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Help me optimize my Blogger blog! (Image compression related, overall look)
HIGH NOON
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey guys,
I've been blogging on and off since I was about 12 and always took an interest in the amateurish self-publication the internet allows. I am now in my second year of university, and am pursuing a degree in Journalism. I write for a few published newspapers, 'zines, etc., on campus and around my city, but figure having a personal blog for all my writings that don't end up on someone elses publication would be a good idea. The only difference is I want to make this one a bit less "personal" and a bit more "professional", while still being original. I've begun to design banners, graphics, and whatnot for my blog, and am really liking the way it's turning out; however, I still have a few (obvious) kinks. Here is a link to my blog.
The main thing I'm trying to figure out is, if you'll notice the most recent post on my blog, the pictures are pretty awful quality, but when you click on them, the "full" size (which is really only a couple pixels larger than the thumbnails) becomes way more sharper and overall better looking. I'm guessing this is because when I processed my pictures, I didn't make them the proper size they should be for the body component of the blog, and then Blogger implemented their awful compression on my otherwise high-quality processed shots. Should I compress them to their fixed size and try re-uploading them? Or am I missing something in my HTML that would increase the overall quality of the thumbnails?
The second thing I'd like to implement is code that prevents right-clicking on my pictures and saving them. I am not too concerned about being plagiarized for my pictures, but it has happened before, and it was a real headache getting the website to give me credit for the shot.
Lastly, I'd just like to know what everyone thinks of my blog, and any tips, recommendations, or criticisms they could give me on its overall organization and presentation. If anyone could point me to some good guides on getting blogs to be more functional, understanding HTML a little better, and anything you feel I should know, that'd be great. I would appreciate anything you can tell me. Thanks!
I've been blogging on and off since I was about 12 and always took an interest in the amateurish self-publication the internet allows. I am now in my second year of university, and am pursuing a degree in Journalism. I write for a few published newspapers, 'zines, etc., on campus and around my city, but figure having a personal blog for all my writings that don't end up on someone elses publication would be a good idea. The only difference is I want to make this one a bit less "personal" and a bit more "professional", while still being original. I've begun to design banners, graphics, and whatnot for my blog, and am really liking the way it's turning out; however, I still have a few (obvious) kinks. Here is a link to my blog.
The main thing I'm trying to figure out is, if you'll notice the most recent post on my blog, the pictures are pretty awful quality, but when you click on them, the "full" size (which is really only a couple pixels larger than the thumbnails) becomes way more sharper and overall better looking. I'm guessing this is because when I processed my pictures, I didn't make them the proper size they should be for the body component of the blog, and then Blogger implemented their awful compression on my otherwise high-quality processed shots. Should I compress them to their fixed size and try re-uploading them? Or am I missing something in my HTML that would increase the overall quality of the thumbnails?
The second thing I'd like to implement is code that prevents right-clicking on my pictures and saving them. I am not too concerned about being plagiarized for my pictures, but it has happened before, and it was a real headache getting the website to give me credit for the shot.
Lastly, I'd just like to know what everyone thinks of my blog, and any tips, recommendations, or criticisms they could give me on its overall organization and presentation. If anyone could point me to some good guides on getting blogs to be more functional, understanding HTML a little better, and anything you feel I should know, that'd be great. I would appreciate anything you can tell me. Thanks!
HIGH NOON on
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Could you center your pictures? I don't think they look bad the way they are, but they don't compliment the position of the text.
are you referring to the ones in older posts, where they're a bit small?
In short, anyone who wants your images will get them regardless of what you would want to do to stop it. As mentioned above the best you can do is watermark your images if you want to make it more difficult for someone to take credit for your images. (And even then, Photoshop etc..)
edit.. looked at the pictures. Problem is most likely that you're compressing a compression. Sort of like dubbing a tape off of a tape, each progressive one down the line is a bit worse. You could consider either cropping your original image or (since the images are almost the same size anyway) specify the height/width of the images via CSS (or HTML though I don't think it's valid strict markup which is what I use). Doing it the latter way can make things look a bit jaggy though.
If you want to appear a bit more professional, I recommend grabbing a domain.
Truncate your posts on the main page, with a link to "read more".
With so many pictures, posts get crazy long, and it's impractical for someone to scan recent posts for ones that interest them. In Wordpress, it's super simple; wherever you want the main page display of a post to stop, you add <!--more-->. Looks like it's similar in Blogger.