Archives for September 2013

MailChimp iPad App

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Almost every one of our clients is familiar with MailChimp, it’s our email newsletter tool of choice. Not only because it works seamlessly with WordPress but it’s cost effective (sometimes free) and very easy to use.

So when we saw today that there is a new iPad app for Mailchimp we thought that you’d like to know!

If you’re a regular user you’ll know that recently MailChimp  had a redesign, much of the new look and feel is carried over to the iPad app. At first glance it looks to include enough functionality to make it a worthwhile tool.

Not only can you create new campaigns but also edit existing ones that might have been setup in the web interface previously. One feature that caught my eye was the ability to work offline.

For obvious reasons the web based interface means that you have to work, building and editing campaigns while your online. The iPad app now offers the ability to be working on your email campaigns without and internet connection, then when you connect up again it will send the changes back to the Mailchimp system.

It’s available now via the iTunes app store but first check out the feature on the Mailchimp web site for more information.

 

Remote control your WordPress website

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Ever have the need to post something to your WordPress site when you weren’t in front of your computer? Perhaps fire off a quick blog post or upload a new image that you’ve just taken.

Did you know that you can access your WordPress powered website from your smartphone?

Well you can and here’s how!

WordPress for iOS – (iPhone or iPad)

There is an official WordPress mobile app that works on all iOS devices (yes there are official apps for other phones too, see the links at the bottom of this post). It has certainly matured in the past few releases to be a handy little app.

WordPress-post-screenSure you can’t do everything that you can in the web interface but that’s not the point. These mobile apps are built so when you’re out and about you can quickly add a new post or photo.

There’s a post editor that is very much cut down from what you’re used to in the web interface. Just looking at the screen shot opposite you’ll get the idea of what is going on: Post Title, Tags, Categories and your main post content.

Pretty easy? Yes it is.

Look down the bottom of this screen shot and there is options to add images to the post, either from your iPhone camera roll or just take a picture as you’re creating the post and include it.

The latest version of the iOS app also supports video in much the same way. Couple this with the update to WordPress 3.6 and you can publish video directly from your iPhone to your WordPress site – it really is that simple!

Getting started with WordPress mobile

It is not very difficult to setup. You need to install the app for your smartphone then the first time you run it you’ll be presented with a walk through to setup your WordPress site.

Basically you tell it your URL, username and password and the rest is configured for you.

Play with the app for a few minutes and you’ll find it really is self explanatory.

More than just new posts?

WordPress mobile commentsThere is a couple of other tools that are worth considering.

On WordPress sites where the commenting is very busy the mobile app steps in to help you out. In fact this is something that the app excels at.

If you get regular comments on your site that you’d like to review, moderate or reply to, just pull out your phone fire up the app and start managing your comments.

Where to get WordPress mobile

If you have an iPhone or iPad then the Apple app store on that device is the place to go, search for WordPress and you’ll find it.

For other smartphones (eg Android, Blackberry, Microsoft etc..) check out this section of WordPress.org

If you get stuck at all contact us and we’ll give you some help.

Illustrate your WordPress site, on a budget

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We spend a lot of time on our blog discussing SEO for WordPress, optimising the words and structure of webpages but not a lot on the visual side of things. So today let’s look at some resources you may not know about to help you illustrate your content.

You may know about popular sites like iStock.com, Shutterstock.com or bigstockphoto.com.

These sites are very popular and boast millions of images each. They mostly work in a similar way, you pay for credits and then depending on the images you select a number of credits will be deducted when you download an image. BigStockPhoto.com is a little different in that you can subscribe for a monthly fee and download a set number of images each month.

We use these services regularly to get images to help illustrate sites as we’re building them.

It can start to get a bit expensive though if you use paid stock images every time you want to publish a new post. We’ve written recently about the importance of posting regular content to your WordPress site to help your SEO, so what to do if you’re publishing regularly and want to keep a lid of the cost of stock images?

Use Free Stock Images!

There are some good stock image sites around that allow you to use images without cost. You do need to read their licensing to familiarise yourself with it, for example some photographers listed on these sites allow you to use the image freely but request a link crediting them as the owner.

  • Stock.xchng – boasts more then 350,000 images
  • StockVault – a smaller collection but still plenty of quality images
  • EveryStockPhoto – this one has a different approach, it’s more like a search engine of stock photos than a dedicated library

Using images in your WordPress site

Now that you’ve got a few ideas to look for images it’s worth pointing out a few tips to remember when you’re preparing the images for use on your site. You don’t need to be a Photoshop guru these couple of ideas will get you a long way.

Size the image for where it’s going be used

If your using an image inside your site content, chance are that it needs to be reduced to the correct size for your WordPress setup. It’s better to reduce the images on your computer before you upload them to WordPress. On Mac OS X you can right click and image and then click ‘get info‘ to see the size that it is, on Windows right click an image and click properties.

Pay attention to the file size too

Once you have the image dimensions correct, also take a look at the size of the image file in kilobytes (kb). Many sites are drastically slowed by their owners uploading very large files. As a quick rule of thumb, images should be certainly under 100kb but ideally under 50 or 60kb is you can. Most image editing tools have the ability to compress images, particularly jpg images to reduce the file size.

Use the correct image format

For display on your WordPress site you should only be using JPG, PNG and GIF images. While some browsers will cope with other like TIFF it’s not going to work everywhere. Also consider these guidelines for choosing which image format should be used. You should use the correct image format for the specific type of image.

  • JPG – anything that is photographic, a scene, a person etc..
  • PNG – icons, illustrations, computer drawn images, perhaps even images that have text only in them
  • GIF – similar to PNG but this format also supports simple animation