Stats Wrangling III: Top Posts and Pages

Michelle Weber's avatarWordPress.com News

We did the 36,000-foot, airplane-over-the-Grand-Canyon view of your stats page, and last month, we walked up to the lip of the Canyon and peered down at the days, weeks, and months views. Today — if I may labor the metaphor — we’ll hop on the stats donkey and ride down to take a closer look at Top Posts and Pages.

(We’re done with the Grand Canyon thing, promise.)

Taking a look at your Top Posts and Pages gives you a quick, clear idea of what’s most popular. You can use this valuable data to inform future posts, but also to make sure your perennially popular content is polished and primed to turn a casual visitor into a die-hard reader.

Where you’ll find ’em

Log in to WordPress.com, and head to the stats tab in your Reader. Just under the main graph tracking your daily views and visitors…

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By edreamconsulting Posted in Wordpress

Your Statistics: More Than Just an Ego Boost

Stats Wrangling II: Days, Weeks, and Months

Krista Stevens's avatarWordPress.com News

If you’re like us — and I think you are — you can’t help but check your blog’s stats a few times each day to see how many someones have caught your latest composition, be it a post, poem, video, collage, or even a song. Back in June, Michael Pick gave us an excellent primer on WordPress.com stats. In part two, we’re going to take a slightly longer view to see what your stats can tell you as the days, weeks, and months roll by, and give you some ideas to help you attract more traffic.

Where to go, what to look for

We’re going to be working in the Stats tab of your Reader.

The default view is a look at the past 30 days of views and visitors to your site. A visitor is a unique user or browser/device that views one or more posts or…

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By edreamconsulting Posted in Wordpress

Community Pool

Want some blogging advice? Looking for constructive non-spam help from the Word Press community? Check out the Community Pool

Digital storytelling: when art and science connect emotions

Digital storytelling: the drivers, success factors and where the true magic happens.

Source: Digital storytelling: when art and science connect emotions

Using the WordPress Interface

Welcome to WordPress. No doubt you are staring at this interface a lot already.

We went over a lot of things in class, but I want to make sure that you’re totally comfortable with it, so here is a helpful handout created by our JMC305 professors.

WordPress Interface handout

What a difference a header makes!

Michelle Weber's avatarWordPress.com News

Our websites are our online homes. It makes sense that we want to give them personality and warmth, just like we do with our physical homes.

One of the simplest updates with the biggest impact is a custom header, a completely free feature that’s available to the majority of themes on WordPress.com. A header instantly sets your blog apart — and with free online photo and graphic editing tools, a custom look is accessible to any blogger, no graphic design experience needed.

Take a look at the world of possibilities with these ten blogs:

Text, taken up a notch

A custom header doesn’t require a beautiful photo or exquisite drawing skills. Fonts have personality; just ask the bloggers and writers behind Don’t think just eat, Ellie and Ace, andThe Lovecraft eZineElegant, quirky, eerie — fonts can communicate all that, and more.

dont think just eat

ellie and ace head

lovecraft

(Bonus points to The Lovecraft eZine

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Installing Lightroom Presets

Adobe Lightroom is a very powerful tool, especially when combined with high quality presets.

Downloading and installing Lightroom presets is easy – this quick and handy guide will show you how.

Step 1: Purchase and/or Download Lightroom Presets

The very first step is to download some Lightroom presets. Good news for you, we offer a free sample pack of 20 presets to our newsletter subscribers. Simply enter your email on this page and you’ll receive your sample presets within minutes. Then, simply download the pack to a location on your computer that is easily accessible (like on your desktop).

Most Lightroom preset packs come bundled in a ZIP file. Simply unzip the file and you will then have a folder that contains all the Lightroom presets.

Step 2: Locate the “Develop” Folder

Now that you have a folder with the presets on your computer, open up Lightroom. Then, find the preferences menu item and open up the Preferences panel.

How to install Lightroom PresetsAt the top of this window, you should see a few tabs. Click the “Presets tab“.

Lightroom Presets TabThen, click on “Show Lightroom Presets Folder“. This will open up your Lightroom Presets folder, inside it you will find a folder named “Develop Presets“. This is where you will install your Lightroom Presets, like the ones you purchased or downloaded from the Contrastly Store.

Lightroom Develop FolderOpen this folder. Inside of it you will find a few existing presets as well as any other presets you have installed already.

Now, simply move the presets you have downloaded (the ones from Step 1, they should be on your desktop or in your Downloads folder) into the Develop Presets folder.

Then simply quit Lightroom and re-open it. You will then see all your new Lightroom presets under the Develop module, in the Presets panel on the left.

Lightroom Develop ModuleEnjoy!

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24 Sound Basics That Will Help You Lay a Sturdy Foundation

24 Sound Basics That Will Help You Lay a Sturdy Foundation.

Acquiring Images for Photoshop — JPEG vs. Raw [UP9]

The alphabet soup of acronyms and codecs can often be as confusing as the work itself. As usual Richard Harrington does a great job of demonstrating and explaining the benefits and pitfalls of acquiring JPEG vs RAW images.

Richard Harrington's avatarPhotofocus (old site)

Understanding Photoshop is a biweekly column that takes an in-depth look at how digital photographs are built and manipulated.  It is a college-level course in plain English for free at Photofocus.  To learn more see this article.

Don’t Skip Column 8

Shooting JPEG vs. Raw

Fig 03_04 MemoryWhen digital cameras became commercially available, the memory cards used to store pictures were very expensive. Many photographers couldn’t afford multiple or high-capacity cards, so they wanted more images to fit on a single, smaller card. Many users also emailed their pictures to friends and family. Small file sizes enabled consumers who lacked an understanding of digital imaging to attach photos to emails with minimum technical headaches. With these two scenarios in mind, manufacturers turned to an Internet-friendly format, JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group). It was a proven technology and one that was familiar to many users.

What is a JPEG File?

The JPEG format…

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