Tag: blogging

Adding Lightbox Style Image Zoom to a WordPress.com Site

Luke Johnson

Guess what? WordPress.com is different to WordPress.org. WordPress.org is self hosted and you can do things like install plugins. WordPress.com is hosted by, uh, WordPress and you can’t install plugins. But the com version is very easy to set up and use and everything kinda just works.

But have you ever tried to get a Lightbox style ‘click to zoom‘ effect in WordPress.com? Its not immediately obvious, so after figuring it out I wanted to share it.

Firstly, go to your admin dashboard and tick the “Display all your gallery pictures in a cool mosaic” option.

wp1.png

Then, go to a post that has a plain image and start Editing it:

wp2.png

Position your cursor above the old image, then click Add Media.
Important: select Multiple Images here and you will get a Continue button:

wp3.png

In the next screen, click Edit and then use the X to remove any superfluous images, so you can just have one image in the ‘gallery’ if you like:

wp4.png

Set your Layout to Tiled Mosaic and Link to Attachment Page:

wp5.png

After inserting this gallery, you will see that there is a new Gallery object above the old image:

wp6.png

Now, you can delete the old image:

wp7.png

And Update the post:

wp8.png

Now, when you go to the post and click on the image, it will ‘zoom‘ to the image like this:

wp9.png

Here is a live WordPress.com page with the Carousel ‘lightbox‘ enabled:
Rooms to Polycurves – dynamoworks

And here is a link to some documentation:
Galleries and Slideshows — Support — WordPress.com

How to Translate RSS Feeds with Google Scripts and then subscribe in your preferred RSS Reader

Luke Johnson

After Google Reader was decommissioned, I was happy to find that inoreader was an excellent replacement. But one feature was missing: free and easy RSS Feed Translation. Did you know you can deploy your own Google Script to translate RSS feeds, and then subscribe to them in your preferred RSS Reader (like inoreader?)

Here are the steps, from labnol.org:

  1. Open the Google Script and choose File -> Make a copy to create a personal copy of that feed translation script into your Google Drive.
  2. Replace the source language (line #4), the target language (line #7) and the RSS feed URL (line #10) with your own values. (some language codes here)
  3. Go to File -> Manage Versions and choose Save a new version. You may leave the description field blank.
  4. Go to Publish -> Deploy as Web App, choose “Anyone, even Anonymous” under “Who can access the app” and click the Deploy button.

Google Script will now offer you a link to the web app. That’s actually the new URL of the translated RSS feed which you can directly subscribe in Google Reader or any other news reader app like Reeder, Flipboard, etc.

If you wish to translate another RSS feed, or offer the same feed but in another language, just go back to step #1.

via
How to Translate RSS Feeds with Google Scripts

Three things I've learned from 6 years of blogging

Luke Johnson

Back in 2008, I thought it might be cool to start a Revit and BIM blog – but I had no idea how long my interest in the subject would endure, or how many readers would actually be interested in what I had to say. I have certainly learnt a lot over that time, and I hope I’ve been able to help a few of you as well.  Here are 3 things that blogging has taught me:

  1. Writing forces you to distill and crystallize your thoughts, and often prompts you to challenge the very things you are suggesting your readers accept
  2. Its more important to be consistent rather than prolific (people get bombarded with way too much information as it is!)
  3. Attribution is key – if you always share your source, others will reciprocate

And one final thought: Share your unique knowledge and workflows. Once people know the basics of a thing, they are often only interested in the un-ordinary (like formatting their Autodesk USB drives).

Over 80,000 views to this page (and counting)

But I’m not giving up yet! Thanks for your continued interest and engagement.

Some recent milestones for What Revit Wants:

And one final, sobering static:

  • over 550 draft posts waiting to be finished (!)

Should you become a Revit blogger?

Luke Johnson

“That’s the value of blogging and sharing your thoughts, your IP, your abilities—when you throw it out there, it can come back to you a hundredfold in the form of new clients, new opportunities and great personal brand exposure.”

via
What Blogging and Reddit Can Do for Engineers and A/E/C Firms | V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency

Heads-up:
https://twitter.com/AutodeskAEC/status/356258801583788032

Thanks to all of you loyal Readers…

Luke Johnson

What Revit Wants finally hit 1000 subscribers on 7 June!  Interestingly, I also made my 1000th post during the past week. Thanks for all of your comments too, I enjoy the interaction.  I hope you are enjoying the blog.

There are 75 posts in my Drafts folder – so there is plenty of Revit goodness still to come 🙂

And let me know if there is something interesting you would like me to post – message me on Twitter @lukeyjohnson .

Publicizing your Blog (Get Noticed!)

Luke Johnson

So, I’m thinking I would like to start getting some more followers.

I really appreciate you 3 guys (my current followers), really I do!

I found a good site at: http://www.contentrobot.com/ways-to-get-your-blog-noticed

I think the tip about making sure your blog gets pinged was great. Go to the following sites to make it happen:
http://www.technorati.com/
http://www.blo.gs/
http://www.weblogs.com/
http://www.pingomatic.com/