Up until September 14th 2011 you can get 50% off ImageWell Version 3.

This is a great little image editor for the Mac, the perfect companion for anyone who works with a WordPress website. Use it to quickly resize (file size and dimensions) or crop images before uploading them to your site.

Apart from being the fastest and easiest to use image editor around, ImageWell has a brilliant (but non obvious) ‘Crop and Size to Fit’ feature that is extremely useful if want to create images of a specific height and width. This happens a lot when you are working with a website.

By default you can set a height (or width) in pixels, and ImageWell will set the width (or height) to retain the aspect ratio. That means you can quickly size an image to a certain width, which is useful for placing a button in a sidebar, for example.

But … if you set a height first, you can then click the lock icon to unlock the aspect ratio, and then set a specific width. You can then use the slider to control what part of the image gets cropped. This works very easily – once you know how. And it makes it very easy to get an image to an exact size.

(Xtralean document this very poorly – if you know what you are looking for you can find it here: Crop and Size to Fit)

If anyone from Xtralean is reading this post … please keep the Crop to Size and Fit feature in for V5!

Now, about the 50% off offer …

According to Xtralean …
“If you haven’t already purchased ImageWell, now is the time to get it. Version 5 – “The Best of ImageWell” – is coming soon and will be a free upgrade to registered users. V5 will be our best version yet! We’ve taken all of the features fromVersions 1 through 4, improved the interface, and leveraged all of the latest features of Snow Leopard and Lion. We’re also adding a few other gems as well as an improved built-in batch processor.”

Offer Details:
Sale Price 50% Off: $9.95 (Reg. Price is $19.95)
Coupon Code: IW50 Offer Expires: Sept.14, 2011
Try it out: Download Imagewell Trial
How to Buy: Use coupon code IW50 at the Xtralean Online Store

System Requirements:
——————————
OS X 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7 or later

Learn More about ImageWell
Feature Set
A Closer Look

50% off ImageWell

If you are a photographer and uploading some of your photographs to the web, you may be interested in how WordPress handles EXIF, IPTC and XMP metadata.

Metadata is information about an image, and can be included in JPEG image files.

EXIF metadata is information about the image recorded directly from the camera – for example, the exposure time and the date the photo was taken.

IPTC (and more recently XMP) metadata is information about the image from the photographer, for example, captions or copyright information.

If you are using a Mac you can see this metadata by selecting the file in the Finder and using Cmd I (Get Info). If you are using Windows you can use this excellent online tool (which can be used on images from your hard disk or from any website):
Online EXIF Viewer.

WordPress preserves EXIF information in full size images loaded to your website. It will also extract the Exif data to make it available for plugin developers (for example, if someone wanted a plugin to display Exif information in a certain way).

When WordPress uploads images, in addition to uploading the Full Size image it automatically creates several differently sized versions of the image:

• a Large version
• a Medium version
• a Thumbnail version

These different sized versions are used in different places including in your Gallery display – this displays the Thumbnails (in the scrolling list to the left) and the Large image (the single image display to the right), and clicking the Large image displays the Full Size.

The EXIF data is not carried across by WordPress from the Full Size image to the Thumbnail, Medium and Large versions of the image.

WordPress and EXIF, IPTC and XMP Metadata in images

I’ve been using the Safari4 beta since it first came out and it is brilliant. Mainly because it is just so damn fast.

What the problem looks like

Say goodbye to any unsaved work

Unfortunately the problem is within the TinyMCE editor used by WordPress. The problem has been fixed and will be available with the WordPress 2.8 release.

Until then, if you use the Visual Editor with WordPress you are probably best off using Firefox until WordPress 2.8 comes out. It can be hard to remember *not* to click any of the TinyMCE buttons.

Safari4 / WordPress pop up window bug

WordPress 2.7 has added some new features that help automate the upgrade process for the core WordPress files as well as plugins (which got a 1 click update previously).

These are handy features. We do WordPress upgrades for a lot of clients, and to avoid upgrade glitches here are some things that are useful to do well before applying the upgrade.

1. Review the changes and the impact they will have

Go through the release notes for the upgrade or patch and see what is changing. What will be the impact on Dashboard users and site visitors? Do you need to let anyone know before things change?

2. Look for dependencies

Does anything else depend on something that is changing? If WordPress is removing a hook that is used by your theme or a plugin, it helps to identify this upfront so you can prepare for it.

3. Upgrade themes and plugins to take advantage of new features

Most WordPress upgrades introduce new features, and many of these require changes to themes and plugins to take advantage of. For example, here is the list of changes recommended to upgrade to WordPress 2.7. You need to be particularly careful if you have customised theme files.

4. Test

Even the best laid plans can go astray, so do the upgrade on a test version of your website and check the upgrade goes smoothly. Check your server logs to make sure you don’t have any new errors appearing, and if you have a high volume website, you may want to run performance tests that compare before/after results.

5. Now you can upgrade!

Running your upgrades after you have assessed impacts, checked dependencies, made required code changes and completed testing should reduce the chance of having an unexpected glitch after your update.

You should have a full backup of your site before you upgrade, and an understanding of how to restore from that backup if you need to.

Avoiding glitches when upgrading WordPress

While a copyright statement in the footer of your website is not strictly required to have copyright protection, it can stop someone claiming in their defence that they didn’t know.

When showing a copyright statement, you should show the Copyright symbol followed by the first date of publication (to the current date, if your site is being updated) and the name of the copyright holder.

Copyright statement with current year.

James has added support for a [currentyear] shortcode to make it easy to automate this.

To get this copyright statement (where the current year is automatically set to the current year):
© 2007-2009 OM4. All rights reserved.

you include in the Footer Text section of your Site Design:
© 2007-[currentyear] OM4. All rights reserved.

If you aren’t using an OM4 website and want to do this in your footer, you can see Lisa Sabin’s article on how to update your WordPress template file.

Showing the current year in your Footer – a new shortcode

When business owners head out to buy a website, they often don’t understand what is important and what is not.

That isn’t surprising – there is no one size fits all approach to running a business online, and there are so many different tools and techniques it can be overwhelming.

Mike Moran, in his post The Most Important Part of a Website points out that the most important feature is being able to update it yourself.

Early generation websites relied on coding the website in HTML and then uploading the website files to the web server (and this technique – while dwindling in popularity – is still used today in varying forms).

Content management systems store the information on the web server. When content management systems were first released, they were often expensive and you paid a special license fee for them.This is no longer the case.

Open source content management systems are available – free of charge – that let you update your own website in a user friendly way. We use WordPress, but you can also get a website based on Drupal, Joomla or many other open source software platforms that won’t come with a hefty licence fee.

If you can’t update your website yourself you are at a big disadvantage.

The Most Important Part of Your Website

A lot of businesses want their own website, but have put it off because they don’t know how.

At OM4 we have put together a system that allows you to create your own website quickly and easily. Importantly, when you have created your site you can:

• update your own content – add new pages, add blog posts, change information any time you want
• update your own design – either follow our instructions to do this yourself, or you can use any graphic designer to do a custom design for you
• use your own domain name – just register with any domain name registrar and we’ll help you with the rest
• add images, YouTube videos, audio, links to Google Maps
• add contact forms to allow visitors to contact you with enquiries
• add your own BuyNow, Add To Cart and Donate buttons to accept payments direct to your PayPal account
• full integration with Google Apps so you can have free email at your domain

We’ll send you regular emails giving you instructions on how to use your site. While we have lots of information that you can read all at once (if you are in a hurry), most of our clients find it easiest to get instructions bit by bit.

You’ll be learning to maintain your website using the industry leading WordPress platform. Every time WordPress issues a patch or an upgrade, we apply it for you. You don’t need to use FTP or anything more complex than the WordPress dashboard, which is used by millions worldwide.

You’ll have access to a very useful set of WordPress plugins for you to use, and keep these up to date as well. While anyone can download and use WordPress, in practice you may find upgrading the software can be a bit tricky. As can selecting the right mix of plugins to support a business website. With OM4, this is all taken care of for you.

And what does it cost? [updated]$45 AUD/mth (hosted in Australia) or $35 USD/mth (hosted in US)

WordPress plugins are really useful for all sorts of business purposes. We support plugins that:

• let people subscribe to your blog posts using RSS or email
• enter client testimonials and have a randomly selected one display on every page
• maintain a collection of quotes and display a random one each page
• integrate an email autoresponder such as Aweber or iContact so visitors can sign up to your email list direct from your sidebar
• integrate your website with Google Analytics so you can see exactly how many visitors are coming to your website, which keywords they are using to find you from search engines, which websites are referring visitors to you, and which pages they are reading

If you have any questions, just log on to our OM4 forums and ask a question – no charge for forum answers.

See you on board!

How to make your own website