Making a Photoblog

The word "blog" is a contraction of the term "weblog". A blog is a type of website - maintained by an individual or a group of individuals - characterized by regular short (or sometimes not so short) posts built around a specific theme. Blogs exist covering just about every single obscure facet of human culture. The act of maintaining a blog - known as blogging - has become one of the most prevalent methods for disseminating news and other information on the Internet. The huge, interwoven network of bloggers - collectively known as the blogosphere - contributes millions of pages of information to the Internet every single day. The development of blogging into an Internet standard has made creating a blog an exceedingly easy task.

Because of the wide variety of media types available on the Internet there are also many different types of blogs that exist. There are group blogs, private blogs, company blogs, blogs from cell phones (also known as moblogs) audio blogs (podcasts), video blogs (vlogs) and - our true topic of discussion - photoblogs. Perhaps we should be grateful to the Internet powers that be seeing as photoblogs are not known as "phlogs" and photo blogging is not known as "phlogging".

What is a Photoblog?

A photoblog is a a blog focusing on - you guessed it! - photographs. Many professional and amateur photographers maintain photoblogs. These blogs are a way to showcase the photographs and differentiate them from a more commercial website. Here the focus can be on photos and nothing else. Photobloggers love other photobloggers and the community aspect of photoblogging makes it a fun and creative endeavor.

A good way to design a photoblog is with a photographic theme. Themes bring cohesion to a site and make the content more compelling and interesting. The photos you take reflect your interests, your self and your life. That should be enough to help you pick the theme that is right for your photos and for you.

If you need some inspiration I would recommend the following photoblogs:

And of course one mustn't miss the Photoblog Awards. Your photoblog could be ready for submission soon!

Free Blogging Services

The first step towards starting your own photoblog is to find a blogging service. Maybe you already have a blog or a website and simply want to add your ZooFoo photos. If you don't already have a blog there are many sites which will give you a web address and a certain amount of hosting for free.

Setting up an account with any of those or the plethora of similar sites lets you quickly join the blogosphere. Time to let your thoughts be read and your photos be seen! Once you have your blog it is time to start posting. But don't forget to send the URL of your page to your friends and family so that your readership grows right away!

Embedding an Image using HTML

Now that you have registered and set up your blog the time has come to begin embedding photos directly from your ZooFoo account. The trick to hosting an image from ZooFoo is using the automatically generated embed code. This is a unique code generated for each photo on ZooFoo. If you copy and paste the code into an HTML field box - such as the blogger editor - it will embed an image directly into your blog or website.

You can access the embed code in two different ways.

First is from within the manager. Put your mouse over the image you wish to embed and click "Share". This will bring up a number of Photo Sharing tools. Click "Embed Photo". You will see a thumbnail of the image and a box with the embed code in it. Below the box you can select three different sizes for the image. Select the size you wish and the code will change automatically to reflect your selected size. Using your mouse, select the embed code text and copy and paste it into the HTML box on your blog editor. You are ready to go.

The second way you can access the embed code is from the image view itself. If you are viewing an image on ZooFoo and you aren't in the manager you will see a blue circle with a lowercase "i" next to the title of the photo. Click this eye to see information about the the photo. Here too you will be given an option to select a size for embedding and copy the code to use on your photoblog or website.

Really, it is that easy! Get posting!

Photoblog of the Week

Every week ZooFoo chooses a photoblog from the Internet to highlight as our Photoblog of the Week. If you think your photoblog would be an appropriate candidate feel free to submit it via email.

Photoblog of the Week
Click here to submit!

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