Advice for a new-comer
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Hi
I’ve only just started my blog and I’d really appreciate some advice. Can anyone tell me if there’s any difference between the design templates available when it comes to displaying pictures? As I’m detailing a building project, images are an important part of the blog. Which template would you advise, or are they pretty much the same? If they are, do you have any tips about the best way to display the images and captions?
Thanks
BetsyThe blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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First of all, can we get a link to your blog? We need to see it to make sure our advice will apply to your case.
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http://bottomchapel.wordpress.com/ (private).
Hi and welcome.
As raincoaster explains, you have to paste the exact URL of your blog when asking questions here (or you can link your nickname to your blog as explained in the Sticky 8 Things to Know).
Some tips I can think of:
– You don’t have to make a permanent decision in advance: you can easily change themes any moment. I would suggest you get accustomed to handling images first, make a couple of test posts maybe, and then you can switch from theme to theme to observe differences.
– Image display varies: in some themes you get borders and/or space or shadows around the images, in others nothing. Apart from the visual effect, this will also affect the way you treat images with wrap-around text or groups of images (extra work to do to create the proper space if the theme doesn’t do that automatically).
– Better avoid the flexible-width themes (they are a minority anyway): they may prove a bit more difficult for a beginner re the arrangement of multiple images in relation to text.
– Fixed-width themes vary in width. Here you can compare maximum displayed image width:
– The blog page will load slower if you host your images elsewhere: better upload them in the blog. It will also load slower if you unnecessarily upload heavy files: make sure the images are in low resolution and/or optimized for the web.
– You have to consider whether you will post images linking to a larger original when clicked or not. In the first case, you’ll have to click “File URL” after uploading and before inserting for that to work (only the first time you do it: the uploader will then remember your preference). In the second case, you’d better limit image width to the maximum allowed by the theme, so that they are inserted in real size: you lose quality if you upload wider images and have the uploader resize them to fit.
– You can also edit images after you insert them, by clicking on them in the visual post editor, then clicking the mountain icon that shows up.
– The “caption” feature is limited to center alignment in relation to the image. If that won’t do, better write your captions as normal text in the post (or incorporate them in the images themselves).
– For batch uploading and arranging multiple thumbnails in a post, there’s also the “gallery” feature, but it’s got some complications. Best info on it here (needs some updating though):
http://gammagirl.wordpress.com/2008/07/27/not-the-official-wordpresscom-gallery-faq/
– Tricky arrangements of multiple independent images and text require html coding for tables.
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Hi
Thanks for all this help and advice. I’ll see how I go. In response to raincoaster and the link to my blog: I’m so nervous about what I’m doing that at the moment I’m keeping it private and I haven’t even worked out yet how to make it available to friends only. But I take your point about pasting the URL when I post and I’ll make sure I do it. For now I can tell you it’s http://bottomchapel.wordpress.com/. Not sure if I have to change the setting so you can access it but I’ll work it out.
Thanks again – I appreciate your time. -
If you’ve set it to private we cannot access it: only staff can. But we still need the link, to make sure it’s a wp.com blog, because we get a lot of wrong visits. Now your blog happens to have your nick as its name, so I was able to find it without the link (I wouldn’t have answered otherwise), but you understand it’s easier for us if you just give the URL. And of course we frequently get questions that can’t be answered unless we check things in the blog; yours didn’t need that this time, so private is ok!
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Thanks – as soon as I’m ready I’ll remove the privacy thing. It’s just a bit scary when you’re starting out. I don’t know why I imagine everybody in the world is suddenly going to be reading my blog! I quite understand why you need the URL. I didn’t realize it was so easy to switch between themes, either, and was afraid to try it in case I lost everything. Thanks again for your help and for the links to other pages.
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