You Can Embed Picasa and Flickr Slideshow to WordPress.com Posts and Pages via Vodpod

WordPress is to blogging pretty much what Mac is to computers.

Compared to Blogger, it offers a more intuitive interface, and a more slick layouts, leaving an impression of a higher level of professionality to readers of our blogs. However, the everlasting troubles regarding WP’s UNWILLINGNESS to allow embedding flash and java objects. (Let’s face it, it’s not like they can’t do it).

To cut the long story short, I ll skip the meditation on why a great platform like WP is making such an ABSURD choice, I’ll go right to the problem solving.

WP is still the best FREE blog hosting platform out there, so we are compelled to keep bearing this lack of convenience and spend hours and days trying to figure out how to add some decent features to our blogs, in orfer to be least compatible to all embeddable stuff available outside WP.

PROBLEM: THE ONLY SLIDESHOWS WP ALLOWS FOR EMBEDDING ARE PLAIN UGLY AND KITSCH. (READ: SLIDE.COM)

Slide.com might play its game and serve its service with the Myspace teenagers, but it is not good enough for all the WordPress bloggers who chose this platform because of the slick layouts and user-friendly logical interfaces it offers.

SOLUTION: VODPOD

You can embed Picasa and Flickr Slideshows directly into WP posts and pages by using a Vodpod account.

QUICK FIX: Enter your Picasa or Flickr slideshow code into Vodpod account, and it will then generate a WordPress-friendly code for you.

Buttons for Safari and Firefox are also available- they will allow you to post to WordPress via Vodpod without entering your Vodpod account.

Hint: Try embedding other embeddable stuff thgrough Vodpod- not all of it will work, but it is worth a try.

We have already spoken about how Vodpod is not a perfect solution for all the WP embedding troubles, since, for example it cannot embed Google Maps.

 

 

What you CAN do with Vodpod: 

 

1) Embed Picasa Slideshows

This is a more slick option compared to SLide.com since Picasa offers a very simple and clean interface for slideshow. It is just a bit of unnecessary registration trouble for those who do not already have google accounts (anyone?:)), or Picasa accounts.

2) Embed Flickr Slideshows to WP posts and pages

Do I have to mention why this is amazing? )

Apart from being finally able to embed your own Flickr images rather than uploading them into an ugly and user unfriendly image gallery, you can actually embed Flickr slideshows of any group, which is excellent for all posts focused around a theme (see an example here). 

3) (SORT OF) embed Issuu dinamic catalogues (It works only in a Vodpod widget, not in posts)

Here is an interesting new look for the Vodpod widgets: instead of showing off just plain video, they can now show your Flickr, Picasa slideshow collections, and even Pdf dinamic catalogues such as the one at Issuu. 

4) Embed Vimeo, and other non oficially WP supported videos. 

This is good because Vimeo has a much slicker interface and a slightly higher quality video than the WP accepted video formats of Yout Tube and Google Video and Daily Motion. It is better for embedding wideos you uploaded yourself since, being more niche than YT and GV, Vimeo has less searchable content. 

 

What you CANNOT do with Vodpod:

 

1) Embed Google Maps. 

Useless to say why this is a great pitty. Platial map widgets are not even close as good as an actual Google Map would have been. Sometimes you need a map in a post or a page, not in a widget. Not to mention the customization options, very poor with Platial.

 

 

Geeky Coder pointed out some very useful stuff that helped me a lot with figuring out the ways to integrate stuff via Vodpod. He is a WordPress.com hosted blogger, and he offers some useful advice on how co overcome WP.com troubles, showing the results directly on his blog. Those who have been searching will know that most WP related tips are about Plugins for the self hosted WP, so this means that Geeky Coder is one of the few useful bloggers who are willing to ACTUALLY help around the FREE hosting WP. 

I hope he will be able to resolve my Issuu dilemma as well. Issuu is a beautiful embeddable and free flash PDF catalogue, that works well when embedded into Vodpod, but when I copy it into WP posts or pages, it just disappears. 

(Unlike for example Google Maps, or the Flickr Slidr- the API version of the slideshow that is not working on Vodpod at all). 

Until then, there is a SORT OF A SOLUTION for Issuu: SInce it works in Vodpod, you can show off your Issuu catalogues through the Vodpod widget available by default on WP. (You can see an example for Vodpod widget use for OTHER THAN VIDEO here. )

 

 

Feel free to comment if you know some other interesting uses of WordPress via Vodpod.