How To Add A Slideshow To Your WordPress.com Blog [VIDEO]

Posted on April 1, 2010 by Jesse Luna

WordPress just announced its new WordPress.com Slideshow feature. This is an AWESOME update.

You can now select photos to upload then quickly add them to a blog post as a Slideshow. [Update: And, I forgot to mention that the Slideshow is iPhone and iPad friendly!]

I did a video on the process, so check it out then see my notes below the video.

Notes:

As soon as I saw the email from WordPress.com, I jumped in and started testing things out.

I found the following:

There are several paths you can to get the Slideshow up and running. The video above is by far the easiest.
You can use images that you have previously uploaded to your WordPress.com blog and that are already in your Media list. But, they cannot be “attached” to a different blog post or page.
My lovely wife suggested a workaround here. If you really want an image to stay in a blog post or page and want to use it elsewhere in a Slideshow, just upload the image again and use it.
If you only add one image at a time via the “Add an Image” button on your blog post page, you will not have the option to insert the slideshow as I demonstrated in the video. You’ll have to go back and use the Gallery tab then insert the slideshow from there.
The Gallery tab appears next to the “From Computer” tab (that I pointed out in the video), but only does so after there is an upload or an unattached image has been added to the post.

Here are some more resources to help you troubleshoot any problems:

So now you have everything you need to go out and create an awesome new slideshow on your blog. If you want to show off your new creation, come back here and post a link in the Comments field. M’Kay?

How To Add Google Analytics To Your WordPress Blog (Video)

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Jesse Luna

Google Analytics allows you to collect and see statistics over your blog site traffic. You can see the number of visitors, referral sources, and the keywords that are driving people to your site.

I’m going to show you how to set up Google Analytics on a WordPress site. This video only applies to WordPress.org blogs, not to WordPress.com sites. Click here if you are a WordPress.com user. Otherwise, enjoy the video:

WordPress.com
Because WordPress.com does not support JavaScript, you cannot load Google Analytics. As of now, there is no way around this. If you have a WordPress.com blog and want to capture some statistics then you can use GetClicky. This site allows you to get some site stats but nowhere near the kind of information you can get from Google Analytics.

The other way to get site statistics is to use the built-in stats viewer in WordPress.com’s Dashboard. Here are a couple of views:

The Dashboard view:

Part of the “More Details” WordPress.com view:

So there you have it, installing Google Analytics on a WordPress.org and tips for checking stats on WordPress.com.

Do you have any questions? Leave a comment and don’t forget to squeeze the tube below and subscribe to my YouTube Channel (cinemaluna).

How To Add A Facebook Fan Badge To Your Blog

Posted on February 25, 2010 by Jesse Luna

One of the best ways to tell your blog visitors about your Facebook presence is by using a Facebook Fan Badge. This allows users to click a button and join your Fan page and to click through to your Facebook account.

Quick note, are you looking for information on the Facebook Fan Widget? If so, click here.

To add the Facebook Fan Badge Widget:

1. Go to the Facebook Fan Badge Widget page. You will need to be logged into Facebook to access this page.

2. The “Select a Page” drop down box will show all of the fan pages you have joined. By default, the Fan Badge Preview section on the right will show the first fan page in your fan page list. Select your fan page and the Fan Badge Preview will update.

3. When you select your fan page, the “Copy the code below and paste it on your website” textbox will update with the correct code. Copy the code. Pro-tip: I like to keep a text file open (like Notepad) so I can paste in and label code. I do this in case I totally forget what I just copied and end up copying something else into my clipboard. It saves time and my sanity. ;)

4. Log into your blog, and add a text widget to your blog, paste in the code, and save your changes. This part of the process will be different depending on your blogging system.

For WordPress.com and WordPress.org (custom install) users
1. Log into WordPress.com
2. From your blog’s dashboard, go to the Appearance> Widgets page
3. Assuming you have at least one sidebar, click + drag a Text widget to your sidebar
4. Set a title. I used “Join My Facebook Fan Page” as the title
5. Paste in the code that we copied from the Facebook Fan Badge page. If it is no longer in your clipboard, you can copy it from your temporary text file mentioned in the Pro-tip above.
6. Save then Close and you’re set.

This is a screenshot of adding the badge to WordPress.com (click to enlarge):

Adding the widget to WordPress.com and WordPress installs is fairly easy but to add them to Tumblr and Posterous take more work and you have to muck around in the HTML. I’ll show you exactly how to do that.

For Tumblr users:
1. Log into your Tumblr account
2. Click on the Customize link button (upper right part of the page with the wrench icon)
3. Click on the “Theme” tab at the top of the page. We’re assuming you have Advanced HTML turned ON for your theme.
4. Navigate to the part of the theme where you want the badge to show up. I put mine right below a FormSpring widget which shows up under the Archive/RSS segment.
5. Click on the Update Preview button to see your changes.
6. After adding the exact code the box was slightly our of whack so you may have to tweak the colors a bit. Once you’ve done that, click on the Save & Close button and you’re set.

This is where I added in the Facebook code (click to enlarge):

For Posterous users (requires Advance Theme view to be turned on):
1. Log into your Posterous account
2. Go to the Settings page by mousing over the upper right section of he page and clicking on “Settings” button
3. Click on the big “Theme and Customize My Site” button
4. Click on the Advanced tab in the upper left hand side of the page
5. Once again, you’ll need to have Custom Theming turned on to proceed. If you do, you’ll see HTML template code in the top window. Expand the window by clicking on the “Expand” link
6. Navigate to where you would like to add your badgeand paste it in. I added my badge right below the “Subscribe via RSS” link

This is what the RSS link template code look like. Paste your badge code right after this section (it ended up being 90% down towards the end of the template page on my theme). Click to enlarge:

So we just learned how to add a Facebook Fan Badge to your blog site. If you desprately need help with doing this with one of the other blogging platforms, leave a comment below and I’ll update this blog post with those instructions. M’Kay?

—

Whoa there big feller, how to I display the fan pictures and my Facebook feed like on some other sites?

Facebook has several types of goodies for sites and one of them is a Facebook Fan Widget (not the same thing as the badge). The Fan Widget uses JavaScript code so some blogging systems do not allow them. WordPress.org blogs do allow them since they are installed on one’s own server but WordPress.com does not allow them because of the JavaScript.

iPhone as a Promotion Machine

Posted on February 14, 2010 by Jesse Luna

I love promoting awesome people, great causes, events, and organizations/businesses that are doing interesting things. My favorite tech tool to help me do this is the Apple iPhone 3Gs.

There’s a reason the iPhone 3Gs is such a hot seller, it is a mobile promotion machine. I use it to check email on the road or at home when away from my laptop. I use it to take pictures that I post to my Twitter and Facebook status feeds and to various blogs. The built in video allows me to post to my YouTube Channel, post via email to my Posterous account, send short videos via 12seconds.tv, and to live stream using Qik.com and UStream. With this single tool, I can immediately share what’s going on with my life or at an event.

Here’s an example of how I used my iPhone for shameless self-promotion. A couple of months back, I noticed Nancy Rodriguez’s Twitter update where she mentioned that she and the crew from Q1047, the local Hip-Hop and R&B station, where going to be live broadcasting from a nearby McDonald’s. It was around 7am so I grabbed a fast shower then zoomed over to McDees. I had chatted with Nancy before via Twitter so it was great meeting her and the rest of the Rico and Mambo show. I took a couple of photos of them in action, posted the pictures to Twitpic and Twitter, spoke to Nancy, then headed back to go home.

Now, I’ve been listening to Q1047 since I moved to Ventura County and it’s my favorite station. So I was glad to post pictures and tweet about them on Twitter. But as I headed back to the car I realized that I could have plugged my new online blogging course. So I decided to grow a sack and went back to ask Nancy to send a shoutout to my BuildYourFanBase.com readers and she kindly did so.

Fifteen minutes after I left the live broadcast, I had uploaded the video shoutout to YouTube and had already tweeted out a link to my blog post on the event. Minutes later Nancy retweeted the link and gave my blog and new blog class an on-air shoutout.

Now that’s promotion at the speed of light!

Do you have any other mobile promotion tech tools that you swear by?

Can I Get an Email Subscription with that Blog?

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Jesse Luna

WordPress finally added an Email Subscription feature to its WordPress.com blogs. This is a great new feature because it is much easier than adding in a third-party email subscription option like Feedburner.

The email subscription feature comes in the form of a new built-in Widget and this video tutorial shows you how to get it working, step-by-step. Happy blogging!

If you liked this tutorial, subscribe to my YouTube Channel and sign up for MY blog by email. Thanks for tuning in!

WordPress serves up lightening fast RSS

Posted on September 8, 2009 by Jesse Luna

Today, WordPress deployed a new functionality called RSS Cloud to its 7.5 million blogs on WordPress.com. This allows people to get notification of blog feeds as soon as they are published.

That’s awesome, Dude! Uh, so, er, what is RSS?
RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a way for blogs to share their content with others via a feed. Typically, people don’t want to look at the raw formatted content so they will subscribe to this content via an RSS reader, like Google Reader.

Ok, so my blog has had and RSS feed on it forever. What’s changed?
Wordpress.com blogs still have an RSS feed but now it includes information about a “cloud” item. The cloud gets and passes along information about the new blog post as soon as it has been published.

This is the difference between going to the bakery every hour to see if there are fresh bagels and having someone stand at the bakery then calling you when they are fresh out of the oven. The person standing at the bakery is the RSS Cloud in this metaphor.

If you’d like more information on the tech details and implementation of RSS Cloud and the RSS specification you should definitely tune into Dave Winer’s recent blog post (he helped shape the RSS landscape).

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WordPress serves up lightening fast RSS