn’t work, which might be the case in some WordPress.org blogs, then you’ll need to add in a caption because then the image will be placed in a caption box which the text can wrap around.) If you don’t need to worry about your picture’s alignment, leave it as ‘None’.

I explained about alternative text in my previous email: alt tags describe the pictures for the benefit of the search engines who can’t read images, so use appropriate and relevant keywords, and for blind people whose computers read the alt tags.

Below that you can see the picture’s special URL, which will link to the picture’s allocated page within your blog. But you can edit that field to any other URL destination, internal or external to your blog, or to your email by typing ‘mailto:’ immediately before your email address.

If you’re happy with these changes, click on ‘Update’.

However, there is an ‘Advanced Settings’ tab at the top:

Here you can change the size of your picture to whatever you want. A tip: change either the width or the height, and then leave or make the other field blank, WordPress will adjust the picture accordingly without distorting it.

I use the image properties for creating ‘padding’ around my pictures. (This isn’t necessary if you have a caption, as padding is automatically created for your caption box.) Padding is the white space in between the picture and the text, preventing them from jutting against each other, and using this can make a big difference when presenting your pictures. I generally put anything from 5 to 10 in the boxes (vertical and horizontal), but you can experiment to what suits you.

The border box obviously provides a border for your picture, but be lenient – use between 1 to 3 unless you want to make a statement!

Again, once you’ve finished editing your picture, click on the ‘Update’ button.

So to sum up, make sure your picture is the correct size, is 72 dots per square inch, is aligned within your text, has alt text added to it, has a link added behind it, and has appropriate padding for ‘breathing space’ within the text. Then you’ll see a difference between professional picture placing and those that don’t know…

How to place pictures into your post

Written on Monday 2 May 2011 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

One of my blogging ‘guinea pigs’ asked me about how to ‘do’ pictures correctly. This is quite a big subject, so I’ve broken it up into two posts – here is the first one:

There are three ways to put a picture into your post, whether its straight from your computer, from your media library or if you know its URL. Go to the picture icon above this field you type your post content into:

You’ll get a menu sitting on your blacked-out screen:

If you are uploading your picture from your computer, once you’ve clicked on ‘Select Files’, it will bring up your computer’s browser for you to find the picture you want to use. Select it by clicking on the right file, and your picture will be uploaded into your Media Library for use:

Now you can give your picture a title (for recognition), add in alternative text (this is the words you put behind your picture for the search engines to read, and is usually as a description for blind users to ‘hear’ it), a caption (this puts the picture in a box with the caption underneath), a description (for the search engines), the picture’s own URL (for HTML use and for the second uploading option) and the alignment and size of the picture. After this has been completed you then choose to either upload it into the post (it will appear where you put your cursor) or save into the Media Library.

The second uploading option uses the picture’s URL, which is either provided for you by the Media Library with each picture’s storage menu, or if you have uploaded your picture into the blog’s server, to be accessed like a document:

A URL of a stored picture from the Media Library looks like this: http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/4/P-computer2.jpg and it shows the picture has been automatically stored away in the uploads file and given a date. It is wise to highlight and copy these URLs to paste them correctly to make sure you don’t miss anything.

A URL from a picture you’ve uploaded into your server will look like this: http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/images/C-FormDashboard1.2.jpg which shows I have uploaded this picture into my images file in my FTP provider – ideal if you have a lot of pictures that might clutter up your Media Library. When you type this URL into its field, you don’t need to include the full URL, just /images/C-FormDashboard1.2.jpg will do.

Whatever URL your picture has, remember to fill it in appropriately. If it is correct, a green tick will appear next to it, if wrong, you will see a red cross, which means you have typed it incorrectly. You need to be scrupulously accurate. Don’t forget to click the ‘Insert into Post’ button.

The next option is to upload your picture directly from your Media Library, which will be if you have used it previously for another post, or if you saved your picture rather than placing it in a post:

Select the picture you want through the ‘Show’ link, and after you’ve added in all the necessary data, click the ‘Insert into Post’ button.

My next post will show you what you can do with your pictures once you’ve placed them in your post, to make them look good or perform appropriately for their chosen task.

blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, revised e-courses, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs - Tags: accuracy, alignment, alternative text, browser, caption, computer, description, HTML, media library, pictures into posts, size, title, URL - 0 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

What does a forward slash signify?

Written on Thursday 12 August 2010 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

Driving to work today, a relevation came to me. For years I had just accepted the forward slash as being parts of a URL or web-address which I didn’t need to question. They seemed to be like the mortar that held the bricks together.

But now I understand them as gateways for the server (the hosting area where your domain name is held) to direct visitors (or spiders) to another portion (file/section/page/post) of your blog.

For example, the URL for this post http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/what-does-a-forward-slash-signify/ shows the domain name (the web address of this blog) followed by a door (the forward slash) to go to the page (the blog post) which contains the above title. (Don’t forget that each post has its own page and therefore a URL allocated to it.) The forward slash also allows these elements to be separated, comprehended and archived.

Let’s look at this URL for the beginning of my WordPress.com blog course: http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/com/create-a-blog/. First is the domain name of this blog, with a door (slash) leading to the parent page ‘com’, with another door/slash which leads to a child page ‘create a blog’, with another slash ready should a grandchild page become available.

If you wrote the full URL without slashes, the server wouldn’t understand that a) the information was separated and b) which areas (page or file) it was to go to, and there would be no methods of conveying the blog user in the right direction.

Well, that’s my interpretation of the forward slash – what’s yours?

blogs and blogging - Tags: blog, domain name, forward slash, interpretation, page, portals or doors, post, URL, web address - 0 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

What and how important are permalinks?

Written on Friday 4 June 2010 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

There is a industrial and successful marketeer called Ed Rivis who has acquired some creditable acclaim through his online marketing prowess, mainly in the use of online campaigns and the art of the landing page, but what astounds me is that he doesn’t optimise his permalinks on his blog!

But more of that later… so what is a permalink?

WordPress allocates each post with its own URL, created from the headline you give it:

Both kinds of blog

As you can see, this post has been given a permalink of http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/what-and-how-important-are-permalinks/ which WordPress has automatically created for me underneath the headline field. I also have the option to edit my permalink should I decide to change my headline while writing my post, or if I want to create a shorter, more memorable one. (There is also the more advanced option of a ‘shortlink’ if you want to use this permalink in social networking, such as Twitter.)

Most blog permalinks include the date within them, and look like this: http://successnetwork.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/5-things-to-consider-when-writing-adverts/ – so let me break it down for you.

• Note there isn’t www after the http:// because this is a blog, not a website;

• Next you’ll see the username of the original author of the blog: ‘successnetwork’;

• Followed by .wordpress.com because this is a WordPress.com or a ‘free’ blog (WordPress take control of your blog’s URL because they have provided all the software and programming for you, if you have a WordPress.org blog you can choose your own blog URL);

• Next is the date of the post: /2010/06/01/ (presented backwards) which is automatically calculated for you;

• And then you have the headline or title of the post: 5-things-to-consider-when-writing-adverts/ separated by hyphens so it’s easier for the spiders to read and for humans to quickly recognise.

If you have a WordPress.org blog, you have the chance to change how your permalinks look in Settings > Permalinks:

And you will see a number of options for how your permalink could look:

• Default = URL/?p=123 (post number)
• Day and name = URL/year/month/day/post name
• Month and name = URL/month/day/post name
• Numeric = URL/archive/post number
• Custom = whatever you want.

I have chosen ‘URL/post name’ as it makes it much easier to remember my permalinks and to write them in posts and browsers. If your categories are important to your search engine optimisation then these can be put into your permalink: ‘URL/category/post name’ for example. In fact, SEO is an important factor when considering your permalinks, but if stuffing it full of keywords and other goodies as well as what’s in the headline of your post is important to you, then go ahead, but take into consideration the length of your permalink and its practicalities, and that shortening it into tinyurls isn’t always the answer.

Oh, and another tiny point, it’s the permalinks that are live in RSS feeds, and when you are posting your latest blog contribution into a LinkedIn Group news section, the programming automatically recognises your permalink and everything associated with it for you!

So what of Ed Rivis? His latest post was http://www.edrivis.com/?p=517 – which means absolutely nothing to me except that he has probably written 516 more posts before this one. I have no idea what the subject is about (it is, actually, 77 ideas for great email and blog content) but I wouldn’t bother reading it because I only managed to glean about 8 that were worth considering! You’d think that an online marketing chap that is so famous and rich would have optimised his blog better – but no matter, it probably isn’t important to him.

How to put a video onto a WordPress.com blog

Written on Tuesday 1 June 2010 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

One thing about a WordPress.com blog is that generally it doesn’t accept HTML code or script if you want to add in special features such as a sign-in box for your newsletter in the sidebar, or a coded badge for your Twitter-stream, for example.

refers to .com blog

But there are exceptions. One is for the chicklit logo for RSS so subscribers can follow your posts through a search engine reader, and another is to post in videos from YouTube.com.

So how do you add a video to your post in a WordPress.com blog? Well, first you need to upload your video into YouTube.com because once this is accomplished, you will be given a URL for your video and code for your website (and also your blog).

I’m going to use an old video I made for my business many years ago, which I have buried away in YouTube.com.

Click on ‘Edit’:

And then ‘View on Video Page’:

And click on the ‘Embed’ button:

This is where you can get the code for your video. If you are posting it into your website, you can play around with the colour scheme and screen size too! But now we need to go into your blog’s dashboard (see ‘How to accessing a blog’):

Here is the WordPress.com blog I use to show the examples in my visual blogging e-courses you can access from the Free Resources Library in my sidebar. Let’s create a post (see ‘Writing Posts’):

I’m going to concentrate on using your video’s URL given to you by YouTube.com first. You can upload that via the Video icon at the top of the post-writing box:

Once you’ve clicked on that, go to the ‘From URL’ tab:

And you will see a space for your video’s URL. Go back to YouTube.com:

And copy your video’s URL from the browser at the top of your webpage. Then go back to your blog and post it into the URL box:

Click on ‘Insert into Post’:

Where you will see the URL correctly displayed. (If you just paste the URL directly into your post-writing box without doing this procedure, it will just become a link that goes directly back to your YouTube.com page which contains your video.)

Now click on ‘Preview’ to see the video window:

If you would like to use the code given by YouTube.com as an alternative method, here’s how. Go back to YouTube.com:

Highlight and copy the code of your video, and go back to your post-writing box in your blog and paste in the code where you want your video screen to be:

Here’s when WordPress.com allows HTML script to happen properly. Click on ‘Preview’ to see your video screen:

Although it looks the same, you’ll see the sentence before reminding you I’ve used code instead of the URL.

Now all you need to do is to finish writing your post, add in your tags and allocate your categories, and publish!

blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, social networking - Tags: blogs and blogging, code, link, post, special features, URL, videos, Wordpress.com, writing you post, YouTube - 0 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

Automatic archiving in a blog

Written on Monday 17 May 2010 by Alice

Fairy Blog Mother

One client asked me whether she should have additional pages added to her blog in order to house archives of the posts she had written. She had visualised doing this manually every time she posted.

Both kinds of blog

I reassured her that this was done automatically, and far more extensively than she had imagined. This is where categories and tags come into play (see my e-course ‘Creating tags and categories’ to find out more) as these are the preliminaries to archiving your posts. Categories are the topics your posts are allocated to, and tags are the keywords used to focus the search engines onto your posts.

But let’s start at the beginning. Every time you write a post, it is published straight onto the main blog post page, which acts like a news roll with the newest post positioned at the top:

Here is the previous blog post I published to this one. The URL for my news roll page is http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/blog/ (because I have a separate homepage):

But if you click on the headline of that post, you will find that it has its own separate page:

And URL (http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/5-top-tips-for-a-successful-post/):

You may have noticed that the page title is different from the post’s headline, as that is the result of using the ‘All-in-one-SEO-pack’ plug-in which allows you to create more appropriate page titles for SEO purposes than your post’s headline.

Now, if you have read my ‘Creating tags and categories’ e-course, you will understand the importance of allocating your post to appropriate categories and relevant tags:

The bottom of each post lists which categories I have selected, and you will see they are live links. They are also listed in their separate widget in the sidebar. Click on any of the categories used (in this case Increasing Business Visibility) and you will see a separate page that contains the post:

and its allocated category URL: http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/category/visibility/

and page title Increasing Business Visibility | Fairy Blog Mother.

The same goes for the tags:

These tags are listed at the bottom of their allocated post, and listed in a ‘cloud’ within their respective widget on the sidebar. You can see that the most frequently used tags are larger than the others.

Let’s look at the tag ‘Keywords for SEO purposes’ that I chose for that post, and the page URL and title automatically created:

Note the /tag/ in between the URL and the tag name.

But it doesn’t stop there. There is an additional widget on my sidebar that shows my archives allocated to each month I post:

I have opted for the pull down menu which shows each month and the number of posts I have published. There is a separate page for each month with its own URL (http://fairyblogmother.co.uk/2010/05/ for May) and page title:

So for each post, there is a total of five pages it is allocated to once it is published. None of these are obvious, but the links are there at the bottom of the posts or within the widgets on the sidebar. And it’s a good thing it is automatic – could you imagine having to do all this by hand?

blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs - Tags: archive, archiving, automatically, blog, categories, headline, page title, posts, SEO purposes, tags, URL - 0 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

Websites and blogs: how are they different?

Written on Wednesday 1 July 2009 by Alice

Actually a blog is a kind of website, as they have many similar attributes.

They both occupy a presence on the internet, use an URL or web address, need a host server to keep them online, contain information such as text content, pictures, links and keywords, both benefit from search engine optimisation and can be tracked through Google Analytics.

But why don’t we call blogs websites? What is it that makes them different?

The difference is in their programming, and how they make use of Web2.0. The are pre-runners of social networking before Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. They thrive on interaction, new content, feeds and optimisation.

Blogs are designed to be self-editable. This means you don’t to pay a web designer to make changes or add content. You can update them through very easy access (a username and password) from any computer in the world. The programming is self-contained, and if you can write in Word, you can update a blog.

They thrive on being updated frequently and regularly, their programming is designed to attract search engine spiders who are looking for new content all the time. This is very good for web optimisation which puts blogs higher up the search engines than websites. Another consideration is that blogs are visited by spiders hourly, whereas websites could wait for months.

Unlike websites, blogs only update new material each time it is posted. Every time a website is updated the new stuff supersedes the old content, whereas blogs store previous entries like a news-roll, each post dated accordingly and assigned it’s own URL for access at a later date.

Blogs are designed to encourage interactive communication between author and readers. Those who comment can link back to their own sites, and this content is also considered as new material by internet spiders. This concept is not available in ordinary websites, except through sign up forms, and then contributors cannot view afterwards what they have written.

And another consideration to note: blogs are much cheaper to create and maintain!

OK, so what else makes blogs better?

Blogs are created to help businesses to spread their expertise, explain what their business does in different ways, maintain a relationship with their visitors and customers, offer subscription services for regular contact, channel traffic back to relevant websites, and can be fed to other websites like social networking for a higher readership.

Most websites, especially ‘brochure style’ ones, are static and once created are rarely updated, and can’t provide an opportunity to explain everything as space is often limited. In fact, over cluttering your pages with too much information can be counter-productive. Visitors will not return for new content, websites are unlikely to get bookmarked, and only through a sign up form to a newsletter can the business maintain a relationship with potential customers.

But this is only my opinion, what do you think about this subject? Since this a blog, leave a comment in the box below to share your views.

blogs and blogging - Tags: blogging, blogs and blogging, comments, content, internet, new material, readers, search engines, SEO, social networking, spiders, URL, Web2.0, websites - 0 Comments - Why not leave a comment?