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Two Favorite Free WordPress Photo Gallery Plugins (ones that you may not be aware of)

May 1, 2012 by Marc 1 Comment

For many years I used NextGen to create, manage and display photo galleries in WordPress. It was and is a very good gallery plugin. But then WordPress’ native image tools became much much better following the version 3.1 and subsequent updates. And I like being able keep all the images together in WordPress’ native media manager and use just one media library system. It also makes it easier to maintain optimal image SEO across all of a website.

For that reason I use NextGen much less these days and instead reach for either Shiba Gallery or Gallery To Slideshow. Now a little about each.

Shiba Gallery:

“The Shiba Gallery Plugin allows you to display a variety of javascript galleries within your WordPress blog. All you need to do is specify the type of gallery you want in your regular WordPress gallery shortcode.

The Shiba Gallery is very flexible and can render post, page, and gallery objects, in addition to image attachments.”

You gotta love Shiba Gallery’s flexibility, plus the huge library of included javascript galleries, particularly the ease of use of noobslide (a favorite), and that is can present even pages and posts in a slider. All within the native WordPress media manager. In using this plugin over the last almost two years, I have yet to be presented any conflicts caused by Shiba Gallery. It is a very tight well crafted gallery plugin. I wish I was in the WordPress plugin repository, but it is not. So you don’t see it all over the WordPress website universe, which can be good if you want to make your galleries look a little unique.

Gallery to Slideshow:

“Gallery to Slideshow converts the built-in gallery into a simple and responsive slideshow. It uses the FlexSlider jQuery image slider, and requires zero configuration from the user.”

For 2012 I am trying to make all my websites fully responsive to the device and display used by the visitor. With the huge growth of all types and sizes of mobile devices, and mobile users increased likelihood of purchasing, and Google’s advice to use only one domain (no mobile domains or subdomains) I believe responsive design is the best way to go! So the relatively new Gallery to Slideshow is getting a lot of use on the sites I am creating for photographers and others. It is simple and easy to use. And presents a good-looking fully functional gallery for Windows, Mac, Android or iOS visitors regardless of the browser and display size.

Although Shiba has many great and attractive features and is very reliable, the growth of mobile and the related marketing advantages has made Gallery to Slideshow my current “reach for first” WordPress gallery plugin. And I hope that Shiba will someday add responsive css.

Below are a couple of quick screen shots from the same site/page using Gallery to Slideshow, one with the browser at about 1140px width, and one at less at 400px width. You are welcome to visit the webpage gallery yourself and test it on different devices. If you have any display or sizing comments or other favorite responsive image gallery plugins, please let me know in the comments.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing, Photography, Tools and Tips, WordPress Tagged With: blogsites, galleries, marketing, photography, responsive design, search engine optimization, WordPress

WordPress Apps for Smartphones and Tablets Allow for Easy Website/Blog Posting and Management

April 22, 2012 by Marc 2 Comments

For us here in the northern hemisphere, it’s Spring and travel and vacation time will be increasing. And the time spent on your website for business or fun will be more difficult to manage.

Fortunately if your site or blog is based on the WordPress CMS there is help. WordPress provides apps for your mobile device that provides an easy to use interface and allows you to add content and images from your phone/tablet. And to more easily manage other aspects of your website and blog.

So you can put up information as easy as can be. It can be your latest vacation photos, a destination wedding images or events related to your company or products/service. Items for sale in your WordPress based shopping cart. Or even an open house.

Here are links for more information and to download the WordPress mobile device apps.

Apple iPnones and iPads – http://ios.wordpress.org/
Android smartphones and tablets – http://android.wordpress.org/
Windows phones – http://windowsphone.wordpress.org/
Blackberry smartphones and tablets – http://blackberry.wordpress.org/
Nokia spartphones – http://nokia.wordpress.org/
HP (WebOS) smartphones and tablets – http://webos.wordpress.org/

It is advantages like this which are just part of the reason that all sites we create use WordPress. WordPress websites provide the best, affordable internet marketing tools for small business.

Filed Under: Blogs, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Websites, WordPress Tagged With: Android, Apple, Blackberry, iOS, Nokia, smartphones, tablets, WebOS, Windows phones

Reference list of 11 articles for learning about Pinterest and what you need to know for success

February 16, 2012 by Marc Leave a Comment

Pinterest is the overnight social media sensation that has been two years in the making. Some small business websites are receiving very significant traffic from Pinterest. There is no doubt that Pinterest is in a very rapid compound growth phase and many businesses, particularly businesses with products and services that render well visually, can benefit.

Pinterest though is not like Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn. It is different and very visually orientated, users are actually creating a virtual pin board of their activities, interests and ideas. In many cases your products, linked back to your site, can be part of an individual’s pin board. Creating links and traffic to your website. (If properly configured.) You know when the Wall Street Journal, Motley Fool, Christian Science Monitor and Entrepreneur have articles on a “new” social media website and technology that you probably need to pay attention.

If Pinterest is new to you, to help you get a thorough understanding I have assembled a reference list of current articles below. Some of these articles about Pinterest may seem a little “weedy” so feel free to ignore those and move on to one that seems interesting.

And be sure to visit the Pinterest website and request an invitation!

Background information about Pinterest:

Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinterest

Motley Fool – http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/02/14/what-is-pinterest.aspx

Pinterest in action:

Pinterest usage by country – http://www.appappeal.com/maps/pinterest/

Pinterest market segmentation – http://techland.time.com/2012/02/15/men-are-from-google-women-are-from-pinterest

How Pinterest Is Becoming the Next Big Thing in Social Media for Business – http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/222740

Pinterest Hits 10 Million U.S. Monthly Uniques Faster Than Any Standalone Site – http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/07/pinterest-monthly-uniques/

Wall Street Journal on Pinterest referral growth – http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/02/03/pinterest-rate-of-referral-now-close-to-twitter-google/

Boston Globe on what types of business fit Pinterest best – http://www.boston.com/business/specials/small_business_blog/2012/02/pinterest_isnt_for_every_small_business.html

Christian Science Monitor comparing Pinterest to other social media – http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2012/0213/How-Pinterest-combines-the-best-parts-of-Facebook-Tumblr-and-Etsy

Tips and advice on how to use and have success with Pinterest:

Hubspot’s Guide – http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/31147/The-Ultimate-Guide-to-Mastering-Pinterest-for-Marketing.aspx

10 tips for getting the most out of Pinterest – http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/01/20/10-tips-to-get-the-most-out-of-pinterest-for-your-business/

Filed Under: SEO, Social Networks Tagged With: Internet Marketing, Pinterest, search engine optimization, SEO, SMO, social media

Improve your BluDomain SEO with our no-risk WordPress BluDomain Setup

December 26, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

We wanted to blog post about our new WordPress BluDomain Setup package. For just $197.00 it is only the cost of a couple of BluDomain options, but can fill almost all site SEO and marketing needs. From your blog to SEO maximized Splash page to HTML and smartphone/tablet options (even iPhone/iPad), shopping carts, video, galleries and more. Adding WordPress, in the right way, to your BluDomain site offers maximum flexibility and SEO. It takes us just one day and there is no risk.

Derived from our four years of experience working with BluDomain users and an equal period of in-depth WordPress development it is the best setup and configuration possible and one that can grow as WordPress and BluDomain continue to develop. We uniquely know BluDomain and WordPress.

This is some of what is included in our WordPress BluDomain Setup Package:

Complete WordPress Installation on your BluDomain hosting
Free StudioPress Genesis Premium parent and child theme. Including the same theme we most often use when making optimal BluDomain splash pages or you can choose any other StudioPress theme as an alternative option
Optimize your Blog for Search Engines and tips to increase your Search Engine Ranking Position
Optimal URL configuration for SEO. No symbols, unnecessary or redundant terms
Making Your Blog Spam resistant
Automate Daily Backups for safety
Setup a Professional Email and WP based Contact Form
Setup FeedBurner account to handle your RSS Subscribers
Setup Email Subscription Option and Embed it in your Blog
Free Support via Email
And we install plugins that your blog/website really needs and may suggest some that might help for your specific niche. Including plugins for Social Media linking, attractive image slideshows and galleries, Facebook Tabs, your own short Twitter URLs, automatic sitemap generation and many more. By using all of these you will be off to a better start.

Send us an email or call now to get started! We will reply asking for the info we need to get started.

Risk Free! No up-front payment, pay when we are done. And if we are not finished within 24 business hours of the receipt of your site info … it is FREE!

Filed Under: BluDomain, Internet Marketing, SEO, WordPress Tagged With: BluDomain, Internet Marketing, search engine optimization, Search Engines, search marketing, search optimization, SEO, web/blogsites, WordPress

An easy way to increase your WordPress site’s speed and potentially your site’s Google rank. Smushit for WP!

November 30, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

For the almost two years now Google has used site speed as a factor in your site’s search results position.

If you want to know more about that here are some links:

An informational post from Matt Cutts explaining Google’s rationale for using site speed as a factor.
A detailed article from Google Webmastercentral on using site speed in search ranking.
More from Search Engine Land on site speed as a search ranking factor.

But most important is just this, install Smushit on your WordPress site. It is easy with the WP Smushit Plugin from the free WordPress repository. WP Smushit should be part of every WP site that uses photos and images. Using Yahoo’s service, it lossless-ly reduces the size of images files making your site load faster by;

optimizing JPEG compression
converting certain GIFs to indexed PNGs
stripping the un-used colours from indexed images

It does this to both your existing images and new images you upload. Making the file size of images smaller causes your site to load faster, improving visitor experience and potentially increasing your Google search ranking.

After you install the plugin, go to your media library and have it smush all the images already there, which, depending on how many you have, can take some time. After the initial smushing, it will perform the optimization for you automatically upon each upload.

Getting on the first page of search results is often the result of many small differences and improvements. WP Smushit is an easy way to gain a helpful improvement.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing, Search Engines, SEO, Tools and Tips, WordPress Tagged With: Internet Marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, search optimization, WordPress

IBM estimates 15% of site visits to retail sites in November are from smartphones and tablets

November 28, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

I mentioned this earlier as part of a long post, but it is very worthy of standing alone. IBM Coremetrics estimates that 15% of consumer retail site visits are using mobile devices in November 2011. This is a very recent, November 4th 2011, article and includes a trending graph showing the amazing growth of retail visits from mobile devices.

Please use the link above to read the entire, very worthwhile, article. But if you are rushed here are a couple of its nuggets:

Online Shopping Growth: Total online sales in November will experience impressive growth of 12-15 percent over the same period in 2010.
Mobile Traffic and Sales: Record numbers of consumers will shift their shopping from the PC to their mobile device this holiday season. In October nearly 11 percent of people used a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site, up from 4.2 percent in October 2010. Additionally, mobile sales continue to increase, reaching a high of 9.6 percent in October 2011, up from 3.4 percent in October 2010.

ps – Keep in mind that a major share of these visitors do not have Flash enabled smartphones and tablets..

Filed Under: Internet Marketing, News Tagged With: Flash, Internet Marketing, Websites

The end of Flash? It is for Flash Mobile on smartphones and tablets.

November 28, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

Earlier this month Adobe announced in an email to developers that it was ending Flash Mobile. Kevin Lynch, Adobe CTO, explained the strategy as follows:

We believe that HTML5 is a significant catalyst for growth for Adobe. And it’s a multi-year vector of innovation for most of our products. HTML5 is great for Adobe and great for the industry.

The key phrase I just used, and I people to make sure we all recognize this, is that most of our products – absolutely HTML5 is going to result in the substrate of the web undergoing a major overhaul – but it’s much bigger than just web pages. It’s the foundation of how content is going to be delivered in the years ahead.

Web, video, publishing, gaming are all going to increasingly rely on HTML5 across PCs, phones, TVs, and tablets. That is the foundation that we’re building toward and that’s the foundation we’re going to take a leadership position in.

A couple of days later Flash developer Mike Chambers expanded on the reasons for ending Flash Mobile and the future of Flash in general. He noted that:

Finally, given the growth of HTML5 on both mobile and desktop browsers, we decided to more evenly balance our resources dedicate between Flash and HTML5.

Halting development on the Flash Player for mobile devices frees up resources for HTML5 development (tooling, frameworks, browsers).

So the future at Adobe calls for less Flash and more HTML5. Contemplating Adobe’s increasing investment in HTML5 development tools and at the same time terminating Flash for mobile devices and what it means regarding Flash overall brings to mind the following quote from Winston Churchill; “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Can it be that in a few months or a couple of years that as Flash Mobile went, so will Flash? To learn more regarding the problems and performance of flash on mobile devices read this analysis by GigaOm on why Flash Mobile did not work out.

Give it some thought when you make an investment in your website. With site visits by mobile devices quickly climbing towards 15% to 20% of the total site visits, according to IBM, it is a very important marketing consideration. For your website and marketing it seems that “to Flash or not to Flash” is the question. With Adobe putting its money on HTML5 for its future shouldn’t you?

It seems time to revisit some of the basic issues. Do you remember April 2010 and Steve Jobs’ thoughts on Flash? particularly concerning security, reliability and performance?

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

In retrospect Steve Jobs had reasoned answers, before hardly any of us had even thought of the question.

Filed Under: BluDomain, Business Planning, Internet Marketing, SEO Tagged With: Flash, Internet Marketing, mobile devices, search engine optimization, search optimization, SEO, smartphones, tablets, website marketing

A great way to present and showcase videos with a lightbox effect in WordPress

November 25, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

There are many attractive options for easily showcasing images in WordPress, but often there is a need to showcase a video. This is particularly true for videographers wanting to present their work in the most attractive format possible but is also needed for many other business. Wether a Realtor showing a listing’s video walk-through or a wedding photographer’s photo montage or any other type of business or service, you need to be able to impress, focus and keep the viewer’s attention on the video to improve your sales.It is well recognized, video works for sharing your work, but most want to elevate our presentation above the ubiquitous YouTube player.

In the past, it has often not been easy to set up for video and there are not a lot of options. But, after trying a number of plugins and options I have found an easy, reliable and low-cost method for presenting video in a lightbox type overlay giving it an almost theater type presentation. Usable on both Vimeo and YouTube hosted videos, and it works for iPad and other non-flash enabled devices.

Below is an example of how a video displays in the lightbox using a video tour of luxury home listing -

Here is how you can set it up for your WordPress based website.

1) First you will need to install and activate the Floatbox Plus plugin from the WordPress plugin repository.

2) Next you need to download and install the Floatbox script. Obtain the script here (you need to pay a $20 license fee after you get it setup). To install the script you need to unzip it and then using your FTP client place the floatbox folder in the floatbox-plus folder so the path would look like this …wp-content/plugins/floatbox-plus/floatbox

3) Configure the Floatbox Plus plugin to your site and how you want the videos to display in the floatbox.

4) Insert your desired video into your page or post and save.

Here is a quick tutorial video covering some of the detailes for the steps above (placedwith standard playback just to show how much better videos look in floatbox). -

If you have any questions or problems please give me a call or use the email form at the right.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing, WordPress Tagged With: Internet Marketing, lightbox, showcase, video, WordPress

New website for custom woodworker and cabinet maker Don Ragland of Austin Texas

August 18, 2011 by Marc Leave a Comment

I enjoy creating websites for small business. These websites provide the business owner a competitive advantage and fairly quickly result in increased business. One of my most recent is a website for Austin, Texas based custom cabinet and furniture maker Don Ragland. Don is a successful craftsman and woodworker creating custom cabinets and furniture in Austin for over 20 years. His marketing was basically the yellow pages. But with dramatic reduction in use of yellow pages (search engines and smart phones have almost replaced yellow pages) and increase in cost of advertising Don had come to realize that he needed a good optimized website in order to be found and reach today’s prospective clients.

Because of the great business results a relative of Don’s has with one of my custom websites, Don asked me to create an effective website for marketing his upscale woodworking. Over a just two week period working with Don, and for much less cost than even a small yellow pages ad, you can now visit the website we created.

Online now for less than a week, we have already gotten the brand new site and domain name in the search indexes. All that is just the beginning of the SEO and search engine marketing that comes with the website.

If you would like to know about the cost and return on investment of my small business websites like Don’s, please call, send an email or leave a comment.