410 CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND (Web server setup)
410 CHAPTER 15 STARTING TO BLOG AND BUILDING YOUR COMMUNITY The images you upload can be referenced in your posts and pages. Assuming your user level is high enough (as discussed in the Assigning User Permissions section later in this chapter), to upload images, all you need to do is click Upload along the top of the administration pages. This takes you to a page with a file browser button and a couple of other controls. Click the Browse button, and navigate to the image that you want to upload to your blog. When you have selected an image, you can add a description of the image. You can also choose to have a thumbnail generated and specify its size. When you have specified all your options, click the Upload File button. WordPress will tell you it has successfully uploaded the file and display the details of the image, including the name, file size, and type. It will also give you the code to display the image. You need to select the code it gives you and copy it to the clipboard. You can then paste that code into your blog post. This way of adding images to your post is less than satisfactory. If you are in the middle of creating your post and you decide to upload an image, you need to save the post as draft, go to the upload page, upload your file, copy the code to the clipboard, click back to the Manage Posts page, click your draft post, find your place, and paste the image code into your article. If you forget to save the post as draft, you will lose what you have typed so far. Because adding an image this way is so inconvenient, the next version of WordPress will probably have a different image upload interface. In the meantime, there is a much better way of handling images. Using the IImage Browser Plug-In WordPress allows you to install third-party plug-ins as add-ons to the software. These plug-ins can be created by anyone with an interest in changing the way WordPress works, adding extra functionality to WordPress, or even taking away functionality. Many, many plug-ins are available for WordPress more than 400 at the time of writing. A few good places to look for WordPress plug-ins are The WordPress Plugin DB (http:// www.wp-plugins.net/), the Plugin Directory (http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/PluginDirectory), and the plug-ins list on the WordPress Codex (http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins). The particular plug-in I m going to introduce to you here is called IImage Browser, created by Martin Chlup .c. You can get it from his web site at http://fredfred.net/skriker/ index.php/iimage-browser. This plug-in is an enhancement of the Image Browser plug-in for WordPress 1.2, created by Florian Jung (which you can find at http://www.bistr-o-mathik.org/ code/wordpress-plugins/). Installing and Activating the Plug-In You need to download the latest stable version of the plug-in (1.4.2 at the time of writing) from http://fredfred.net/skriker/index.php/iimage-browser. Download the zip file to your computer and unzip the files. Using your FTP program, upload the iimage-browser-plugin.php file to your wp-content/pluginsfolder and the iimage-browser.phpfile to your wp-admin folder. You don t need to upload the third file, insert_image_placement.txt. To activate the plug-in, go to the Plugins Management page of your blog. You will see the new plug-in listed, along with any other plug-ins you have installed. (If you do not see the new plug-in listed, make sure that you uploaded the files to the correct places.) Click the Activate link on the right side of the plug-in description. WordPress will highlight the line to indicate that it is activated, as shown in Figure 15-8.
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