Yet most of us are missing a trick. The standard wordpress themes are optimised to be read on the web. We provide RSS feeds so that people can read on the go, but often those feeds struggle to cope with image sizes or layout issues. So for a large percentage of our audience all that hard work around the customer experience is being squandered.

As people do more and expect more on their smartphones, so we need to find a way to provide a great customer experience on these devices.

Step forward WPtouch

WPTouch is a free plugin for wordpress that automatically transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application-style theme, complete with ajax loading articles and effects, when viewed from an iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Opera Mini, Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm mobile devices.

The admin panel allows you to customize many aspects of its appearance, and deliver a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of your site to your iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Opera Mini mobile, Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm visitors without modifying a single bit of code (or affecting) your regular desktop theme.

Critically, it also includes the ability for your visitors to easily switch between the *WPtouch* view and your site’s regular theme – putting control of the customer experience back in the hands of the user.

Quite simply it is awesome. Doubly so when you consider it is free and triply so when you find out just how easy it is to configure.

You can download the plug-in from the WordPress Codex here.

This post tells you how to to increase the number of images that are in the slideshow.

The good news is it is pretty simple. It does require  you to edit some code, but providing that you are careful and follow what I have done below, you can do this without any technical knowledge whatsoever. Before you start, just back-up a copy of your modularity theme, which you can find under your wordpress directory, eg ../wordpress/wp-content/themes/.

Okay, there are two php files that you will need to change, and we are going to make the changes using the built-in text editor within wordpress. From your wordpress dashboard, go to “Appearance” and select the “Editor” option. This will open up a screen with a box containing the file “customs.css” open and ready for editing. On the right there will be a list of all the files that are contained in the modularity theme. Go over to that list and double click on slideshow.php.

The page  will refresh and the text box will now contain the the php code that makes up  the slideshow.php file. Scroll down towards the bottom until you find the following Les the [code] tag which I have put in there so that is displays correctly and you can cut and paste it easily) :

[code]<li><img src="<?php if ( get_option('gpp_slideshow_image_5') <> "" ) { echo get_option('gpp_slideshow_image_5'); } else { bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/slideshow/image5.jpg<?php } ?>" alt="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>" /></li>[code]

This is the code that displays your images into the slideshow - in this case in the 5th slot. The first thing we need to do is create some more slots in the slideshow to display how ever many more images you want to show. Effectively you need to copy this block  of code that refers to image number 5 and replicate it by the number images you want to add, ensuring that you change the numbers each time. Or you can copy and paste the code I have posted below to add another 5 images.

Here is the code for another 5 image (remember to strip out the two {code} tags):

[code]<li><img src="<?php if ( get_option('gpp_slideshow_image_6') <> "" ) { echo get_option('gpp_slideshow_image_6'); } else { bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/slideshow/image6.jpg<?php } ?>" alt="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>" /></li> <li><img src="<?php if ( get_option('gpp_slideshow_image_7') <> "" ) { echo get_option('gpp_slideshow_image_7'); } else { bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/slideshow/image7.jpg<?php } ?>" alt="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>" /></li> <li><img src="<?php if ( get_option('gpp_slideshow_image_8') <> "" ) { echo get_option('gpp_slideshow_image_8'); } else { bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/slideshow/image8.jpg<?php } ?>" alt="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>" /></li> <li><img src="<?php if ( get_option('gpp_slideshow_image_9') <> "" ) { echo get_option('gpp_slideshow_image_9'); } else { bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/slideshow/image9.jpg<?php } ?>" alt="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>" /></li> <li><img src="<?php if ( get_option('gpp_slideshow_image_10') <> "" ) { echo get_option('gpp_slideshow_image_10'); } else { bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/slideshow/image10.jpg<?php } ?>" alt="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>" /></li>[code]

Now click on the "Update" button underneath the box. Okay part one done and you are about half way through!

Now we need to update the Homepage slideshow section of the modularity interface, to add the ability for us to upload the images and assign them to each of the slots that you have just created. In the editor, go back to the right hand side of the page and now open up theme_options.php

Scroll down until you find:

$options[] = array( "name" => "Slideshow image 5",
"desc" => "Upload your fifth slideshow. Images should be sized at 950 pixels wide max, jpg only, compressed to 6, in sRGB mode.",
"id" => $shortname."_slideshow_image_5",
"std" => "",
"type" => "upload");

Between the end of that code and the next block (that begins:
$options[] = array( "name" => "Slideshow height",
"desc" => "Enter the height, in pixels, that you want your slideshow to be.")

Insert the following:

[code]$options[] = array( "name" => "Slideshow image 6",
"desc" => "Upload your sixth slideshow. Images should be sized at 950 pixels wide max, jpg only, compressed to 6, in sRGB mode.",
"id" => $shortname."_slideshow_image_6",
"std" => "",
"type" => "upload");

$options[] = array( "name" => "Slideshow image 7",
"desc" => "Upload your seventh slideshow. Images should be sized at 950 pixels wide max, jpg only, compressed to 6, in sRGB mode.",
"id" => $shortname."_slideshow_image_7",
"std" => "",
"type" => "upload");

$options[] = array( "name" => "Slideshow image 8",
"desc" => "Upload your eighth slideshow. Images should be sized at 950 pixels wide max, jpg only, compressed to 6, in sRGB mode.",
"id" => $shortname."_slideshow_image_8",
"std" => "",
"type" => "upload");

$options[] = array( "name" => "Slideshow image 9",
"desc" => "Upload your ninth slideshow. Images should be sized at 950 pixels wide max, jpg only, compressed to 6, in sRGB mode.",
"id" => $shortname."_slideshow_image_9",
"std" => "",
"type" => "upload");

$options[] = array( "name" => "Slideshow image 10",
"desc" => "Upload your tenth slideshow. Images should be sized at 950 pixels wide max, jpg only, compressed to 6, in sRGB mode.",
"id" => $shortname."_slideshow_image_10",
"std" => "",
"type" => "upload");[code]

Now press the "Update" button below the text box to save and update the changes to the theme_options.php file.

That's it - all done!  To check everything is ok, go back to the modularity section, open up the Homepage slideshow section, and you will now find that you can upload another 5 images

Good luck

Historically I believed that a combination of the lack of zoom and low number of megapixels consigned the iPhone to a snap camera – and not a very useful one at that, although I was puzzled to see some of the great photographers out there creating awesome iPhone images and assumed that these had been ported into Lightroom or Photoshop to “rescue” them. I wanted an app that allowed me to do everything directly on the iPhone.

Then Loren told me about Camera Zoom and Perfectly Clear. The former does what it says. It allows you to zoom the iPhone camera and then take an image. This was great and solved some of my problems, but it was the latter app that blew me away.

Perfectly Clear provides some basic post-processing capabilities. Snap the picture (using the original, iPhone camera app or Camera zoom ) and then open Perfectly Clear (you can take a picture from within Perfectly Clear but there is no zoom capability). The screen then gives you a “Before” and “After” side by side view. The results are spectacular. You can customize all the settings, but I found the standard settings good enough. It is effectively a mini version of Lightroom for the iPhone. Awesome.

Then upload you image directly using your Facebook, WordPress or Flickr app.

Embedding Lightroom gallery

Those of you following this blog from the start will know that I had struggled initially to get multiple Lightroom albums and galleries to display correctly across multiple browsers.

If you go down the route of creating your own HTML page for your portfolio, and then linking to this from your WordPress blog, then you need to be incredibly careful about your HTML tags and your validation, as Firefox in particular will not display correctly if you have any errors there at all.

The good news is that there is an incredibly easy solution for users of WordPress, Adobe Lightroom and SlideShow Pro wishing to either create a post with a gallery/album in it, or a separate page. For example I created a page called Portfolio and then linked to this page from the menu, thereby embedding my portfolio in my blog’s look and feel. Simply install the free plug-in from Kimili, used to embed Flash objects.

1. Install the Plug-In
The first thing you need to do is to install the Kimili WordPress plug-in, which you can do simply by going to the “Add New” option in your Plugins panel within WordPress. Just search for Kimili Flash Embed plug-in. Don’t worry about the “might not work with WordPress2.8″ message. It seems to work just fine.

2. Create The Slideshow
In Lightroom, create the slideshow with which ever settings and dimensions you want, but if you are using the “wet floor”, when you write down the dimensions (you’ll need it later) then add a little bit. But don’t worry –  making a change later takes just a second, so you can tweak and adjust before you publish.

3. Upload the Slideshow
Upload the slideshow somewhere on your site. I prefer to keep all of my albums in a directory called /portfolio.

• Export your slideshow form Lightroom to a local folder on your MAC/PC. I called mine portfolio
• Upload with an FTP  or Dreamweaver this folder to your website. Its important that the loader.swf, js/ directory and all the files EXCEPT index.html get uploaded. So I now have a folder on my website called http://www.marcoryanphotography.com/portfolio.
• You can preview your gallery at this stage (although of course it is not embedded in the blog yet). Check mine out at http://www.marcoryanphotography.com/portfolio/loader.swf

4. Create The Post or the Page With The Slideshow

• Create the post or a new page as normal
• Switch to the Code editor (the HTML tab). Copy and Paste the following lines into your  page or post, remembering to modify the following lines with your website details and the folder where you uploaded your gallery AND being sure to take out the word REMOVE – I had to put that in otherwise WordPress would have tried to embed a gallery right into this post! Make sure that the text that begins kml_flashembed is right up against the square bracket, ie no spaces
• : [REMOVEkml_flashembed movie='/portfolio/loader.swf' height='500' width='500' base='.' allowfullscreen='true' wmode='transparent'/]
• You can use an absolute or a relative URL. On my website I chose an absolute URL, although above I have shown a relative URL.

That’s it. You can tweak the settings to fit a post (500 by 500 as above is good) or a full page wide (like my own portfolio). Now ensure you use Preview to check your post or page.