Have a question for Ask The Geek? Send it to me.

Dear Ask the Geek,

I have a question for the photo geek. What book or resource do you recommend to learn tips on using a DSLR? Want to increase my knowledge before my trip to Lucca this April.

Thanks,
Kristen

Dear Kristen,

this time I’m trying something a little different and I hope you’ll find it useful – I’m answering you in a quick video! Check out my answer regarding improving photography with some helpful tips about using your manual, books and sites you can read for tips, and setting some goals for improving your photography. I’ve also included some helpful links below the video (direct link to the video in case you don’t see it)

Books & gear I mentioned:

• The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby [Kindle ebook version]
• The Digital Photography Book - Volume 2 by Scott Kelby [Kindle ebook version]
• The Digital Photography Book - Volume 3 by Scott Kelby [Kindle ebook version]
• All 3 volumes of Scott Kelby’s The Digital Photography Books - [Kindle pack]
• More camera/video gear and photography booksI use or recommend - and more books that talk about composition and the more artistic side of photography

I also wrote a post about tips to improve your photography with any camera (not just a DSLR).

Other sites & blogs you should check out: (have a favorite site? leave it in the comments)

• Digital Photography School (they have a very active forum, too)
• Photofocus
• Phototuts+
• Jasmine Star Photography (especially for portraits / wedding)
• Strobist
• Joe McNally
• Stuck in Customs
• Nicolesy
• Mitchell Kanashkevich (he has a lot of ebooks, too)

Hope that helps,

Sara Rosso, aka WIHT’s in-house geek

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are to Amazon – I’m an Amazon affiliate and I will receive a small percentage if the product is purchased. 

If you’ve never given a presentation in the Ignite format: 5 minutes, 20 slides, 15 seconds each (read more about the Ignite format on O’Reilly’s website), I strongly urge you to – it will challenge you as a presenter and force you to be very succinct and practice quite a bit to stay with the timing. I’ve presented several Ignites in Italian this year, but this was the first one in English.

Here’s the video of my presentation:

Here are the slides of my presentation:

If you’re not familiar with the Ignite format, it’s very exciting for both speakers and spectators. 5 minutes, 20 slides, 15 seconds each slide. It’s a timing nightmare and you’re always racing against the clock, but it’s a great exercise to really concentrate on the meat of your presentation and remove the extras. (I gave another Ignite earlier this year on the New Digital Company: Distributed, Online, Transparent)

In any case, the Ignite I gave has enough material and research behind it for a 1 hour talk, and it was hard to stop at 5. But since this topic is relatively new, I wanted to whet people’s appetites with a broad overview of digital curation: what, why, how, and a brief look at curation and protecting our data across all of these different social networks and sites we sign up to and subsequently fill up with our data. We often can’t get that data back.

I propose WordPress as a digital hub – a place where our original and curated content is created, published, and archived, and integrates with everything else. It’s not a perfect solution, but it is one you can own and it continues to evolve as new plugins are coming out every day (just today a plugin was released to sync WordPress with Google+ – it’s a great time to get started!)

Here are the slides (in English) from “Digital Curation: The New Frontier of Knowledge“. Video of my presentation is online at KnowCamp.it, but it’s in Italian. If you have any questions, let me know!

The liveblog is about 90% accurate, which is amazing since we were talking so fast, so if you see particular sentences with a few words missing you should know that the point being made was brilliant and we were coherent the entire time.

Podcast (audio recordings) of all sessions will become available soon, as well as videos of select sessions (it’s not clear if my session will be included or not) and will be available at BlogHer ’11 VirtualCon. And all of those materials are free!

Here are the video and slides from my presentation which was a brief introduction to WordPress for non-tech decision makers and lots of case studies and examples of large-scale and enterprise installs using WordPress. I also highlighted related presentations from the WordCamp weekend – be sure and look for those individual presentations on WordPress.tv and on their sites when they become available.

(If you can’t see the slides below, click through to view WordPress for Large-Scale Installs on Slideshare)

My answer is always the same: it depends.

Sophia at Fiction Vixen put it more eloquently than I could and listed a bunch of considerations that I suggest anyone read when deciding if they should add plugins to their self-hosted WordPress site (spoiler: you might not need every plugin under the sun).

One of my favorite points from her post which I totally agree with:

When searching out plugins there are a few things to consider before downloading and installing them on your blog. Plugins are fun and can really enhance your blog…or occasionally create some huge headaches…Before you go plugin crazy, stop and think about whether or not that plugin will really enhance your blog and/or your blogging experience.

In many cases you won’t need any or many plugins for your WP site, since it can do a lot of what you need out of the box. Taking some time to really evaluate what features you need on your site will save you some trouble in experimenting with plugins just for the glitter-factor (and probably keep the site loading faster, too).

Check out the full post at Fiction Vixen about WordPress plugins for noobs.

Also, be sure you check out Automattic’s Jetpack plugin which brings WordPress.com features and a few other plugins to all self-hosted WordPress sites, for free!

They specifically asked me to speak about using WordPress as a website, instead of a blog, as many journalists are now interested in maintaining personal websites as well as continuing to create all the content they do for external publications.

I really only needed one slide to explain how to do that – it’s very easy! I’ll let you discover how via the slides.

The presentation is geared at those very new to WordPress – so new, in fact, that I included a little bit about WordPress’ history and its community which I think are strong points in choosing to use it (awesome people are making an awesome product).

We spent a lot of time in questions after the presentation, many of which would have been answered by articles I’ve already written on this site, like:

• What is DNS? DNS in Plain English
• How to Choose Web Hosting for your Website or Blog
• Ask the Geek: How Do I Find and Install a WordPress theme?
• The Quick and Dirty Guide to Getting Started with WordPress

The slides aren’t actually meant to be self-explanatory – I went in-depth into most of the concepts and screenshots in person, and don’t like to put much content in my slides, so if you have questions, be sure to let me know!

In English:

In Italian:

At the bottom are both the complete Italian and English slide decks in Slideshare in case you feel the need to share or embed them. There’s also a video of my presentation in Italian available.

The first few slides were information about me (in a nod to Italian national identity card design) and the company I work for, Automattic, which is obviously a huge inspiration for the presentation. I tried to extract the three main points and describe them independently of our company, and how they could be applied to any “new digital company.”

The first point is “Be distributed.” The subtext of this slide is that the definition of a company is changing: it is no longer an office, a set of desks, and meeting rooms. The company is how and where you make it, and having a distributed company is more appealing than ever.

Automattic is a distributed company, with 75 employees in 25 countries and 65 cities. The highest concentrations of employees is in the San Francisco Bay Area, where we have a Lounge that is not an office but an occasional event and meetup location. The second-highest concentration of Automatticians is in Sofia, Bulgaria (4).

Why should a company be distributed? As our CEO Toni Schneider said, “You can hire great people, wherever you find them,” allowing your company to grow organically where talent is to be found. The company receives applications from people all around the world, who would never have dreamed of applying if it weren’t a distributed company. Employees are not forced to move to a specific city with the company’s office and uproot their whole life in order to work for a great company.

Further still is the freedom a distributed company allows the employee to construct his/her work environment, from the location to the timing. The concept of: being in the office = productiveness is no longer applicable, and the flexibility allows the employee to work when they feel more productive, to take breaks when they aren’t, and experience other environments if desired. Of course, this has to be balanced with the demands of clients if the worker is client-facing, and also if the employee prefers to be around when the bulk of the company is online and tranascting business (many do, and adjust their schedules accordingly no matter what time zone they live in).

A subtext of working from anywhere and not working in an office is that proactiveness and managing one’s time becomes of utmost importance. (the photo is actually one of my colleagues’ photo – he often posts his interesting desks from wherever he is).

The second main point is “Be online.” Many companies feel that they are online because they have a website where they communicate about or sell their products and they’re present on a few social networks.

Be Online is about shifting the entire inner workings of the company to online – from discussions to decisions to documentation. Note: I don’t consider email online as it’s generally not consultable by others.

This is one of my favorite graphs which illustrates how a digital company can communicate internally – most of our communication happens on internal blogs, followed by IRC (a private company chat), Skype for personal, 1-on-1 communication, and a small percentage for email, which is mainly outgoing with clients.

Interviews, trial projects, and training all happen online, which reduces the need for in-person events, and it can mobilize a greater part of the company to participate since the geographic restriction is removed.

Here’s a picture of a traditional meeting – 6 people sitting around a table with computers open, dazed looks on their faces, and surely they’ve been in this meeting much longer than necessary.

Our meetings, when we actually have them, look more like this – different parts of the world connected by Skype for brief moments. Thanks to Skype video we see each other, too, but our team meeting is once a week and more about talking about things we didn’t discuss online and generally hearing how everyone is doing, outside of work, too. It’s more of a human meeting than one with action items, and we try to keep it short, just 30 minutes. Everything else is a non-meeting.

The third point is “Be Transparent.” Transparency plays a big role in a distributed company because physical distance between employees becomes less important than the distance between the employee and the information they need to get their job done, including the discussions and decisions I mentioned before.

Our internal blogs are broken down into teams, cross-functional projects, and also watercooler blogs which are outlets for us to chat and have fun, too. They serve not only as an intranet & knowledge, but they are our primary communication tools.

This works because as I mentioned before, discussions and decisions all happen ON these tools, and if a decision is made on IRC or in email, the decision is brought back to the blogs so there’s a record and further discussion can happen – the blogs remain the de facto place where decisions happen. If you have all these tools available but people revert to email for a decision, email will be the functioning tool.

All of these blogs can be accessed by any of the employees, no matter what their current projects, team or interest. If a systems team member wants to follow the design blog because they are interested and/or have something to contribute, they can.

The nature of these blogs means that all the content is searchable, available real-time, documented, and basically all those things I mention on the slide.

I think the results are obviously more important – it creates a collaborative environment where discussions can happen in real-time, from any part of the company, and results in a lot of distributed ideas, instant diffusion of information, and the ability to contribute at any level. The downside of having all this information is that it can be too much noise but there are a lot of ways to combat this including limiting one’s subscriptions to only the most applicable blogs, filtering messages and content based on keywords, and receiving alerts any time your name or a keyword you follow (like your product or team name) is mentioned on any of the blogs.

Of course, I couldn’t help but pimp the fact that we use WordPress to power these blogs, and not only WP but a specific theme that enables frontend posting and comments are immediately expanded and visible (comparable to a Facebook or Twitter environment – the backend is of no importance to most contributors) – read more about the P2 theme here (hint: it’s free!) and how P2 changed Automattic.

A final way we keep up to date with what’s going on in the company are monthly Town Halls with the President of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg. Often special guests (other employees) are available and any employee has the power to ask a question and hear the answer during the transmission.

The last point in the New Digital Company is “Work Hard, Play Hard.” A distributed company means that individuals don’t often see each other, so when they do get together, it’s important to remember to enjoy being with each other as well as all the hard work you do when you’re not together. Many meetups are spent doing fun activities and working on short projects that are outside the normal work scope.

A few days after I gave my presentation at the Digital Communication Forum in Milan, Automattic posted on the WordPress.com more information about How WordPress.com is made, which includes information about how our distributed company works. You might want to check that out as well.

A video about how the P2 theme works that’s worth a watch:

Below, the files on Slideshare – in English:

The New Digital Company

and in Italian:
La Nuova Azienda Digitale

Have a question for Ask The Geek? Send it to me.

Dear Ask the Geek,

A friend set up my WordPress site and the design for it, but now I want to change it and give my site a new look. How do I do that, and where do I start?

Signed

WordPress newbie

Dear WordPress newbie,

You can find WordPress themes all over the Internet which is the great thing about WordPress – anyone can develop for it. I strongly recommend starting with the WordPress.org Theme Directory as the themes there have been reviewed and there’s a higher guarantee that no malicious/spam/ad code has been inserted in the theme (a small risk of using Google and looking for WordPress themes).

I suggest browsing the Popular themes first. These are all free themes and you may find a few designs you want to come back to. If you have a specific feature or layout in mind (like how many columns, main color, or style, etc.), you can use the Theme Tag Filter tool to narrow it down.

If you’d prefer a theme that is more unique or has support from the theme developer associated with it, you may also want to browse the WordPress.org Commercial Themes directory which lists many companies that offer custom themes for a small payment and give you access to various benefits with your purchase.

There are usually some themes already installed on your WordPress site and can be accessed via the Dashboard at Appearance > Themes.

Make note of which theme your site is currently using (it should be the theme featured as “Current Theme” at the top of the Manage Themes tab) so you can go back to your original setup if necessary.

To add other themes from the WordPress.org theme directory, click on “Install themes” and search for a type of theme or a theme name.

You can preview it or install it directly. Click on Install and confirm Installation.

After installation, you can preview it again how it will look with your content, and if you decide to Activate it, click on Activate. It’s now live on your site!

Open the front page of your site in another browser tab/window and see how it looks – click around to different posts and pages to see if you like it.

If you need to go back to that original theme you made a note of when we started, go back to Appearance > Themes and search for the name of your original theme in Manage Themes, and click Activate it to return to the original.

Note that you can add dozens and dozens of themes to your local theme directory so don’t feel like you have to choose or install just one at a time to your local directory. For a commercial theme, you will have to upload the theme after purchase before being able to activate it.

The only other thing you would need to check is if your sidebar content (recent posts, comments, etc. ) is using widgets (check for their existence at Appearance > Widgets) – widgets are easy and great for you to be able to upkeep, and they are independent of the theme which makes switching themes painless.

If you aren’t using widgets for your sidebar content, now is a good time to set them up before switching the theme. Once we get them into widgets, you’ll be able to switch themes easier, and then it’s just making sure we include your stats.

Note: this is an answer for a self-hosted, paid hosting user using the WordPress.org software – if you have your site at WordPress.com, you can use the theme.wordpress.com directory

Enjoy playing with your site’s theme!

Sara Rosso, aka WIHT’s in-house geek

Often when I recommend to friends that they get started on WordPress, I suggest they sign up for a site at WordPress.com so they can see how they like the interface and the features of the WordPress software.

One of the first things I hear is this myth: on WordPress.com, I can’t have a custom theme, so I can’t have a beautiful website.

Besides the fact that there are 100+ themes to choose from (and I’ll do a post on my favorite themes in the future), many with customizable backgrounds and headers, you can have a beautiful website on WordPress.com. I wanted to showcase some of the websites I’ve seen on WordPress.com that have made their sites beautiful using one of the default themes as a base and customizing the site with just the Custom CSS upgrade (currently $15/year) – so that’s free, unlimited hosting (!) plus a beautiful site for $15/year. Pretty cool.

I don’t want to convince you that WordPress.com is the best home for your new site (I have several .org sites that I love) but I definitely want to disspell the rumor that you can’t have a beautiful site on WordPress.com.

Read my article on Infinite Styles with Custom CSS on the WordPress.com News blog.