Best Photo Hosting Site for WordPress?
It would be great if you could just upload a picture to your blog and have it appear automatically. Unfortunately, that’s not how things work. You have to go through a quick guide to know how to set up your blog with a nice-looking photo as the main or only image on your homepage.
Steps to Take Before You Start Blogging
If you’re considering starting a blog, the very first thing you should do is to pick a good niche. This will determine the general theme of your blog. When picking a niche, it’s important to pick one that you’re passionate about. Blogging about things you’re passionate about makes it easier to write content that you find interesting. It also makes it easier to connect with your audience and provide them with useful information.
Next, you should pick a good domain name for your blog. The best domain name extensions are.com,.net, and.org for blogs that are related to a niche you’ve chosen. For example, if your blog is about lifestyle and you want to use a.net domain, make sure that you register the domain name “lifestyle.net”. Blogger provides you with a free domain name that you can use if you’ve chosen to use their blogging platform. You can find more information about choosing a domain name at
How to Choose a Suitable Domain Name
Having a catchy and relevant title for your blog is important. However, coming up with a unique and catchy blog title that doesn’t violate any copyrights can be challenging. One of the best tactics I use to find a suitable blog title is to enter your proposed title in the Google search bar, and see what comes up. Usually, the first couple of results are the best candidates for your blog. For example, if I search for “best organic apple pie recipe”, the first result that comes up is
The Organic Applesmith
The great thing about having a domain name is that you can use it to set up a professional-looking blog in no time. To get started, you simply need to visit
http://wordpress.com
If you’ve never used WordPress before, you’ll be greeted by a dashboard that looks like this:
When you first log in, you’ll see this:
As you can see, WordPress offers you several options regarding the appearance of your blog. You have full control over the design of your blog, and can easily change the theme to suit your requirements. This is also where you can add a photo to the header and footer of your blog. If you choose to use a free photo hosting service, such as
Yahoo!’s Image Hosting
or
Flickr
you’ll need to upload the photo to your WordPress blog. Make sure that the photo you upload is the right format for the blog. If you don’t have a graphic designer, you can use free online tools to easily convert JPEGs, GIFs, and TIFFs to a format suitable for web use.
How to Add Photos to Your WordPress Blog
After you’ve picked a suitable domain name and launched your blog with WordPress, it’s time to add content to it. At this point, you’ll need to decide whether or not to use a free photo hosting service to host your photos. If you decide to use a free hosting service, you’ll need to go through the process of registering with them which can be complicated. But once you’ve done that, all you need to do is add your photos to your blog.
To add a photo to your WordPress blog, simply click on the Add New button on the toolbar and choose either a Category or Post to host your photo in. Either one of these will work just fine. When adding a photo to a post, make sure that you add text to go along with it. This adds structure to your blog and makes it more interesting for your readers. Keep adding new content to your blog and eventually you’ll have a healthy archive of material to pull from.
Pro-Tip: Remember To Optimize Your Photos
When it comes to getting visitors to your blog, the first thing you should do is get rid of the annoying ads that slow down the loading time of your site. To do this, you can use a plugin such as
AdBlocker
or
Ghostery
These plugins work in tandem to provide you with a faster and more secure browsing experience. What this means for you as a blogger is that you can add more photos to your blog, without having to worry about slowing down your site. The end result is a happier reader and a more engaged audience.
Final Takeaway
After going through the steps to create a WordPress blog, you’ll have a ready-made platform for content. As long as you keep adding new material, you’ll have a steady stream of content to draw from. While it would be great to be able to post a picture and have it appear automatically, the fact remains that you have to do a lot of the work yourself. But the effort is totally worth it in the end.