Author: NEKLS

Using the Event Calendar

You know you want to add events to your calendar, it’s easy as pie with the now built-in Event Calendar plugin. Let’s take a look at how it works!

The very first time you use it, you will need to set up the category you want to put your event posts in, and set a few settings depending on your preference.

Create the event category:

  1. Log into the administration console of your website (the Dashboard)
  2. Click “Manage”
  3. Click “Categories”
  4. Click “Add New”
  5. Enter the name of the category (Events, Library Events, Fun Events, whatever you like), don’t worry about the other fields.
  6. Click “Add Category”

The rest of the instructions after the jump!

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Categories
Events

Making Your Website Pop!

Jane Purcell, senior vice president of Advanced Access, a Web design and hosting firm in Anaheim Hills, California, says “I equate (having a good website) to a car. If you don’t put gas in it and get regular oil changes, it won’t perform for you. The same goes for the Web, where sites that aren’t useful or current do little good for their owners.”

That said, how do you make your site “pop?”

Here are a few ideas:

  1. Use strong headlines – Write engaging headlines that speak to the essential needs of your patrons, such as “Got Kids? Need a peaceful moment? Come to storytime!”
  2. Keep it up to date – there’s no point for your patrons to come to your website if there’s nothing new for them to look at. Keeping it updated at least every couple of weeks keeps your site fresh and interesting for patrons.
  3. Keep your information accurate – There’s nothing more frustrating than out of date content or bad links. Check your content every now and then, your patrons will thank you.
  4. Write patron centered copy – It’s their library, let them know that! Use you and your, instead of I and we.
  5. Write in an inverted-pyramid style – list what essential services your library provides first (the basics), and keep the details at the bottom. They’ll read down to the nitty gritty if they are really interested.
  6. Use small, context sensitive pictures in your posts – Not every post needs a photo or a graphic, but it can make your site look and feel a lot more fun. KLOW makes this easy as you can upload a photo to place on any post. You don’t have to use only photos, you can use royalty-free clip art as well (see the post below) to make a point or draw attention to a particular post.

I’m sure you have many ideas on what makes websites pop… what are your ideas?

Categories
Tutorial

Idea for post: What the director is reading

P.J. Capps, director of the Atchison Public Library has a great post on her KLOW site entitled “What the Library Director is Reading.” What a great way to get the community involved! She’s got a lively conversation going with her patrons about what she’s reading and what they are reading.

What other kinds of posts really get your patrons going?

Picking WordPress Themes for KLOW

Finding the right visual look for your website can be a challenge. Fortunately, there are many sites that host WordPress themes that are compatible with our system here. A few key words to look for when you are looking at a theme:

  • Widget ready – so you can drag and drop your widgets!
  • WordPress 2.0+ compatible (we’re using WordPress 2.0/2.1)
  • Available in a .zip file
  • Look for themes that aren’t too thematic or artistic. Sometimes it’s quite challenging to modify a theme to your specifications when it is very graphic intensive.
  • Stick to familiar layouts, 2, 3 and 4 column layouts all seem to work very well with not too much fuss.

Some sites to consider when looking at themess:

http://widgets.wordpress.com – features themes that are widget ready

http://www.wpdesigner.com – he tries to do a theme a day, and some are very good.

http://themes.wordpress.net – lets you search on particular criteria, such as color, widget ready, prominent colors, etc.

Have Fun!

Photos in Posts

Nobody likes to wait for photos to download on a website, so if you’re uploading photos that are directly from your digital camera, likely they are pretty huge and will take a long time to download. There’s an easy way around this — resize them!

I found a handy online tool that will let you easily shrink those files down to a more manageable size both for you to upload and for your patrons to download.

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