Social Media Links

After successfully adding a logo to my header, I’ve decided to continue tweaking the Travelling Banana site. Today I added a few Social Media links. You can find them just under the Travelling Banana logo or if you’re visiting on a mobile device, drop down the menu (the three lines often referred to as the hamburger) and you’ll see them pop up.

In case you’ve been living on Pluto or you’ve actually been busy doing more important things, you may not know what some of those hieroglyphics mean.

Here’s a quick guide on the Social Media icons I have added to my site.

TumblrTumblr – pronounced “tumbler” is a microblogging platform and social networking website. Often contains a mixture of art, design, photos and videos. It has been around since Feb 2007

TwitterTwitter – Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send and read short 140-character messages called “tweets”.  It’s been around since Mar 2006.

FlickrFlickr – pronounced “flicker” is an image and video hosting website owned by Yahoo. It’s a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs since Feb 2004.

PinterestPinterest – Pinterest is a visual discovery tool that you can use to find ideas for all your projects and interests. It has been around since Mar 2010.

Google+Google+ – pronounced and sometimes written as “Google Plus” is an interest-based social network that is owned and operated by Google Inc. It has been around since Jun 2011.

Have you noticed how a lot of these social media sites launched in February or March apart from Google – I wonder why?

This is only a small selection of a vast amount of social media sites that are popping up all over the place.


Here are a few of my doodles that you can find on Tumblr


 

Travelling Banana Site Icon

WordPress have just released version 4.3, also known as “Billie”.

One of the new functions of this release, which I’ve already implemented, is the Site Icons feature.

Site icons represent your site in browser tabs, bookmark menus, and on the home screen of mobile devices. Add your unique site icon in the customizer; it will even stay in place when you switch themes. Make your whole site reflect your brand.

So if you are looking at this post (or anything on my website) whilst on your computer or laptop you should now see a mini banana just left of the travellingbanana.com url in the browser.

Can you see it?

If you are on your mobile device such as an iPad or iPhone you can add me to your homescreen using the Add to Homescreen feature.

You will now have a funky smiling banana as an icon. It should look something like this:-

Now you can have a useful visual identification to help you find one of your favorite websites :-)
Now you can have a useful visual identification to help you find one of your favorite websites 🙂 and a convenient link on your mobile device.

If you are visiting from an Android device, let me know the options you have and I will add those instructions here too?


You can find out more about this new WordPress release here

Nominated for the Liebster Award

I've been given the Liebster Award
I’ve been nominated for the Liebster Award for up and coming bloggers. Thank you!

Well, it looks like I’ve been nominated for the “Liebster Award,” an award for up and coming bloggers with 200 followers or less! Thanks for my nomination goes to AliMoonGoddess who has one of the coolest tag lines a blog could have, so go check her out 🙂

So without further ado I will answer the questions I have been posed:-

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WordPress Fun and Foibles

I have tried many times to create a website and have used WordPressQuestion-Mark-Dice-Blue-1500x1500 consistently…at least the choice was consistent…the actual content production, not so much. The reason, I have discovered, has been a number of factors.

WordPress itself – it has always been reputed as being easy to use, easy to set up and you’ll be up and running in no time. Yes that is true, for the most part, and I like a lot of their features, but sometimes it can be rather frustrating and you can’t always find the solution to what seems a simple question!

Let’s try adding a video to a post for example. There’s a lovely button that says Add Media and this is where you will find a much streamlined and fast way to upload your images and videos. It works like a dream for photos and with the new drag and drop feature it’s very smooth and extremely quick.

Add Media

So armed with the new Twenty Fifteen theme from WordPress I gaily attempted to add a video to a post I had written about the World Cup 2014. Just as images are really easy to add to your post I thought it would be the same with videos. Can you guess what happened next? Not a lot of content uploading or writing but lots of frustration, a stiff neck and a headache…so I gave up.

Not to be defeated, I returned the next day having consulted various videos and information on the wonderful web of wisdom and no-one seemed to be having any trouble with embedding a video as long as you were using YouTube, Vimeo and any other social media third-party that allows you to copy their link or use their pre-made embed code. But WordPress make it possible to upload my video without having to get an account anywhere else. I don’t have a YouTube account, I have a WordPress website and that’s where I would like my content to sit so I don’t have to login anywhere else.

Video Embed & Thumbnail Generator
Video Embed & Thumbnail Generator

So the proof is in the pudding and now that I have found a wonderful plugin (which, even though good, I really should not have to use) it now works. So thank you Kyle Gilman for your Video Embed & Thumbnail Generator which can be found on WordPress.Org Plugins

The now fully embedded World Cup 2014 video can finally be viewed here