ProPhoto - Premium Wordpress Theme for Professional Photographers - Single Column, big pictures - Blog Template

I got an email today from someone who was having trouble typing below and between images that she had uploaded and inserted into her post. She said that in the past when she tried to do this…

“several of my images were “stuck” together so I couldn’t get in between the images very well to type — and when I did once it deleted the image.  so i got frustrated.”

This type of problem is pretty common for people new (or not-so-new) to WordPress.  It’s tough sometimes to get your cursor in the right spot and type without deleting stuff or clicking on images.  Here are a few tips and tricks to make this a bit easier.

1. Increase the height of your post box (<– click the link to find out more)

2. Increase the width of your post box (<– click the link to find out more)

3. When you’ve inserted an image and want to type below it, or if you want to type between two images you’ve already inserted, put your cursor just to the right of an image, click there, then press “Enter”.  If you then start typing, you should be on a new line under that image.

4. Try switching to full-screen editing mode when posting (<– near the bottom of that post)

5. In a pinch, switch over to “HTML” mode and put your curser after the code for the image in question.  Then press return TWICE and start typing your next line.  If you then switch back to visual mode, you should be able to continue typing.

If you’re anything like me (and I know I am) then you love BIG monitors. My main computer is a 24″ iMac (primal grunting here). I just think that I’m a lot more productive on a big monitor. And there is scientific evidence to prove my point. But I digress…

If you have a big monitor like me, then you may have been a little frustrated when WordPress 2.5 came out and one of the new “features” was an admin working area limited to 980px. Especially when posting big, ProPhoto-sized pictures, more width can be really nice.

I already posted about increasing the write-post box’s height, but today I tried out a cool plugin that removes the max-width setting on your admin area.

You can download it here. I like it! What do you think?

Related posts:
Increase the size of your post-writing box
Installing and using plugins

One of the cool features of WordPress 2.5 (have you upgraded yet) is that you can upload multiple images at one time.

If you haven’t already tried this yet, all you have to do is click on the “Add media:” image button, click on “choose files to upload” and use shift+click or command+click (ctrl+click for PCs) to select multiple images at once. You can also click on an entire folder to upload all the images inside it.

Well, that’s pretty cool and all, but wouldn’t it be even nicer if you could insert all your images into your post all at once instead of one by one? Well, you can, sort of. All you need to do is use WP 2.5’s new “gallery” shortcode feature, with a little special sauce thrown in.

Here’s how it works:

First, upload a bunch of pictures using the “Add media:” image button.

Once they’ve all finished uploading, click on the “gallery” tab of your little uploader box, and at the bottom you can click on “insert gallery into post.” What this does is add a little bit of special WordPress code to your post that says:

[ gallery]

(I added an extra space after the first [ that shouldn’t be there so that the code wouldn’t execute in this post). When you publish your post now, it will insert all your images into your post as small thumbnails. Go ahead, try it and then come back here.

Cool, huh? The only problem is, we don’t want little thumbnails, right? Right. The next step is to modify the gallery shortcode just a bit so that we display our images full-size. To do that, just change the gallery short code to:

[ gallery size="full" columns="1"]

(again, leave out the space after the first “[”). Now if you publish your post your images should display full-size, one per line, and centered. We’re getting closer.

However, there is still a funky border that we don’t want.

To get rid of that, we have to make one change to our stylesheet. We only have to do this once, and then from now on every time we use the gallery shortcode, we won’t have those borders. To make the change, go to “Design” –> “Theme Editor” and open up “Stylesheet (style.css)”. Scroll down to the bottom, add a new line, and paste in this line:

.gallery img {border:none !important;}

Click “update file” to save your changes, refresh your browser, and the borders should be gone.

Once you get used to this, this can save you a lot of time. Again, all you have to do is upload all your images, and then paste this line (minus the extra space) into your post where you want your images to appear:

[ gallery size="full" columns="1"]

The only real downside is that inserting your in this way does not allow you to type text between images, so if you like to do that, then this probably isn’t for you. But, if you like to write up your post and then post all of your pictures in a row, this could save you lots of time.

In my opinion, I think the default size of the post-writing box (shown below) is a little too small. Then, again, I do have a 24″ monitor. But still, especially with the size of images we tend to post on ProPhoto blogs, this area is a little cramped.

Luckily, there is a simple way to increase the size of your posting box. Just click on “Settings” (”Options” in WP 2.3.3 and earlier) in your WP Admin area, and then click on the “Writing” subtab. Then, where it says “size of the post box” just bump it up from the default 10 lines to something bigger.

I like 20 lines or more. Depends on how big your monitor is. Or, if you really want a lot of room, click on the “Toggle Fullscreen Mode” button, and really get comfortable.

Update:  if what you’re really after is more WIDTH to your posting box, try using this plugin.  It’s pretty sweet.

Update #2: If you want to make just a quick temporary adjustment to your posting box height (it won’t be remembered next time you post) you can also just grab the lower left-hand corner of the box (shown below) and drag it.

Plugins are one of the great things about WordPress.  In the future, I’ll be posting a lot about great plugins that add all kinds of cool functionality to your blog.  In this video I show you how to download a plugin, how to install one, and some basic facts about plugins.

[Note: you might also want to read this post, about the problem where your image upload box freezes and turns white, not allowing you to insert images.]

Hey all, I thought I’d quick post because some people have been having trouble with the image uploader feature of WordPress 2.5. These issues seem to be mostly experienced by those using PC’s and Internet Explorer. Often, using FireFox instead is enough to get it working. If not, you may want to read this thread and try some of the things they recommend.

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/164999

Hopefully WordPress will have this resolved when they release 2.5.1 in a few weeks. If you use a PC and haven’t upgraded yet, this is probably a good reason to wait.

By the way, this is a WordPress problem, and not a ProPhoto problem, so I can’t provide support for you if you’re having trouble. WordPress is an open-source platform used by millions, so there are lots of resources out there. If you’re having trouble, try googling your problem (if you’re getting an error message, try googling the exact error message) or visit the WordPress support forum:

http://wordpress.org/support/

I finally finished creating some new videos showing and explaining the new WordPress 2.5 admin interface, and here they are. If you’re already pretty familiar with WordPress, these might be a little basic, but if you’re new to WordPress, there is a lot of info covered here that might be useful to you.

Of special note might be the first video, which explains in some detail most of the posting and image uploading features in WordPress 2.5. The image upload feature especially has stumped some people (it is kind of counter-intuitive), so it might be worth watching.

NOTE: I’m pretty sure there is a bug in WP 2.5 that makes uploading and inserting images almost impossible if you are using Internet Explorer 7. Use Firefox instead and you should be fine. I’m pretty confident WP will fix this soon. But, why are you using Internet Explorer anyway? Firefox is faster, safer, and more powerful. But I’ll save that rant for another day…

Let me know if these videos are useful!

Video: WP Admin Area - Writing Posts

Video: WP Admin Area - Manage Tab

Video: WP Admin Area - Design Tab

Video: WP Admin Area - Comments

Video: WP Admin Area - Settings Tab

Video: WP Admin Area - Plugins

Video: WP Admin Area - Users

Q: Can I embed a ShowIt slideshow? How do I center it?

A: Yes, just paste the embed code generated by ShowIt Web into the CODE EDITOR section of your posting admin panel.

If you want the slideshow centered, after you’ve pasted in the code into the code editor, add this tag before: <p align="center"> and this tag after:</p>.

NOTE: if you can’t see the controls of your ShowIt slideshow after embedding it, it’s probably a background color issue. For example, if you normally have your ShowIt slideshow web pages with a black background, ShowIt will make the controls WHITE so you can see them. However, if you paste the embed code into a blog with a white background, now you won’t be able to see the controls even though they are there. To fix this, just create an additional showit web page with the same background color as your blog, and use the embed code generated when making that page.

NOTE #2: Sometimes people get a problem when embedding ShowIt slideshows where the whole blog kind of breaks, and text below the show flows off into the background and everything looks weird. Click here for fix.