Wordpress is great for words, but not brilliant for pictures. There are ways of integrating with gallery software and other tools, but they’re not very robust in a big multi user blog like ours. Instead, we’ve implemented a simple tool called ‘Slimbox’ which should give everyone access to eye-popping slideshows. It’s easy to use…
First, your blog admin will need to activate the plugin for your blog. It’s turned off by default because it’s a fair chunk of javascript that not everyone needs.
Next, upload your pics as you write your post, giving the picture a title. Then “send to editor” as a thumbnail* linked to original file. So far all standard Wordpress, but the next bit is a little tricky.
You need to enter the ‘code’ view and find the link to your image, which will look something like <a href="/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/004.jpg" >. You then add in rel="lightbox" just before the closing > so that last bit looks like ...XX.jpg" rel="lightbox" >. Add a title attribute … title="A Photograph" > as well and it’ll display as a caption.
That’s it! Try this image as an example.
More than one photo at a time?
Easy! instead of just rel="lightbox", use something like rel="lightbox[mypics]". Then all the photos on the page with ‘mypics’ will display as a slideshow like they do on this page.