Images

Adding/removing slides

If you have a Redback Graphics installed CMS website with the responsive “slides” function built in.

Make sure you have a slide prepared – it must have identical dimensions to your existing slides. You can see your slide dimensions in Dashboard/Slides/Settings.

Login to your Dashboard, under “Dashboard”, click once on “Slides”, then choose Slides to view your existing slides.

To add a new slide, click the Add New button, then choose Set Featured Image link. Upload a new slide (making sure it is already the exact dimension of existing slides), click the Set Featured Image button in bottom right corner, then the Publish” button.

You can also add hyperlinks to the slides, so that anyone clicking on a slide is taken to another web address or page. Go to Dashboard/Slides/Slides then edit a slide and add the link in the “Slide link” field, then Update that slide.

The changes will be live immediately. Use CTRL+F5 in your live website browser window to force a refresh of the web page you are viewing to see the updated slide/s.

Number of Slides
The number of slides in your slideshow is set in Dashboard/Slides/Settings, Slideshow Quantity. If you add a new slide, without deleting an existing slide, you need to modify the slideshow quantity accordingly.

Tip 1
It’s always handy to have another browser window open to view the “public” side of your website to see the changes without having to log in and out of your Dashboard to see the public website.

Tip 2
Always backup your website before doing any updates until you are very familiar with updating pages and images etc.
See backing up your website
.

Posted by Redback Graphics in Images, Wordpress Tips

Adding widgets

If you have a Redback Graphics installed CMS website.
Firstly, what is a Widget? A Widget allows you to add, arrange, and remove tools, plugins or content from the sidebars and/or footers of your website. Widgets make it easy to customize the content of your website sidebars and footers. Typically used for Categories and Posts from a Blog, they can also be used for traditional website content including images, advertisements and News items.

This is to add a Widget Area to your sidebars or footer areas. Not all  websites have both sidebars and footer widget areas, but by adding a Widget you will quickly find out what areas you have available for Widgets.

Login to your Dashboard, under “Dashboard”, click once on “Appearance”, then once on “Widgets”.

On the far right side of your screen you will see all of your available Widget areas. Expand any Widget Area and drag and drop one of the “Available Widgets” into that Widget Area (ie “Right-1” will be the far Right Sidebar). Adding a Text Widget is one of the most useful Widgets to install. You can edit its Title, and insert any text or html. Click “Save”, then view your website to see your new Widget in action.

If you want in insert images into your Text Widget area, see Inserting Images into Sidebars to get the html for any image you want to insert.

Tip 1
It’s always handy to have another browser window open to view the “public” side of your website to see the changes without having to log in and out of your Dashboard to see the public website.

Tip 2
Always backup your website before doing any updates until you are very familiar with updating pages and images etc.
See backing up your website
..

Posted by Redback Graphics in Images, Wordpress Tips
SEO content and images

SEO content and images

Adding descriptive Titles to your images, and/or specific strings of text within your content, will greatly increase your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). If you name your images with an exact string that you might expect someone to “Google”, your image (and your website) will then rank higher in any Google results. Making the Title specific, but also unique will give excellent results. For example, if you were to name an image “twitter free zone”, then anyone Googling twitter free zone would quickly find your website. Your challenge is to predict what people will be Googling (exact string), then include an image you can name accordingly. The more correctly named images you have, the higher the Google ranking for those strings will be. Do NOT try and trick Google by adding excessive images with blatant SEO Titles, Google will recognise that and blacklist your website completely. Just include relevant content, with relevant images with descriptive titles, and Google will love you, and people will find you.

Updating/adding relevant content to your website, through images, documents, videos, text, etc will increase your Google ranking. Google visits and indexes your site periodically, automatically. If nothing has changed when Google comes back, the period until the next visit will increase, each time. That is how your Google ranking drops. To maintain or increase your Google ranking you must keep an active, relevant website.

Please see also Website title and SEO article.

Posted by Redback Graphics in Images, News, SEO, Wordpress Tips
Gallery images

Gallery images

If you have a Redback Graphics installed CMS website

To create a new gallery on a page
Select or create a page for your gallery. Edit that page.
Place your cursor where you would like to place the gallery on the page (eg. above or below existing text).
Click the “Add Media” button above upper left corner of the editing box.
Choose “Create Gallery” from options in top left corner.
“Upload files” from your computer or select images from the media library. Ideally images should be resized and optimised for web viewing, and for a consistent look it is recommended that images be a uniform size, eg 800 x 600px or 600 x 800, 1200 x 800 etc Unless you must have bigger images, 800px wide is max recommended. Then choose “Create New Gallery” (button bottom right corner). Once the images have uploaded to the page, you can rearrange images by dragging and dropping, then click “Insert Gallery” (button bottom right corner).
“Update” your page.

To add an image to an existing pre-installed gallery (with navigation/scrolling thumbs and arrows on the page) (Type A)
Login to your Dashboard, under “Dashboard”, click once on “Media”, then near “Media Library”, click once on “Add New” button. Choose “Select Files”, locate them on your computer, select the file (or multiple files), select “Open” (or hit enter), wait while it “Crunches” the file/s (uploads). At this point you can (not necessary) edit Titles, description, captions etc. This can be done at any time, so no need to do it right now. Then click “Save all changes”. You will then be back in Media and can see a list of the images now in your Media collection.

Any image/s you just uploaded (you can upload several images at a time) will not be “Attached” to any particular page. In order for them to appear in a gallery on “a” page, they must be “attached” to that page. Check the select box for all images you want to “attach” to a particular page, then click “attach” for one of those images (all images with a check/tick will ALL be attached to the same page that you now select). In the “Find posts or pages” box, type a few characters of the page name you are looking for, then select “Pages” and “Search” to locate the correct page you wish to attach those images to. Select that page, and you are done. The image will now be added to the existing gallery on that page.

To add an image to a normal gallery (no navigation/scrolling thumbs and arrows on the page, just thumbnails) (Type B)
Login to your “Dashboard”, click once on “Pages”, then once on the page your gallery is on.

Click once within the gallery area on that page, then the “Edit Gallery” icon. Click “Add to Gallery” button (on left), find or “Upload” the files to add, select the files, then update the gallery. While you are still editing the gallery you can drag and drop to rearrange images. Make sure you “Update” the gallery after making any changes.
Once back on the page, “Update” your page.

 

 

Tip 1
It’s always handy to have another browser window open to view the “public” side of your website to see the changes without having to log in and out of your Dashboard to see the public website. The changes will be live immediately. Use CTRL+F5 in your live website browser window to force a refresh of the web page you are viewing to see the updated image and link.

Tip 2
Always backup your website before doing any updates until you are very familiar with updating pages and images etc.
See backing up your website.

Tip 3
Adding descriptive Titles to your images will greatly increase your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). If you name your images with an exact string that you might expect someone to “Google”, your image (and your website) will then rank highly in any Google results. Making the Title specific, but also unique will give excellent results. For example, if you were to name an image “twitter free zone”, then anyone Googling twitter free zone would quickly find your website. Your challenge is to predict what people be Googling (exact string), then include an image you can name accordingly. The more correctly named images you have, the higher the Google ranking for those strings will be. Do NOT try and trick Google by adding excessive images with blatant SEO Titles, Google will recognise that and blacklist your website completely. Just include relevant content, with relevant images with descriptive titles, and Google will love you, and people will find you.

Posted by Redback Graphics in Images, Wordpress Tips
Image hyperlinks

Image hyperlinks

If you have a Redback Graphics installed CMS website.
This assumes you have an image on a page, if not you might need to read adding an image to a page first.

Then, to add or edit the hyperlink to that image
Login to your Dashboard, under “Dashboard”, click once on “Pages”, then once on the page title of the page you want to edit an image.
In the editing box that contains your page content, click on the image you want to add/edit a hyperlink to.
Click once on the image, then choose the icon to “Insert/edit link” (in line of icons above editing box), then insert the URL of the web address you want to link to. Then from the “Target” options, choose open link in new window to make the browser open a new window for the linked website. Then click the “Update” button to update the image, and then the “Update” button of the page to update the page.

To remove a hyperlink from an image
As above to access the page and select the image. Then choose the icon to “Remove link” (next to icon to “Insert/Edit link). Update your page and you’re done.

Tip 1
It’s always handy to have another browser window open to view the “public” side of your website to see the changes without having to log in and out of your Dashboard to see the public website. The changes will be live immediately. Use CTRL+F5 in your live website browser window to force a refresh of the web page you are viewing to see the updated image and link.

Tip 2
Always backup your website before doing any updates until you are very familiar with updating pages and images etc.
See backing up your website.

Posted by Redback Graphics in Images, Wordpress Tips