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Formula for Resizing Media to Fit Your Blog and Why You Need It

Even if the information on your blog is good, the sheer number of visible words can get overwhelming for some. It’s not really the word count that is the problem, it’s the wall-of-text that might turn off readers. The simplest way to break things up is to add images, video, and bullet lists. Adding media can be a pain, though. Here is a simple formula for finding the right width and height for embedding media on your blog or website.

Yo, dawg...

This is not the only way to do it and there are probably “better” ways, but this one will work for all blogging platforms and websites. We start with the maximum width that we want. For my blogs, it’s usually around 600px. This means that an image wider than 600px will overflow into my sidebar and make me look really unprofessional (see image above).

The Formula (Yes, it’s math)

The simple formula is based on proportions. Let’s say we have an image with a width w and a height h. We want to resize this image to a width of 605px, but we don’t know what the resulting height, x, will be we start with:

605/x = w/h

where x is the unknown height of the final image. Solving for x, we get:

x = 605*h/w

To use the formula for yourself, just replace “605” with the best width for your site, plug in the width and height for the media you’re trying to embed, and solve for x. Easy-peasy.

What to do with the results

Now that you know what width and height you should resize your media to, what do you do with it? In WordPress, the procedure is to insert the image into your post first. Go ahead and choose Full Size. Click your image and click the small photo to open up its properties. On the Advanced Settings tab, you will see where you can manually specify the width and height for the image.

Why?

While you can use the percentages and presets available in WordPress to scale down your images, it’s always a guessing game. I found that I was wasting a lot of time switching between playing with the percentages and checking Preview mode. Time is money and prettying up a blog post is probably not where you want to waste your money.

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I Have No Excuse for Not Blogging

ShrugSure, I have been busy. Working a lot and spending time with family, but this is all no excuse. It doesn’t take that much time to write a blog post. Am I running out of ideas? No. I’m just not writing any of them down. I’m still writing posts over at BlackWeb 2.0, so obviously is just a case of neglect.

I should be ashamed of myself.

New Blog Layout

I had to change my blog layout. Wicketpixie is a nice theme with some nice features, but it has a few bugs on the back-end and I never did get it to render correctly in IE. I needed something clean and light-weight, so I went with Tarski (thanks mjc). It’s simple, but also has a few configuration options on the back-end.

Continue reading “I Have No Excuse for Not Blogging”

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Why You Shouldn’t Ignore My Ads

Contextual advertising
Image by mirkoshanghai via Flickr

You may have noticed the ad block in the sidebar here. I think that has been pretty consistent since the beginning. What you may not realize is that all the ads on my site are actual endorsements. Wait…let’s back up…

On most blogs, you will probably find contextual advertising. Blocks of advertising that try to market things to you based on what the blogger has written about. The blogger makes money when people click these advertisements. The amount of traffic they bring to their blog has a direct effect on how much income they can generate.

I started to go with this standard approach, but something bothered me. I think of my blog as an extension of myself. I don’t like to promote or advertise people or companies or anything that I don’t actually believe in (at least a little, anyway). So, I ripped out the ads I had and started thinking of other ways to monetize my blog. I have to pay for it somehow, right?

What I ended up doing was selecting a few things that I actually benefit from. These are products and services that I use to increase the quality of my life. You may see programs I use to make money, products I use for my health and nutrition, and stuff that I just think is cool.

In any case, you can think of the advertising here as me giving you a direct referral. Don’t even think of them as ads. Let’s look at them as little windows into my life in addition to what you can learn from the actual content I write.

So, shake of the ad-blindness. I have taken time to promote things that have been useful to me, because I figure you may benefit as well. This is not a demand, just a little heads-up.

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Sponsorship Is How This Works, Stop Hating

I always try to see the best in people. I always want to give someone the benefit of the doubt. I mean, we all have the capacity for rational thought, right?

It’s very disheartening to me that so many people believe a blogger somehow loses their credibility once they become sponsored. Some of us just don’t have six-figure incomes behind our blogging efforts. Hell, some bloggers are barely working with five figures. Steven Hodson explains the situation pretty well in his post There’s Web 2.0 and Then There’s Reality:

One thing is more than apparent when you look in on Web 2.0 and the constant chatter about all the cool hardware, software and ideas. The majority involved in this space have no idea of what being on the other side of the technological divide is like or how it is limiting the adoption of the things they believe in. They talk about dropping a couple of grand on a new laptop in the same way they I would order breakfast or they line up to fork over a couple of hundred for a new cell phone without even blinking an eye. For them the connection is forever flowing whether through never ending broadband connectivity or wireless goodness. On the other side of the fence though real life has a habit of slapping you back to reality and your position in it.

In most other realms, being "sponsored" or advertising to gain revenue is readily accepted as a natural means to be able to do what you want in life:

  • Girl Scouts sell cookies door-to-door
  • Musicians seek deals with major labels
  • Young athletes dream of being drafted
  • Aspiring writers look to get published

Of course, there are those haters out there who think you have to sell your soul to the devil in order to get a sponsor, or get signed by a major label. These people that are leery of  anything that remotely looks like you might be taking a step up from obscurity. They are certain that you will have to bow to the Sponsorship Overlords and you can no longer be trusted. Those people should just cock those tin-foil hats to the side and take a long walk off a short pier.

It seems that if you run a relatively small blog, you are not allowed to step outside a certain realm of acceptable revenue methods. AdSense and other advertising networks are your place. Steven says it plainly here:

It seems that unless you are a part of a blog network or some big name blogger the idea that you would even think of stepping beyond the bounds of ad networks and god forbid go looking for deals of your own then you are stepping beyond your pay grade and need to be put back in your place. The most common method of slapping forward looking independent bloggers back into place is by calling their ethics into question. (full article)

Now, I am new to all this blogging stuff. Sure, LiveJournal says I’ve had a blog since 2004-05-13 08:24:15, but I only started blogging seriously within the past few months. Maybe there is something that I’m missing. Maybe this whole idea makes sense to all you veterans.

As far as I’m concerned, this whole attitude is bull. No matter what you’re doing in your life, you need a way to fund it. Some people have jobs, some have been successful as entrepreneurs, some are just spoiled.

There are others of us who simply have not been as fortunate. Those of us who haven’t even seen an iPhone in real life, who are tied to computers as old as the web itself, who look at gadgets on tech blogs and realize they will really be nothing more than eye-candy.

Why should the "little guy" get shafted? Why should I be restricted in seeking funding for the things I want to continue doing? Why can’t I be allowed to pull myself up by my bootstraps? Are you going to open up your own wallet to help me reach my goals? If not, who the hell are you to judge?