Wordpress Vs Pixelpost...The good, the bad, the plugins

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chrisuk

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Edit My Images
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Well I've been a big fan of Wordpress for some time now. As a blogging and general site platform, it's fantastic and I use it whenever I can.

However, not so impressed so far from a photography site perspective. The nicer themes I have found, have been nice, but have had niggles like no widget support or poor navigation coding.

While I will continue fiddling with wordpress, I have since also discovered Pixelpost, and this seems to be more suited to a photo site than what I have seen with Wordpress so far.

So really I was just after peoples opinions on each platform. Straight away I can see that the Content Management side of things with pixelpost is nowhere near as good, but there does seem to be addons for that.

Anyway, appreciate any thoughts :)
 
I am fairly new to blogging CMS stuff, so had to choose between Pixelpost and wordpress and few months back. I went with Pixelpost and I am not overly impressed. The community isnt as big for support etc but there so seem to be a fair few plugins etc. I half wish I had gone for the tried and tested Wordpress, but think I am going to stick with Pixelpost and learn how to use it better. As you say it is far more photo friendly and there are some great themes out there for it. A few niggles I had was trying to get tags and catagories to display correctly and for some reason the comments system seems to have gone slightly screwy on mine without me changing anything, stuff like that which bugs me, but they are only small things and are fixable if you have the time to search out and work on the fixes.
 
I've just been setting up my photo site using Pixelpost...

www.diffracture.co.uk

You can get it do what you want, but you'll need to be happy tinkering in PHP/HTML/CSS to tweak it 'just so'. The code is pretty crap as well to be honest, not the nicest to play with. The stylesheets are horrible. Oh and the installer doesn't work, there's a bug in the password field which needs fixing before it'll work :bang: I've done a fair bit of tweaking of categories and tags to get them to display properly as well.

That said, it's pretty simple, and after a few nights tussling with it I'm happy I can go hack in the extra things I'd like to see in it. If you're not happy getting your hands dirty with a text editor I would avoid it.
 
I have no issues getting my hands dirty, so long as it's with clean code :lol: Usually I make tweaks to Wordpress files to get it just so, but everything can be done within the admin interface.

The installer worked fine for me, but the admin interface seems super limited. I will play with it tonight though, as there seems to be some nice sites using it (although usually using the same theme :lol: )
 
You'll probably quite enjoy the tinkering then, like me :) Still a few niggles like the page number formatting and thumbnail framing to sort out on mine. Might end up repackaging the template if the author doesn't mind, as I'll be making a little more swish with some fading rollovers etc.
 
I've just got into wordpress and rather like it
not fussed with messing around too much with it though

however, my blog suits me fine for now.
Wordpress with YAPB as a plugin...then I messed with the widget sidebar and the mosiac page, a bit of fiddling and upped the JPEG quality to 95%
does the trick for me so far.
there are other nice themes which so larger files
 
That's nice Matt. I've been a bit 50/50 with the pixelled theme but it suits your blog well.

I've just been trawling through more wordpress themes, and found a few corkers...

I think for now, I will keep Wordpress in mind but it's handy to know there are other platforms out there!

Any of you lot use Joomla at all?
 
Damn DizMatt, you stole my theme! :p

What's YAPB when it's at home? I also like the image mosaic at the side, does that show images you uploaded to wordpress or also those that are just linked to in the posts?
 
Amp34 said:
Damn DizMatt, you stole my theme! :p

What's YAPB when it's at home? I also like the image mosaic at the side, does that show images you uploaded to wordpress or also those that are just linked to in the posts?
Click to expand...

YAPB - Yet Another Photo Blog - A nifty photoblog plugin

I have used a similar plugin to the mosaic in the past, and it just picked a random selection of images from any of the galleries.
 
chrisuk said:
Any of you lot use Joomla at all?
Click to expand...

I use it for some general websites. I personally wouldn't use it for a blog though. It is just too bulky and would require a good trimming down to make a usuable speedy blog imo. I also struggle to get it to display stuff well sometimes, the in-built editor seems to like to argue with me whenever I try and display any sort of image on it :(
 
I use joomla and find its really simple to use as a blog too.
Has much better components plugins for photography too.
I'm nearly finished with mine bar added shed loads of pix.
 
chrisuk said:
YAPB - Yet Another Photo Blog - A nifty photoblog plugin

I have used a similar plugin to the mosaic in the past, and it just picked a random selection of images from any of the galleries.
Click to expand...

Ah, thanks:)

Just out of interest, what spam filters are people using for their wordpress comments sections? It seems the main one Akismet can only be run on a blog hosted on wordpresses own site?
 
I use Akismet - and my wordpress is self hosted. You just need to add the plugin and then enter your activation key. If you don't have one, then you need to sign up to wordpress.com and then you can get one with no hassle

It's also worth putting a captcha plugin on any contact forms you use
 
Ah, ok, I must have read it wrong then. :lol: I'll do that now. :)

I'll see about activating the captcha plugin too.
 
I wrote some pixlepost plugins a long time back. no reason why you cant use both just need to play with your theme to get them looking the same.
WP for blog PP for gallery.... thats what I would do if I had anything worth showing :lol:

I use joomla a lot, created a couple of websites using it and written a fair few plugins for that too, checkout my website link in sig (link in my blog for my joomla plugins).
its a bit bulky for a blog but can be used for a company/business website with gallery
 
well my portfolio..not that its' much...is in joomla which I quite like for general web content.

the theme, I really rate...very nice and clean with few icons to clutter up the place
the YAPB widge sidebar is an extra bolt on for plugin...but it's popular and well supported

I have a problem with spam, not much yet but I'm sure it will get worse, so any suggestions on a CAPTCHA box are welcomed. will have a look if there's a single plugin as you seem to indicate that there is.
 
DizMatt said:
well my portfolio..not that its' much...is in joomla which I quite like for general web content.

the theme, I really rate...very nice and clean with few icons to clutter up the place
the YAPB widge sidebar is an extra bolt on for plugin...but it's popular and well supported

I have a problem with spam, not much yet but I'm sure it will get worse, so any suggestions on a CAPTCHA box are welcomed. will have a look if there's a single plugin as you seem to indicate that there is.
Click to expand...

have u tried Joom Gallery?
they are awesome.. if they had a paypal / sell option for each pic it would be the best on the net in my eyes
 
comment spam
it's rubbish comments which are nothing to do with the blog or pron links.
nothing too bad yet but it will get worse

I've tried some captch a plugins, will wait until one is certified with 2.8 though before I bother installing, one I tried didn't work at all


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Click to expand...
 
the ones I mentioned work with 2.8 as its what my blog is running
 
I had a couple of odd comments the other day, both for the same post and both from the same email domain (but different beginnings eg. *****@dede834r4f.cn). Both names were different and I would assume it's spam, but the only link they provded was to google.com :thinking:

My portfolio is hosted with Gallery2 which is then linked to in my wordpress blog (through the embedded images) so my newest work is the most visible, but older work can be seen easily in a proper gallery. What I do have though is a splash page for my index page that allows you to choose between the blog and the gallery. I probably should change that as earch engines don't like that if I remember rightly? i.e. www.wildaboutlife.net
 
It all depends what you are going for. I decided to avoid the case above of using one of the popular themes (and hence duplicating the look of many other websites) by producing my own theme. It works for me, I like the simplicity and ease of use. It still has bugs to iron out, but a more individual look suits me. See what you think.
 
That's a nice site!

Very simple and clean. Is that just using the Flash gallery plugin?
 
chrisuk said:
That's a nice site!

Very simple and clean. Is that just using the Flash gallery plugin?
Click to expand...

I use the Kimili Flash embed plugin to simplify coding, but the flash galleries themselves are not plugins, they are from elsewhere. Very simple to do, just resize images (large & thumbs) then write the xml file to control the flash.

My website is not for business purposes, I don't sell my prints, I just realised that for the price I pay for Flickr, I can write my own website. It's developing into a bit of a hobby, and I have been asked to write a couple for others now my finals are done. To be honest, its at the point where I find wordpress a little restrictive and having done a lot of background work on css and php, I might write something completely from scratch.

I would add, that developing your own theme is an excellent way of getting to understand some css and php (and by that I don't just mean tweaking someone elses!)
 
Oakey22 said:
I am using Wordpress on my site, had to do a lot of tweaking, making template files to match the galleries to the right track, have news on the left, different sidebar for different pages, etc. Works the way i want it to, would like it to be a bit quicker though but that is maybe my host, i do not know. oh its http://www.btccpics.com if you wanted to look.
Click to expand...

not sure at all about those grid girls...
will check later again I think...something's not quite right..... :nuts:

nice and clean website though
 
Jimmy_Lemon said:
and for some reason the comments system seems to have gone slightly screwy on mine
Click to expand...

Apologies if you mention this later, not read all the thread, but what's happened to your comments system?

I have found mine will only show comments if there is two or more, and if only one comment is left it doesn't seem to know that it's there. :shrug:
 
I use WordPress for my webdesign site - www.placeofdesign.com. I developed the template to not use comments at all. Wordpress is pretty much the cream of the crop in blogging SW. In my opinion, Joomla is too bulky for just a simple blog, although it will do the job well

The great thing about Wordpress is the very friendly templating system - which can be used to style a blog and blend in with a site perfectly.. here is one I did a month or two ago for a customer... www.caronphotography.co.uk - this shows just how tight you can integrate Wordpress (and a gallery) into a site. Yes you have to work at it, but the simplicity of the templating system in Wordpress helps a great deal

Pixel post has trickier temlates, but its major letdown is the lack of gravity it has, meaning that plugins, and overall knowlege in the developer community is low. This basically means you are more on your own with a problem then you would be with Wordpress, that has a superb community and infrastructure behind it
 
I've made a cursory investigation of Squarespace, and it's definitely worth a look if you want an easy to build site with blogging & photo display, membership etc. It's not free, but it is very comprehensive.
 
Richard King said:
I use WordPress for my webdesign site - www.placeofdesign.com. I developed the template to not use comments at all. Wordpress is pretty much the cream of the crop in blogging SW. In my opinion, Joomla is too bulky for just a simple blog, although it will do the job well

The great thing about Wordpress is the very friendly templating system - which can be used to style a blog and blend in with a site perfectly.. here is one I did a month or two ago for a customer... www.caronphotography.co.uk - this shows just how tight you can integrate Wordpress (and a gallery) into a site. Yes you have to work at it, but the simplicity of the templating system in Wordpress helps a great deal
Click to expand...


I see your customer's page only has the blog powered by Wordpress, but your site is full on Wordpress. Which do you find the best route?

Do you use a standard template to start with? e.g Hybrid or some other template framework, or start from scratch?
 
Craikeybaby said:
I see your customer's page only has the blog powered by Wordpress, but your site is full on Wordpress. Which do you find the best route?

Do you use a standard template to start with? e.g Hybrid or some other template framework, or start from scratch?
Click to expand...

Depends on the job to be honest. My customers site also has Gallery 2 integrated , so what ever way you look at it, one or the other or both needed adjusting

In that case - I started with a fairly standard template as a framework, and re-wrote it where needed (most of the code was re-written). I did the same with the gallery template, and the overall site template was developed from scratch to the customers spec

The difference is - my site has a dynamic front page, and all the pages use the menu from Wordpress, because thats he way I wanted it. My customer needed a more static introduction to the site, with a fairly static portfolio, but a dynamic gallery and blog - Horses for courses really
 
Jimmy_Lemon said:
I am fairly new to blogging CMS stuff, so had to choose between Pixelpost and wordpress and few months back. I went with Pixelpost and I am not overly impressed. The community isnt as big for support etc but there so seem to be a fair few plugins etc. I half wish I had gone for the tried and tested Wordpress, but think I am going to stick with Pixelpost and learn how to use it better. As you say it is far more photo friendly and there are some great themes out there for it. A few niggles I had was trying to get tags and catagories to display correctly and for some reason the comments system seems to have gone slightly screwy on mine without me changing anything, stuff like that which bugs me, but they are only small things and are fixable if you have the time to search out and work on the fixes.
Click to expand...

^^What he said!

I tried wordpress but couldn't find a theme to suit and found it didn't easily suit photoblogs. So I went with pixelpost. Easy to configure and easy to upload/manage images.
 
Richard King said:
Depends on the job to be honest. My customers site also has Gallery 2 integrated , so what ever way you look at it, one or the other or both needed adjusting

In that case - I started with a fairly standard template as a framework, and re-wrote it where needed (most of the code was re-written). I did the same with the gallery template, and the overall site template was developed from scratch to the customers spec

The difference is - my site has a dynamic front page, and all the pages use the menu from Wordpress, because thats he way I wanted it. My customer needed a more static introduction to the site, with a fairly static portfolio, but a dynamic gallery and blog - Horses for courses really
Click to expand...
Thanks for that. I started on the matching the blog to the rest of my site route, but have now back tracked and am trying to fit my Lightroom generated galleries into Wordpress pages. I've got the design in my head, I just need to make a theme.
 
Craikeybaby said:
Thanks for that. I started on the matching the blog to the rest of my site route, but have now back tracked and am trying to fit my Lightroom generated galleries into Wordpress pages. I've got the design in my head, I just need to make a theme.
Click to expand...

Tip

Before you do anything, think of the structure of your site.. that is the physical structure of the templates. draw it in boxes on page. which bits will be static? which bits expand? - in which direction do they expand? is it fixed width? what is the page length? (what happens to the background) Is it in the header/mainpage/ footer format? The simpler the drawing, the easier your life is. If you are modifying a template, is the drawing the same sort of shape as your template you are starting off with
 
Cheers! I've gone for a template which is pretty much how I want the site to look like, just the wrong colours, there are a few other tweaks here and there, but have gone for the simple approach, as I've worked on some pretty complicated sites before.
 
Craikeybaby said:
Cheers! I've gone for a template which is pretty much how I want the site to look like, just the wrong colours, there are a few other tweaks here and there, but have gone for the simple approach, as I've worked on some pretty complicated sites before.
Click to expand...

cool - let me see the finished result.. !
 
I've seen a couple of people here mention not being able to find themes that fit their blog/site. Surprised no one has mentioned Artiseer.

I had exactly the same problem with my site, and I know nothing about coding so I downloaded a trial copy of Artiseer

The manual 'aint the greatest, and I had a few teething problems, but I ended up with a much much better site than I imagined I could have using someone else theme or Dreamweaver. Best of all, it was designed by me.

It's not overly expensive to buy, and the trial product displays a faint "trial" text on your background, but you can upload the theme to see what it looks like. My site is still using the trial version so you can see how obnoxious it is('nt). Don't use my site as an example of what it's capable of though. I have very little time, and prefer taking pictures to swearing at the computer.

Hope this helps!

-H
 
I'm going to have a play with that I think, I am going to try and integrate my site a bit and this may be of use.

And you're right, the trial watermark isn't obvious, I had to zoom to 400% to actually read it... :lol:
 
I like wordpress and use it on my blog. I tried pixelpost but preferred the ease of tweaking I had learned in wordpress. What I did is find a theme near what I wanted and customised it. I also found that the wordpress community is bigger and any problems I had were much easier to research and solve.

Dave
 
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