How to add photos, videos and featured posts to your site

The screencast below walks you through the process of adding photos and videos to your posts, and featuring posts in the skybox at the top of your site. Several aspects of the process of adding photos and videos to posts merit special attention:

  • When adding a photo, be sure to add a caption. That signals the site to display the image properly, with the caption and credit in the appropriate places.
  • Cropping images: As you're learning the system, refer often to Wes' post about the best dimensions for image crops. You can crop photos from within WordPress by clicking "Edit image" within the "Add an image" dialogue box. (See this in action at 2:19 in the screencast below.)
  • Featuring a post requires two steps:
    (1) Make sure the post has a featured image (look for "Set featured image" from within the post composition page; when you're adding an image to your post, you can also click on "Use as featured image" from within the "Add an image" dialogue box). (See this in action at approx. 4:38 in the screencast below.)
    (2) Make sure one of the boxes is checked under "Post Prominence" in the post composition page. (See 6:25 in the screencast.)
  • Adding video: To add a video from YouTube, Vimeo, or another popular video site, don't drop in the embed code. Just paste in the link to view the video on the original site (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjtzbLdPahg). (See this in action at 7:31 in the screencast.)

This video covers a few theme features that have changed or removed. Take note of the following changes:

  • Grab the Argo media credit plugin to add credit and caption fields for your images.
  • The "National" tag has been removed from the post-prominence taxonomy.