There are plenty of free ways to build an average photoblog, but if you have dreams of creating one that meets your needs and not just the masses, check out Pixelpost 1.7.1. Updated earlier this year with a bunch of new features including an Install Assistant, this MySQL/PHP-based application is a free download and needs only a modicum of technical knowledge and some server space to use.
Everything is tweakable and functionality can be extended with a number of free downloadable add-ons for everything from the ability to use PayPal to let visitors buy photos to adding histograms to images to an Adobe Lightroom exporter. All of them have easy-to-follow instructions for installing them, too.
If you’re not the tweaking type, simply pick one of the available templates (also free) and start publishing your photos.
To see what I mean, pop over to GatheringOfPixels.com (click the skull above the photo at the right to see “before” shots) or any of the Pixelpost featured photoblogs.
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Here’s an oldie but a goodie. Confounded by trying to track down fancy-looking WordPress themes? Check out this Web-
based theme editor that lets you tweak every nook and cranny of a theme then spit it back to your server to go live. You can add columns, change fonts and backgrounds, even throw in a customizable tag cloud–all with no coding experience required. All you need is a little creativity and some working knowledge of drop-down menus.
While some WordPress themes have excellent built-in support for doing this right from the WordPress dashboard,
many more don’t, and trying to figure out all the little things like text color is made far easier with a WYSIWYG editor than with WordPress’ built-in editing tools.
Advanced users can throw in graphics or design elements they’ve hosted elsewhere on their server (as long
as it’s got a URL to link up to), and when all is said and done each bit of the theme can be grabbed as an individual file to whatever theme you’re currently using. This is an easy way to try out new fonts and colors without making a mess out of your existing style.css file.
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Google announced on Friday the release of a number of updates to its Blogger publishing platform–well, sort of. The updates have gone into Blogger in Draft, the service’s beta platform, with the expectation that they’ll eventually become full features.
The updates will seem a bit humdrum for people who don’t use Blogger, but for those who do, it’s a set of important baby steps toward shaping the service to fit customer feedback. That’s especially important for Google, as this is one niche of the Web where Mountain View doesn’t have a huge lead: there is tough competition in the blog-publishing market, especially from the likes of WordPress and Six Apart.
Blogger users who want to be on the cutting edge will now be able to set their default “dashboard” to Blogger in Draft, and have the Blogger in Draft blog bookmarked as an easy reference. There’s tighter integration of Google Gadgets, as well as a number of minor fixes to a recently redesigned dashboard.
But the “by popular demand” features are likely to gather more interest: five-star rating options on posts, much like those of Pownce; a revised post editor interface; support for Google Account logins and OpenID in comments; and perhaps most importantly, the ability to back up blog posts on a computer or export them to another blog.
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