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.

Our blogging tool, Wordpress MU, lets us centrally handle a lot of the management tasks like upgrades, stats, themes, spam control and plugins, leaving you to get on with writing your content.

With simplicity come constraints, but if you find that Wordpress MU doesn’t do everything you need, we can upgrade you to a stand-alone Wordpress install, or even migrate you into the CMS.

In most cases though, we’d recommend just getting started this way and seeing where it takes you in the longer run.