Web Site

FriendFeed Room for Squashy Frog Photography

This is for all you people out there that are into your social news/media/bookmarking stuff (like me ).  I’ve created a new room on FriendFeed for Squashy Frog Photography and you’ll be able to find it here:

http://friendfeed.com/rooms/squashyfrogphotography

Or click on the image below:

So what does it include, well lots of things.  Here’s a list of the main ones: -

• New blog articles from Squashy Frog Photography
• Photos from my Flickr stream
• Photos of my favourites from Flickr
• Tweets from Twitter
• Favourite images added to the photo bookmarking site, vi.sualize.us
• Photography-related articles dugg on Digg
• My deviantART favourites

So please join the new room if it looks like something that is up your street.  There might be some duplication from one service to the other but it’s not too bad and I hope to figure out a way to avoid it in the future.

You can also find my individual FriendFeed page here:

http://friendfeed.com/koltregaskes

I hope to see you on there.

In additional I’ve created specific Squashy Frog Photography social media users.  For more information please read my article entitled ‘Squashy Frog Photography gets social‘.

WordPress upgraded to version 2.6, theme upgrade next

Hi guys, long time no speak.  Yep it’s been pretty dead for new articles here but if you follow the feed (which I highly recommend) then you’ve been kept busy pretty much most days.  Anyway, I upgraded to WordPress 2.6 a few weeks ago and again it went swimmingly as you can see.

Next up is an upgrade to a new Revolution theme.  This will be a lot trickier and will have to wait.  In entails a load of manually copying and pasting all my customisisations of the default templates into the new templates.  To be honest I’m quite happy with the theme as is and don’t see it being a huge rush to upgrade to Revolution 3 theme.  But I’ll keep you up to date as always.

Internal links now working

I noticed today that nearly all the internal links were being redirected to the home page, so I’ve gone through all the links of the pages and fixed them.  I’ve left the links on the posts but if anyone finds any others please let me know?

What I need to do after swap-over

This will be the last post before I actually go ahead with the swap-over and it basically gives an idea what I will do afterwards. I’m not going to go into detail now, so it might probably not make sense to most but will be a guide for later.

Internally I will need to update database settings for each site once all the files are in place and refresh sitemaps. Also, I’ve already detailed what will happen with this site here and here but what else needs doing externally and afterwards? Well there are a few sites that are associated to my site:

MyBlogLog:
I need to update the old site and refresh the new site so that stats are correct.

Technorati:
Reclaim both old and new sites.

Flickr:
Update the blog link to the new old site (!). I could probably leave the new site alone but to be tidy…

Digg:
Update the blog link to the new old site (!)

Google Adsense:
I can’t see that I need to do anything here?

Google Analytics:
I suspect I’ll have to completely redo every site I’ve got here, reclaiming and thus reposting each one again

Amazon Associates:
Update my web site information

Bloglines:
Perhaps just update to the new site

Photoblogs:
Update my blog link

FeedBurner:
Edit the feed settings

BlogRush:
Can’t see there is anything to update.

See you on the other side.

Lots of new pages

I’ve added some new pages to the site. Basically they are copies of previous posts that could be useful as static pages. It makes them more visible and easier to find too. The full list is below:

Under the Info menu:
My Kit List: a list of my camera equipment
Training Info: details of potential photography and art home-study courses from the Open College of Arts
Plans: what I plan to do with the site and with my photography in general
My Favourite Photographers: list of my favourite photographers I’ve discovered from books and the Internet
Donations: info on donations to me

Under the Links menu:
My Sites: list of all my sites
My Friend’s Sites: a collection of my friend’s sites
Photography Sites: general list of useful photography-related sites that I recommend to view or use
Other Useful Sites:more useful sites not relating to photography
Photography Software: list of useful software for photography
Other Software: list of useful software for everything else
My Flickr Groups: full list of my groups on Flickr

Under the About menu:
About Me: background info on me
About The Site: details of how the site has been built
My Social Media Sites: a massive list of all the sites I’m registered on
Site History: breakdown of what has happened to the site so far

I have also changed the Info, Links and About main pages to show list links and brief details of the submenu categories (so no duplications). And I have added a submenu with All Blog Categories. If you hover over this you’ll get a list of categories from my blog. Click on any of the links and you’ll be presented with all the posts from that particular category. Note clicking on All Blog Categories will display previews of every single post!

The sub categories are:
Art
Computing
Entertainment
Fun
General
Personal
Photography
Web Site

Updated portfolio pages

Nothing major but with the help from the guys from the Revolution theme support site I’ve been able to tidy up the image thread found at the bottom half of the portfolio pages.  It will now display threads from the related category (for example, nature photo threads on the nature portfolio page).  The thread will be a preview and will basically show only the photo.  Links to the full entry, where you;ll find background information and alternative images, are provided.  The full list of portfolio pages are:

Main Portfolio Page

Animal
Event
Landscape
Nature
Portrait
Sport
Travel
Urban
Wildlife
Other

What I’m gonna do with my old blog

I was lingering on what I should do with the old blog.  It’s not content-heavy but but there are a lot of entries there and seems a waste to just dump them.  So….

I’ve bought a new domain name, called HowDoYouPhotographThat.com (empty page).  What I’ll use this for is to plonk my old entries that are currently sitting in the Squashy Frog Blog.  At a later stage I’ll revamp the site and make it a photography tutorial/help site.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.5

Just to say that I have successfully upgraded the site to version 2.5 of WordPress (my webblog application). I was suprised how easy and smoothly it went. I used a automatic upgrade plugin which walked me through the process of backing up, downloading and installing. It couldn’t be much easier and couldn’t have gone any smoother.

So what does this mean to you? Well nothing, really. The site was down for a mere few minutes and once back up it looks pretty much identical to what it did before.

What does it mean for me? This is a big upgrade for WordPress and if you are interested you can follow the link below to find out about the new features and fixes that I’ve gained.

What it means in general is that there is no issue with 2.5 (as you can see) and the Revolution theme hasn’t complained about it. So now I can think about launching the site.

I have 3 articles I would like to write beforehand, plus a couple of re-posts and the About needs updating. Once these are done, the switch will be implemented and we can start proper.

Nearly there.

Link for WordPress 2.5 info:
http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-brecker/

Future short and long term plans

I’ve started to create a list of future implementations to the site and the Squashy Frog Photography ‘project’ as a whole. The list looks something like this:

• A gallery is definitely needed. So far attempts to add a Gallery2 gallery to the WordPress site have failed and for the moment the site only has the not-so-great alternative in the way of the Portfolio pages.
• The dreaded adverts. Yep I’m planning to add some, though I hope to have relevant ads and they will only appear on the blog page. I already have Google Adsense ads on the RSS feed page and the previous blog site, and I’ve used Amazon Associates links to CDs, DVDs and books both here and there.
• Externally I need to reorganise my deviantART store page. I’ve enquired into whether they can bulk change things but apparently this is not possible. It means a tedious job of deleting virtually everything that is already there and added the rest of my portfolio photos. If too tedious then I’ll go elsewhere for my store facilities, but we’ll see. (any suggestions on this can be posted here). I plan to upload the bordered versions only for the moment. I will, however, add a comment to each photo saying that if you would like a non-border version please let me know and I’ll add it.
• Again externally or perhaps as an alternative to above I would like to set-up a stock photography account somewhere. I have a list of companies I’m considering: PhotoShelter, Fotolia, TriggerSnappy.co.uk and iStockPhoto. I have already signed up on PhotographersDirect and awaiting feedback on my first 2 submitted photos (but I’m happy just to been granted an initial account). Tips and advice on stock photography is most welcome.
• Small things to be done such as signature bar (to include my important social media links), business cards, letterheads and more important to all these a better logo. I’m no artist, well no digital painter, and so hope an old artist friend can help me out here.
• What site doesn’t have an FAQ (frequently asked questions)? Mine for a start! I have a hidden page already in place and will add to that when/if questions roll in but I hope to have a page that is linked off to articles, such as how I created the site, how I go about taking photos, etc.
• It’s a long way off, if ever, but I might be tempted to add a forum. The Revolution theme comes with ‘free’ one so it’s very possible. But there is no point until there is (if at all) a large amount of readers. It’s currently marked as a ‘nice-to-have’.
• The biggie is, of course, is the photography. I have tons of photos to process, I have plans to go out to events during the year (June to August being the busy time if I can) and I need to carry on reading through and performing all the articles and tutorials I’ve saved (for photography, Photoshop as well as web site, blogging, marketing, advertising, business and social media). I will continue to write up and blog background details on my portfolio photos, continue to participate on Flickr and my other photo-sharing sites, continue to digg and stumble, and of course continue to learn and enjoy everything along the way.

Expect updates to this list in the future.

Round-up of what has been done on the web site

So what’s been done already? Well it’s probably worth looking around to give yourself an idea first but here’s a run-down:

• I’ve created the site using WordPress, I toyed with WP before starting the old blog but went with Serendipity that time. I’ve since trialled WP in more depth and feel it’s a slightly better system personally and feel it’s better supported and I’m more comfortable with the backend/admin area. Being a non-coder means I’m after the easiest, most user-friendly system there. Serendipity is an excellent weblog system and has features that I’ll miss but WP edges it for me (more details in a future article ).
• Next I was recommended the Revolution theme (not free but fairly cheap and felt it was worth the expense). I couldn’t find a free theme I liked anyway and this popped out to me once I show it in action. I went with the standard version as the others were tailored for magazine or news sites, which my site is not. Again I’ll be writing an article on the detailed set-up and tweaking I’ve done to the theme in the future (but thanks must go to the developers I’ve mailed over the last few weeks and the guys from Revolution and on the support pages! I wish WordPress forums were half that good).
• The sidebars (the columns on the right) have had some content added here and there. These will be altered as I’m not too happy with them. I’m after more customisability for each page so need to work out how to do that.
• I’ve added a flash animation of my best photos to the home page. The application used here is called Soundslides. Alas it’s only a demo until I can afford to purchase the full version (donations gratefully welcome here) but it was very simple to create and easy to add to the page.
• The blog page has been created. It’s not perfect but it currently displays all the recent posts and links to the full articles. What I’d like here is for pagination links at the bottom but that’s proving a pain to implement at the moment. I hope new content will be added here on a very regular basis.
• I have added DiggThis and ShareThis links to all my entries. I hope they are not too intrusive (please let me know if they are?) but I’ve started with all this Digging, Stumbling and Mixxing malarkey and see that sharing articles could benefit my site.
• The RSS feed comes with WordPress but I stumbled upon FeedBurner yesterday and have put my feed on there. What this has allowed me to do is add my Flickr stream entries and my Diggs to the feed. Is this a good idea? Only time will tell but this and the other features (oh yes another future article) seem like a good idea. The big problem is that I digg things that are not just about photography and so not relevant here but then again I write unrelated entries too. I feel, though, they are about my interests and important to the whole ‘project’ but we’ll see how it goes and what feedback I receive. I know it’s a cardinal sin to go off-topic on your blogs, so this ‘policy ‘could change. One important thing is I can track subscribers – and was surprised to find that I actually have some!! So thanks guys!
• Portfolio pages for all my genres have been created. They current have a featured photo at the top then photo entries for that specific genre from there downwards. The pages were created as an alternative to a gallery but I’m having server troubles with Gallery2 and so far there won’t be one to talk of (1&1 support don’t appear to understand the gallery system and have been of very little help in solving the issues to date – but I will endeavour to rectify them!).
• A News page has been created. It is the Revolution theme’s take on the blog page but I prefer the traditional blog format. It is a round-up of the latest news from the important categories. I’m not sure about the layout (3 categories at the top them 3 at the bottom). It’s very untidy at the moment too. But I need to change the articles to display excerpts only and would like the photos and social news buttons hidden. I will be an alternative view to the blog page.
• Info and Links pages have been added. These will be amended ad-hoc. The Links page especially. I could fill pages and pages on the best links on the web so might have to reorganise that if it grows to a stupidly-long list.
• The Contact page has a contact form. It’s a spam-protected one but for some reason the last box is off centre. It needs fixing and I’ve seen the problem in Firefox and Opera. I would check Internet Explorer but (oh dear) it doesn’t work on my PC. Shame.
• About page added but is the old content. This will be updated and have social news/networking links for me on it (yeah you’ll find me on lots of lots of them!).
• The Site Map page has been created – this was simple and a WordPress/Revolution standard page.
• Then there’s been lots of small features added, for example: signature to end of each entry, addition ping services added (to inform others of my new entries), permalinks have been turned on (to make the URLs a little friendlier on the eye), a XML sitemap have been added (to help my site be indexed by the search engines), Google Analytics have been switched on (to track visitors and hits) and plugin and WP updaters have been installed among a selection of other useful plugins.