Photography Tips | Photography Tutorials & Resources - For Professional Photographers » Wordpress Themes

10 WordPress Plugins for Photography Blogs

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 05:11:58 +0000

WordPress is our recommended blogging platform for a variety of reasons, one of which is its extensive library of 3rd party plugins. These plugins make life easier for us bloggers, with functionality ranging from aesthetics to SEO. You can link to your Twitter and Facebook accounts, include “sexy bookmarks,” flash headers, and add other great, useful, and good looking features to your site.

However, the problems with any extensive library are saturation and convolution. For example, there are 18 Twitter-related plugins, 19 Facebook plugins, and dozens of SEO-related plugins. So this article is intended to serve as a guide through the jungle. A few of these, such as Akismet, All in one SEO, and Broken Links Checker are considered must-haves, while others like Gravity Forms, Flash Fader, and Facebook Like Button should be used when appropriate. If you feel that I’ve left out some important ones, feel free to comment with recommendations in the comment section of this article.

Aksimet

The Akismet WordPress plugin ships with WordPress 2.0 and later by default, but make sure you activate it and input your API Key. If you’re tired of all of that comment and trackback spam, Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short), is your no-brainer solution. If, for some reason, you don’t have the plugin, you can download it here

All in One Seo

This plugin is another must-have for anyone running a WordPress blog. You can download it here and check out its extensive full list of features. The most notable features are 1) Automatic optimization titles for search engines, 2) automatic generation of META tags, and 3) inclusion/exclusion of categories, archives and other pages to avoid duplicate content.

Broken Link Checker

Broken Links, links that lead to an error or unavailable content, hurt you in two ways. First off, they reflect poorly on the content of your site, as it makes the information you present seem outdated and/or inaccurate. Secondly, it hurts your SEO, as you get dinged by search engines for every broken link on your site. The hard part about managing broken links is that the process of the link becoming broken is not controlled by you. If the webmaster or the site owner decides to change the URL or remove a page, a broken link is generated. With Broken Links Checker, you can avoid these problems, as it warns you in the dashboard of your WordPress site when your site contains a broken link.

Status Updater

There are dozens of Facebook and Twitter plugins, but Status Updater is my favorite. As of the time of this article, it’s the only one I found that allows you to automatically publish directly to a Facebook Fan Page. Others allow you to publish to your own status, but I prefer to only update those who have joined our fan page and not all of my Facebook friends. In addition to your Facebook status and your Facebook Page, you can include your Twitter account and (for those of you who still happen to use it) your Myspace profile as well.

Facebook Like Button

The Facebook Like Button is a great way to increase awareness of your site. See the Facebook like buttons at the beginning and end of this article for an example. When your reader clicks the “like” button in your article, it appears in their Facebook profile. Talk about an easy way to advertise! This plugin gives you the option to include the button at the beginning of the article, the end of the article, both, or by an article by article basis.

Gravity Forms

This is actually a paid plugin, but Gravity Forms provides a look and feel that the other free form plugins just won’t provide. If you have any kind of form on your site, whether it be a contact form, an album order form, or any other form, Gravity Forms will give it sleek functionality and aesthetics. With conditional fields (fields that appear only when a certain other value in the form is selected) and validation (functionality that does not allow the form to be submitted unless certain forms are filled out correctly) these forms are worth the small price.

Flashfader

Create a Flash slideshow with Flashfader. There are drawbacks to this plugin, specifically the relative difficulty (in comparison with other WordPress plugins) to set up, but once you have it up and running, it creates a reliable, good-looking slideshow for your header, sidebar, or any other location on your site.

SEO Friendly Images

Image Searches can lead to a lot of traffic for your site, but in order for Google to find your images, they need to be optimized. The difficulty is the time it takes to create titles and alt tags for all of your images. With the help of SEO Friends Images you don’t have to spend hours on each post making sure each image is optimized. The plugin automatically creates titles and alt tags for your images. Now all you need to do is make sure you’re naming your images right and surrounding it with relevant, contextual content.

XML Sitemap Generator

XML Sitemap Generator helps search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo index your blog and makes it easier for the crawlers to see and retrieve the complete structure of your site. I know we’ve beaten the topic of SEO to death in this article, but this one is just as important as the others in this article for getting you more readers and more clients.

Permalinks Migration

If you started using WordPress out of the box, like most of us, you didn’t pay any attention to permalinks. If so, your URL’s look something like this http://example.com/?p=N. Even WordPress calls this “ugly” in their article on using permalinks. The problem is that if you change your permalink structure, you not only create broken links for anyone who has linked to your article, but you also lose all of your SEO page rank for that post. With Permalinks Migration, you automatically generate 301 Redirects that redirect the old URLs to the new URLs and also preserves their page rank.

How to transfer your hosting to Bluehost

admin — Wed, 05 May 2010 09:07:55 +0000

“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.” – Harvey MacKay

SLR Lounge used to be hosted on Go Daddy, but after hours lost dealing with various issues, from injected malware to slow loading times and beyond, we decided to transfer SLR Lounge to Bluehost. If you’re not convinced, we compare them side by side in this SLR Lounge article. We had been happily using Bluehost for various websites; but we never got around to using it for SLR Lounge until a few recent experiences pushed us over the top.

Some of you may feel as married to your hosting as you are to your Camera brand, as the transfer process can seem daunting and time-consuming. However, switching your hosting (from Go Daddy or any other hosting service) to Bluehost can be as quick as a couple of hours, depending on the size of your database and the number of files; and you can do so with little to no downtime for your site.

The following methods is based on my experience with transferring 3 different sites from Go Daddy to Bluehost. There are a variety of ways to achieve the same result; and there may be unique situations that I have not encountered. However, the following steps should work, or at least give you a good reference, for transferring your site.

So let’s get right into how we can transfer, switch, migrate (or whatever else you want to call it) your hosting to Bluehost.

If you’re using a WordPress site, you can either follow the steps (1 through 8) in the second portion of this tutorial (and migrate your entire site, it’s databases and all of it’s content); or you can go another route that I’ll call the “Alternate Route”.

The Alternate Route

This method does not involve transferring your existing databases; but instead, it only transfers all of your content. Imagine moving into a new home (as opposed to moving your entire house). The negative aspect of this method is that you have to reinstall all of your plug-ins, set all of your permalink preferences again, and make a plethora of adjustments to get your site to exactly match it’s previous state. The time and effort this method takes depends greatly on how much you strayed from the default WordPress settings, how many plug ins you’re utilizing, and how close you want your site to match the previous version.

The trade off is that this method is a bit more straight forward than the one outlined below; and may be easier if you’re not used to working with MySQL, PHPMyAdmin, and FTP Programs.

Here are the steps if you want to use this method.

a) Get a Bluehost hosting account ( Click Here)
b) Assign the domain to your Bluehost account (see step 7 below for instructions)
c) Installing WordPress (see this SLR Lounge Article for instructions)
d) Export Content from Old Blog and Import Content to New blog. (See This Tutorial).

However, if you want to transfer the entire contents of your site, whether it be running WordPress, another CMS, or any other content you can also follow the rest of the steps in this tutorial. Imagine moving your entire home with the entire structure in tact (as opposed to moving into a new house).

1. Backup your current database

a) For Go Daddy, make your way to your “Hosting Control Center”
b) Click “Manage Account” > Click “Databases” > Click “Mysql” (as shown below)

c) Click “Manage via MyphpAdmin” and Log in
d) Click on your database (on the left side)
e) Click the “Export” tab. You should see the following:

f) Check the first 4 boxes in “Structure” and the “save as file” box
g) Enter a name you’ll be able to identify into “save name template,” and click “Go.”

2. Backup your current files

a) Use an FTP Program to connect to your site (If you don’t have a free FTP program, see step 6 in this tutorial).
b) Create a folder on your desktop and transfer all of the files from your site into that folder you created.

3. Create a database in Blue Host

a) First off, create a Bluehost account create (by clicking here) or Sign into your existingBluehost Account.
b) Click “Mysql databases”
c) Enter the name of your database in the “create new database” field
d) “Add new user” if you would like (or if you don’t have any users) making sure the user has full privileges
e) Under the “Add User to Database” section, match up the User with the database you just created.

4. Change Your Configuration Files

In the example of a WordPress site, you’ll go into your wp-config file and change the database name, username, password, and host. Your username and password will be the one set up in the previous step. If you’re not using WordPress, find the file that contains all of your database information.

5. Upload Your Files

Using your FTP program, create a folder for your site in the root directory and upload your files from the folder you created in step 2.

6. Import Your Database

a) From your Bluehost C Panel, go to Myphpadmin

b) Click on the database you created in step 3
c) Click import and browse for the file you exported in step 1.

7. Assign the domain to your account.

1) Follow the instructions in this tutorial Your directory will be the FTP folder you created in step 5.

Note: For Godaddy, the Authorization (EPP) Code is in the domain manager. (See below)

8. Check your site.

If everything went well, your site should be transferred. If you see an “error connecting to the database”, your wp-config file has some incorrect information. Double check the fields and re upload using the FTP.

Free Photography WordPress Themes

admin — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 02:50:06 +0000

We’re excited to announce 3 new free WordPress themes. We listened to all of your comments and made drastic improvements over our last theme. First off, in all three themes, we’ve designed an intuitive back end, a.k.a an options page. This means no more messing with the Theme Editor and altering the code of the site. Everything, from the border colors to the link text to the banner image, profile image, and logo image is completely controlled by the back end. Next, we cleaned up the code to display properly in all major browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera). Lastly, we added some great functionality to each theme, as we’ll describe in further detail below. There are plenty of features that we just don’t have space to mention here, but feel free to click the examples and see the video tutorials for more information.

Note: comments have been closed for this post. All questions and issues can be posted and resolved on the forums, found at http://www.slrlounge.com/forums

PhotoFeature Free Photography WordPress Theme by SLR Lounge

The first theme is called PhotoFeature. We designed this because we were tired of all of our great posts from a year back never getting any love, as most of of our readers stopped after the 3rd page or so. The featured slider gives your readers a chance to view your featured content.

Example: Click Here
Download: Sign Up by Clicking Here
Instructions: Click Here

PhotoFlash Free Photography WordPress Theme by SLR Lounge

If you think the featured section looks a little too busy for your taste, go with a simple flash banner instead. All the same customization ability with the addition of a flash banner instead of the featured section.

Example: Click Here
Download: Sign Up by Clicking Here
Instructions: Click Here

PhotoLounge Free Photography WordPress Theme by SLR Lounge

Still too many bells and whistles for your taste? Go with PhotoLounge, a laid-back, simple version of the two themes mentioned above. We took out the featured section and the flash header and left you with a clean, basic blog with sleek typography and easy customization.

Example: Click Here
Download: Sign Up by Clicking Here
Instructions: Click Here

We hope you enjoy!!!

Note: comments have been closed for this post. All questions and issues can be posted and resolved on the forums, found at http://www.slrlounge.com/forums

Photo Lounge WordPress Theme Download and Installation Instructions

admin — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 02:21:55 +0000

Photo Lounge is completely free. It’s sleek and simple design is perfect if you want a single column wordpress theme with an intuitive back end where you can customize all of the features in the menu and in the footer. Enjoy the theme! All we ask is that you please keep our credit at the bottom of the blog theme. Thank you!

Example: Click Here
Download: Signing Up HERE (You receive access to all 4 themes with one sign up)

Basic Instructions

1) Install WordPress. For video instructions, see this post.

2) Download the Theme by Signing Up HERE (You receive access to all 4 themes with one sign up)

3) Install Theme and begin customizing by clicking “Photo Feature by SLR Lounge Options” in the Appearance Tab

4) Customize the colors of your site using Adobe’s Kuler (Optional Resource)

5) Continue Customizing Your Blog by Continuing with the “Photo Feature by SLR Lounge Options” in the Appearance Tab

NOTE ADDED 4/12/2010: TO INSERT QUOTATION MARKS, APOSTROPHES, EXCLAMATION POINTS AND OTHER SPECIAL CHARACTERS, FOLLOW THIS RESOURCE: http://www.tedmontgomery.com/tutorial/htmlchrc.html

6) Customize The Footer

Photo Flash WordPress Theme Download and Installation Instructions

admin — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 02:17:09 +0000

Photo Flash, the Free Photography WordPress Theme offered by SLR Lounge, was created for photographers who want to feature a dynamic banner. The estimated set up time should be around 20 minutes, and we’ve really tried to make it easy for you to do everything from a nice and intuitive back end. Follow the instructions below, and we would love to hear your comments.

Note: comments have been closed for this post. All questions and issues can be posted and resolved on the forums, found at http://www.slrlounge.com/forums

Live Example: Click Here
Download: Signing Up HERE (You receive access to all 4 themes with one sign up)

Basic Instructions

1) Install WordPress. For video instructions, see this post.

2) Download the Theme by Signing Up HERE (You receive access to all 4 themes with one sign up)

3) Install Theme and begin customizing by clicking “Photo Feature by SLR Lounge Options” in the Appearance Tab

4) Customize the colors of your site using Adobe’s Kuler (Optional Resource)

5) Continue Customizing Your Blog by Continuing with the “Photo Feature by SLR Lounge Options” in the Appearance Tab

NOTE ADDED 4/12/2010: TO INSERT QUOTATION MARKS, APOSTROPHES, EXCLAMATION POINTS AND OTHER SPECIAL CHARACTERS, FOLLOW THIS RESOURCE: http://www.tedmontgomery.com/tutorial/htmlchrc.html

6) Install an FTP Program (Filezilla) and Connect to Your Site (The following video was created for the SLR Lounge Theme 1.0, but the same instructions should apply to this theme)

7) Go to http://www.lynk.de/wordpress/flashfader/ and download the plugin, FTP files (NOT FOLDER) of the Flashfader into the Plugins Folder, and Finalize Your Customization

8) Change the flashfaderhtml document

NOTE THIS IS AN ADDITIONAL STEP ADDED 4/12/2010 TO CORRECT THE MENU DROP DOWNS FROM HIDING BEHIND THE FLASH BANNER

In order to have your menu drop downs appear over the flash banner, you need to alter the flashfaderhtml.txt document

a) Open your ftp program
b) Log into your site
c) Navigate to wp-content > flashfader > flashfaderhtml.txt
d) Drag flashfaderhtml.txt to your desktop and open with any text editor
e) Copy and paste in the following code: right before the object closes:

For example, the flashfaderhtml.txt file in our example blog reads

Your code should not need to be altered except for the inserting the code we talked about in step e. The whole code is mentioned above for your reference. Notice the right before the end of the code. However, yours will be slightly different because your url obviously isn’t slrlounge/testwordpress

f) Replace the new flashfaderhtml.txt document on your site with the one you changed using the ftp program.

9) Customize The Footer

Note: comments have been closed for this post. All questions and issues can be posted and resolved on the forums, found at http://www.slrlounge.com/forums

Photo Feature WordPress Theme Download and Installation Instructions

admin — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 01:53:15 +0000

Photo Feature was created because we realize a photographer’s best work is often displayed on his or her blog. However, we also realize that our readers rarely go past the first couple of pages. That combo of circumstances leads a lot of our great posts from the past being buried and rarely seen. We created a featured slider to feature some of your great past content so they get a little more lovin.

Live Example: Click Here
Download: Signing Up HERE (You receive access to all 4 themes with one sign up)

Basic Instructions

1) Install WordPress. For video instructions, click here.

2) Download the Theme by Signing Up HERE (You receive access to all 4 themes with one sign up)

3) Install Theme and begin customizing by clicking “Photo Feature by SLR Lounge Options” in the Appearance Tab

4) Customize the colors of your site using Adobe’s Kuler (Optional Resource)

5) Continue Customizing Your Blog by Continuing with the “Photo Feature by SLR Lounge Options” in the Appearance Tab

NOTE ADDED 4/12/2010: TO INSERT QUOTATION MARKS, APOSTROPHES, EXCLAMATION POINTS AND OTHER SPECIAL CHARACTERS, FOLLOW THIS RESOURCE: http://www.tedmontgomery.com/tutorial/htmlchrc.html

6) Customize the Featured Slider Section of Your Blog

7) Customize The Footer

SLR Lounge Photography WordPress Blog Theme

admin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:21:43 +0000

Note: There are newer themes available. They are still completely free but they now come with an options page (to customize your blog without altering the code), improved functionality, and a variety of new features. Click here to view examples and receive download and installation instructions for these new free wordpress themes. However, the theme featured on this page is still available for download.

Basic Info

We’re proud and excited to announce the new SLR Lounge Photographer WordPress blog theme. With the thousands of blog themes out there, why would we feel the need to create another one? There simply isn’t much out there that met all of our needs as a photography studio running a photography blog. So we decided to create our own photography blog theme and put in some awesome features and a sleek design, ideal for any type of photographer. Best part, our photography blog theme is professional and free!

Cost: Freeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Download: Click Here
Standard Example: Click Here
Customized Live Example: Click Here
Installation Tutorial: Click Here

Here are just some of the key features:

What’s Great About the SLR Lounge Photography WordPress Blog Theme???

1. Single column with large images – We’ve taken out the sidebar so you and your fans can focus on the display of large, stunning images. I mean shouldn’t a photography blog theme focus primarily on your photography!?

2. Sleek Typography – We’ve utilized a typography with style & consistency.

3. Widgetized Footer - Typical WordPress themes have a widgetized sidebar, taking up precious room on the side of your page. Instead, we’ve moved the widgets to the bottom of the page, allowing your viewers to navigate your page based on tags, recent comments, recent posts, and any other widgets you chose to install.

4. Twitter & Social Bookmarking - We all know the importance of social bookmarking for spreading awareness of your studio and establishing a stronger relationship with our fans. These features allow you to connect via the most popular communities by displaying your most recent Tweets and linking to RSS Feeds, facebook, and Stumble-upon. You can also customize these buttons to link to any site. So all you photography socialites need look no further for a photography blog theme that will enhance your social image!

5. Drop Down Menus – These menus are important for the overall navigation of your site; and they are easily customizable.

6. Simple, Reliable Commenting System – If you’ve experienced the frustrations of the inconsistencies associated with AJAX, you’ll appreciate this simple, intuitive, and reliable commenting system.

7. Borders – This subtle design feature makes your content pop off the page.

8. Tutorials – Although we will not be able to address every question, we’ll provide a vast array of resources to help you implement your photography blog theme, including Adobe Illustrator template files for creating your banner and your background and WordPress installation instructions. We’re constantly working on these resources; and they can be found by clicking here

Note: There are newer themes available with an options page, improved functionality, and a variety of new features. Click here to view examples and receive download and installation instructions. However, the theme featured on this page is still available for download.

Install WordPress with Blue Host

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 01:54:46 +0000

Here is a short video tutorial on installing WordPress on your website or blog using Blue Host’s hosting services. Bluehost has a ton of great features that fit a photographer’s needs perfectly We pay only $7 a month for a single Bluehost.com account that hosts each and every one of our domains, allows for unlimited bandwidth and storage space along with online video and slideshow streaming. For the price and the features, it is a definite no brainer. Feel free to comment with any questions or concerns! Click here for an article comparing Bluehost, GoDaddy, and BluDomain

Install WordPress with Godaddy Hosting Services

admin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:57:29 +0000

Here is a short video tutorial on installing WordPress on your website or blog using Godaddy’s hosting services. Feel free to comment with any questions or concerns!

Click Here to sign up with Godaddy

Installation of Your SLR Lounge Photography Theme

admin — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 01:13:06 +0000

Please follow the instructions carefully to correctly install the SLR Lounge WordPress theme. If you are having issues, you may find solutions in the comments section by users who have encountered and solved the same issue.

Video Tutorials

Feel free to add comments with questions and issues you would like us to address. Please scroll down to view the written instructions if needed.

1) Install WordPress on Your Website

Since we have already created videos for the installation of the WordPress site, we won’t repeat those steps here. Please see the links below for the WordPress installation video tutorial.
Bluehost Installation – Please click here to view the Bluehost installation video tutorial.
GoDaddy Installation – Please click here to view the GoDaddy installation video tutorial.

2) Install the SLR Lounge WordPress Theme

3) Install an FTP Program (Filezilla) and Connect to Your Site

4) Customize the Background

5) Customize the Header pt. 1 – Customize the Banner

6) Customize the Header pt. 2

7) Customize the Widgetized Footer

Written Instructions

For those of you that prefer to read the instructions, here is the entire set of instructions for the video tutorials seen above.

1) WordPress Installation

To Install WordPress, follow these instructions (click here)
If you prefer video tutorials, please check out our video tutorials on WordPress installation on Bluehost and GoDaddy servers.

Theme Customization Instructions

First off, download the Custom Theme Here

2) Install the Theme

a) Go to the Admin Panel
b) Find “Add New Themes” in the “Appearance” Menu

c) Click Upload
d) Click Browse and find the zip file containing the theme files
e) Click Install Now
f) Preview and Activate

3) Customize the Background

a) Under the “Appearance” menu, click on the “Editor” as shown below.
b) The first file that shows up (by default) should be the Stylesheet (style.css). If not, find it at the bottom right of the page.
c) You should find detailed instructions inside of this page.
d) Look for the following instructions on how to change your background:
/*If you want to change the color of the background, change #900 to whatever color you prefer.
If you would like a custom background instead of a color, replace “background-color:#900;” with “background:url(‘images/background.jpg’) repeat top center;”
Then locate th images folder (…slrlounge/images). Design your custom background (with dimensions 100px x 100x), name it background.jpg, and replace the file in your images folder*/
You’ll need to FTP an image named background.jpg to the images folder if you wish to have a custom background.
e) Further customization on the stylesheet is not necessary, but if you would like to change the font or any other styles, read the comments inside of the document for instructions. (comments are denoted by a /* and end with a */)

4) Customize the Header

a) Next click on the Header.php file. This is the 5th item down on the right side of the Editor Screen, as shown below.

b) Customize your header – Next, look for the following and follow the procedures:
IF YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO CREATE A BANNER OR DO NOT WISH TO DO SO, YOU MAY TYPE IN “So and So Photography” AND REMOVE THE BANNER.JPG FROM THE IMAGES FOLDER… THIS WILL LEAVE YOU WITH JUST THE TEXT “SO AND SO PHOTOGRAPHY AND A BANNER SPACE OF 1000PX BY 285PX. FROM THERE, YOU CAN ADD AN IMAGE 1000PX BY 285PX (NAMED BANNER.JPG AND PLACED INSIDE OF THE IMAGES FOLDER) TO HAVE THE TEXT OF YOUR CHOICE DISPLAY OVER THE IMAGE
c) Customize your menu – Next, look for the following and follow the procedures:
HERE YOU CAN ADD A FEW MENU ITEMS BY ADDING:
d) Customize your portfolio – Next, look for the following and follow the procedures:
CHANGE THE FOLLOWING “http://www.slrlounge.com” TO YOUR URL
e) Customize your Studio Name – Next, look for the following and follow the procedures:
EDIT YOUR STUDIO NAME HERE
f) Customize your profile – Next, look for the following and follow the procedures:
EDIT YOUR STUDIO PROFILE HERE. Replace with your studio information
g) Customize your Facebook – Next, look for the following and follow the procedures:
MAKE SURE TO INPUT YOUR FACEBOOK USERNAME BELOW –>
h) Customize your twitter – Next, look for the following and follow the procedures:
EDIT YOUR TWITTER PROFILE HERE
Make sure you replace two things with your twitter profile. First, find “http://www.twitter.com/pyeman” and replace “pyeman” with your twitter name. Next find “twitter_messages(‘pyeman’, 1, false, true, ‘#’, true, true, false);” and replace “topherlin” with your twitter name. Also, make sure you remove the /* on both sides of the “twitter_messages()”

5) Install the “Twitter for WordPress” plugin

a) Click add new under the plugins menu on the side as shown below

b) Search ‘Twitter for WordPress’, then click install, then click activate

6) Customize the Widgetized Footer

a) Click on “Widgets” in the Appearance menu (on the left side of the page)
b) Drag widgets over to the first sidebar and the third sidebar (one widget per sidebar),
The middle box is defaulted to the tag cloud, (recommended widgets – recent posts + recent comments)
c) Make sure to click “Save” each time

At this point, your blog should be customized. You can futher customize the style.css file if you want to alter your font sizes, colors, and other aspects of the appearance.

Thanks and again, feel free to comment with issues and questions!