Adding Photos & Giving Credit

photo by doug88888

In class this week, we reviewed Copyright and talked about what it means to give someone credit for their work. For bloggers, “giving credit” usually means linking:

For a short quote, link the blogger’s name back to his main blog page, and then also give the name of the article you are quoting, and link that back to the article itself. (See example.)

For longer quotations, be generous with the links, as described above. But also take the time to explain what you liked or didn’t like about the article, what you agreed with, and what you would do differently. (See example.)

The best way to find dramatic photos that are safe to post on your blog is to use the Flickr Creative Commons (Attribution) Search.

Creative Commons Attribution = You may change the image however you like (for instance, by cropping or adding text), but you must tell (and link to) the person who created the original.

I had originally planned to talk about adding videos, too, but we ran out of time. We did talk about how to get from the Dashboard to WordPress.com Support, and they have easy-to-follow instructions for embedding YouTube Videos in a blog post.

How To Add a Link

If you want to see screenshots, check the WordPress.com Support > Links page.

1. Open the page you want to link to.
2. Copy the URL (the Internet address, which starts with “http://”) from the box at the top of your browser.
3. On your Edit Post page, type in the blogger’s name, the name of his blog, or the name of the article you are linking to — whatever words you want to make into a link.
4. Highlight the words you just typed.
5. Click the Link button. If you are using the Visual Editor, this button has a picture of a chain.
6. Paste the URL that you copied (Step 2) into the pop-up box. If your box asks for Target, Title, or Class, ignore those.
7. Click Insert or OK, and the link is done.
8. Click Save Draft, then click Preview. Click on the link to check that it is working properly, that it takes your reader to the page you intended.

For those of you who are writing a series: If you include “To be continued…” at the end of each installment, then whenever you finish the next post in the series, you can go back and turn your “To be continued…” into a link to that next post. This makes it easy for an interested reader to keep going through your whole story. You may want to begin each new post with a link to the beginning of the series, so new readers can catch up. See Kitten’s Winter wonderland series, for example.

How To Put Photos on Your Blog

1. Find a cool photo at Flickr.
2. Upload the photo.
   Note: At Flickr, clicking the little magnifying glass on the photo page click the word Actions above the picture, and then click View all sizes. That will take you to the All Sizes page, where you can find direct links for downloading whichever size you wish (usually Small or Medium). This download link goes in the Image URL blank when you Upload From URL.
3. Make the Title match the name the photographer gave the picture.
4. Make the Caption give the photographer’s screen name: “Photo by _____.” Or, if you don’t want to use a caption, then make sure your blog post contains a credit line for each picture.
5. Use the Flickr photo page as the Link URL, so that clicking on the photo will take your readers to the original version and let them see other things the photographer has done.
6. Click Save Draft, then click Preview. Make sure your caption is showing properly and that clicking the photo takes your reader to the Flickr page.

Warning: Occasionally, photographers will remove their photos from Flickr for one reason or another. If you used the Upload From URL option, the photo will also disappear from your blog. If you want to make sure the photo stays where you put it, your safest bet is to download it from Flickr to your own computer and then Upload From Computer to store a copy in your WordPress.com account. Even so, be sure to paste the Flickr photo page address into the Link URL box!

Homework

• Write a post that includes a quotation from another blogger or that includes a Creative Commons Attribution photo that you like. Be sure to give credit!
• Or upload a photo of your own and post it.
• Write at least one comment on a classmate’s blog.