Blog For New SmugMug

Tom Potter

Does New Smug have a Blog feature, or should I stick with WordPress, which I planned to use?


Thanks,

Tom

www.tompotterphotography.com

ko04

Tom Potter wrote: »

Does New Smug have a Blog feature, or should I stick with WordPress, which I planned to use?


Thanks,

Tom

www.tompotterphotography.com

You can use smumug pages to create a blog smumug has a tutorial about this shown here http://school.smugmug.com/SmugMug-Tips/How-to-Make-a-Photo-Blog. You can this in action with a gentleman that works for smugmug and is a photographer his website is here http://www.michaelbonocore.com/Blog. I have used a blogger and matched the templet to what my smugmug looks like(with some minor problems tweaks I have). You can see how I did that with my website here www.k-ophotography.com. I. Hope this helps!

Hikin' Mike

I personally would stick with Wordpress.

Tom Potter

ko04 wrote: »

You can use smumug pages to create a blog smumug has a tutorial about this shown here http://school.smugmug.com/SmugMug-Tips/How-to-Make-a-Photo-Blog. You can this in action with a gentleman that works for smugmug and is a photographer his website is here http://www.michaelbonocore.com/Blog. I have used a blogger and matched the templet to what my smugmug looks like(with some minor problems tweaks I have). You can see how I did that with my website here www.k-ophotography.com. I. Hope this helps!

Thanks KO!!!

ko04

Hikin' Mike wrote: »

I personally would stick with Wordpress.

I agree because you can add widgets and ways to have your subscribers interact and what not but for people that may not code at all this is the easiest way I think. I had a lot of help as you probably know it get mine working and this place is full of people willing to help so Tom if Wordpress is what you'd like to use but need help I'm sure people here can help you with it.

denisegoldberg

I think using a page in smug might be acceptable if you plan to blog infrequently. If you're planning to blog more often one of the blog sites wins.

In addition, it was my understanding that inbound links to your site help SEO. If you house your blog inside of your smug site you lose the inbound links.

It's relatively easy to match the look of your blog to your smug site if you choose to use a blogging tool/site. You can look at my site (or at Ko04's or Hikin' Mike's sites) as an example.

--- Denise

Tom Potter

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I think using a page in smug might be acceptable if you plan to blog infrequently. If you're planning to blog more often one of the blog sites wins.

In addition, it was my understanding that inbound links to your site help SEO. If you house your blog inside of your smug site you lose the inbound links.

It's relatively easy to match the look of your blog to your smug site if you choose to use a blogging tool/site. You can look at my site (or at Ko04's or Hikin' Mike's sites) as an example.

--- Denise

Thank you all for your generous input!!! Denise, can you expand a bit on just HOW I would go about making my WordPress Blog look similar to my Smug site? Just some basic direction. Is it critical that the two look as close as one another as possible? Finally, what do I need to do to get visitors click on my Blog button and get to the proper public area of my WP blog, as opposed to my private blog area where I actually work on the design of it?

Hikin' Mike

Tom Potter wrote: »

Thank you all for your generous input!!! Denise, can you expand a bit on just HOW I would go about making my WordPress Blog look similar to my Smug site? Just some basic direction. Is it critical that the two look as close as one another as possible? Finally, what do I need to do to get visitors click on my Blog button and get to the proper public area of my WP blog, as opposed to my private blog area where I actually work on the design of it?

I believe Denise and Ko04 uses Blogger, and I use Wordpress. Modifying a WP site isn't hard if you have a general knowledge on HTML/CSS. I would recommend creating a Child theme instead of modifying the Parent theme. This way if the developer makes a change, your changes are not lost when you update. In my case, my blog/main site was a Wordpress. I then modified my SM site to match.

To me it was critical that my SM and WP blog matched as much as possible, but I'm anal about that...!

Tom Potter

Hikin' Mike wrote: »

I believe Denise and Ko04 uses Blogger, and I use Wordpress. Modifying a WP site isn't hard if you have a general knowledge on HTML/CSS. I would recommend creating a Child theme instead of modifying the Parent theme. This way if the developer makes a change, your changes are not lost when you update. In my case, my blog/main site was a Wordpress. I then modified my SM site to match.

To me it was critical that my SM and WP blog matched as much as possible, but I'm anal about that...!

Being one who HATES HTML/CSS, is there a way around that, or, MUST I know that stuff in order to operate a WP blog, or, a blog offered by any company, for that matter?

denisegoldberg

Tom Potter wrote: »

Being one who HATES HTML/CSS, is there a way around that, or, MUST I know that stuff in order to operate a WP blog, or, a blog offered by any company, for that matter?

I suspect you will need to use HTML and CSS to match the two sites - but given that you only show the menu on most pages it should be pretty easy to match.

There is also nothing wrong with deciding to not match the look between the two sites. I'd recommend at least providing a way to navigate between your smug site and your blog.

--- Denise

Tom Potter

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I suspect you will need to use HTML and CSS to match the two sites - but given that you only show the menu on most pages it should be pretty easy to match.

There is also nothing wrong with deciding to not match the look between the two sites. I'd recommend at least providing a way to navigate between your smug site and your blog.

--- Denise

OK - Understood - Thank you much!!

Hikin' Mike

Tom Potter wrote: »

Being one who HATES HTML/CSS, is there a way around that, or, MUST I know that stuff in order to operate a WP blog, or, a blog offered by any company, for that matter?

You don't have to know anything about HTML/CSS to use operate a Wordpress site/blog. You only need to know HTML/CSS to modify it to match your SM site. Like Denise said, there's nothing wrong with not matching your blog to your SM site. Some of the WP themes allow easy color changes by the "average Joe".

Tom Potter

Hikin' Mike wrote: »

You don't have to know anything about HTML/CSS to use operate a Wordpress site/blog. You only need to know HTML/CSS to modify it to match your SM site. Like Denise said, there's nothing wrong with not matching your blog to your SM site. Some of the WP themes allow easy color changes by the "average Joe".

Thanks for the info Mike - Appreciate it! :O)

ko04

Hikin' Mike wrote: »

I believe Denise and Ko04 uses Blogger, and I use Wordpress. Modifying a WP site isn't hard if you have a general knowledge on HTML/CSS. I would recommend creating a Child theme instead of modifying the Parent theme. This way if the developer makes a change, your changes are not lost when you update. In my case, my blog/main site was a Wordpress. I then modified my SM site to match.

To me it was critical that my SM and WP blog matched as much as possible, but I'm anal about that...!

I do have blogger your correct..Though if I started all over again I would go with word press they are much more you can do with the word press then with blogger..I feel like blogger is kind of out dated, at least those are my feelings.

Hikin' Mike

ko04 wrote: »

I do have blogger your correct..Though if I started all over again I would go with word press they are much more you can do with the word press then with blogger..I feel like blogger is kind of out dated, at least those are my feelings.

Totally agree.

You can change to WP by importing your Blogger to WP.