We’ve got a few new authors in The Garage and there have been some questions about how to upload a pretty gallery of images so another tutorial is in order.

First, a bit of history:

In the early days of WordPress, the image management functionality was rather limited unless you were a techie. The rest of us had to rely on plugins to make our lives easier. Arguably, the most popular galleries plugin was/is Alex Rabe’s NextGen Galleries. The problem with NextGen is that while the end result looks great and works well, it is a bit of a pain in the ass to create the actual galleries. Also, it is fairly easy to create a galleries page that allows all of the galleries to be displayed.

The more recent versions of WP have addressed the functionality issues surrounding galleries and it is now no more difficult to add galleries than it is to upload single images.

Next up: To save me some typing, go here and read all of step #4. Don’t worry, we’ll still be here when you get back. Now, just for fun, upload a few photos in a test post. That way you will have something to work with. Don’t insert the images, just click “save all changes” and then close the window.

Position your cursor in the spot in your post where you would like to insert a gallery. Now, click on the “add an image” button on the toolbar again. This will bring you to the upload dialog box. If you look along the top, you will see a row of text links. You want to click on the one that says “gallery”. When you do, you will see this:

If you look down at the bottom of the box, you will see a button that says “Insert Gallery”. Press it and you will see a gallery like this:

While it looks nice, you will notice that if you click on an image, the image opens on a new blog page. If you click that image again, it will open in a blank page with a white background. That is fine if you are sharing large images like the desktop backgrounds I’ve used as examples, but if you are publishing a regular post with images, it looks nicer if the photos appear in a lightbox.

Press that add an image button again. This time, you are going to make a tiny change to the Gallery Settings. Next to the text that says Link thumbnails to, the Attachment page selection is the default. You want to select Image file instead.

When you select this one and then insert the gallery, at first it doesn’t look all that different.

When you click on a photo, the photo should now open in a lightbox*, which is like a shadowed pop out in front of the main page. It looks much nicer on the page and allows the reader to change images with the use of an arrow rather than paging back. It is a small thing, but it improves the experience for your reader.

*Bear in mind that this tutorial has been written for a new WordPress user. I am working on the assumption that your techie type or publisher will have already made sure that a lightbox type of plugin has been installed.

Ed note: GRRRRR! Bumpystick is not playing nice today for some reason and a bunch of plugins are not functioning correctly, yet other sites that are using the exact same WP install are working just fine!!! Soooo…If you would like to see a lightbox in action properly, head on over to the photography page on our BVM site.

For some readers, this may seem like an overly simplistic post, but when bringing a new writer on board there is always a bit of a learning curve if they haven’t worked with WordPress. Thankfully, WP is the standard of blogging/publishing platforms and the mechanics of writing a post hasn’t really changed much since day 1. That means that I can write this once and stop hacking it together every time someone new drops in to write.

Step 1: go to the WP login page that you were supplied with. The address should look something like http://blahblahblah.com/wp-login.php/ and enter the username and password that you were given. Be careful, as these fields are case sensitive and the smart admins out there will mix things up to keep safe.

Step 2: At the top right of your WP dashboard you will see a button that says “New Post”. Click that button.

Step 3: Once you’ve pressed the new post button, everything but the left sidebar changes. For now, just forget that sidebar is there. Move along, nothing to see here. You are concerned with the rest of the page. First and most important is the title. As this is a beginner tutorial, I’m not going to explain the background, I’m just going to tell you to fill the title in first. Yes, I know your English teacher said you could write the article and then decide on a title. In this case, she was wrong. Fill in the title before you do anything.

Step 4: Now comes the fun stuff. Below the title you will see 2 toolbars and then a big, empty box. That box is where you are going to put your story. Some old school types will write their story in Word and then cut & paste, but this is not necessary. WP is very stable and it auto saves as you write, so you can feel safe that you won’t lose your work. You may cut & paste from word, but sometimes the formatting will not transfer nicely. As a newbie, you will be writing in the default editor which is a What You See is What You Get tool. In other words, it is as good or better than word etc. Type away.

The only thing that might be a bit tricky is the addition of photos. Humans love photos and so do search engines, so you really want to add an image to go with each story. Don’t have an image? We’ll talk about copywrite in another post, but let’s hope you have a publisher like yours truly who has a photo archive that goes back for years. My writers never have to worry about finding an image. Your editor/publisher my not be quite so well hung!

I usually recommend using an image that is between 600 – 1000 pixels wide. That way, when a reader clicks on the image, they can see the whole thing without having to scroll around the page. Remember those 2 toolbars up above the post box? Well, the top one is for uploading media. The only one you really need to think about is the left most one, which is for loading photos. Before you click on it, make sure your cursor/text prompt is in the spot where you want the photo in your story. Then, click that button. A shadowbox will open up with the title “Add media files from your computer”. Just click the select files button and then navigate to the folder your image is in. Once you double click on your image file, an upload bar will appear and then a box that looks like this will appear:

For the sake of this newbie post I’m going to say just press the insert into post button. There is more to worry about, but I will write that in another post. This one will get you going. Once you press that button, the image will be inserted into your story and the media shadowbox will close.

Step 5: Categories. Think about a library, where they have all the car books in one aisle and all the cookbooks in another. That is what categories do. On the right hand side of the text box, you will see a heading for Categories. Given that you are probably writing in an existing blog, you can just scroll down through the existing list of categories for the one that best fits your story. This makes it easier for readers and search engines to find stories of a similar nature.

Step 6: Tags. If categories are like the aisles in a library, then tags are the shelves. Say you are writing in a blog about golf and you are reviewing a new putter. The category you chose was clubs or product reviews. You might choose tags like putter, club, greens, putting, Odyssey, 2 hole. In this case, 2 hole refers to the putter, not an old world outhouse. The field to enter tags may be above or below the categories box depending on how your publisher has set up the dashboard. You have to actually type in the tags. It can be a bit of a pain in the butt, but this is what allows readers to find your content through the search engines.

Step 7: Install a page break. You’ve seen it before: You are reading a story online and part way through there is a link that says More or Follow the jump or After the break. This is called a page break. There are 2 reasons for this: 1. So your 9,000 word opus doesn’t take up the entire front page and piss off your fellow writers because it dumped their award winning piece to the bottom of the front page. 2. It drives readers further into the site. In theory, this means they are more likely to visit your advertisers. Once you have written your story, you should go back and place your cursor a couple of paragraphs from the start and press the button you see below.

Step 7: Press Publish.

Step 8: Go to the front page and make sure everything looks ok. If not and you have no idea what you’ve done wrong, send your editor/publisher an e-mail and he or she will fix your eff up in no time!

Congrats, you have written your first blog post.

With all the excitement and hoopla over the introduction of WordPress 3.0, I have to say that I’m somewhat underwhelmed. Sure, I’m only looking at user interface stuff right now, but many of the new features are not supported by Thesis.

I’m stoked to learn the MU capabilities though, as we have another site that needs to be launched and I’m hoping to get it up and running shortly.

Oh, one bright spot is that the actual upgrade is super fast.

I’d love to hear some feedback from the non automotive crowd.

ClassiPress has a great rep, but it is a theme that only deals with classifieds, not a blog with classified functionality. There is WP Classifieds that appears to be rather flawed from the comments section of the developer’s own blog. Neither is what I need.

Then, there is Another WordPress Classifieds Plugin. It appears to be the most usable plugin for my needs, but it seems like I’m fighting to fix something every step of the way. I’m able to find a solution for every issue I come across, but the dev forum is disjointed and hard to follow and I have to really dig for each answer.

I’m going away from this for now and I’ll be back later to see what I can do to bring this thing together. Either that or I’m going to use the WP ecommerce plugin and go a totally different direction. At least I know it works!

This video was shot at Blog World Expo last October by WebPro News and is a great introduction to Scott and the modern Ford.

You’ve heard that social media is crucial to your business and that it is essential to have a Twitter account. You’ve visited Twitter and set up an account in just 30 seconds.

You think: Wow, that was easy!

Looking at the screen, you are now wondering: OK, so now what?

Don’t worry, every Twitter user thought the same thing the first time they signed in. The Twitter web interface is really quite basic and not very intuitive. You have no followers. You don’t know what an @reply is. You know what a DM is, but don’t have any. Most importantly, you have no followers. How do you find followers?

The first thing everyone should know about using Twitter, that nobody tells them is that they should be using an outside Twitter tool to help make sense of all the information you are about to receive.

Twitter is an incredibly powerful community building tool, but just like many tools, the operator needs some add ons to actually make it useful. Think of that home table saw you bought when you finished the basement. You brought it home, plugged in it and started cutting 2×4′s only to discover that the saw started struggling after just a few cuts. That is because the blade that came with the saw was crap. You need to spend an additional 80 bucks to buy a good blade that will actually last and give you some accuracy. Twitter is just like that except that most of the add on goodies are free. Free is good.

There are many Twitter clients available, but the two most common are Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. These tools allow users to search for and add followers, arrange followers into related columns using groups or twitter lists and track replies and DM’s. The main difference between them is that Hootsuite is web based and Tweetdeck lives on your hard drive.

Like many, I started off using Tweetdeck, but as your community of followers grows, it can use up a rather large chunk of your computer’s resources which slows things down. Also, with tweetdeck you are tied to your PC. Leave the office and you can’t use your lists. Obviously you can still access your info from Twitter, but it just isn’t the same.

Being web based, Hootsuite uses next to none of your computer’s memory, meaning that it doesn’t sloow your machine down. Also, I travel a bit for new car model launches and work from my laptop while I’m on the go. With Hootsuite I can access my stuff anywhere. That is a big deal for me.

Go ahead and play around with these two tools and see which one you like the feel of better. When you get back, I’ll explain how to use Twitter’s search function to find people in your niche that you should be following.

Years ago I worked with a lady who sold Volvo’s for a living. She was a funny little lady from Singapore who had traveled all over the world. Along the way she picked up a knack for making people like her and was very comfortable approaching total strangers and saying hi. She loved to eat but claimed that cooking was not her forte, so every meal was enjoyed out. Restaurants all over town looked forward to Irena’s visits as the vibe in the full dining room would always be positive with our star in the room as she walked from table to table saying hi like she owned the place.

Every one of those people Irena spoke to remembered her. Every single one also ended up with a business card in their pocket.

You could say that Irena was very strong at social networking.

Social media is not all that different from social networking in the physical world in that both revolve around meeting and nurturing a community. As Irena nurtured her community, she grew a network of potential clients. When you grow a network of friends on Facebook or Twitter, you are potentially doing the same for your business. Just like our heroine would make friends when she went for lunch, you should be making friends when you venture online.

It would seem then that social media is as easy as going out for lunch. But is it really?

When Irena went out for lunch with a group of us, she would bolt from the table with a great big smile and work the room in a seemingly haphazard manner. Once you had been out with her a few times though, you realized that she had a strategy. First off, she always said hello very loudly to the owner or manager who welcomed her warmly. The waiters would always greet her by name and maybe introduce her to someone at another table. She had been working the community for so long that she had a connection of some sort with just about everyone, so it was easy for her to add new people to her network of relations. She never sold cars at lunch, rather she made friends by selling herself.

Oftentimes, Irena would return to our table when we were finished with our dim sum and then come back to the dealership and eat a sandwich.

This very smart lady had a social networking strategy that made her one of the top Volvo sales people in Canada.

Social media can be as easy as going out for lunch, if you have a plan.

What is your strategy for lunch today?