Does you web presence lack style?

The definition of Swank is: Imposingly fashionable or elegant; grand. It is our desire to offer you elegant and affordable solutions for your blog or website. Take a look around and let us know what we can do to take your site to perfection.

Posts Tagged ‘images’

How to add Related Posts with (or without) Thumbnails to your WP Blog

July 20, 2009 by Emily  

Tutorials


Adding related posts to your blog is a great way to help your readers find other posts on your site that interest them. And if you have ads, increasing the number of pageviews on your blog can turn out to be quite lucrative. I recently had a request from a client to use a certain widget that she had seen on many other blogs that adds a list of recent posts along with a thumbnail image from that post. But after looking at the widget and researching the many other plugins that are available to add this functionality, I decided I wanted to find a way to code it directly into the template.

One reason for this is that the more plugins installed on a blog, the more that can slow down the loading time of that blog. If you can hard-code a function into the template, it’s almost always preferable to using a plugin. Plus many of the plugins or widgets I looked at gave very little control over things like styling or where the list appears in the template or even how they even figured out what was “related”. What if you want them to be related by tag instead of category or vice versa? What if you just want other posts by the same author?

After doing some more googling and modifying some of the code I found I figured out how to do everything I wanted to and more. My client was extremely pleased with the results and was amazed that I’d even been able to implement it without using a plugin or the widget she had originally wanted:

“It IS cool! A zillion people are going to see it now and want it on their WP blogs! Thanks!”

Which leads us to this post. I thought I would share my findings so that you can implement the same feature on your own WordPress blog. Below I will show you how to add related posts by category, tag or author. I will preface this by saying you should probably have some very basic knowledge about how to edit a template in WordPress, but for the most part, you can copy the code directly and paste it into your template. That’s it. For people with more advanced knowledge I’ll point out things that you can edit further and customize to your liking.

Continue Reading »





Inserting Images into WordPress 2.5

May 27, 2008 by Leslie  

Tutorials


There are two ways to insert an image in to WordPress now. One is to upload an image from your hard drive. The other is to link to an image living on a server somewhere else (ie: flickr, a photo gallery, snapfish, a server, etc.) Here steps for each method.

Adding an image from your hard drive in to a page or post:

Step 1. Start a new post (or page) as usual Write > Post/Page.

Step 2. Go to the “Add Media” area and select the image button.

Add an Image

Step 3. Click on “Browse” to add an image from your computer.

Browse

Continue Reading »





Creating great photos for your online shop

August 23, 2007 by Shaz  

Around the Web, Business


light box I have worked with many small business owners in the past who were trying to build an online store. The thing about online stores is that the product images must look amazing, it’s easy to figure out that the more amazing they look, the more interest they generate!

Being small business owners though, means that some things must be compromised due to costs, and one of those things is often getting professional photographs of the products. While this is not recommended, I completely understand the decision.

When I came across this cool little gadget, I thought it was the perfect thing to recommend to my clients, as a lot of them were selling jewelry and small handmade items. It’s called the Table Top Photo Studio by HAMMACHER SCHLEMMER.

If you’ve used it in the past, I would love to hear your feedback!





Stay Updated

RSS Get new post updates by Feed or Email

Twitter Follow Swank on Twitter

Facebook Become a Fan on Facebook

Twitter Recent Tweet






Recommended Books

Interested in Web Design or Blogging? These are the books we recommend to get you started.

  • The IT Girl's Guide to Blogging with Moxie
  • WordPress For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))
  • Designing with Web Standards (2nd Edition)
  • CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions
  • Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter)
  • HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition (Visual Quickstart Guide)
  • The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web (Voices That Matter)
  • Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design (Voices That Matter)