Organizing Your Blog’s Graphics

I love the idea of photos to make my entries catchy and interesting.  BUT, I hate the work involved in it all!  If you haven’t upgraded to WordPress 2.5.1,  it will make the image uploading so much easier!

Find Graphics:

1. Stock Exchange
2. Microsoft Clip Art
3. Scrapbooking graphics

Keep them:

I use a folder on my desktop called “To Upload” where I keep everything that I want to put on my blog, that I haven’t uploaded yet.  And that way I keep my desktop tidy.  (A bit of a neat freak here.)  AND I can then find those darn graphics on my computer.  Would you believe that my automatic download location is a folder in an archive hidden under 3 other directories?  It took me weeks to figure that out.  Stupid Windows.

Compress them:

If you want to make the uploads faster, you can open your image in any editing program (I use microsoft Picture Manager, Publisher, or GIMP.  Each of these programs have a “compress” button right in the “edit” menu or toolbar.  Select the “small” or “Web” size.  Which is usually around 400px (or 4 inches) by 300-ish px.  72 dpi.  This is all calculated automatically so you don’t even have to know what that means.  You gotta LOVE that!  These will look great on the web.  Not so good if you print them out for your scrapbook or whatever.

Upload them:

When you are writing a post, and want to put in that cute picture, click on the “add media” button in the post editor (‘write post’ screen).  Select “Choose Files to Upload”, go to your desktop, To Upload folder.  Click on photo.  It will automatically be uploaded to wordpress, and attached to the current post.

Display them:

Under the “Add Media” tab, you can see all the attachments to the current post.  Click on “show” next to the attachment that you want.  It will drop down with a bunch of options.  I never worry about editing any of the options.  And don’t bother setting the layout options either, because they don’t work.  (I’ve no idea why – probably to be fixed in future wp versions.) Just insert into post.

Adjust the layout:

Click on your image.  It will show a line surrounding it with small boxes on each corner.  Under the “visual” tab, you will see a pretty little tree icon/button.  Click on it, it will open the “insert/edit image” screen.

In this screen, the “image url” should have a web address in it.  Go to alignment.  I usually use “left” which aligns the image to the left of your text, or “right” which blah, blah, blah.  Get it?  If this is not working, it just means that the formatting that you can’t see is messing with it.  Just type the rest of your text as if the image is where it is supposed to be. Then drag your image to where you want it.  Along with the correct alignment options, it should all work out!

As usual, Heather and I are around to answer questions as you get used to this very cool feature!