Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Monday, May 7, 2012

Wordpress Users...help?

So I need to create a group blog (really more of an online portfolio) for another class. We decided to go with Wordpress, but now I am completely stumped. I have the Suburbia theme, which is a magazine-ish one that is supposed to have images on top of little blurbs with the beginning of each post.

How do I add Featured Images? All that is showing up on the main blog page is the text of the post. When I click "Read more," it shows the image I put with the full post, but I want it to show up as a thumbnail on the main page too. I've looked it up and it seems like I have to do some kind of fancy coding stuff that I don't feel like doing. Is there an easier way?

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

How to Make an Animated GIF

Hello fellow bloggers/classmates! This post will be dedicated to creating your very own GIF(s). Hopefully this will become useful to you and it will help to decorate your blog!

Creating a GIF using an Editing Program.

This was the easiest method I found to creating a GIF and it's both Apple and Windows friendly.

Step 1: Create or Find your Video.

You can use a video you've downloaded or one you've created yourself, it doesn't matter. Be aware, however, that the longer the video is the longer it will take to be imported.

Step 2: Import the Video into your Editing Program.

Every laptop and computer (unless it's from 1997) should come with a free video editing program. Open the program up and import your footage.

Step 3: Editing.

Once your video is all ready to go start editing. You're going to want the video to be 2- 5 seconds long or else the file will be too large.

Step 4: Exporting.

When you have your video file edited down to 2-5 seconds export it. Windows users, you'll want the file to be an .AVI not a .WMV.

Step 5: Online Gif Generators.

This was the trickiest part for me. There are a lot of websites dedicated to helping users create GIFs, but not all of them will work. After days of searching and experimenting I finally found a site that worked, LunaPic. Feel free to search around but this was by far the best site I found.

It's really simple. Upload your video to the site and set it to the image size of your liking.

500x750 worked for me.

The website will then allow you to slow down or speed up your gif, adjust the image width, and even cut your footage down.

When you finish playing with that you can scroll down to the bottom of the page and either save the Gif to your computer or upload it to the websites that are hyperlinked there.

* If you have trouble uploading the GIF to your Tumblr or Blog try uploading it to a photo sharing & video hosting site like Tinypic.com.

Here are some other options which involve a little more time and money.

Mac users have the option of buying there own GIF editing program. Judging from the customer reviews GIFBrewery seems to be the best option.

It's basically a Gif editing program and it only costs about $5.00. It's easier than using Photoshop and from the reviews it seems that the quality of the GIF seems to be relatively decent.

Photoshop.

If you have access to a Photoshop program it's a really useful tool for blogging. If you want to buy the program prices can range from $66.00 to over $200.00.

Creating a GIF using Photoshop is a longer process but the quality is usually leagues better. If you have a basic understanding of the program it shouldn't be too hard. Below are two videos I thought were the most useful:







That's about it! If you have any questions feel free to send me a message. If you comment on this post maybe a fellow classmate will be able to help you out. Best of luck!







Tuesday, May 1, 2012

And the Linky is working!

Thanks to Hannah for coming up with the questions! I set up a free InLinkz account so that when you put in the URL of your post, it will automatically show up on the blogs of everyone else who participates. I put up Hannah's and Briana's already, and wrote up some instructions on how to do it that will also appear automatically on each linked post. Technical writing for the Division of IT can come in handy...