Photos can be a great way of giving support to your blog whether it is within the blog post itself or on the sidebar to link to a photo gallery. The majority of us either use a self-hosted blog like that of www.wordpress.org or a hosted blog such as www.wordpress.com that may or may not contain a photo gallery to display your photos on a page of your blog or on the sidebar of your blog. On the other hand, what if you have used some third-party photo service such as Flickr, Photobucket, or Picassa to show and share your photos to others to view and now you have decided that you want to integrate those photos on your blog? It is true that we can of course just upload photos from our computer and use them as part of our blog. If you are a Flickr user, you can integrate your photos by using the Flickr Badge, Flickr plugins, or using the Flickr RSS Feed. The focus in this case will be what a RSS Feed (Flickr RSS Feed) is and how to integrate the Flickr RSS with a self hosted or hosted Wordpress blog.

Flickr RSS Feed

Most of us might be familiar with a RSS (Really Simple Syndication) which allows you to syndicate and distribute content to your visitors using browsers. Using RSS can beneficial when you are posting to your blog and want others to be informed about regular updates that can be delivered to a news reader (Google Reader as an example), widgets, or gadgets.

How to Integrate the Flickr RSS Feed

In order to integrate your Flickr RSS Feed with your Wordpress blog (Wordpress.com or Wordpress.org) the following steps can take place:

Part 1 – Your Flickr Account

• Make sure you are logged into your Flickr account.
• Select the “You” menu command.
• Next to the “You” menu command is a drop down list, select that and choose “Your PhotoStream”. You should see your photos.
• Scroll all the way down into your see a RSS feed button(It looks like a square orange button) and next to it will show in gray “Subscribe to your name photostream”.
• Right click on the RSS feed button and select “Copy link Address”.

Part 2 – Using Wordpress.com and Flickr

If you are using a Wordpress.com(an example fortwashingtonphoto.wordpress.com), the following steps can take place:

• Select “My Dashboard”
• Under Appearance look for Widgets.
• Select Widgets.
• You should see a Widget called “Flickr”.
• Move it over on to the sidebar.
• Give it a title (optional).
• Paste the RSS URL (in part 1, you went to your Flickr account and copy the link) where it shows you Flickr RSS URL.
• Click on the Save button and select Close.
• View your site to see if the Flickr photos appear on the sidebar.

Part 1 – Your Flickr Account

• Make sure you are logged into your Flickr account.
• Select the “You” menu command.
• Next to the “You” menu command is a drop down list, select that and choose “Your PhotoStream”. You should see your photos.
• Scroll all the way down into your see a RSS feed button(It looks like a square orange button) and next to it will show in gray “Subscribe to your name photostream”.
• Right click on the RSS feed button and select “Copy link Address”.

Part 2 – Using Wordpress.org and Flickr

If you are using a Wordpress.org(an example is www.webmastertoolcenter.com- on your own web host), the following steps can be taken place:

• Select Dashboard. You will see Appearance. Look for Widgets and select Widgets
• Look for a widget called” RSS”. Move it over on to the sidebar.
• Give it a title (“Give the Feed a Title”) which is optional.
• Paste the RSS URL where it shows you to “Enter the RSS feed URL here:”
• You have options to display the number of items you want others to see such as three, four, or even five.
• Select the Save Button and select the Close link button.
• Preview your site to see if the Flickr text or items appear on the sidebar.

More and more, photo sharing is becoming increasingly used with more ways of sharing your photos on your blog or other places such that of Photo Bucket or Flickr. However, Flickr provides a wonderful way of integrating photos onto your blog (Wordpress.org or Wordpress.com) whether you are using the different Flickr plugins or using the Flickr RSS. With that in mind, have you used Flickr? How often do you use Flickr for photo sharing and possible integrating your photos on your blog?

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