WordPress famously advertises a ‘5 minute install’ but to create a good safe WordPress Website it takes many hours of work.

Over several years of Installing WordPress I have developed a checklist of the procedures. It’s quite involved and takes many hours before the design part is considered. Here is a similar checklist of the work involved.

Killer WordPress Checklist [Infographic] by the team at Capsicum Mediaworks, LLP

Easy thumbnails is a free program that resizes one or several photos at the same time

Download it here http://www.fookes.com/ezthumbs/

Read the Manual – http://www.fookes.com/ezthumbs/ezthumbs.pdf

Photos in a digital camera are huge!! typically 4mb or more. Left at that size they will take a long time to appear on a website, they will use a lot of bandwidth both at the server and for the viewer.

This is unnecessary – it’s easy to resize photo’s with Easy Thumnails.

The average monitor resolution is 1024 pixels wide, when fully open (2012)

Photos on the web need to be a maximum 900px wide or high – this gives a file size between 150-350kb

Quick Info –

Ste the maximum width and height to 800px

Select the folder where you want the thumbnails to be put

Open the folder with the photos, select one or many of them and click ‘Make’

If you want to create thumbnails for all the photos in the folder, click ‘Make All’

The new thumbnails will have the prefix tn_ so are easily identified.

Roboform saves passwords, usernames and URL’s- the address of the place you want to login to.

With two clicks you can go to a website and login. The free version allows you to save 10 passcards, the paid version is unlimited, will keep a secure copy in the cloud and will auto sync with any other online computers you want.  If you have to login even once a day,  Its almost impossible to be with.

This is a link to a website which explains very well how Roboform works, with set up information – http://www.davescomputertips.com/2011/08/why-you-shoud-use-roboform/

Here’s a link to Roboform  www.roboform.com

Clients often ask me for the name of a simple image editing program  – usually they just want to resize photos but sometimes they want to crop as well. I recently found a nifty free program called FastStone with quite a few features – FastStone Image Viewer 4.6 – Free of course!!

It’s quite simple to use. When displaying an image it shows how much it has been reduced to fit the screen and the resizing options are very simple and good, always showing the % the file size the size in pixels width  x height. Cropping is simple, again all sizes etc displayed.

It also has colour controls and I found them very good to use, I easily enhanced the colours on some ducks and made it really good. There’s a sharpness feature but that should be used carefully because  it’s range is too big and it’s easy to oversharpen.  I normally only sharpen with the unsharp mask and use 1 out of a possible 100.

It launches with a 2 panel window, so you can select your photo. Double clicking the photo launches a full screen window with NO TOOLBARS!! When you hover near the sides of the screen the toolbars pop out, this is really good.

Download Fastone Image Viewer from here –

http://www.download.com/FastStone-Image-Viewer/3000-2192-10324485.html?part=dl-FastStone&subj=dl&tag=button

If asked to ‘Save’- click yes. If given a choice, save to your downloads folder.

When the file has finished downloading, either double ckick it in the download browser, or go to your downloads folder and double click it there.

Follow the prompts.

After it has finished installing you will be taken to a page asking for donations. The program is free. I suggest you use it for a while and if you find it useful go – http://www.faststone.org/ThankYou.htm  here and make a donation. Many things are free on the Internet, but when I find a valuable application, I make a donation, to honour the programmers hard work. If everyone sends the successful programmers $5 or $10 it can only do good.

Open FastStone Image Viewer via the Start Button list of programs.

Fastone opens up with 3 panels, Navigate to your picture folder in the Left Hand panel and click on it.

The photos in that folder display as thumbnails in the Right Hand Panel

Click on a photo to select it and it will display in the bottom Left Hand Panel

Double click on the photo and it will launch in full screen mode.

At the top will be displayed the information on the photo size and at what percentage it has been shrunk to fit the screen.

By moving the cursor to the borders of the screen, different toolbars appear and you can work on the photo.

Information on how that works is in a video Tutorial by Leo Notenboom here –

http://ask-leo.com/video.php?vid=webinar8-1-photo-too-large&f=phototoolarge/1280&w=1280&v=1&l=1&s=100M

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED -An In Depth PDF on Using Fastone for Difital Imaging is here – http://www.faststonesoft.net/DN/FSIV_Tutorial.pdf

iPad, Kindle and Zip versions also available here- http://www.faststone.org/FSIVTutorial.htm

Remember to always crop before you resize !!