A half hearted half arsed Photo Blog

If you’re new to WordPress there are a few things you should always do to improve the user experience for your visitors so they keep coming back.

1) Always set your gallery to link to an attachment page instead of the file directly.
Linking to a file directly is the default option in WordPress but if you have a large number of images in your post this will cause frustration. Linking to an image means the user has to click back to the article and then click on the next image to see it. If the image links to an attachment page, the user will be provided with a back and forward option on the page saving them time when they’re viewing all your amazing photos.

2) Use easy to remember Permalinks for your blog posts
By default a WordPress URL looks like this: http://algorythm.co.uk/?p=123 which is nice and simple and if someone wants to come back to an article later they can type that in, right? No unfortunately, while some people may be good with remembering numbers most people are better at remembering words and the /?p= bit is only remembered by real geeks.

Set your WordPress blog up to use a custom structure that includes the title of your article, for modern browsers typing the article title in to address bar will bring up the article you’re looking for. You can set up Permalinks under Settings and Permalinks in your Dashboard.

3) Enable Facebook comments on your articles
This is a more complicated undertaking but will allow anybody with a Facebook account to leave a comment on your site. They don’t have to sign up for an account with you, they don’t have to prove they’re not a spam bot and their comment won’t be held back for checking if the spam checker flags it incorrectly. They can also ‘Like’ your post with the plugin I use and this will show up on their Facebook page.
To get started on installing the Facebook comment plugin for WordPress, search for Facebook comments under add new plugins, the one is use is created by Graham Swan. I assume that you’re using the latest version of WordPress, as you always should!

Any questions, please feel free to ask.