Wordpress Blog

Tom Foster

I know that some of you have Wordpress blog's integrated into your main site so I was wondering about the practicalities of doing so and hoping for a few answers.
I currently started a Smugmug Blog page but Wordpress is likely much more user friendly I would expect.

1) So if I wanted to make my blog blog.tomfosterphotos.com or something similar then what would the best way of doing this be? Should I go to wordpress.com, sign up and start a blog that way? Sorry, I'm a bit clueless about Wordpress!

2) Does this cost anything? I thought customisation was a bit limited if you set-up a free blog right? I assume I need to pay to use a custom address too?

I'm sure I will find other questions, will let you know if anything comes to mind! A Wordpress content block would be ideal but seems that is unlikely in the near future at least!

denisegoldberg

If you plan to create blog entries on a regular basis then I think a blogging platform is a better answer than using pages in smugmug. That platform could be Wordpress, Blogger, or something else entirely.

I can't answer your Wordpress questions since I don't use it but I suspect Hikin Mike will provide some feedback.

I use Blogger and recommend that platform. All customization (including URL of your choice) is free.

You already have a domain name and using a subdomain of that domain should be covered without any additional cost.

Whichever platform you choose to use, you will need to sign up and create your blog at that site.

--- Denise

sarasphotos

A few months ago I decided to teach myself Wordpress to add to my marketable web-design skills. It seemed like it would handle what I wanted - mostly static pages with a bit of blogging and a bunch of photos or photo galleries. Unfortunately what I failed to realize in advance is that for those of us whom image management important is, out-of-the-box Wordpress has a TERRIBLE media library. It dumps all of your images into one big folder with very few sorting possibilites. So I've had to use various plugins (some free some paid) and work-arounds to display galleries.

I haven't tried displaying individual photos from SmugMug but did go so far as embedding a slideshow from a SM gallery but since that wasn't how I wanted my galleries to display that didn't quite work for me either and I ended up with a different solution.

BTW, I'm using Wordpress in a hosted environment, ie not on Wordpress.com. If you're insterested, here's the address: http://saras-bike-travels.de/ it's still very much a work-in-progress but the basic structure is there. My web hoster is Host Europe and I can't recommend them enough. They are professional, reliable and the prices are quite reasonable.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Sara

Hikin' Mike

If you own your domain, then you should be able to create a sub-domain and install WordPress there. I do the opposite, my SmugMug site is a sub-domain. If you go that route, I do suggest downloading WP to a separate folder and not to the root (blog.tomfosterphoto.com/wordpress/). You can still have your blog say 'blog.tomfosterphoto.com', but all of your files are stored in your WordPress folder.

There is no cost involved when you download WordPress. There are thousands of free Themes and Plugins to chose from. My suggestion is to pick a free (parent) Theme, and if you decided you need to customize it, create a Child Theme. This way if the developer makes a change, your changes are not lost.

Feel free to e-mail/PM me if you need help/questions with WordPress.

Tom Foster

Thanks for the help everyone, some good information here! I have downloaded Wordpress and am currently running a Wordpress site using wampserver on localhost on my PC so I can fiddle about with it.
I think I've got it looking fairly similar so far. I was wondering though if anyone knew how to download the social icon logos at the bottom of my page? Can't seem to find a link to the original image file and need them there to make it look the same...

Also Hikin' Mike, I signed up for my domain name with Godaddy when I got my Smugmug account, think that's just the domain name though and I'd need hosting too? Unless I host it on a home PC or something but that seems like it will be more complicated due to lack of a static IP.

Hikin' Mike wrote: »

If you own your domain, then you should be able to create a sub-domain and install WordPress there. I do the opposite, my SmugMug site is a sub-domain. If you go that route, I do suggest downloading WP to a separate folder and not to the root (blog.tomfosterphoto.com/wordpress/). You can still have your blog say 'blog.tomfosterphoto.com', but all of your files are stored in your WordPress folder.

There is no cost involved when you download WordPress. There are thousands of free Themes and Plugins to chose from. My suggestion is to pick a free (parent) Theme, and if you decided you need to customize it, create a Child Theme. This way if the developer makes a change, your changes are not lost.

Feel free to e-mail/PM me if you need help/questions with WordPress.

Hikin' Mike

WordPress uses 'Genericons' and Smugmug 'Fonticons' to generate your Social Icons. You might be able to download SM's fonts to use for your WP site, but I haven't tried.

Smugmug is not a host or a registrar. If you use GoDaddy then that is your host and registrar. You should be able to create a sub-domain from there. I don't use Godaddy, so I can't help you there.

Tom Foster

Wait, I thought smugmug was hosting and Godaddy was the registrar? Or am I wrong here? Sorry for all the questions!

denisegoldberg

Tom Foster wrote: »

Wait, I thought smugmug was hosting and Godaddy was the registrar? Or am I wrong here? Sorry for all the questions!

SmugMug is the home of your smug site and GoDaddy is the registrar for your domain. You will need to create the subdomain for your blog at GoDaddy.

But SmugMug is not a general hosting site; it can't be a hosting location for your Wordpress blog. You can probably pay GoDaddy to host your Wordpress blog.

--- Denise

Tom Foster

denisegoldberg wrote: »

SmugMug is the home of your smug site and GoDaddy is the registrar for your domain. You will need to create the subdomain for your blog at GoDaddy.

But SmugMug is not a general hosting site; it can't be a hosting location for your Wordpress blog. You can probably pay GoDaddy to host your Wordpress blog.

--- Denise

That's exactly what I thought the situation was Denise! Had just been confused there for a moment!

MomaZunk

Tom,
I just learned in setting up my new front end there are actually 3 parts to this equation:

1. Registrar - who you get your domain from
2. Name servers - this is where you point your domain for all of the dns settings. It can be at the same place where you are hosting your website or with the registrar. Your email is usually associated with the location of the name server as well.
3. Website Host - this is where your website sits. Your dns settings will point to your host whether it is smugmug, blogger, bitly, or your own hosting on google sites / hostgater/site5, etc.

I just finished my front end, and still working on tweaking.

Tom Foster

I think it's almost there! I'm not sure of the exact way I set it up in terms of name servers, etc. It's a bit of a shoddy/inefficient job of the DNS perhaps but it works!
[url]Http://www.blog.tomfosterphotos.com[/url] ... Do you think it matches http://www.edinburghphotography.com well? Any suggestions?

denisegoldberg

Tom Foster wrote: »

I think it's almost there! I'm not sure of the exact way I set it up in terms of name servers, etc. It's a bit of a shoddy/inefficient job of the DNS perhaps but it works!
[url]Http://www.blog.tomfosterphotos.com[/url] ... Do you think it matches http://www.tomfosterphotos.com well? Any suggestions?

It looks fine once the page is displayed but the swirling circles on the yellow-orange background needs to disappear. There is quite a lag (on that background / swirl page) before each page of the blog opens.

--- Denise

Tom Foster

denisegoldberg wrote: »

It looks fine once the page is displayed but the swirling circles on the yellow-orange background needs to disappear. There is quite a lag (on that background / swirl page) before each page of the blog opens.

--- Denise

Any better now Denise? I think it was a dodgy Smugmug embed plugin causing problems!

Hikin' Mike

Tom Foster wrote: »

Any better now Denise? I think it was a dodgy Smugmug embed plugin causing problems!

Not for me. You did a good job with the SM/WP integration, but I don't care for the orange swirlling circles.

You need to make sure the links point to the correct blog page on your nav bar.

Tom Foster

The orange swirling circles shouldn't show up anymore, I disabled it via CSS so don't know how you're seeing it still! Hope it's gone now! It doesn't display for me anyway! Are you still seeing it?

The link on my nav bar is intentionally pointing to the other blog page at present as want the new WordPress one to be fully up and running before switching them over. I'm nearly there now I guess, just need to copy one remaining blog post over and then I can switch things over!

denisegoldberg

Tom Foster wrote: »

The orange swirling circles shouldn't show up anymore, I disabled it via CSS so don't know how you're seeing it still! Hope it's gone now! It doesn't display for me anyway! Are you still seeing it?

The orange swirling circles are gone, much better. But there is a noticeable lag and blank screen before your blog opens.

--- Denise

Hikin' Mike

Tom Foster wrote: »

The orange swirling circles shouldn't show up anymore, I disabled it via CSS so don't know how you're seeing it still! Hope it's gone now! It doesn't display for me anyway! Are you still seeing it?

The link on my nav bar is intentionally pointing to the other blog page at present as want the new WordPress one to be fully up and running before switching them over. I'm nearly there now I guess, just need to copy one remaining blog post over and then I can switch things over!

When I first visited your WordPress site, I saw a orange screen with a swirling circle. I don't see it now.

In your blog page (WordPress), I would change your link on your logo from 'blog.tomfosterphotos.com' to 'www.tomfosterphotos.com'.

MomaZunk

If you want to test your site for load time I recommend GTMetrix. It will help you see what needs to be optimized to speed things up.

Hikin' Mike

MomaZunk wrote: »

If you want to test your site for load time I recommend GTMetrix. It will help you see what needs to be optimized to speed things up.

...along with 'Pingdom'.

Tom Foster

denisegoldberg wrote: »

The orange swirling circles are gone, much better. But there is a noticeable lag and blank screen before your blog opens.

--- Denise

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/M9Coc/Www.Blog.tomfosterphotos.com

Says 2.91s which is faster than 55% apparently, don't know if there's much I can do to improve that...is it slower than that for you?

Thanks for the suggestion guys, I quite like the 'Pingdom' tool Hikin' Mike!

MomaZunk

I use pingdom as well. 2.91s is pretty high for a simple wordpress site. I used W3 Total Cache to speed things up on my site. GTMetrix will give you a waterfall graph so you can see each items load time. I have noticed that the Google fonts can sometimes drag down the site for example.

Tom Foster

Down to 1.38s now:
[url]Http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/bKaKxV/http://www.blog.tomfosterphotos.com[/url]
It's quite variable however!