• Preserve all my blog content, including comments, permalinks, stats, etc.
• Make it easier to add new content, including new full screen galleries
• Have a more refined, professional look and feel
• Fully support browsing on iPhone, iPad, etc.
• Bit a little slicker, and more up2date behind the curtain

While there will be some downtime (I unfortunately can’t afford mirrored real time systems), hopefully it won’t be too painful. When all is said and done, I will try an write up my tips for setting up your own photography website.

Lightroom & WordPress user? Then check this out!

Getting my images from Lightroom to my website has always been a bit of an ordeal:

1. Select images and export from Lightroom to disk
2. Log into wordpress, and manage media
3. Upload new images, and dig around on your hard disk to find them
4. Create a new blog post, or page, or whatever, and then attach the images to them
5. …
6. Profit?

If this sounds like you, then you absolutely need this Adobe Lightroom Export plugin from Luc Renambot called “Dossier De Presse”. Read on for more details and a sample gallery.

There are a number of ways to upload photo’s from Lightroom to WordPress:

1. Create a web gallery within Lightroom and upload it using FTP to your website. Not exactly the neatest solution, although there are some impressive addin’s now available such as SlideShowPro
2. There is always my clumsy process of exporting jpegs to disk and then uploading to WordPress. This is rather time-consuming
3. Finally, I located a couple of Lightroom Export Plugins, which connect directly to WordPress from Lightroom:
   1. LR/Blog from Timothy Armes
   2. Dossier De Presse from Luc Renambot

The following photo’s (and the initial creation of this post) were all created by Luc’s Dossier De Presse Plugin. I haven’t had a chance to review all its options (I know it also creates NextGen Galleries), but I am impressed at how quick and easy it was to get this far… select images, export, done.

Next step is incorporating these images into a formated and structured gallery, rather than a post. Watch this space…

BTW: the photo’s are from around Sydney during the visit of my own parents, and in-laws.

What’s In The Box?

So Adobe has announced Creative Suite 5. There have already been some amazing preview video’s, but, as always with Adobe products, there will be the debate whether to upgrade or not. I am lucky enough to have Adobe Master Collection CS4, but here are the top three features which will probably push me down the upgrade path…

Content Aware Fill in Photoshop CS5

Ok, I’ll admit it, I am terrible at retouching photo’s, and I would imagine that I am not alone. Good behind the camera, but don’t have the time to master this exacting skill. For us, Adobe has introduced Content Aware Fill.  I could explain it, but it’s simpler to see it in action:

Native Support For Canon 5D MkII / 7D Movies In Premiere Pro

Let me tell you, editing video from a Canon DSLR in Premiere CS4 is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. The main issue being Canon’s file format choice for DSLR video, good for size and playback, bad for editing on a Non Linear Editor (i.e. Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Sony Vegas, Avid, etc.). Because of the type of compression used, Premiere Pro has to work hard to extrapolate image data when you try and “scrub” through your clips. The normal resolution is to trans-code the files to another format, usually at additional cost for additional codecs (Neoscene, I am pointing at you!).  Combined with a new, GPU accelerated, playback engine called Mercury, native support for Canon formats should make the whole editing process a lot less labor intensive:

Ability To Create / Edit WordPress Sites in Dreamweaver

As I am the jack of all trades (and more than likely master of none) when it comes to the design and maintenance of this website, I am especially looking forward to the ability to create, edit, and maintain WordPress sites within Dreamweaver CS5. Up to now, I have been reluctant to dive in and learn proficiently the HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript necessary to perform this task, but this feature should allow me a greater understanding of how a typical WordPress template hangs together.

Bonus Features

Some of the other Creative Suite 5 features which caught my eye:

• Lens correction in Photoshop CS5 (as against PTlens)
• HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5 (as against Photomatix Pro)
• 64Bit across all applications

Building foundations — the hard way!

When I started this blog, the web was alight with talk of WordPress, Blogger, and other “blogging platforms”. I eventually chose WordPress as I was blown away by all the varied and artistic themes that were available for it. Also WordPress is extremely extendable through plugins for embedding YouTube movies, photo’s from Flickr and a host of other things. Before you even start blogging, it is important to build a solid foundation for your WordPress Blog. Here are 11 plugins to help with that…

Security

Above all else, you need to ensure the security of your blog. While you may think that it will never happen to you, or that you have little to lose by blog spam, theft, or defacement, it is best not to test those assumptions. Especially when it is so easy with these two plugins:

• WordPress Automatic Upgrade — All software has bugs which can result in major security vulnerabilities. WordPress is no exception. As bugs are discovered and fixed, new versions are released which include these fixes. This plugin greatly simplifies the process of backing up your database and WordPress files, downloading the latest software and installing it and reactivating everything. Plus, updating frequently is easier and saves a lot of heartache over less frequent major upgrade jumps.
• WP Security Scan — For many people, buying hosting and installing WordPress is one of their first encounters with Unix, and Unix security. I am in the lucky position of knowing a little about UNIX, but even for me this plugin is very helpful. It runs a series of checks to ensure that your copy of WordPress, and supporting software (PHP, MySQL) are up2date, and that the permissions on your website directory are appropriate.
• Akismet — This plugin is so popular, and commonplace, it should nearly be part of WordPress at this stage. It’s job is to intercept blog spam. While it may not be as critical as the other two plugins mentioned, it is still in my opinion, an important security function to prevent defacement of your blog with spam.

Backup

Possibly tied in first place for importance is backing up your data. Time after time I have read about people losing their blog content (primarily through disputes / disagreement with their hosting companies, it must be said). The best backups are inclusive (i.e. backup everything, excluding what you don’t need rather than exclude everything, backing up what you need), automated, and off site. As most WordPress content is stored in MySQL database, backing that up is most important, though a monthly full backup of your site directories etc. is not a bad idea either.

• WP-DBManager — There are several plugins dealing with database backup. I like this one as it has the ability to email you the database backup on a schedule (as I use Google Apps for my domain, I have a separate email account set up to receive all backups). And it also adds database tuning!

Statistics

So you are up in running, your blog is secure, and if a disaster were to happen, you have backups to get you back up and running. Now before you open the floodgates to the masses, you might want to know who your visitors are, where they came from, and what they are reading on your blog:

• Google Analytics for WordPress — Google Analytics has become the big daddy of the website statistics world. It’s free, simple to use, and extremely comprehensive in the information it captures. You need a Google Account (NOTE: this is different to a Gmail or a Google Apps account, but you can use your login details from those to set one up. As an added bonus, it also works for Google AdSense), and once it is set up, you are given a piece of JavaScript code to include in all your blog postings, pages, etc. This plugin simplifies this last piece if the puzzle.
• WordPress.com Stats — Sometimes, you just want a simple “summary” of your blog statistics. Well, this is the plugin for you. It places a number of attractive graphs, and stats in your WordPress dashboard.

Search Engine Optimization

Not getting many hits? Let’s be honest with ourselves, it is highly likely we will never make our living as bloggers, but it would be nice to get a little more traffic. Welcome to the science of Search Engine Optimisation or SEO, which has only 258 million hits on Google! I wasn’t even aware of it until I started this blog. Wikipedia defines SEO as:

…is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords.

Basically, it is the process of forming your blog URLs, naming and describing your posts, adding tags, and structuring your site to maximise the chances of good search results. I know people work for years to get to the top in Google, and while I am not there yet with my blog, I am getting closer…

• All in One SEO Pack — This plugin adds some form elements to the “write post” page, allowing you to easily enter search engine friendly descriptions, tags and summaries to your heart’s content!
• Google XML Sitemaps — When Google and other search engines come c®a(w)lling, if you have a properly formatted map of your posts and blog in XML, they will be all the happier. This plugin automatically generates this file for you.
• ShareThis — This plugin isn’t strictly an SEO plugin, but it does help bring traffic to your site. The only plugin here which visually alters your post, it allows visitors to easily submit content they like to Digg.com, Reddit.com, or other social linking sites.

Advertising

Now that you are getting the odd visitor, time to make the site pay. As I mentioned already, I doubt I will retire on the takings, but even if you cover your hosting costs, it all helps!

• AdSense Manager — A lot of people are still very hostile to advertising, finding them intrusive. With much of the web now financed by advertising as long as it is tastefully done, I have no major issue with it. And some times I actually see things which interest me. Google AdSense opened up web advertising to the masses, and the ads they serve up are typically relevant and not too intrusive. This plugin allows you to place ads in a WordPress widget, and in posts. If I had one complaint about this plugin, it is that the drop down box for placing ads in posts is only available in the HTML view.

Caching

Unlike traditional html based websites, WordPress is not just a bunch of static files. Rather it is an application, employing PHP to generate dynamic web pages from data in a MySQL database. This allows a very rich and dynamic web site, but each page does take a little time to generate. Under normal load, this is not an issue, but if you get a flood of visitors it could wipe you out. That is where caching comes in…

• WP Super Cache — There are a number of WordPress caching plugins, but some require loading the PHP engine to serve the static content. This plugin gets around this. Added bonus — developed in Ireland!!