FireFox has been around for 5 years now and provides and excellence browsing experience. To celebrate their achievements and tell the story so far this the ‘Five Years Of FireFox’ video has been produced.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ULDH90H530

Should you choose, you can download the latest version of FireFox from the ‘Mozilla Europe‘ website.

I guess this old saying explains why almost everybody who manages their own website likes to insert a healthy amount of images.
Even better still is how easy WordPress makes it to insert your images!

One problem has been if you’re getting your images from your digital camera or a stock photo site, they can be way too big to upload. More often than not, images need to be resized, before being uploaded into WordPress.

PhotoShop is my tool of choice for resizing images for my site and my client work. But, what if you don’t want to buy and learn PhotoShop?

The answer is now here in the form of the online image editor – Picnik.

Picnik makes your photos fabulous with easy to use yet powerful editing tools. Tweak to your heart’s content, then get creative with oodles of effects, fonts, shapes, and frames.
It’s fast, easy, and fun.

Picnik manages to strike an incredible balance between playful and professional, giving users a variety of tools to edit, improve, personalize and transform photos and images.

Go ahead and start using Picnik.

I recently saw this video where a spokesperson for Google has confirmed thst “Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking”.

The video is below. Check it out.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK7IPbnmvVU

What we generally find next is that these clients get a bit of an ‘uneditable mess’ when they simply copy and paste text from Microsoft Word into WordPress.

There is a good explanation for this kind of ‘uneditable mess’, it has been documented quite well.

We have screen captured this article [120kb, Gif file] on why not to copy and paste from Microsoft Word into Wordpress from the FAQ pages of the Wordpress website.
‘Why not to use Word (with Wordpress)’ Screen captured from http://faq.wordpress.com/2006/11/09/why-not-to-use-word/

So, do you have text ready to copy and paste into your website?

There’s a simple process you can follow that will allow you to paste text from a wide variety of sources into your Wordpress website.

All you need to do is remember the ‘Paste From Word’ button in the Wordpress visual editor.

Let’s try it:
How to Paste Text From Microsoft Word Into WordPress (so you can apply your own formating)

Step 01:
(a)Open up and login to your Wordpress administration using your username and password.
(b)Once logged in, go to ‘edit’ and select the ‘page’ or ‘post’ where the content will be added.

Step 02:
Leave Wordpress open and also open the document that contains the text you want to paste from.

Step 03:
Select and copy (commonly ‘Edit > Copy’ or ‘Ctrl+V’) the text you want to paste into Wordpress.

Step 04:
(a)Go back to the Wordpress Administration which you left open on the page you want to paste the content into.
(b)Use the mouse to ‘Click’ and put the ‘Insert’ cursor where you want you text to be pasted.

Step 05:
You are ready to pate your content! Click on the ‘Paste From Word’ button in the Wordpress visual editor. The ‘Paste From Word’ window will open and you can paste your text in here and select ‘Insert’. The ‘Paste From Word’ window will close

Step 06:
Your text will be in the Wordpress page and it will be free of all Microsoft Word formatting. Now you have complete control over the text and you can apply the formatting you desire.

Please Note: This is a work in progress.

1. Dashboard

   The new-look dashboard is what you might see when you first log in (you will see either the dashboard, your profile page or the edit pages screen).

   The dashboard isn’t important for most users maintain their website content – don’t worry if you can’t see it.

   Wordpress 2.7 dashboard screenshot
   
   

2. The difference between pages and posts

   Before we really get into editingyour site, it’s important to have a clear understanding of the difference between pages and posts:

   1. Pages are usually those which have a static purpose in life. For example, an about page, or contact forms. They do not usually contain information about news items, for example, which are frequently added to the site. Pages are generally defined so that they are always accessible from the front page.
      Some people build entire sites with just Pages – this is especially the case for sites with little need for dynamic content and is very popular with small businesses.
   2. Posts usually contain semantically and chronographically arranged information – for example, news reports, event results, and of course blog entries! The semantic structure is defined by categories and tags, and whilst making it easy for people to navigate your site will also help search engines to understand the content of your site and so improve the relevance of search results.

3. Pages

   Wordpress provides easy access for you to write and edit pages on your website.

   From the Pages menu on the left hand side, selecting ‘edit pages’ shows you what pages exist in your website. Once on this page you have the option to give pages a number so they appear in a particular order. Trial and error usually gets what you want! You can add a page by clicking on ‘add page’ from the Pages menu on the left.
   

   Editing and creating a pages is much like maintaining a word document.
   

   When editing a page there is a dropdown menu on the right of the page that allows you to specify a parent page if necessary.

4. Posts (Not Applicable to all)

   Editing posts is exactly the same as pages. The difference with posts is that they are automatically added to your websites news or articles page.

5. Editing your content

   You can get to an editing screen by either, clicking ‘add new’ from the Posts or Pages section or selecting a page to edit.

   You will then see this screen – I’ve numbered the key features (click on the image below to see a bigger version):
   

   Here are the components that have been numbered in the above image:

   1. This is where you type the title of your post.
   2. This is where you write the content of your post.
   3. If you want to put something in bold, highlight it with your mouse and click on the B icon from the formatting bar.
   4. If you want to put something in italics, highlight it with your mouse and click on the I icon from the formatting bar.
   5. If you want to password protect your post, you can do so here.
   6. If you don’t want to publish your post yet – you want to write it now, but have it appear on your site tomorrow for example, edit the settings here.
   7. You can categorise your blog posts – add a new category here, or once your blog’s set up how you want it, select a category from here. You can also use the Categories option from the left hand Menu (Posts >> Categories) to edit/arrange these.
   8. If you want to save your post to finish later, click here.
   9. Don’t forget, you have to click the publish button for your post to show anywhere!

6. Add a link

   To link to another website from your post, select the word(s) you want to be the link, and click on the icon of a link of a chain from the formatting bar.

   A box will appear where you can fill in:

   1. The website you want to link to.
   2. The option to pick whether the link opens in a new window.
   3. A title for the link.
   4. A class (beginners don’t need this).

   Add link to post in Wordpress 2.7:
   

   To delete a link, select the text again and click on the icon that shows a link from a chain breaking.

7. Add an image to a post.

   To add an image to a post, click on the square icon to the right of Upload/Insert (above the box where you’re writing your post).

   If your computer has flash installed, you’ll see the following screen. If it doesn’t, you’ll see the similar looking ‘browser uploader’.

   Add image to post in Wordpress 2.7
   

   Select your image from your computer (like you’d add an attachment to an email – click on ’select files’ and find the file on your computer) and you’ll be moved on to this screen:

   Add image to post in Wordpress 2.7 (screen 2)
   

   If you want a caption to appear under your image in your post, then fill in the caption box.

   If you’d like your image to have a description, or link somewhere, fill in the following areas.

   If you’d like to lay your page out nicely, and align the image within/around your text, pick which layout from the options there. You can also choose whether the image appears full size, or thumbnail, medium or large.

   Once you’re done, click on ‘Insert into post’.

   That should give you this:
   

8. Comments(Not Applicable to all)

   You can use the pages in this menu section to approve or delete comments left on your blog. If you’re on the ‘edit comments’ page hovering over any comment shows options of what to do with it.

9. Users

   If you are an administrator for your website you may want to add other users to your administration system. These might be users who can update your website. Different user types allow people to do more or less accordingly. See here for a list of what the various subscription types allow.

Ok – I think you’re done! Happy content editing

This is a work in progress and will be expanded as needed.