Let me start with a little background. First, let me acknowledge that WordPress is a great blogging platform for text. And I have seen some really beautiful photography blogs created on this platform. But what most people don’t realize is that these photo-blogging themes have a ton of custom code. Out of the box, WordPress is still absolutely awful with regards to text mixed with media. And I do realize that they’ve been constantly updating things, but it’s frankly still a crude environment.

The multi-line captions are a good example. While WordPress 2.5 added the ability to have captions, instead of building it into the user interface and allowing the user / writer to create content to be used as a caption, they instead decided to have the photo import interface add an odd caption shortcode which WordPress will later replace with actual HTML. What this means is that unless you want to modify WordPress core files (a very bad idea since you’d have to do it every time you upgraded WordPress), you’re stuck trying to fix captions within the bounds of their already lacking system.

So, without further rambling, here’s the long and the short of fixing the captioning system (a little bit).

Current Implementation (WordPress 2.5+)

Before fixing the captions, we need to understand exactly how it works out of the box.  When you go to insert a photo into a post, if you type anything in the caption dialog, WordPress will insert an image surrounded by a “caption” shortcode.  It goes through and replace this caption shortcode with actual HTML when it’s requested by a reader. However, instead of taking a block of text and including it, all it takes is one lousy string that can’t have anything but text.

Allowing Multiline Captions

Due to the existing implementation, there is really only so much we can work with. We need to take the caption and break it into multiple lines, but remember, WordPress won’t store more than a string for the caption. To fix this, I decided that I’d insert line breaks into the caption based on a text string — in my case, I chose the “|” symbol as I don’t ever see it being used in a caption. You can replace it with whatever you like.

To override the existing caption code, edit your theme’s functions.php file and add the following code (note, clicking on the left-most button in the top right of the code box will open the source in an editor — perfect for copying and pasting).

/*
*********************************************
  Function to allow multi-line photo captions.
  This function will split captions onto multiple lines if it detects
  a "|" (pipe) symbol.
**********************************************
*/
/* Override existing caption shortcode handlers with our own */
add_shortcode('wp_caption', 'multiline_caption');
add_shortcode('caption', 'multiline_caption');

/* Our new function */
function multiline_caption($attr, $content = null) {
	extract(shortcode_atts(array(
		'id'	=> '',
		'align'	=> 'alignnone',
		'width'	=> '',
		'caption' => ''
	), $attr));

	if ( 1 > (int) $width || empty($caption) )
		return $content;

	if ( $id ) $id = 'id="' . esc_attr($id) . '" ';

 	$new_caption = str_replace("|", "<br />", $caption);

	return '<div ' . $id . 'class="wp-caption ' . esc_attr($align) . '" style="width: ' . (10 + (int) $width) . 'px">'
	. do_shortcode( $content ) . '<p class="wp-caption-text">' . $new_caption . '</p></div>';
}

With this done, all that was left was to edit the caption of the desired photo with something like this: “First line of caption.|Second line of caption”.

Additional Resources

In searching the web for a solution, I found everything but what I needed. However, I did find some good resources for WordPress captions in general.

• WordPress Forum Post discussion modifying captions.
• The WordPress Codex — Official Shortcode API

So, if you’re enjoying my work, or just want to go see other really good photography, check out the above link and either vote for me, or look around!

A brief introduction to web crawlers

Hopefully, I’m not ruining any fantasies here, but there isn’t a room full of people at Google looking through web pages and indexing the contents of different sites.  That would require way too many people and cost way too much.  Instead, large search engines generally implement web crawlers, programs which quickly read web page data.  This process called crawling or spidering generally performs the following actions:

1. Read the prominent* page data on the current page
2. Read all hyper-links to other web pages and add them to a list of future pages to crawl
3. Move on to the next web page

* What a particular crawler deems to be “prominent” data depends entirely on the purpose of the crawler

There are a two important things to note here:

1. Once a crawler leaves your site, they may not come back for a while!
2. Since a crawler follows the links on your page, you had better make sure that the links count (and link to more of your content)

Thankfully for us, there is a set of standards which are used a guidelines for these web crawlers (also called robots).

What are these meta robots?

Spend any time in a web design forum, or browsing through an HTML book and you’re bound to come across the concept of meta tags.  As defined by Wikipedia, meta elements are metadata which can be embedded in HTML web pages that provide structured information about the current page.  These elements can include such things as keywords, location data, and content type.

The meta tag we’re interested in right now is the robots meta tag.  Using this tag carefully, we can specify three important attributes for links on our site**.

1. noindex – An attribute suggesting that the robot not add the data contained within the tag to the index (or search engine as the case may be)
2. nofollow – An attribute suggesting that the robot not add the link contained within the tag to the list of future pages to crawl.
3. noarchive – An attribute suggesting that that robot not to store a cached copy of your page.

**There are more attributes that are search engine specific, but I’m only covering the major ones here

You will recognize a couple things right away.  First, is that I was very careful to use the word suggest.  The author of the robot can choose whether or not to take these suggestions to heart.  Google seems to do a good job of following these suggestions, but I can’t speak for other search engines.  Second, the malicious user will notice that you can keep the robot from indexing other people’s sites that are linked to from your page.

Using these meta tags in the heading of a particular page applies them to the whole page.  The syntax is as follows:

<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

For more information, check out this helpful link.

The downside to this method is that you are specifying these properties for the whole page.  While this may be desirable in some instances, more often than not it’s desirable to specify such attributes on a link by link basis.  We can do that by adding the “rel” attribute to the standard link syntax as follows:

<a rel="noindex, nofollow" href="http://google.com">Google</a>

How to use meta robots for good?

So here’s a true story.  This may be a bit embarrassing for yours truly, but in sharing, I hope that I can help others avoid the same mistake.  Earlier this year, I was looking through my Google Webmasters account to see which keywords I was hitting with this site.  (For more information on how to setup Google Webmaster Tools and how to find keywords, see my post entitled What is SEO and why do I need it?)  I was a bit surprised to notice that my my number one keyword was “RSS”.  Clearly, being a Photography / Blogging site, this wasn’t good!  Thankfully, if you click on a keyword in Google Webmaster Tools, you’ll be given a list of what pages this keyword appears in.  I was shocked to find out that the keyword “RSS” appeared numerous times on every page of my site!

Digging a little deeper, I found that every place I had a link to my RSS feed (sidebar, post metadata, etc…) these links were being indexed.  And since the  text that is also a link seems to be given a higher ranking by Google, the keyword “RSS” was doing very well!

So, I went and changed the links to my feed to add the nofollow and noindex attributes, and waited.  One thing you will learn about SEO is that changes don’t happen overnight!  After a few weeks, the top keywords on my site were back to useful keywords.

Conclusion

Keywords are a very important since they are how new visitors can find your site.  By assisting web crawlers and leading them to the correct content, you can make your site appear more readily when people search for the chosen keywords.  However, do keep in mind that nothing replaces content.  Just drawing visitors to your site and having them leave disappointed is not the way to go.  It’s important to realize that some search engines will penalize your site if they feel you are incorrectly guiding their web crawler.  So I guess I would caution you, the designer, to ensure that you only use these techniques to help your site appear correctly in searches — or more importantly, to not appear in searches that are completely irrelevant.  RSS Feed anyone?

What is SEO?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization is the process by which the author of a web page (or blog in our case) organizes and formats their content to make it more accessible to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing.  This sounds relatively simple, right?  Well, let’s start off by making it clear that there is no such thing as a blog with perfect SEO simply because there is no 100% definition of exactly what “perfect SEO” really entails.  However, there are a few simple things that can go a long way to making sure that your blog is at least getting indexed by search engines.

Some may ask why it’s so important to have search engines indexing our carefully crafted webpages.  The answer is pretty simple really.  If the search engines can find our content and index it, that means that people who are searching Google, or other search engines, can find our content.  This is what is referred to as organic traffic as it’s traffic that the blog has generated without any assistance from you (aside from writing the initial article or post).

Why do we care about Organic Traffic?

Many will argue that organic traffic is one of the most important types of traffic as it means you are reaching readers based on them specifically searching for your content — which means that they are more likely to stick around and read some more.  What’s more, you are reaching new readers which should help to grow readership.  After all, readership is the key to a successful blog!

So officially, how important is this organic traffic?  There are tons of different statistics out there, but I’m going to just ignore them for a minute and tell you my opinion.  While I have a significant number of repeat visitors, a very large portion (over 70% as of this writing) arrive at my blog from a search engine.  Of the people finding my site on search engines, more than half visit a second page on my blog.  Collectively, they spend well over a minute on my site.  While these numbers are good, the ultimate goal is to raise them.  It’s also important to note that the vast majority (over 95%) of search engine traffic is from Google.  Therefore, it seems that focusing on Google’s ranking is the key to success here.

Getting started with SEO?

Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet when it comes to optimizing a blog for search engines.  There are, however, a few steps that need to be taken prior to changing anything on you blog.  The first is to setup some tools to help you better understand how your site is currently viewed by the search engines.  In order to do this, I highly recommend setting up a Google account and signing up for both their Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics.

The easiest way to setup Google Analytics on a WordPress blog is with the most excellent Google Analytics for WordPress plugin by Joost de Valk.  This plugin, and the associated setup page makes it very painless to get started tracking your visitors.  There are also a host of great features such as outbound link tracking and keyword tracking that Joost describes very nicely.

While just as easy to setup, Google Webmaster tools is even more useful for SEO purposes.  It gives the user a list of keywords that appear on your site in order of relevance (meaning how prominence they are) as well as your search engine ranks for popular searches.  This information is invaluable when trying to see how your site is currently portrayed on the web!

Search Queries as shown in Google Analytics

While my current search queries aren’t really all that impressive, you can see how powerful this tool really is.  It shows me the query that my site ranks on, and what position my site will appear in the results list.  Ideally, you’ll want all number 1 in the “Position” column.  While this may give a great representation of what queries will pull up your site, what about keywords?

Top Keywords displayed by Google Webmaster Tools

This is just as powerful, but in a slightly different manner.  From here, you can see the top ranking keywords on my blog.  You can also see the significance of each one.  So, looking at these keywords, you can see that currently, the most significant keyword on my site is “smugmug” which makes a lot of sense since I have written rather in depth about Smugmug vs. Zenfolio here, here, and here to name a few.

After setting up both of these Google tools, do be aware that it may take as long as a month before you start receiving meaningful data.

Where do I go from here?

To start with, it’s a good idea to let these tools start collecting data.  The next thing to do is to perform a few searches on Google to see exactly what pages from your site appear when searched for relevant topics.  If you’re curious to know what pages of your site have been indexed, the best way to do this in Google is to search for ‘site:yoursite.com’ without the quotes.

Searching for all Digitalnotions.net pages in Google

To see the results of the above search, click here.

Over the next few months, I’m going to post more information about optimizing a WordPress blog for search engines.  If you ave any tips or questions, feel free to let me know and I’ll do my best to write about them!

With that said, I’m trying to actually make some New Year’s Resolutions this year.  You see, I’m on a roll from last year having successfully accomplished my single resolution to make no resolutions.  While it may not be a huge undertaking, it’s one which I took seriously and am proud to say I’ve generally succeeded.  I like to enjoy the successes in my life – no matter how small and insignificant they may seem.

So this year, I’m going to actually try to market Digital Notions.  If you’re read my previous article entitled Rookie Blogging Mistakes, you’ll soon realize this is one of my biggest hurdles I’m facing with the success of this site.  In an effort to do this, I’m going to be undertaking a huge task – posting at least one photo every day.

I’m not going to set any limits on the subject matter of these daily photos.  They may be simple snippets of my daily life.  They may be photos of which I’m particularly proud.  Or, they may be some experiments that either did or didn’t come out correctly.  Regardless, I’m hoping to see a progression throughout the year.  Overall, I’m trying to grow as a photographer.  We’ll see how it goes.

In addition to Photo A Day plan, I’m going to try to write more.  You see, as much as I enjoy photography, I also enjoy writing.  I plan to not only write more helpful articles for fellow bloggers (especially about the Photo A Day undertaking), but perhaps write some more creative pieces.  I don’t want topics to stray too far from the purpose of this site, but I do want this site to evolve into something that is uniquely me.

So there you have it!  If you have any ideas for topics to write about, or any ideas for daily photo themes, leave a comment and let me know!

Blogging is Difficult!

Photo by nkzs - stock.xchng

There.  I said it.  Blogging is difficult.  Even more so for someone new to online publishing — the “blog rookie” if you will.  Sure, there are tons of success stories, and great resources with tons of information.  That’s enough, right?  Perhaps.  But don’t be fooled into thinking it’s easy to sit down and write a successful blog!  The process of simply setting up a blog can be intimidating and time consuming, especially if you’re trying to setup a unique domain name and host the blog on a server as opposed to going through a ready made blog site such as WordPress.com or Blogger.  We haven’t even begun to write yet, a task which for many, is harder then they anticipated.  After an initial burst of energy and great ideas, finding topics, images and motivation can become difficult.  And we’re not even to the part of this venture where you have to actually market your blog.  That’s right.  Sites don’t just take off and become profitable on their own.  Along the way, mistakes are made.  Lots of them.  Yes.  Everyone makes mistakes when blogging and anyone who claims they haven’t is lying to you.

So, what are us rookie bloggers to do?  Persevere.  Work hard.  Blogs are made from blood, sweat, and tears – both literally and figuratively.  My first six months as a blogger required probably 2 – 3 times as much time spent performing non-writing task as is spent actually writing content.  And once I was over the initial hurdle of getting things setup and a tidy stash of articles posted on my site, I got to start the really hard work — marketing.  Make no mistakes, starting a blog is a long, hard and time consuming venture.  Most successful bloggers have been at this for years!

My Perspective on Blogging

While Katie makes some great points in her article (which I strongly encourage any blogger, rookie or not, to read), I find my list of rookie mistakes to be quite a bit different.  Now let me explain a little about me so you know where I’m coming from.  I’m a software engineer.  I spend copious amounts of time writing code and studying algorithms.  Therefore, some of the more cryptic tasks such as server administration and layout design are areas where I have some actual professional experience.  However, while I may have an advantage in the technical aspects of blogging, I have zero marketing experience.  I also have limited amounts of time as I am currently employed in a full time engineering position.

Therefore, for me, blogging is as much about making my blog as easy to maintain as possible as it is about writing quality articles.  Sounds weird?  Possibly.  But by writing my blog in a search-engine friendly fashion, I’ve managed to get close to 75% organic traffic (traffic from people searching on Google, Bing or the like).  Remember, I have zero marketing experience and therefore, am initially relying very heavily on search engine traffic.  I’ve also customized my theme such that writing posts is easy and minimal time is spent trying to get things to “line up” or “look right”.  This is key.  This means I get to spend more time writing, which for me is the whole point.

Prerequisites to Launching a New Blog

With as much time and effort as it takes to start to develop initial content, should people really be worried about doing anything but writing when they launch a blog?  In my opinion, yes!  It’s important to step back and do some research – research on web hosting, content management systems (CMS), and theme selection.  These items will play a huge role in your success down the road.  And let me tell you from experience, it’s much easier to start with the right web host than switch everything over in a year.  Or even worse, start with the wrong CMS and try to import all your articles into a new system — possibly breaking links, pictures and a slew of other items in the process.

So what follows assumes you have a functioning blog, and have chosen a CMS that you’ll be using.  If you haven’t gotten this far, don’t stop reading!  But please do bookmark this, and any other interesting article you have on the subject of actually blogging as you’ll need them down the road when you are setup.

Common Mistakes – and Possible Solutions

Below is my list of what I feel are the five worst mistakes a rookie blogger can make. Some, I have personally made while others I’ve happily avoided.  Where possible, I’ve tried to include realistic approaches to fixing many of them, but in some cases, my advice may not apply.  You get the idea.

1. Poor Website Design

To me, there is nothing more obnoxious than a blog layout that is impossible to read.  I’ve seen some really messed up sites out there that apparently are making money for the author.  Just think how much better they would perform if they actually were designed for the reader!  Examples of bad design include the following:

• Text overlapping photos – This makes the photo impossible to enjoy as well as making the text unreadable.  If people can’t read the text, they go elsewhere.
• Blinking text or bright colored text – Think about your audience.  Can you stand to look at the page for long periods of time?  You want your readers to read your blog.  Your blog should not look like a Hawaiian shirt (unless of course, you’re trying to market Hawaiian Shirts).
• Poor navigation – Give the reader something to click on.  If an article is discussing a difficult topic, link to other sites that have more information for the reader.  What’s more, make sure the reader can find you home page or other posts.
• Text only – Modern web browsers display images.  Use them!  Long, text only posts, are boring to the reader.  Embed videos, pictures and keep things interesting!

There are so many good, inexpensive (some even free) blog themes out there that using a poorly designed one is simply inexcusable.  Personally, I did everything in my power to avoid these pitfalls, and yet I’ve still re-designed my theme a couple times in an effort to make things even better.  My site is still not perfect, but it’s much better than when I started.  Looking back, a $50 theme could have saved me a lot of time.  This bring me to my next point.

2. Insufficient Time

I know this is a sore subject — especially for those who blog in addition to working full time (myself included).  But quite frankly, blogging is a serious commitment of your time.  From what I’ve seen, for a blog to thrive, you have two options.  The first option is to post really good daily entries that engage the reader (think about Heather Armstrong’s Dooce.com).  This takes, at a minimum, an hour per day.  Or, you could do what many tech blogs do (and what I’ve tried to accomplish here with my site) and post more in-depth articles for your readers on a less regular schedule.  You should ideally be posting 4 entries per week (at least) in an attempt to grow content (though not all of them have to be overly long).  Again, think 4 hours minimum for your one in-depth article each week and an hour for the other three.  Not to mention that another hour per day (at a minimum) should be spent researching your topics, reading blogs and making helpful comments, marketing your blog through guest posts, etc…  At the end of the week, you’re easily talking to 20 hours per week.  I know full time bloggers who report working in excess of 60 hours per week.

Let me put this in perspective.  For many, until your blog is thriving and making a decent income, you’re working a full time job.  Many of us are married and/or have children.  That means you’re working a full 8+ hour day, plus commute, and coming home to another 2+ hours of work to be done.  Do you have the time?

For me, this has been quite possibly the biggest hindrance with growing readership.  Depending on my work schedule, I often find I have little time leftover for blogging.  In fact, I actually have a couple gaps of months in between posts.  Clearly, my site lost readers over these posting gaps.  I’m still trying to get things back on track which is forcing me to jump into the marketing game and brings me to my next point.

3. Insufficient Marketing

Katie has a great discussion on how to become active in the blog community and make your comments count.  She also discusses the idea of participating in carnivals / memes (defined here).  But there is more than just getting your name out there and getting links to your site.  I’ve made numerous comments on other people’s sites and sometimes am rewarded with additional traffic.  More often than not, I’m rewarded with single digit clicks.  My conclusion is that you have to network – to make personal connections.  Now at this point, anyone who knows me personally knows that I’m really really bad at this part.  So in a way, me discussing the merits of networking is akin to the proverbial pot calling the kettle black.  But I’m working on it.  I’ve started posting links to my recent articles in my Twitter Feed (feel free to follow me) and I’ve attempted to get out there and continue to comment on related articles hoping it will at some point pay off.  I’m not sure it’s working, but only time will tell.

Most of all, it’s important to provide a product people want and then drive the right people to that product.  The problem is, I’m not sure how to target the right people.  It is this point that’s one of the other factors holding my blog back.  Therefore, I don’t have much in the way of a solution to this particular problem.  Do you?  If so, leave a comment!

4. Poorly Written Blog Posts

Not everyone is a great author.  It’s a simple fact of life.  But let me be frank with you and say this: if you’re writing on a publicly accessible medium such as a blog, it’s time to face reality and write in a manner that is readable.  Now I’m not going to tell you exactly what that means for your particular blog.  But there are a few definitive issues to think about:

• Slang – I’m not saying to never do it, but shortcuts commonly found while reading a teenager’s cell phone have no place on a blog.  Many people won’t understand the shorthand and therefore, you inadvertently alienate a portion of your readers.
• Capitalization / Punctuation – Simply put, people have to be able to easily read you posts.  Feel free to take some creative license here, but remember — if the readers have to expend too much time trying to figure out what you’re trying to say, they will go elsewhere.
• Lists, Headings, etc. – Again, use them.  A well organized post is much nicer to read.
• A picture is worth a thousand words – Sometimes, the best way to show something is visually. Use photos, graphs, charts, etc. to make your point cleanly and concisely.
• Spell check – I know this is basic but I’ve seen some blogs with awful spelling errors.  And while I can’t claim to be excellent at spelling, there are spell checkers available that make this task pretty much automatic.

The whole idea behind having a successful blog is to communicate information.  You are trying to build a relationship with your readers, and it’s important that they can understand you.

I work very hard to attempt to keep my writing understandable.  I feel I’ve succeeded, but I still find the occasional typo that’s crept into an old post.  It’s frustrating, but part of the experience (or so I try to tell myself).

5. Participate on you OWN Site

That’s right.  Not only do you have to write posts, do research, keep you site running smoothly and all that fun stuff, you also have to get involved on your own site!  Sounds basic, right?  But let’s face it, we’ve all seen sites where you comment or ask questions and the author never checks back in. It’s frustrating.  It’s annoying.

You are trying to build a community.  You’re trying to grow you readership.  If people have questions, it behooves you to do your best to answer them. Reader’s like to feel like they are a part of something so you have to do your best to include them.

It’s pretty amazing when you start seeing comments come in from complete strangers!

My Final Departing Advice

Katie ended her article with a final tip which I found really appropriate.

…you need to believe you’ve got something good, work hard shamelessly promoting your own site, and get lucky sometimes.

I think she really hits the nail on the head.  While I make no claims my advice is worth more than hers, I felt it appropriate to end my discussion with a parting thought as well.

Be yourself.

I realize this sounds somewhat trite, but due to the fact that blogging is a lifestyle, it’s absolutely critical to write about something you care about — something for which you have passion.  Your blog is going to become a huge part of your life.  It’s much better to shape your blog around your lifestyle than the other way around.  I learned this the hard way when I first started my blog.  Essentially, I had narrowed my focus to just a small portion of my interests and was having a very hard time staying motivated to write.  So I didn’t.  Clearly, this was bad and I came to the conclusion that writing only about photography didn’t consistently inspire me. I learned very quickly that if you don’t write, it’s next to impossible to succeed.  Lesson learned – the hard way.  So, I’ll stand by my advice.  Pick a topic that inspires you.  Something that’s a part of you life already and you like to research and learn about.  Since I’ve expanded my blog a little to include blogging, SEO and technology (while still trying to maintain a focus), I’ve found it much easier to come up with articles and get excited to spend some time writing them.  It’s still a work in progress, but I do feel that things are moving in the right direction.

With this said, my focus over the holiday is to prepare for the New Year with a project I’m passionate about and yet have somehow had very little time to implement.  Check back!  Great things are happening here at Digital Notions!

If you have any advice or comments, feel free to leave a note below!  I’d love to hear from you!

The Big Picture - Photojournalism

According to the site:

The Big Picture is a photo blog for the Boston Globe/boston.com, entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday and Friday by Alan Taylor. Inspired by publications like Life Magazine (of old), National Geographic, and online experiences like MSNBC.com’s Picture Stories galleries and Brian Storm’s MediaStorm, The Big Picture is intended to highlight high-quality, amazing imagery – with a focus on current events, lesser-known stories and, well, just about anything that comes across the wire that looks really interesting.

I have to say. The three part “2009 in Photos” series is simply amazing. Then again, all of the entries are amazing!

So, this brought about an interesting question. Is it really possible to make a living as a photoblogger?

In a recent article by top blog consultant and the guy behind the site ProBlogger, Darren Rowse, it’s very possible to make $30,000 per year after a couple of years blogging. Now that sounds like a respectable living — or at least enough to allow many people to quit their full time jobs and focus on blogging 100% (which should boost earnings).

This article discusses how to make this work. Basically, he breaks it down into a more easily digestible figure of $82.19 per day and goes on to describe how one might go about earning this sum. Clearly, advertising is a large portion of income and something that can be successfully incorporated into a photo blog. However, since the focus of a good photo blog is the photos themselves, having too many colorful ads or banners could be distracting. Therefore, it is key to ensure that the advertising present is tasteful.

Also part of the $82.19 per day equation is affiliate marketing. For those unfamiliar with this concept, affiliate marketing is where an independent site attempts to market a product on another site. A commission is paid to the affiliate for every successful sale. In my opinion, this type of program is ideal for photo bloggers so long as they can find products that deal with photography. To top it off, most photography equipment is somewhat costly so percentage based commissions should yield the blogger some decent earnings.

Lastly, Daren Rowse suggests writing an e-book. While this may be an option for a photo-centric blog, I think that instead, attempting to sell prints and actual photos might be a better opportunity. Clearly, this is the golden ticket for a photo blogger. If they can stir up enough interest in their work, perhaps actual paying jobs and assignment work may result.

Overall, I really do feel that a photo blog can be a primary source of income for a photographer. Unfortunately, like any other business venture, it takes time and dedication. In the meantime, don’t quite you day job!

So, what’s so great? Check out this video demonstration for a quick overview!

Yes, this app has been around for a couple months, but the BIS support they added in todays release really makes it usable for the general public on the go (prior versions only supported BES – BlackBerry Enterprise Server, a corporate setup).

So if you have a BlackBerry, check it out by pointing your browser at http://blackberry.wordpress.org/install to give it a try. You will need to have XMLRPC installed and working properly for this app to work, but the latest versions of WordPress have this working out of the box (unless your theme doesn’t support it).

It works great for me, so let me know how it’s working (or not working) for you. And yes, this whole post was written on my BlackBerry Bold!