There are easy and free ways to add all kinds of media to your WordPress.com blog. This post explains how to add photos, video, audio, text and mixed media documents to your blog.
Photos: WordPress.com makes it easy to upload and host images using the Upload/Insert photo button on the admin panel. These photos are hosted online at wordpress.com. I also edit and host images at Skitch.com (mac only) and Drop.io.
WordPress.com does not host media types other than photos.
http://drop.io/toddlucier/asset/coffee1-mp3
src=”/jw/embed/player.swf”
width=”470″
height=”20″
bgcolor=”#ffffff”
allowscriptaccess=”always”
allowfullscreen=”true”
flashvars=”file=http://drop.io/toddlucier/asset/coffee1-mp3&duration=33″
/>
Hosting other forms of media on a WordPress.com blog requires users to set up free accounts using other Web services prior to embedding the content on your blog. The easiest way to embed a slideshow in your blog is to use a powerpoint embedded photo slide show as shown below.
Video: Upload your video to a variety of Video hosting sites using Tubemogul, a ‘multi-site upload service” – to free video hosting sites like youtube.com, blip.tv, veoh.com and others. Try a few embedded viewers. Each looks a little different. Then copy and paste the embed code from your preferred video hosting site under the HTML tab in the body section of a post or by clicking on the embed video icon in the ribbon bar.
Audio: Create a free account and upload your mp3 files to Drop.io. Click on the file and copy the link or embed code into the HTML tab in the body section of your post or link to the url at Drop.io using the Add Audio link (musical note symbol) above the ribbon bar.
The embed code from drop.io results in a nice little flash player for your page like this one:
PDF’s and Word Documents: Embed these types of documents into your blog with a free service like Scribd.com or Issuu or upload the document to Drop.io and link as with audio above. Scribd provides embed code that shows your document in a window within your post. Documents can also be shared via hyperlink to the URL of your document at Scribd.
Embedded pdf’s look like this:
Obama Inaugural Guidebook
Multimedia: All the media you could ever wish to post to your Worpress Blog:
Some folks may want to embed powerpoint presentations or other multimedia content designed using Web 2.0 services. Here are a few free multimedia services that provide embed code.
Slideshare.net is a powerpoint hosting site that makes it easy to embed slide shows in your blog. Just copy and paste the embed code into the HTML tab. Slide shows can be advanced with the click of the viewers mouse.
Viewbook - a web-based service that lets you create image slide shows you can embed in wordpress.
Flowgram.com – multimedia tool integrates web pages, powerpoint slides, photos audio and more in a format for embedding in your blog.
Voicethread - a multimedia story telling tool
Animoto – make a multimedia slide show with your photos and music or choose from a selection of music tracks to make a free 30 second video.
Google.com/Maps – Put a google map into your blog or make your own map with Google’s My Map tool. Unfortunately, the embed in Website url does not work with WordPress.com due to api restrictions, and getting a map on your blog takes a bit of work. But remember, if your ideal guest doesn’t know that you are easy to get to, they are not coming. To get the map into your WordPress.com blogsite, you’ll need to take a screenshot of the map and upload the map as a photo (described above).
On a Mac, you can take a screenshot using shortcuts in your System Preferences / Keyboard Shortcuts settings.
On a Windows PC, design a map that meets your needs. Then with your map in your browser window press the [Alt] + [Prt Screen key] to copy the current window.
Paste the screen grab into an image editing document and crop the screenshot to the desired image.
Back on the Google Map, copy the link or embed code to the original map at Google, and put this link on your site with your screen grab image to link out to the Google Map you want your visitor to see.
The final version of your custom MyMap can include images, icons, hyperlinks and more. The finished map could look something like this:
See the map at google.
The map at the other end of this link includes a Get Directions to here link, which gives turn by turn driving directions to your location! That makes you easy to get to.
Do you use other online multimedia services that provide embed code? Tell us about them
external links:
- How to create Flickr slide shows
- How to embed almost anything
- 50 WordPress.org multimedia plug-ins
- JW Embeddable mp3 / video player
