Art/Photo Blog Friendly Features
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I love WordPress and use my blog as an art-blog so I post a lot of pictures up.
What would be lovely is one or both of these things:
1. Theme(s) designed with pictures in mind rather than just text.
My pictures are around 600px wide typically which on most of the themes on a standard browser size causes either the text from sidebar to float over the image, or the image to half disappear behind a column.
Most themes seem to think about how text is wrapped etc – but not think about accomodating larger images. I use Andreas09 2.0 which I really like – but I could do to have just one of the narrow columns like on this theme, to give more room for images.
A lot of the themes don’t expand to use the full screen – very stylish but is such a waste for me as my images get chopped off with room to spare. I appreciate WordPress is primarily aimed at wordy people (the clue is in the name!) but your felxibility works really well for us arty types you know. :)
I’ve tried using smaller images but any smaller doesn’t do my images justice. I can use the thumbnail facility but the problem still happens if you open the image in a page. Plus the thumbnail is too small when it’s the main content of my posts.
Which leads on to …
2. A thumbnail size option, or a second reduced size for displaying pics (maybe as an upgrade?). So a bit like in Flickr you can select to show a thumbnail, a 200-300 (ish) pixel size, or full size.
I appreciate this might bump up storage space on the server but maybe with a paid upgrade?
I’ve considered using Flickr to host my images but I like the convieniance and ease of doing it with WordPress.
As ever – just a suggestion.
Rachel
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But you DO have the option to resize your pictures to a medium size though. Just load the pic and resize using the Image icon in the rich text editor (visual editor). Use that with the “link to file” option in the Upload box and it’s clickable and expands to full size in pure webspace, no template involved, no size limit.
Or am I not understanding the question? That’s happened before, god knows.
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Ah yes – that’s a possibility. Hmmm.
I learnt it was bad practice to re-size that way as the download for the viewer is the same as for the full image. But in this scenario it could work. Not much control over getting images consistantly the same size though.
I’ll have a play. Thanks for the suggestion.
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Erm – yer resizing in the rich text editor isn’t ideal at all. When it resizes it doesn’t resample the image – like it does if you decrease the size in graphics editing software – so it the image loses a lot of quality and looks really ropey. I keep my images to the smallest file size I can for download speed, storage etc.
As the main content in a post that just makes it look a bit rubbish – all distorted and ugly.
That’s not really a satisfactory alternative.
I can find work arounds … this post was about making a suggestion for new features/themes that would be just marvellous in my book.
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Part of the issue is there really isn’t any themes designed and released for photoblogs. There’s many photo blogs on wordpress online but almost all of them are using themes that have been designed by the bloggers themselves or have been professionally done.
I can think of only one theme right off the bat that was released for use but *chuckle* It basically looked like Andreas09 come to think of it.
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I do like the look of Andreas09. But yes that’s what I thought after playing about with them all yesterday – no themes designed with the visually orientated amongst in mind I think.
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I love wordpress.com and the blogs here suit my needs. But have you considered acquiring a free photoblog from http://www.shutterchance.com/
In case you’d like to take a look my friend who is a photographer has an account there http://suzanne.shutterchance.com/archive.php -
I’ve been using Chaotic Soul, mostly for its dark background. It’s not a true photoblog, I know, but I like having a sidebar. I like Unsleepable, but the bottom bar keeps breaking for me.
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Since shutterchance has been presented as an alternative, I though I’d point out that the free photoblog option there only allows you to see the most recent 30 photos. You must pay for an upgrade. If you already like wordpress, you might be served just as well by purchasing the css upgrade here.
Just my two cents, since this issue is driving me crazy too. At the moment, I’d even be happy with a generic grayish theme with one column, that can accommodate images wider that 500 pixels, has a small header, and working next and previous buttons near the top of the page where they can be seen and a widget area at the bottom of the page. I’ve already made my suggestion through feedback though, so now I’m just crossing my fingers and hoping others do the same.
ETA: There are several photoblog-specific themes that could work for wordpress. I found a bunch in the forums here, so if you do a search you might find some to suggest to the staff. I know it’s come up before.
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The maximum sizes for image display in the blogging space of each theme are found in this thread http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/09/25/how-big-can-my-images-be/
The largest blogging spaces are found in: Shocking Blue Green .. 800px; Silver is the new Black .. 800px; WordPress Classic .. 800px
Perhaps if you can find a regular wordpress.org theme that suits you can request that it be adapted to run on our software here http://themes.wordpress.net/
This is the approach Matt is taking to the many long standing requests for “girly” themes https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=10166
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Thank you for the http://themes.wordpress.net/ suggestion timethief. I’ll check that out.
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Just a thought, but why not make a thumbnail of the picture in say photoshop, than add that to the blog ith a off site link to a different place for showing the full thing.
I write manga and anime reviews so i have a lot screen caps and covers, thats how ive been doing it. I take the original, and make a thumbnail using Photoshop CS3. Upload the original to my Photobucket Pro account, then embed a link in the thumbnail to the photobucket picture. When the thumbnail is clicked it opens a new window with the picture in full size.
Phoobucket isnt free ($25) but i got a free upgrade using their affiliates program. All i had to do was spen 30sec filling in a survey, and at the then i got a free upgrade for a year :)
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@ tiamatsdisciple, I think that’s a fine suggestion for a blog with pictures, but not so much perhaps for a photoblog where you like to see the pictures without squinting or clicking through.
I did follow through with timethief’s suggestion. While there don’t seem to be any themes on that site tailored for pictures (in fact the setup template only includes a thumbnail size image for reference) I found these themes that are slightly more photo-friendly and at least approximate the criteria I mentioned above.
http://themes.wordpress.net/columns/2-columns/3187/upstart-blogger-modio-01/ (You really need to test run this one to see the customizable potential of it)
http://themes.wordpress.net/columns/1-column/694/black-minimalism-10/
(On the flowery side)
http://themes.wordpress.net/columns/1-column/2987/bamboo-10/
(It doesn’t have previous and next post, but it has a good width)
http://themes.wordpress.net/columns/1-column/353/jillij-1/I think my favorite is Upstart. It’s not particularly wide though I think its mimalist look (and nifty hideaway sidebar), both helps to compensate for the relative narrowness and sets it apart from the other templates available here. Though the template doesn’t show it start with a photo page or post, from what I gather in the description I think it can be adjusted to do that.
Anyone have any thoughts?
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lol cant get anymore minamilist than upstart lol.
I dont see the problem with the solution i listed to be honest. I know of a few photoblogger who use that work around and while admitedly they also dont like the idea of click throughs, for a free hosted blog they found it the best soloution.
The only way to truely get the result you want would be to go self hosted, and then customise the theme to fit your needs. Especially if your having a large number of photo’s. Or possibly look at specialty photoblogger sites.
http://www.siteground.com/photoblogger-hosting.htm seems to be about the best paid service, though that was just with a quick google search.
Free services specifically aimed at photobloggers would be:
PhotoBlogger: http://www.photoblog.com/
BlipPhoto: http://www.blipfoto.com/
Animus3: http://www.aminus3.com/All of which seem to be focuses souly on PhotoBloggers. DeviantArt could fit the bill aswell i think, though ive never used them.
WordPress (i mean the free service here, not the self hosting software) seems to be aime more at your usual main stream blogger. Where text is the main stay with images as a compliment. Photobloggers are the reverse though, Images as the main with text as a compliment.
Just a thought i just had, since the themse here are governed by CSS if you purchase the CSS upgrade you could possibly alter the themese that way, so you can then get your 600px images on. Though im not sure if that would work properly, or how it would effect the actual theme. Best wait for someone with more CSS knowledge and ask them :)
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Well, I can’t speak for anyone else on the forum, but I can tell you why your suggestions don’t work for me.
I have tried many of your suggestions. You can, in fact have a quite nice photoblog in many other places and you can do it for free. I have done both. I used to host mine on Blogger and I customized my css to be alomst exactly the way I wanted it. (My CSS skills are decent but not perfect.) I also have a paid service where I host very large pictures for my portfolio.
However, for my personal blog, which I keep purely for my own edification, I can’t really justify the yearly expense. I do pay in other ways by spending so much time looking for just the right solution, of course.
Why not just use my blogger site if I’m so happy with the template? Because I like the community on wordpress. I like the support. I like actually being able to blog instead of spend all my time tweaking my template. I like having a decent spam feature. I like the bulit in blog stats and being able to track commens I’ve made on other people’s blogs. I like the easy ability to search common tags. I don’t need my own URL or to host my own site. WordPress has exactly what I need, except for a template that is geared towards presenting pictures.
Frankly, I don’t think it’s such an outrageous request, though it may not be a feature that appeals to you. If others have the same desires I don’t see the harm in requesting the features. It’s not like photos are going to disapper from blogs.
Have I justified my request sufficiently for you?
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lol you misunderstood my post, i wasnt saying justifiy it >.<
As i said im not a photoblogger, but i do use images alot. The solution i use came from other photobloggers i know who have and do use it. Its not perfect, but it works.
Also i never said photos should disappear *checks* nope didnt say that. I use images alot in my blogs so i’d be a bit of a hypocrite saying they should :D
You asked for ideas, i presented one i know works. You said it didnt work for you and i wondered why. Thats it, no critisim, no demands for justifications. I simply said i didnt understand why you say it dosent work for you when its a system other photobloggers use. I honestly dont see the issue with having a thumbnailed image in your article, which can be clicked to open up the full thing.
In general this makes more sense to me than having a huge picture straight away, saves loading time, and for those on limited bandwidth (like most of us in the UK lol) saves our precious bandwidth.
If you use a image editing software such as Elements, Gimp or Photoshop then resampling and sizing isnt a huge issue.
One of the widgets ive seen on selfhosted wordpress blogs could also be what you need. You have the thumbnaled image. When you click it a new box opens infront of the page with the full sized image, the comment you gave it, close button and a next/previous button.
I noticed its used on the theme browser at wordpress.org aswell. Mo idea what the plugin is called unfortunatly so i cant tell you that, but im sure someone here knows what im talking about.
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I’m certain got your point the first time you made it. You did mention that you are not a photo blogger, so perhaps it’s natural that you don’t understand. I’m sure others will be grateful for your many useful suggestions.
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