A Newbie Blogger’s Guide to Posting Images in WordPress

{ August 8, 2006 @ 9:21 pm } · { Newbie How To's, Tech, Uncategorized }

My friend Stacey asked if I could help her on how to blog pictures in WordPress. We are both newbies with this blogsite and I’ve also encountered the same thing when I started blogging in WordPress. Then I’ve managed to kill enough time to tinker around with my Dashboard and found out a little about posting photos in WordPress.

First things first
Have a PhoBlog or a Photo Blog. Multiply.com and Flickr.com offers options for photo blogging. I’m not a Multiply user (yet) so I would do a “how to blog an image at WordPress” using Flickr; I’m more familiar with Flickr since that’s the one I’m currently using that for this site.

Step 1. Go to your Dashboard > Presentation > Several Widgets.
Drag the Flickr widget to the list of widgets that will appear on your blog.

Step 2. Configure your Flickr. If you don’t have a Flickr site yet, go to www.flickr.com and sign up. You can choose to sign up using a Yahoo account (which I did, and I found it easier because I have an existing Yahoo account). Or, create your own Flickr account (which is as simple as creating another email address). Your choice.

Step 3. After you’ve created a Flickr account, you can now start uploading pictures and images. Descriptions for each photo aren’t really necessary.

Step 4: On your Photo’s Page, click on the image or photo that you’d like to post on your blog. There are two ways to get the URL of the image that you want to post:

A. The Long Cut—On top of the photo, you would see several image editors including Blog This and All Sizes. Clicking Blog This is the longer route as you first have to configure the blog where Flickr would send the photo. For WordPress users, key in “http://your.blog.address/xmlrpc.php” (i.e., https://inmediasres.wordpress.com/xmlrpc.php). Note that the most common mistake that WordPress users encounter at Flickr is that they misspell “XMLRPC” as “XM-I-RPC.” After configuring that, do you think that you’re just one click away from happily blogging your photos onto your WordPress?

Well, maybe not that fast yet.

You see, what the Blog This option does is to literally post the image on your WordPress as a blog entry: with the title of the image as the entry title, and with the photo description as the entry content. This would be advantageous for those who like blogging photos more than writing entries, but it could be a disadvantage for people who still tinkers with the position of the photos to go along with their what-nots.

Fear not, though, as that entry is editable. Click Edit and it would lead you back to the editing screen. Click on the image on the editing box and a window/box would appear which—tadaaa!—reveals the URL of the image for blogging.  Edit: Click on the image/Highlight the image on the editor, then click the Insert Image button (that green-colored thingy). A window/bow will then pop out and –tadaaa!—will reveal the URL of the image. Cut or copy the URL from the Image URL box and use that.

You can now use the image URL in the entry where you want the photo to appear. You can also choose to delete the post after you’ve acquired the image URL. User.

B. And as for the short cut—Clicking All Sizes would send you to another page where you can view the different available sizes of your image or photo. Scroll down your page, and tadaaa! there’s your image URL in all it’s glory. Heh.

The image URL should be something similar to this: “http://static.flicker.com/photos….” Do not trust the “http://www.flicker.com/photos/huntress_at_dusk/000001810” kinds of links. They never work.

On Photo Blogging
Now that you can generate the image URL for embedding images to your post, let’s move on to the step-by-step newbie guide to posting images.

Step 1. Dashboard > Write > Post. Or simply click Edit to any of your posts that you wanted to add images.

Step 2. Click that green little box (that’s a tree, I think) that’s the button for Insert Image. The window/box would pop out and would ask for the following:

> Image URL:
> Image Description:
> Alignment:
> Dimension: ____ X ____
> Border:
> Vertical Space:
> Horizontal Space:

Step 3. You paste your image’s URL at the “Image URL” box.

Step 4. Remember the little wordings that pop out next to your mouse when you hover the pointer at an image or link? Those little wordings should be typed in the “Image Description” box.

Step 5. Alignment: Top, Baseline, Left, Right, or not set–depends where you want your image to be found in your post. I’ve experimented a lot with the layouts in this entry and this entry.

Step 6. Dimensions: You can specify the size of your image here. The first empty box is the width, and the next empty box is for the height. You can check the properties of your image first if you want to see it the way you saved it.

Step 7. Border. You can go borderless for all I care. (Peace!) The higher the number you put, the thicker the border.

Step 8. Vertical Space and Horizontal Space: input a number to indicate the distance between your image and the text. You’re not dumb enough not to know which is vertical and horizontal. If you don’t want any space at all, then leave the boxes empty.

Step 9. Click “Insert” and wait for the image to appear on your editor. Whee!

I’m still not an expert at using WordPress yet, but I hope that these little step-by-step could help newbie WordPress users.

Email me if there’s something questionable about this.

~michiko