Photos in Wordpress

[Normandy Cow]

I thought I was doing so well - but I now have a problem and a dilemma!

I want to get rid of my old website and combine it with my blog, so I've overhauled my blog, using the same template as Musetta, and I was pleased that I had managed to do just about everything I wanted by just using the standard template and not downloading Wordpress onto my PC and hosting it myself. Basically, I just want to have a simple website/blog combined, using a standard template, so that I don't have to invest the time in learning how to host it myself. I am prepared to make a few compromises if necessary.

For some reason though, I suddenly don't seem to be able to upload photos into my blog, as the link to upload files which up until about an hour ago used to appear at the foot of the write/edit page screen, no longer seems to be there!

But, I had already been wondering whether I was going about it the best way in the first place (ie uploading my photos into Wordpress), or whether I would be better off using flickr for my photos instead?

Does anyone have any advice on this?

If you click my Blog link below, you'll see my half-finished latest attempt. I'm happy with the layout at the moment, I just now need to add the content! And yes I do realise that it's a bit shabby making all these changes to a live site, but what the hell, I've started now, so I guess I'll keep going for the time being (it's only my blog that I'm amending at the moment, my main website is still there, and I won't switch it over until the blog is complete)

Thanks!

Daisy x

[Musetta]

ok...that's REALLY odd....just checked and it is still showing up on mine....no clue what's up with it disapearing on you! maybe log out and come back and it will be there??! ha- I know...not too sophisticated a fix...only thing I know to do though

[e-richard]

..But, I had already been wondering whether I was going about it the best way in the first place (ie uploading my photos into Wordpress), or whether I would be better off using flickr for my photos instead?

Does anyone have any advice on this?

Daisy, I don't profess to be an expert on this matter, but I may suggest that using flickr to host your pictures on Wordpress is simply adding a "second point of failure". As your Wordpress site opens, it has to then also open Flickr and apart from an additional delay in displaying your pictures (Flickr could be very busy at that moment, even though Wordpress is not) you are under threat that Wordpress is working fine, but Flickr is not.

How big a threat this is I don't know, but as these Free photo sites get more popular, so you'll definitely notice occasional degradations in speed.

Of course, if you cannot upload pitures to Wordpress, you may not have much choice in which case, its not really such a bad idea - most of the time

I'm just redoing my website/blog, and I'm trying to rejig my interiors descriptions. I like the way you have laid out your blurb into "living space", "cooking/eating" and "sleeping/washing" etc, and I'd like to try to rearrange my text into similar groupings. I'm not going to copy any of your actual text, but I'm presuming you will not mind me getting inspiration from your website?

I freely admit to stealing concepts and ideas from all over the InterWeb, so why shouldn't you ?
And anyway, I'm too flattered to say no.

[vrooje]

Have you tried inserting photos by hand using the code view? I know that's probably not optimal... but you could figure out which code to use by mimicking the code for the images that are already there. Your homepage seems to use just a simple IMG tag, but the smaller thumbnails on your Interior page use (for example):

Code: Select all

<a href="http&#58;//normandygite.files.wordpress.com/2006/06/Wholehouse2_SawdayB.jpg" title="A Gite in Normandy" class="imagelink"><img src="http&#58;//normandygite.files.wordpress.com/2006/06/Wholehouse2_SawdayB.jpg" alt="A Gite in Normandy" height="97" width="128"></a>

As an example of one image, linked to the larger image. I think the key here is the class="imagelink" text. If you're manually adding more thumbnails, be sure to include that text in both the A and IMG tags.

I would check out the wordpress forums to see if this has happened before, and if it hasn't, I'd post there as well. My guess is that either you've inadvertently inserted some bit of code into a page that's corrupting the write/edit screen, you've reached some sort of limit on disk space, or you've accidentally checked a box somewhere that took that option off. It could be a WordPress bug, but that seems unlikely if it's working for others...

Whatever it is, though, that's got to be frustrating.

[Normandy Cow]

Thanks for the advice Brooke. I take it that you are with Richard on the use of embedded Wordpress images as opposed to flickr then?

I hadn't even thought about entering them within the html code, but of course I could do so, even though it's a bit tedious. But then again, will it work if I haven't even uploaded them in the first place?

But it gets curiouser and curiouser. I have two PCs, and the I've just tried it on the other PC and the upload bit is there! Hooray! But no - not really hooray, because all my images and my copy of Photoshop (and I've misplaced the disk) are on the first PC and I really can't be bothered to have to keep copying the photos backwards and forwards as I resize them in PShop.

I've noticed though that on the PC where it doesn't work, there's a small message saying "This feature requires iframe support". So I'm off to the wordpress forum to see if I can get any info.

Will report back asap...

[vrooje]

Hmm... that suggests to me that it could be a browser issue. Do you have the latest version of your browser? I know that iframes work in both Firefox and IE, so it's probably not an issue of which browser (unless it's something really non-standard), but which version.

I don't know that it matters where you host your photos... your WordPress site will give either a WP address or a Flickr address to a client for downloading photos. Either way, the client browser will have to download the images. But I suppose that if you use Flickr, it's entirely possible that someone might come to your site and find the site loading okay, but the pictures not loading at all (or loading very slowly). Which is what e-richard was saying, I think.

However, I think Flickr is a very useful tool and in some ways, this is when it is most useful. And you're quite right that a manual coding of the image tag won't work if you can't upload the images in the first place! So in that case you'd have to use your Flickr account.

Garri would know more about the ups and downs of using a Flickr gallery on a cms-based website.

[Normandy Cow]

According to the wordpress forum, apparently it is probably something to do with the adblock in McAfee. This sounds very plausible, as I have McAfee on the first PC and Norton on the second (don't ask why - it's a long, boring story!).
So I'm going to disable adblocker on McAfee then reboot, but first I've got a load of images to resize and save. ..

Will report back asap.

In the meantime, Garri, if you read this, I'd appreciate your viewpoint re Flickr/Wordpress images, if you have any. (Will also see if there have been any discussions on the wordpress forum)

Daisy x

[Normandy Cow]

BINGO!

I turned off the ad blocker in McAfee and went back to Wordpress where it worked first time!

How on earth did we all manage before forums??? (fora?).

I was a little nervous about the wordpress forum as I am a newbie on there and I feel much more comfortable posting here on LMH, but I realise that it is the best place to be for complex wordpress questions, so I guess I shall be using it more extensively from now on.

Thanks for your help richard and brooke.

Daisy xxx

[vrooje]

Wow -- who would have guessed that an ad blocker would disable an iframe loaded by the same site as that in the address bar? ...then again, maybe it isn't. ...then again 2, I believe McAfee is known for being intrusive.

I'm so glad it's all sorted!

[Hells Bells]

I have had awful trouble with both Norton and McAfee in the past. I know use 'freebies' such as AVG, Zone Alarm, AdAware etc instead. I have a problem with our work firewall at the moment, the boss won't be happy as he's a big ebayer, but I can't access anything but the front page of the site.

[enid]

I asked my own Wordpress guru (my daughter) and she came back with the following comment:

To me it doesn't really matter whether you store your assets in the same place or not. Whatever is fit for purpose. In fact I use both methods. I put some photos on Flickr others I load into Wordpress. I haven't experienced many downs using Flickr but using the Wordpress uploader can still be a right pain. It doesn't have to be an either/or questions in a decentered network environment. You use the most appropriate solution to meet a need. The first step in deciding what technology to apply is to think about what you really want to do. Until you have answered this question that any discussion of which technology to use is rather abstract.


Hope that helps your thought processes

[Normandy Cow]

I have had awful trouble with both Norton and McAfee in the past. I know use 'freebies' such as AVG, Zone Alarm, AdAware etc instead.

Helen, my subscription for McAfee is up for renewal. Which of these "freebies" would you recommend, and are they really as good as the paid ones? I'm a bit nervous about the risk of not going with tried and tested paid antivirus software...

[Hells Bells]

I am running Avast on my Laptop, and AVG on my PC, I've had less trouble with either of them than the paid ones. They update almost every day too. I also have Spybot Search and Destroy which nabs all the spyware.