photo blogging

thebaz

Seeing as quite a few of us have blogs , why not start a thread introducing your blog, and outlining difficulties, help and just general info for current photo bloggers or those thinking of launching one . Anway heres mine :-

http://www.photoblog.com/thebaz/

Last April I commited to doing a blog for a year, just to track my daily ups and down of life, visually. I try to post one image a day, sometimes 2 , with a few words and comments and the odd verse ....

AnCatDubh

Might also be useful to say why you picked your blogging provider - i'm struggling at the moment to get a basic template that i'm happy with for blogger so my blog hasn't advanced much.

Do people use photoblog, wordpress, blogger, others ? and why?

Hugh_C

AnCatDubh wrote: »

Do people use photoblog, wordpress, blogger, others ? and why?

I'm using Wordpress basically copying ~Solarina (from flickr's) template on her photoblog, it uses a plug-in called YAPB and a theme called Grain.

Mine can be found here, I'm a bit sick of the look of it now so am looking for ideas for different kinds of photoblog. Oh yeah, the domain is mine and it's hosted here in Ireland, seems a bit slow to me but there again it's cheap, whattayagoingtodo?

H

GristlyEnd

I also use wordpress and a theme called freshy2 which has a great editor for easily changing the header and body sizes. I'm still not 100% happy with it but I get the odd visitor so I must be doing something right. I also have approx 6 domain names all pointing to my blog.

My blog

If anyone is thinking of setting up a blog and needs help don't hesitate to ask. I've got my wordpress & database installs down to minutes.

Edit to add, I recently changed hosting providers to an Irish company. I've had no downtime yet since the change (compared to the last shower).

Phototoxin

blog = weB LOG

surely its a PHLOG (pronounced flog) ?

my blog is warmachine.joerogers.info its about assembling a new miniature army for a game called warmachine.. som photos but they are small... not getting the thumbnails to work properly yet.

kgiller

DarrenG wrote: »

I also use wordpress and a theme called freshy2 which has a great editor for easily changing the header and body sizes. I'm still not 100% happy with it but I get the odd visitor so I must be doing something right. I also have approx 6 domain names all pointing to my blog.

My blog

If anyone is thinking of setting up a blog and needs help don't hesitate to ask. I've got my wordpress & database installs down to minutes.

Edit to add, I recently changed hosting providers to an Irish company. I've had no downtime yet since the change (compared to the last shower).

Id say most of those visitors are me actually . I check on it a bit to see your new stuff.

shepthedog

Would be very interested to see why people chose certain blog providers... Which one offers certain services etc...
Also be no harm in seeing which boards people have blogs.. Seeing as its the season for the blog awards..

thebaz

AnCatDubh wrote: »

Might also be useful to say why you picked your blogging provider - i'm struggling at the moment to get a basic template that i'm happy with for blogger so my blog hasn't advanced much.

Do people use photoblog, wordpress, blogger, others ? and why?

I started on blogger, which was reliable but very plain to view.
I now use photoblog.com which I like visually,and has a great helpfull community, but the technical support is weak - it goes down a bit, and slow to comeback - I actually considered moving back to blogger - but would miss the knowledeable worldwide community their (very few Irish) nice balance for me, along with our local boards

dazftw

www.daz0rz.wordpress.com

1st time ive told a sole I had it.. I was going to wait until my website was done.. but it should be done tonight if I stay up and finish it :cool:

Its going to be skateboarding mainly though so I dont think it'll attract that many people unless there into it..

Feel free to comment and all that jazz.. I dont think you can like add people on wordpress can you?

Actually might set up another one for photography... anyone recommend another provider besides wordpress?

Deliverance XXV

Wordpress, from my experience is the easiest and most easily customisable blog out there.

Dazftw, if you wanted you could host your skateboarding blog and a photo blog on your web server where your website is.
There is no problem in having multiple installations. As said by Darren earlier, a Wordpress installation is literally minutes.
The level of customisation for Wordpress in endless. There are hundreds of themes and useful plugins out there.
A Wordpress installation doesn't necessarily have to be a blog, it can be used to mimic a website.

My blog/photoblog is http://www.jmcdermott.ie/blog/

Yesterday, I put a load of you on the blogroll so if I forgot any of you or got some info wrong, feel free to PM me. Feel free also, to reciprocate.

elven

I have a blog but it's about photography, rather than full of photos, if that makes any sense... it's to save you lot from having to read my inane ramblings on here!

http://seethedetails.wordpress.com

Just a standard wordpress thingamy, but I like the theme, nice and clean and has space for the flickr widget at the side.

I've been toying with the actual photoblog idea for a while now but haven't actually put anything in place yet so i'll be watching this thread for ideas

Anouilh

My photoblog is Shortsights, using Blogger.

I started out with my main photo uploading space, Photographedublin, but found there were so many questions that I made other blogs to annotate progress:

http://technorati.com/people/technorati/Anouilh

One tip is to start a blog, using any provider and use it to try out templates, fonts and layout. Photos can be sent directly to it by using the "Blog This" button in Flickr. Keeping it private might also be an idea, so that experiments do not become distracting.

There are some very helpful posters on the Irish Webmaster Forum and in the Tech/Web Forum on Boards.ie.

bovril

I tried to have one and have failed miserably . I think it just got confused between a photobog and a free for all text yokie.

I'd love to have something like DarrenG's, Valentia's or Rymus but alas I don't think I will ever get off my rear!

latchiko

My photoblog is kevoto.com.

My original blog (at latchiko.com) was generated by some code I wrote but it was a pain to maintain. So I moved the whole lot to kevoto.com which uses pixelpost. I picked a template which I liked and then tweaked it here and there. I've always included the original, unprocessed photos with each post so it took a bit of messing to get that working the way I wanted to. Visitors seem to like it though.

alb

I've had my Focus Pocus blog for over 3 years. I wrote the software myself as wordpress was pretty basic and I wanted to be able to sell prints directly from each post as well as do some SEO. I go for quality over quantity, so there can be periods where I don't post too often.

kgiller

bovril wrote: »

I tried to have one and have failed miserably . I think it just got confused between a photobog and a free for all text yokie.

I'd love to have something like DarrenG's, Valentia's or Rymus but alas I don't think I will ever get off my rear!

Ya, i know how you feel. Ive been trying to get one up and running for a while, but trying to teach yourself PHP programming is not the best idea in the world. I failed miserably. I got reasonably far, but then ran out of things to do because of my lack of PHP skill.

Its a wordpress site. A few of the lads were helping me with it (Darren, Kyle, Deliverance XXV), but eventually i failed to do much with it. www.kgillerphotography.com

There are some pics there if you look in the left hand tabs.

rymus

have been running www.glasseyalley.com for just shy of a year now..

Going to throw my hat in too along with Darren.. if anyone needs help setting up a photoblog, give me a shout. Had thought about putting something together to make setting up and maintaining a photoblog easier for newbies but haven't figured out a way to break even with the setup and ongoing costs yet

Covey

rymus wrote: »

have been running www.glasseyalley.com for just shy of a year now..

Going to throw my hat in too along with Darren.. if anyone needs help setting up a photoblog, give me a shout. Had thought about putting something together to make setting up and maintaining a photoblog easier for newbies but haven't figured out a way to break even with the setup and ongoing costs yet

Might take ye up on that !!

Calina

I run three blogs.

The main photography one is Dancing Shades of Light. It was set up because I saw photography as a learning journey and I wanted to document that journey. Every post in it relates to photography, and the vast majority of posts involve photographs. It was set up in June 2006, not long after I got a DSLR.

I have a blog along with the extreme photography site as well which is specific to kitesurfing and kitesurfing photography.

The main brain dump site is at Winds and Breezes. It's the original of the blog species for me (although it started life on Blogger as it happens, had a hosting related accident and is now fairly stable courtesy of a nice group of people somewhere in Carlow). I post photogrpahs to there from time to time, but it's not a photography site. The fact that it wasn't a photography site was why the Dancing Shades site was set up.

All my blogs run on Wordpress which is basically near enough fool proof. I traipse through available templates every once in a while but have no great wish to change any of the ones I have. Time spent customising them sapped the life out of me in the past so I don't do it any more.

paudie

I've had paudie.wordpress.com for a few months now. Set it up as regular updates to my portfolio site seemed like a pain in the ass.

It's set up as a text blog because I like to have an outlet for words and don't always have shots to put up. Mostly surf related as that's what I mostly shoot. Tends to be my "could have been" stuff more than the stuff I really like as I keep those for the mags.

I enjoy the writing part more than the editing part truth be told.

Loving your blog Latchiko.

nilhg

latchiko wrote: »

My photoblog is kevoto.com.

My original blog (at latchiko.com) was generated by some code I wrote but it was a pain to maintain. So I moved the whole lot to kevoto.com which uses pixelpost. I picked a template which I liked and then tweaked it here and there. I've always included the original, unprocessed photos with each post so it took a bit of messing to get that working the way I wanted to. Visitors seem to like it though.

After reading this thread I decided it was time to get off my backside and try to put something together, the pixelpost software looked promising, especially when I saw an addon which allows direct uploads from Lightroom, so I gave it a go.

To be honest for someone like me, who has no web coding ability beyond the most basic html, it was surprisingly easy to put together something which is (hopefully) reasonably competent looking. I've still a bit to do but it's probably time to give you folks a look, see what you think.

Here you go, all the hard work (except the photos) has been done by somebody else, so I d like to thank them, and Latchiko for the heads up.

All comments are welcome, I've a feeling the sizing of the shots might be a shade big, the first few I uploaded were 1024px, and the last 900px.

latchiko

You're welcome!

I'ts looking good. It reminds me a bit of Rymus' blog which can only be a good thing. Nice photos on it too - looking forward to seeing some more!

nilhg

latchiko wrote: »

You're welcome!

I'ts looking good. It reminds me a bit of Rymus' blog which can only be a good thing. Nice photos on it too - looking forward to seeing some more!

Cheers,

As for Rymus, all I can say is that great minds think alike.........

dinneenp

DarrenG- I like yours a lot but only problem is you have to scroll down for next, previous.
I have just created two blogs (http://pacork.wordpress.com and http://faceseverywhere.wordpress.com )but amn’t happy with the page styles. Monotone I like a lot but if I could put more links at the top (random, next, previous) and categories somewhere then I'd be in heaven.
Cheers,
Pa.

bovril

dinneenp wrote: »

DarrenG- I like yours a lot but only problem is you have to scroll down for next, previous.

That is probably down to the resolution of your screen dinneenp.

I put my photoblog live at the weekend (www.golanky.com) . I used pixelpost and I really like it. I've tried workdpress before for photo blogs and I could never get to grips with it. Everything fell into place quite easily with Pixelpost.

bravo

Hi Guys,
Got inspired reading this thread and revamped my website with Pixelpost and Blogger. http://www.wexfordphotography.com
After a lot of customisation it sorta works but needs more contact. I tried gallery2, coppermine and a few other gallery programs but found pixelpost suited what I was after.

Fajitas!

I like Pixelpost, it's just easy to work with.

nilhg

Fajitas! wrote: »

I like Pixelpost, it's just easy to work with.

+1

bovril wrote: »

I put my photoblog live at the weekend (www.golanky.com) . I used pixelpost and I really like it. I've tried workdpress before for photo blogs and I could never get to grips with it. Everything fell into place quite easily with Pixelpost.

Very nice Louise, well done. On e thing I noticed is that the pictures don't show up in your rss feed (in google reader), I had the same problem with mine and had to do a workaround with an atom feed and feedburner. I have no idea what the problem is or why the atom feed works but it does.

bovril

Thanks nilhg, I'll look into the problem, I wasn't aware of it until now.

Covey

Looks great Louise.

Looks like I'll be on the move again :eek:

dinneenp

Hi Bovril- I like your site a lot- the pictures are very good and the page style (spotless is great).

How customizable is it? I'd like to apply it but would want to inlcude 'previous', 'next' and 'random' above the picture instead of below it.
Cheers,
Pa.

nilhg

dinneenp wrote: »

Hi Bovril- I like your site a lot- the pictures are very good and the page style (spotless is great).

How customizable is it? I'd like to apply it but would want to inlcude 'previous', 'next' and 'random' above the picture instead of below it.
Cheers,
Pa.

The templates page for pixelpost are here, you can download them and have a look at the html on your own PC, most of the templates have four pages, about browse, comment and image.

bovril

dinneenp wrote: »

Hi Bovril- I like your site a lot- the pictures are very good and the page style (spotless is great).

How customizable is it? I'd like to apply it but would want to inlcude 'previous', 'next' and 'random' above the picture instead of below it.
Cheers,
Pa.

It's very easy to customise things. If you go to the template page you'll see what the real spotless looks like. It's white with a small shadow etc. Moving the links to the top shouldn't be a problem at all. You will need basic HTML/CSS knowledge though but send me a PM if you've any problems and I'll try help out if I can.

dinneenp

Cheers for the replies.

2 questions-
1. can you recommend any other templates that are good for photoblogs (1 photo per page I think I like- it makes the user view pictures rather than just scanning a lot of pics on 1 page).

2.What do I need to do to get my blog running? Why do I need to install anything on my laptop, is there not an option (like in wordpress) where everything in hosted on pixel/pixelpost site- I just choose template and upload photos?

3. Can I use 'blog this' on Flickr to copy over photos?

Cheers,
pa.

bovril

You will need a domain name and some hosting space for pixel post. Then the only thing you will need on your laptop is an ftp client (e.g filezilla). You can edit the html and template css etc in the likes of notepad and then upload them to your webserver. Pixelpost doesn't host blogs as far as I can see anyways.

dinneenp

Cool- thanks again. My brother has a domain so that should be okay.
Last question before I get busy- how does one then uplaod pics and can I copy from Flickr straight over?

PonderStibbons

i've just redesigned my blog using word press rather than blogger. It's at blog.photosandponderings.com if anyone's interested. I'd toyed with the idea of using a one photo photoblog template but text is just too important to me so i compromised with a one column design which at least allows me to post bigger pictures. My main problem with blogger was that any photos wider than 500 pix would get cut off. Some pictures only look good large!

Cabaal

Pixel post seems nice, I run a blog at cabaal.org/log but its not really a photo blog, think I need to look at redesigning things

bovril

dinneenp wrote: »

Cool- thanks again. My brother has a domain so that should be okay.
Last question before I get busy- how does one then uplaod pics and can I copy from Flickr straight over?

I don't know if there is an addin you can use for pixelpost with flickr.

When you install pixelpost on your site it gives you an admin control panel you can access and you can upload your photo here by browsing to it on your computer (choose title, description add tags etc). It's easy as writing a post here and submitting it.

Cabaal

bovril wrote: »

I don't know if there is an addin you can use for pixelpost with flickr.

When you install pixelpost on your site it gives you an admin control panel you can access and you can upload your photo here by browsing to it on your computer (choose title, description add tags etc). It's easy as writing a post here and submitting it.

I take it pixelpost sorts out the exif data on the fly once uploaded?

bovril

Yep Exif tags can be placed in your template html files which pixelpost will then render when the page is loaded. If you look under documentation (pixelpost website) and then tags you'll see a list you can use there. I know the template I went with didn't have any exif tags used in it, I just slotted them in myself where I wanted them. I only looked at the one template, some templates may show exif data out of the box.

Cabaal

right installed Pixel Post this morning, still being tweaked but its live http://www.barrysomers.com/blog/

dinneenp

I like the site from Lili Forbergaa lot-here's where the design is from- Bananalbum.
That could be an alternative option to Pixelpost or a wordpress.

Gozo

Thanks to the inspiration of some of the great blogs by the member of boards, i finally got around to setting up a blog myself. I used pixelpost which was recommended on this thread, it really is very good! I used the theme 'theworldin35mm' which i think is a nice simple clean theme.

please drop by and say hello any C&C is welcome

www.alexherriott.com

Anouilh

I have several photo blogs, the oldest being Photographedublin on the Blogger system.

It's worth mentioning that Blogger blogs can easily be imported into the Wordpress format. I had forgotten about many of these photos, as they were made several years ago:

http://anouilh.wordpress.com/category/1/page/19/

hopelessOne

Like almost everyone else, I use PixelPost for the photoblog (photoaday.ideasasylum.com)
although I use Wordpress for my regular blog. PixelPost is designed around photoblogging so it's a lot easier to use, whereas Wordpress needs some adaptation.

PixelPost's killer feature: the ability to queue up images for days in advance... great for when you're away from the computer

dinneenp

Hi,
I use Monotone by Wordpress- My blog. (there's still a few bits to finish off the site). I love the way the background matches your picture on each page. mine is slightly modified using some code provided by Daz

I prefer to have 1 picture per page because this makes people look at each image rather than just glancing (if you have multiple pictures on 1 page).

I think it's vital to have 'next', 'previous' and 'random' links at the top of the page to make browsing easy for people. (that's what I'm still in the process of doing).

HopelessOne- can you explain a bit more about this feature:

hopelessOne wrote: »

PixelPost's killer feature: the ability to queue up images for days in advance... great for when you're away from the computer

Darren Greene- I like your pics a lot, pity you havne't had more in recent times.....

cheers,
Pa.

bovril

dinneenp wrote: »

HopelessOne- can you explain a bit more about this feature:

HopelessOne explained it as it is. If you use PixelPost to create your blog you can load images through the admin website and schedule them to be published to viewers on a given day at a given time. It's fantastic alright. You can schedule stuff to publish when you're away!

hopelessOne

bovril wrote: »

HopelessOne explained it as it is. If you use PixelPost to create your blog you can load images through the admin website and schedule them to be published to viewers on a given day at a given time. It's fantastic alright. You can schedule stuff to publish when you're away!

Yep, that's it. It allows you to specify a date/time for each image or (as I usually do) publish it 24 hours after the last image was published. This means I can sit down on a Sunday and schedule the whole week's images... a real time-saver which also removes the burden of remembering to upload today's image.

nilhg

bovril wrote: »

HopelessOne explained it as it is. If you use PixelPost to create your blog you can load images through the admin website and schedule them to be published to viewers on a given day at a given time. It's fantastic alright. You can schedule stuff to publish when you're away!

hopelessOne wrote: »

Yep, that's it. It allows you to specify a date/time for each image or (as I usually do) publish it 24 hours after the last image was published. This means I can sit down on a Sunday and schedule the whole week's images... a real time-saver which also removes the burden of remembering to upload today's image.

Just to add, if you are a Lightroom user there is a plugin which integrates really well with your normal workflow and makes all of the things the folks above have been talking about really easy as well as allowing you access to all of the usual Lightroom export features like watermarking, resizing, adding frames, and so on.

Posting to your blog with this addon is exactly the same as exporting to your hard drive, one click and you are done once you've setup the inital options.

GristlyEnd

dinneenp wrote: »

Darren Greene- I like your pics a lot, pity you havne't had more in recent times.....

cheers,
Pa.

Thanks. I'm taking a small break from my photo blog but it will be updated more frequently from May.