ICT, Education and Business Development
Make the header bar stand out
Many of the themes in WordPress allow you to add your own image bar to give the site a feel to better suit you.
Autocollage is a great tool for making those image bars. I cover how to get Autocollage free if you’re a teacher here (and there are some instructions there at the same time).
The task is easiest broken down into 3 steps – get the pictures, make the collage then make the heading bar.
Blogging Made Easy
I’ve been making use of Windows Live Writer to make this blog, and many others, for the last 6 months. Thanks to Ray Fleming from Microsoft for introducing me to this great FREE 
utility.
As I’ve tried to introdce it to other staff and customers – I’ve had the question – is there a user manual?
There is now. Please feel free to download a copy – please let me know how you feel I could improve it.
By Windows Live Writer (ably assisted by Cropper)
How to download Windows Live Writer – download live writer
WordPress is one of many blogging platforms. I currently use it for this blog and work with schools on 5 or 6 others.
It’s a fantastic facility and has some real strong points, but the editor really is basic.
This is where Live Writer comes in.
Live Writer provides a clean, crisp interface which allows you to create posts and pages off line to upload to your blog when it’s convenient for you.
Most of my blog about the Computing at Schools Conference was made on the train on the way home.
There are a number of good documents out there showing the more powerful features in LW.
This post will introduce it a bit slower.
Posts AND Pages?
WordPress blogs can have a page full of posts – these are the entries in the ‘newest first’ order, typically on the home page of a blog. They can also have ‘static’ pages as other tabs in a WordPress Blog.
On my blog – here’s what a post looks like
The pages are seen here
So – as I’m busily making this ‘off line’ – will it be best as a post or a page all of it’s own? I’ll make it a post – because the more feature will let users read it only if they want.
This is the more button on the Live Writer toolbar – and when I click it, you’ll see the ‘more’ broken line below this text
I’ve recently upgraded my blog hosting to allow the use of videos, hence the interest in the cropper add on (see below).
In an earlier post I overviewed Photosynth with examples from a local quarry .. here’s what it looks like – and this is amazing on a whiteboard!
