Entries tagged 'WordPress'

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

Blogging via Google Docs

So in fiddling about with Google Docs‘ sharing settings, I noticed a new feature that appears to let docs be published as blog entries to major blogging platforms such as WordPress, so I wanted to try it out.

We use Google Docs (and WordPress.com) a ton at work, and this might be a really great way for folks to do collaborative blog posts, working on the text together on Google Docs and then sending it to the blog.

It can handle font formatting (bold, italics, underline) and pictures (see above), both of which are deal-breakers for this type of thing. It also tags your blog post according to the labels you applied to the Google document.

Yet, it still isn’t perfect. The code produced by Google Docs is, just like its other HTML, really ugly and complicated and you still have to use WordPress’ admin tools to post videos and other embedded content. 

The biggest challenge is that it doesn’t transfer over document/post titles, but that looks like it’s under development. Also, changes made in WordPress’ admin interface don’t sync back to Google Docs. Similarly, any changes made to the Google document itself have to be manually synced back to the blog.

So, while it’s not the most bug free or fantastic Google offering out there, it’s one more neat tool in the arsenal and one more reason to ditch Microsoft Office.
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Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

The Beauty of Photos

So I’ve been (back) at this blogging thing for nearly a week and I’ve started exploring some new plug-ins for WordPress. I like to take a lot of photos, but always struggle with where to post them.

Some end up on Flickr. Others go on Facebook. Still more end up living in iPhoto, never to be seen again.

When I ran across the NextGEN Gallery plug-in, I was impressed. It allowed me to easily upload multiple photos and display them nicely in a blog post. Take a look at these disgustingly cute pics from my recent engagement:

 

There’s lots of options about how to display the shots–full size, thumbnails or in a simple slideshow. And the plug-in integrates just enough Flash to add to its functionality and not distract from its usability.

The only hiccup was when I tried to upload some full-resolution images. The software didn’t automatically downsize them, resulting in huge page load times and when I manually clicked on the button to resample them, I only got through two of ten photos before running across a server memory error. Luckily, iPhoto will happily export them in 800×600 @ 72 dpi.

In any case, hopefully I can start to post select galleries to TresVacas thanks to NextGEN. Cheers!

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