The answer to your lightbox gallery problems is here.

Last night, I was pressed for time developing a WordPress site for my friend who happens to be an upcoming hip hop artist out of Atlanta, Georgia. Before we get started you can check out the new gallery to see how it functions. (Mr. Floyd County Photo Gallery) The launch is on October 23rd and everything was ready to drop on iTunes. The website had been neglected all summer with both of us being busy and we had to throw everything together quickly. After all, what artist doesn’t have a website up and running at all times if you are anywhere near the mainstream? (hrrm…http://www.kidcudi.com…seriously. I’m getting big timed hardcore on Twitter.) Anyway, I ran into some major issues when implementing a lightbox gallery in the WordPress.

If you haven’t noticed yet I use the Flexible Lightbox plugin on my Portfolio page to showcase my designs to potential clients. That plugin has always been quite a pain in the ass to me. It never works when I try to simply import a gallery all at once instead of doing all of the images individually. The CSS code has to be tweaked every single time I go in to edit. I will be taking my own advice soon and upgrading to the Lightbox Plus WordPress plugin by 23Systems.net.

I tried just about every single lightbox plugin possible including Lightbox 2, Shadowbox, and Flexible Lightbox. They just would not work with my new theme design. The images in the gallery just kept popping the images into a new window tab which is extremely boring. After getting frustrated I performed a search in google and hit this page.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lightbox-plus/faq/

After reading through the frequently asked questions and troubleshooting page for the Lightbox Plus plugin I was immediately convinced that there was some good development behind the plugin so I installed it. After installing the plugin I was immediately impress by the array of options available within the admin panel. The screenshot below does not do justice.

One of the most impressive options within Lightbox Plus is the style setting. Many bloggers are not very knowledgeable  in CSS customization and the plugin clearly takes care of it with so many choices already available. A few of other settings available Resize Speed, Transition Type, Overlay Opacity, Slideshow, Previous/Next Labels, and much more. You can check the plugin out at the 23Systems.net home page or I’ve provided a direct link to the WordPress.org plugin below for quick download. Enjoy creating your lightbox gallery with efficiency and ease!

I was digging around on Twitter and found a link to this video about the Social Media Revolution. I’m not sure how accurate the statistics are but they seem reasonable to me.

1. Google Sitemap Generator

The Google Sitemap Generator is a plugin that will generate a fresh XML sitemap every time you update your wordpress content.

What is a Sitemap?

Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover. In its simplest terms, a XML Sitemap—usually called Sitemap, with a capital S—is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google’s normal crawling process.

2. All in One SEO Pack

The All in One SEO Pack is an essential WordPress search engine optimization plugin that will help setup your blog so that search engines can drive traffic to your website based on the unique content of each page or post. Note: You will need to input the meta information on each page. If you are not quite sure how to configure the plugin you can check out this tutorial by Michael Pick on Tubetorial.com

3. Possibly Related Recent Posts

The Possibly Related Recent Posts plugin is a great tool for hooking your readers into articles similar to what they are already reading. I have my possibly related links appear directly under articles so when they will be more likely to click them. The link list is automatically generated on the fly by recency and the categories the current post is in. Does not use tags.

4. Contact Forms

The CForms II plugin makes it easy to create contact forms for your blog. The plugin has excellent styling capabilities so that you can create a form that matches your blog’s design.

Note: This is a very nice plugin with a lot of customization options, however, I did have issues at one point with the ajax compatibility which made the forms malfunction. Not sure if it was perhaps a bug or what. I kept getting the “One moment please…” message. The problem was resolved by disabling ajax on each individual form’s settings. Quick fix. I will continue to use CForms II unless I can find something better. At that point I will edit this post.

5. Disqus Comments

Many bloggers will use comment systems that function only within their own blog site. I’m not opposed to it but I like the Disqus Commenting system because of the versatility is provides for members of the Disqus community. Rather than forcing readers to sign up for a brand new account at every blog, Disqus allows its users to maintain one account which can be used to comment on any blog that uses Disqus. Disqus also informs commentors when someone replies to a thread they are partipating on unlike the default commenting system. You would normally require a plugin like Subscribe to Comments.

Thanks for reading and I do realize that there are many more plugins which are useful for WordPress bloggers. I couldn’t possibly name them all but I think these will cover most everyone who wants to start a blog with a minimal amount of plugins.

So, you’ve finally decided to launch your very own design blog? If you aren’t experienced in social bookmarking and actively following design news you may find yourself struggling. The most important thing I’ve learned is to post design related material which is informative and interesting to the people visiting your blog. If you cannot generate a few hundred unique visitors after submiting an article or two to just a few of these sites then I would suggest your change your game plan. The key is to provide timeless resources to your viewers. My first week I was only generating around 10 unique visitors a day to my design blog. After submiting to sites like stumble, digg, linkdin (joined an AIGA network), and reddit I noticed I was getting hundreds every hour.

Here are some of the social bookmarking, networking, and article submission sites which I utilized daily to promote my new design related posts on a daily basis:

1. Stumbleupon – If You use FireFox, install StumbleUpon add-on to easily send Your links to friends.
2. DesignFloat – A design focused site like dig.
3. DesignBump
4. Linkedin - This site is great because its focused on your connections. Join a design group and share away.
5. Reddit -This site works great for me. I tend to get hundreds of unique hits after one article submission.
6. DesignM.ag -A respectable site to submit articles to with a good return.
7. Digg-Be active and this can be great source of traffic.
8. Twitter – If you have a following you can keep your fan base up to date and get a good return.
9. Graphic-Design-Links
10. Dzone

Other Notable Promotional Sites to try out if you have the time:

• Noupe
• ZaBox
• CrazyLeafDesign
• BrushKing
• Abduzeedo - You can add user link news there, but in order to do that, You must register there.
• CSSDrive
• FuelYourCreativity
• TheCreativityWall
• MyInkBlog
• KnowTeBook
• Mixx
• CSSLeak
• PSDFan
• DevSnippets
• NetTuts
• Paintbits
• BoogiesBC
• CSSGlobe
• Propeller
• Devmarks
• DesignMoo - You can add user link news there, but in order to do that, You must register there.
• Woork
• ShareBrain
• DesignShard
• Kailoon
• Design-Related
• InstantShift
• Hongkiat
• Speckyboy
• Design-Newz
• TripWire Magazine
• Naldzgraphics
• Colorburned
• ScripyAndStyle -Takes a few days for approval. They are very selective.

If you are thinking about blogging you don’t want to overlook this video. I know it’s in depth but it covers just about everything you are thinking at the time you make that first article post. Get quality traffic on your blog site.

Tim Ferriss of 4 Hour Work Week talking about his blog experiences.

Learn the tricks of the trade from an experienced blogger. Tim Ferriss (writer at www.fourhourworkweek.com) gives a great presentation on blogging traffic in 2009 during an opening keynote at the last  San Francisco WordCamp, titled “How to Blog without Killing Yourself”. I know its long but if you have time and are serious about increasing your blog quality as well traffic its a great shortcut to avoid your own pitfalls while learning the blog game.

In the above video presention, the following topics are covered…

Enjoy the tips!