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.

Top 10 Free WordPress 3+ Photo Themes | Blogging Sueblimely

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.

Image Sizes and Optimizing for the Web | Blogging Sueblimely

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.

Best Tools and Tips to Speed Up Blogging | Blogging Sueblimely

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.

Post-Writing a Blog Post Post | Blogging Sueblimely

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.

Making Money Online Research | Blogging Sueblimely

Make posting to Facebook and Twitter automatic:

Using bit.ly, when I am on a site I want to link to, I just press the bit.ly toolbar button , and then press “share” on the bitly site. The url is automatically shortened and title and text are automatically added, with the option to edit and add tags. My selected Twitter and my personal Facebook pages are automatically posted to without me having to go there.

To post to my Facebook community pages, I use the Facebook add-in Smart Tweet for Pages. Anything I have posted to my chosen Twitter accounts, which I have usually automatically posted to via bit.ly, are then also automatically posted to my chosen Facebook Pages.

Reading Updates

NutshellMail sends me twice daily emails containing all my Facebook and Twitter updates. (I have set up all the individual notification emails that come from FB to automatically go to trash because there are so many of them). This service also supports updates from Linked In, YouTube, MySpace, Yelp, FourSquare and CitySearch.

I have recently discovered that my Windows Live Messenger main screen can include updates from Facebook. What’s more, none of the application requests are included here – only messages from friends. I can post messages to FB from here too. If it were not for using FB apps and joining in group discussions I would not need to go to the Facebook site at all.

Using paper.li I have created two “daily papers” one for Twitter and one for Facebook. These show posts that include my chosen Twitter @tags and Facebook phrases. I use them for keeping up with mentions of #fragilex and “Fragile X” so that I do not have to trawl the increasing number of FB and Twitter pages that talk about Fragile X Syndrome. I can then post any links that turn up here to my own Fragile X page by which I am attempting to centralize all relevant references. This way others do not have to crawl numerous sites themselves. I subscribe by email to these two daily papers, again saving me time. Others can subscribe too.

Although I use the paper.li service for references posted anywhere on FB and Twitter you can use it to create papers that apply to only your own personal or community pages. This is a useful tool for bloggers who want an additional resource, apart from just RSS feeds, to share their posts with their readers.

Tools for posting to Twitter and Facebook | Blogging Sueblimely

As I miss the social networking that blogging brings I have decided to keep on blogging but on matters that do not take me hours and hours to research.  It was always my aim to be original and to offer something to my readers that they could not find elsewhere. As “how to blog” blogs have become  so commonplace now, I do not want to merely talk about issues that have already been covered. I can use my twitter account for posting links to articles I think are useful. I will continue posting about tools and resources that I use, those I think will be useful to you too, but not spend time trying out everything new that comes out just so that I can report on them.

It took me a year or so after it came out to see through the spammy applications and their endless updates to accept Facebook for the communication tools it offers. I have connected with family I have not seen for 30 years (who live across the world) and joined in an active international online support community for Fragile X Syndrome, a condition my son suffers from.

Creating Facebook pages has given me the opportunity to work on raising awareness of Fragile X and linking to resources for parents, carers and therapists so they can find their way through the maze to find the most useful information. This is not only part of my role as a Fragile X Association of Australia committee member but a passion of mine. It took me nearly 4 years to get a diagnosis for my son as even the medical profession had not heard of the condition so I had to set out and find out myself. The situation has improved but many remain undiagnosed, leading to problems for them in regards to getting the correct therapy, medication and funding at school. Did you know Fragile X is the leading known proved cause of Autism? Did you know that 1 in 126 women are carriers and carriers have problems with conceiving, early menopause, anxiety and depression. Male carriers develop a condition called FXTAS and are most often incorrectly misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and not given the right treatment.

Facebook personal and community pages are also good for promoting blogs of course. I do not recommend merely posting links to your blog posts but to develop a substantial list of “friends”, including other bloggers, and interact with them. Send them messages, share some of their links and respond and press the like button on their messages.

Coming up:

• Tools for posting to Twitter and Facebook,making it less time consuming, and how to create a daily user subscribe email message of your posts.
• A rave about versatility of the default Facebook Theme “TwentyTen” and making child themes.

Facebook has taken over | Blogging Sueblimely

It seems now that it is tentatively raising up from its sick bed to say a weak hello. Why now? I just had an email from CMF Ads who informed me that apart from not blogging since last June I had masses of spam comments.  On checking I was horrified to see how many there were.  Something I had spent much time and effort on was being slowly destroyed through my neglect.

I know this happens to many bloggers and I probably kept going at a reasonable pace for longer than many.  Why the lack of enthusiasm?  There were a number of reasons.  My health was suffering from sitting on my behind on the computer chair for so many hours.  The days when many new social networking sites were starting up are over and it is now a while since I have seen anything new to interest me.  When I started blogging Facebook was for the college crowd, Twitter had not yet uttered its first tweet and Stumbleupon had not yet tripped over anything.  I revelled in trying out new and different appplications and reporting on them.

To begin with it was  exciting being able to connect with so many new people and I  established a small network of bloggers who I now consider close friends and a wider network of blogging acquaintances.  It was the rest that wore me down; those who would take advantage of my public profile on sites to badger me for diggs and  stumbles; the sort of thing I would do gladly for friends whose work I respected but not for all and sundry.

Many of the bloggers who started out at the same time as me have given up and my comments began to come from strangers who strangely enough often had names associated with whatever they were trying to sell. Are we going back to the old days I wonder, when people  were named after their trades; as in Cooper, Gardner, Ward.  Will Usedtires or Seo  become commonplace surnames? Judging by my comments they already are. Will all the sons of the many Real Estates that comment  become MacReals or, given the times, PcReals?  Apologies, I digress.

What have I been doing instead of blogging? The many hours that were freed up have not been as productive as I would have liked mainly because I got sucked in to Facebook and its games – plowing harvesting and seeding my fields, building towns, cooking up a storm in my virtual cafe.  I had avoided these for years, knowing my propensity to get hooked on such things.  My health is back on track though and I proudly purchased a size 8 pair of jeans  last week, for myself. I have continued to build web sites for small businesses and non profits and have  got behind the hood of the Thesis theme and created a CMS site from that. I decided life was too short to keep putting things off and my long planned overseas trip is happening this year – a whole 12 weeks in Asia and Europe, staying in 13 countries.

I will be back here, although not as often as I once was.  I will again be sharing what I have learned about blogs and their building and design.

Comments are switched off for now but only until I remove the spam that got through the net. I would love to hear from  those of you who were regular followers and you can always drop me a line via my contact form.

The Blog rises from its Sick Bed | Blogging Sueblimely

A subscribe option allows you to add the collections of others to your favorites and track when these are updated. These user created collections are ranked by the amount of subscribers they have attracted.

The Firefox Collections page allows you to view lists of Editor’s Picks (so far only Firefox Created Collections), Popular Collections, your own and your favorite Collections. The lists are searchable by most popular all time, most popular this week or month and newest. A keyword search box is also provided.

Social networking aspects are involved here.

• You are able to keep up to date with new extensions added by those whose knowledge you respect. I first heard of collections via the blog post Best Of Breed Firefox Collection For SEO, Bloggers & Internet Marketers, by Andy Beard, whose collection I subscribed to immediately.
• You can subscribe to the collections of current friends and develop more contacts.
• By publicizing and gaining subscribers for your own collections, the higher your own profile will reach in the collection rankings.
• For bloggers this could lead to more visitors and regular readers.

It has taken me a while to get back into the swing of blogging after being away on holiday but life is now back to it’s normal routine. As usual I have tried out the tools I review so here are my own Firefox Collections: These are based on those I use and those I have found useful but have had to delete from my default Firefox profile to keep the number of add-ins down. The more you have the slower the browser.

• Social Networking Firefox extensions and toolbars that help you interact with your social networks and communicate with your contacts. I keep my most used in my default profile but have a social networking profile for times when I wish to do nothing else but catch up with my network contacts.
• Blogging- blog writers, web design and image tools for blogging.
• Sueblimely Using Add-ons- the add-ins I use with my default Firefox profile.

For an explanation of why and how to use different profiles please checkout my post Speed Up Your Firefox Browsing

Firefox Collections and Social Networking | Blogging Sueblimely

Although you may not have the same needs as this organization you may consider using WordPress MU if you want to develop more than one blog.

I had originally created the coastwatch site using the Joomla CMS system but, as the interface was complicated for them, WordPress was my obvious choice. After working with WordPress on various sites for a year or so, I know how flexible it can be. I was pleased to see that immediately after the new site was up and running Keef, who will be a co-author, had written a post and just needed me to tell him to hit the media button to add images. So much simpler.

As NCI East Coast now comprises of two coastwatch stations, managed by two separate committes, each needed their own unique identity, I decided on using WordPress MU to make administration simpler. Both stations now have their own unique pages and blogs on their own virtual subdomains.

The blog and some pages on the main East Coast site are being used as a private member only area for both of the coastwatch volunteer teams. Plugins turn this section into a true community site.

The other East Coast pages are public and contain information common to both stations. By using WordPress MU, the three blogs and three sets of static pages (NCI Eastcoast, NCI Skegness and NCI Mablethorpe) can all be managed from one admin dashboard.

I am hoping to see lots of posts written on the site to gain it speedy search engine page ranking and to raise awareness, more volunteer watchers and, hopefully more funds, for this worthy charity organization. Their volunteers man the coastwatch stations daily, making sure beach and sea goers are safe.

You may like to go along and leave a comment, joining me in congratulating them on their hard work and efforts in getting their second station up and running.

I will expand upon the advantages of and uses for MU in an upcoming post. For those of you interested in setting up an MU site I will also be talking of how to I set the East Coast site up, the plugins I used and where to find futher information.

I will also be discussing how you can use WordPress, including an existing installation, or WordPress MU to create a community site. As with the NCI Eastcoast example, you do not have to run your whole site as a community site – you can just have it as an add-on to a normal WP site.

WordPress Multi User | Blogging Sueblimely