Tag Archives | Wordpress

Testing a Vimeo Embed

By on June 5, 2010 in Miscellaneous

As I mentioned recently, due to a change at my hosting provider, I ended up switching my self-hosted WordPress.org blog over to a WordPress.com blog. The transfer itself was very smooth and easy using the great built-in function in WordPress.com, which copied over all my posts and custom CSS (although it did not do as well with some images, but that’s a separate story).

However,  because I am quite used to the freedom of a self-hosted WordPress.org blog (I administer several), I was a bit surprised to learn about some of the limitations of WordPress.com. In particular, the ability to post JavaScript or embed Flash, etc..

Realistically, I completely understand why Automattic places such limitations on users: just like Steve Jobs and his stance on the stability of Flash, they want to control the environment and ensure that everything functions smoothly across a shared platform.

So, as I get used to my new home on WordPress.com, I still need to test out a few things: one of them is embedding Vimeo videos, so that’s today’s post. I don’t produce that many videos (I’m obviously much more focussed on DSLRs than video cameras), but I am still on the fence between YouTube and Vimeo: I like the interface of the latter, but, obviously, the former is much more widely used and, therefore, means more people are likely to see a video and there is better compatibility with other services (iPhone/smart phones being one: you have to sign up for Vimeo’s paying service in order to be able to switch on mobile versions of your videos).

Anyway, today’s test of a Vimeo embed – this is 15 minutes of cloud movement after a typhoon condensed into 2 minutes. It was shot last year with a Canon iVis HF21 HD video camera on a tripod (from my balcony):

(turn off the sound if you don’t like techno…) ;-)

Embedding the video is really easy – WordPress.com’s instructions are here. However, oddly enough, they neglect to mention that the URL/Video ID can be pasted into either the “visual” WYSIWYG post-writing window or the HTML post-writing window.

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WPtouch

By on March 8, 2010 in Miscellaneous

WPtouch™ image from the WPtouch™ Gallery

I’ve installed WPtouch™ on tokyololas’ blog, so that those of you visiting from an iPhone™ or Blackberry Storm™ or other smart phones can get a trimmed down view of things (saving both time and data charges). If you click on an individual post heading, or on “Read this post”, you will be taken to the actual post page and be able to see the images in the post, etc. If you prefer the full, regular view, you can toggle the “Mobile Theme” switch (at the bottom of the page) to “off”.

So far it seems like a great plugin from the BraveNewCode people, but if any of you regular readers who read this blog from your mobile dislike it, let me know and I’ll deactivate it!
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For WordPress users:
A little hint to anyone else installing this plugin and wanting to get thumbnails of post images to show in the post previews in the “Mobile Theme” version: under “Settings” in your WP Dashboard, click on the WPtouch link to customize your WPtouch™ settings and, in the first section (General Settings), change the “Post Listings Options” from “Calendar Icons” to “Post Thumbnails”. Then, make sure that for each blog post you create (or have created) that you enter a thumbnail image (which can be done on the individual post page, on the lower right, under “Post Thumbnail”). You can go back to earlier posts and add in the thumbnail by hitting “Set thumbnail” and then selecting one of the images from that Post’s Gallery, clicking “Show”, and then clicking “Use as thumbnail” and “Save all changes”.

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