bluefacedpixie

Instructions I’ve been sharing for the bloggers on machaggis.net and aphotoperday.

I used to host all the photos on bluefacedpixie etc on the machaggis.net website. With the start of aphotoperday this started to get on heavy on my small network storage at luxsci so I started to post them to flickr (the rest of the world seems to do this) and then cross-post them from flickr to my blog. Technically this is called hosting the images on flickr and including or referring to them on the blog.

As a few people use my blogs, and as I warm Phillipa and Cindy up for aphotperday, these are the instructions I’ve been sharing.

Posting to flickr

1. go to flickr and choose sign up now if you don’t already have a login
   

   • sign up for a yahoo id – follow the instructions, use a real email address – this includes checking your email and clicking on a link back to yahoo
     
   • go back to flickr
     

2. sign in to flickr (i.e. with your yahoo id and password)
   

   • if its the first time, set up your account with your nickname etc
     

3. click on upload to upload pictures
   

   • n.b. I also clicked on upload tools and installed a program to my computer to make this easier – both the Mac and Windows Flickr Uploaders work, and the iPhoto Export to Flickr works too.
     
   • Upload the pictures with the “resize to 800” option so that you do not use all your bandwidth per month.
     

Posting to your blog from flickr

These instructions talk specifically about some bluefacedpixie and machaggis.net and wordpress settings, hopefully you get the idea.

1. goto http://www.flickr.com/blogs.gne
   
2. setup a new blog to post to from flickr (many instructions follow):
   

   • wordpress (then next)
     
   • Endpoint:
     http://machaggis.net/<your blog>/xmlrpc.php</your>
     e.g.:
     http://machaggis.net/premodernist/xmlrpc.php
     
   • Username: [your login name on the blog i.e. bluefacedpixie]
     
   • Password: [your password]
     
   • ALL done
     


3. at this stage you’re really done, but you can also choose a template. If you want to do a custom template then:
   

   • create a custom posting template
     
   • choose any layout or
     

     • choose customise
       
     • delete ALL the text
       
     • paste in the following (this is for bluefacedpixie – exact copies matter due to automatic line conversion):
       
<div class="imgcenter">
<a href="{photo_url}" title="Photo Per Day Linked from flickr"><img width=400 src="{photo_src}" alt="{photo_title}" /></a>
<p align=center><a href="{photo_url}" title="Link to photo on flickr">{photo_title}</a>, originally uploaded by <a href="{uploader_profile}" title="Link to photographer on flickr">{uploader_name}</a>.</p><p>{description}</p></div>

       

   • preview
     
   • save
     

4. now – this time – you are done setup
   
5. to post a photo:
   

   • choose any of your pictures and select “blog this” from the icon at the top, and then the blog to post to
     
   • enter bloggage and then post
     
   • even if this says it fails (due to timeouts) it will often succeed, so check before you retry
     
   • n.b. the blog will post to the default category on the wordpress blog (for bluefacedpixie this is random) so you may want to immediately edit the post and change it’s category (e.g. I do this to quickly change the category to A Photo Per Day and any other relevant sub-categories).
     

6. Done