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benduki
Registered Users Posts: 40 Big grins
No laughing!:rolleyes I have never had nor read a blog but now I have one on my website. I read in the support material that blogs are good things but it doesn't say why or what you do to make it so. Can anyone give me some tips or direct me to where I can learn about how to make it productive?
Also, and again no laughing, when posting a blog there is a box for "tags". I don't know what this is for and (this is where you might be tempted to laugh) neither did the programmer who built it. The word tags seems like it could be a useful tool?
Any advice or direction would be greatly appreciated.
Also, and again no laughing, when posting a blog there is a box for "tags". I don't know what this is for and (this is where you might be tempted to laugh) neither did the programmer who built it. The word tags seems like it could be a useful tool?
Any advice or direction would be greatly appreciated.
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Comments
Anyway, blogs are GREAT because the search engines love them. Use lots of words you want to be associated with, always link to your website (but don't just link-- again, use alt tags and titles) on each post. Use the "headlines" as SEO (search engine optimization). And remember, search engines like the words before and after links, and the titles too.
My own blog was so popular and started getting so many readers that I had to back off. I wanted a blog where I could be candid about my shoots-- instead I found people were swiping photos and getting offended sometimes by the content (sometimes I like to blog like a sailor
Anyway, now I have two blogs-- one for candid comments/posts-- and one for SEO. The candid blog is a lot more fun, I never link to my site, and I'm very careful in my wording (no names, locations, etc that would come up on a search engine search). The best of both worlds for me-- a fun blog and a boring ol' SEO only blog.
Hope that helps.
Portland, Oregon Photographer Pete Springer
website blog instagram facebook g+
I have been "beefing" mine up lately to encourage more traffic, and it has been working.
It is a very simple layout - not too fancy - but take a look at it at:
http://photographybykml.blogspot.com/
I have been adding some links to some blog communities, and I have really enjoyed using the Blog Catalog website.
Dogwood's advice about the links are excellent.
Good luck and have fun with it!
http://photographybykml.com
http://photographybykml.blogspot.com
See all my categories on the right?
They are the words that are in the "tags" box. I figured I would use them as a category listing instead and I like the way it works.
http://photographybykml.com
http://photographybykml.blogspot.com
Dogwood:
First let me say you have a beautiful site and I love your landscapes.
Second let me say, you may now laugh!. "I use wordpress and tend to code links, tags, and titles manually using html." Say what? I have no clue what any of this is. You may now laugh!
I designed my site but I had someone build it. Andy can tell you I am completely out lunch on this stuff.
It's my dog's blog actually. Koty just made his first entry this afternoon. Big favor. Could you take a look and tell me how he could do better? And, should he fill up that "tags" box and what with exactly?
http://kotybear.com/corner.html
Many thanks!
PS: My nickname should really be "old dog" trying to learn new tricks!
Thanks for the reply and your blog looks plenty fancy to me!
Mine is really bare bones by comparison. It's meant to be somewhat like a travel log. I need to figure out how to post photos to it. This looks very nice on your blog.
I may have a bum blog by that I mean my program I'm afraid isn't very flexible. Your keywords and tags along the side are a great idea. And, I've seen archives too but I don't think I can do any of this with the program I have currently. I don't know enough to no for sure but I have a bad feeling.
benduki
www.kotybear.com
I do include photos in my blog entries, and I use those photos to link back directly to my smugmug galleries. You can follow the link below if you're interested in seeing my blog example.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Blogger is owned by Google and it is free. It cannot hurt to set up a blog there just to try it out.
The templates are easy to use and are laid out pretty well. They have many to choose from. They walk you through the setup. Once you get more comfortable with it, it uses the CSS just like smugmug, so you can change things around.
You could try it just to compare it with what you have for a program.
http://photographybykml.com
http://photographybykml.blogspot.com
Thanks Denise:
Looking at your blog and Kathy's my sinking feeling continues.
Very nice site and blog. Thanks for sharing.
Kathy:
As much as it pains me to say so I think this is an excellent idea. I've just wasted 6 weeks with the bozos who made the one I have.
Thanks again
Kathy:
Ok, I just created this in about 30 minutes! Tell me what you think.
http://kotybear.blogspot.com/
Sure wish I'd known about this before
Oh, and if you want a photo of Koty in the corner (like the one I have of me in the corner of my blog), you can edit the profile on your blogger site and supply a link to a photo.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Thanks Denise!
Like you, I enjoy writing and that space just feels comfortable and looks twice as nice as what I have going now which I can't stand......kotybear.com/corner.html........not to mention it has so many more features.
My main concern now is trying to figure out how to get rid of the old blog. I don't have a link in my navibar because the blog was always just a part of the above page. I wouldn't want people to go to the blog and then not have an easy way to get back to my galleries.
Lordy, with all this Internet and computer stuff when does anyone have time to do photography!?
Then, in your blog, you can define a links section. And in that links section you can post a link back to your galleries. You can look at mine for an example. I just looked, and when in my blog I clicked the template tab, and then I have a "links" page element. So you can easily set up a link back to your smugmug site.
Also - I just noticed that in your blog entry you refer to your web site but that it isn't shown as a link. There's a chance that it (blogger) will recognize www.kotybear.com as a URL and show it as a link if you start it with http://. If that doesn't automatically work, you can use html to show the link:
Here's a sample of html that you can use in your blog to link back to photos in your gallery:
The <a href= specifies where the user will be taken if they click on the photo, and the <img src specifies the location of the photo to be displayed.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Hey, you are off to a great start! 30 minutes sure beats 6 weeks.
I have to agree with you though - this technology that makes our lives so much easier on one end sure eats up all the time we could be using behind the lens.
It does get easier as you go along - Denise gave some great tips on linking to your images from SM.
Good luck and keep up the good work!
http://photographybykml.com
http://photographybykml.blogspot.com
Thanks Kathy I owe it all to you!
But, I've screwed it already. I was playing around and put my domain name in a place where it said it would link my blog to it and now when I try to go to my blog it takes me to my website and I can't find my blog anymore. I went back to the page and took my address out and got an error message saying I couldn't leave the box empty....even though it was before.
Chit! I've lost my beautiful blog!
Your web site is fine too.
It sounds like you just need to figure out how to link from kotybear.com to your new blog.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Hi Denise:
There's a lot of information in your post, most of which I don't understand so I'll just start with one thing.
I added http:// to ww.kotybear.com but that didn't do the trick. So, you say "use html to show the link". I see people talking about html all the time but .... what the hell is html!
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It is one of the pieces of the puzzle when building web pages.
For example, if you wanted to have a link on your page to your blog, but you wanted the link to read to the human as Koty's Blog, you can use the <a html element to define it, like this: That's an example of just one html element.
But the best document for you to take a look at is Ivar's Customizing SmugMug Simplified. It's very readable, and I think it will help get rid of some of the confusion for you. You can access the document from the first post in this thread:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=54833
Let me know if you have other questions!
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Denise:
Please don't apologize because I am a doofuss. I sincerely appreciate your time and trouble to try and help this neophyte.
So, basically, I think what you are saying is that html is the "language" of the web?
I shall go and check out Ivar's.
Thanks again!
You can also add title tags to links-- it's very basic. Just add:
title="blab blab" after the link url. That will create a 'bubble' describing the link-- but more importantly, when the search engines crawl your blog they'll crawl the link, the title, the alt tags, the words used for the link, and the words before and after the link. The trick is to use words in your blog, the heading, the titles, etc to help guide the search engines to the words people would search.
It sounds complex-- it's actually very basic and with the automated prompts on most blogs, it's really easy.
Portland, Oregon Photographer Pete Springer
website blog instagram facebook g+
Thanks Pete!
I think I am getting the drift slowly but surely.
Kinsey
ww.kotybear.com
http://kotybear.blogspot.com/
I was just looking at your blog again and I don't see anyplace to make a comment. Am I missing it ?
Kinsey
www.kotybear.com
http://kotybear.blogspot.com/
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Benduki
www.kotybear.com
http://kotybear.blogspot.com/
The first thing I need to figure out is how to link the blog to my website and thus my galleries.
It's not as though people haven't been trying to help. Denise suggested Ivar's yesterday. I passed out after ten pages!:D
Benduki
www.kotybear.com
No, you're not missing it. I don't have comments turned on in my blog. I do have a guestbook on my smugmug site, and a contact me link to send an email, also on my smugmug site.
Oh, and I see the back and forth comments you've had with Andy about linking photos from your blog back to smugmug. I put an example of the html that you need to do that in this post: http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=611635&postcount=14 (earlier in this thread). If that doesn't help, let me know and I'll try to explain it more clearly.
As far as people stealing images, anything that is displayed on the web can be grabbed by people who know how to retrieve stuff from the browser cache. If you use the small or medium images from your gallery, they are so small that if stolen the image quality won't be great. Don't know if that makes you feel any better about it, but...
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
I have the print out of that post sitting right here.
What I found out is that putting a link back to my website is easy as pie. There is a box for it right in the blogspot stuff. Just takes time to find this stuff. I don't have time to do everything all at once. So, now there is a link on the blog.
Is there some strategy for not allowing comments? I must be hallucinating but I could have sworn that someone said comments helped one's visibility with the engines. Not so?
As for the photos I'll have to work on that.
benduki
www.kotybear.com
http://kotybear.blogspot.com/
The reason I don't have them enabled is that when I started blogging the comments showed inline with the blog, which I hated. They don't do that anymore - you have to click to see them. But I don't particularly like the implementation of comments there. My guestbook on smugmug is fine. And I get comments on my cycling journals all the time, but the guestbook there is attached to the journal and not to a specific page. That works much better for me. (If you want to see what I mean, you can look at any of my journals at http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/denisegoldberg. Just click on any journal, and click on guestbook. (Probably more than you wanted to know...)
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
I probably just got mixed up with other stuff on the comments. I have been gathering a lot of moss lately and am undoubtedly getting somethings mixed up.
benduki
www.kotybear.com
http://kotybear.blogspot.com/
benduki
www.kotybear.com
http://kotybear.blogspot.com/