Tuesday’s Tool: How To Create and Embed Flash Slideshow Gallery Into WordPress- EASILY
Adding a Flash gallery to your blog can really make your pages and posts pop. If you are a small or home based business a flash gallery can really step things up a notch and breathe life and visual interest to a page. They add a professional look and give blah pages pizzazz. You don’t have to be an expert programmer or know anything about Flash to create a slick Flash slideshow - here’s how.
Adding Flash Slide Show Gallery To Your Blog
Creating a Flash slide show gallery and then embedding into your WordPress blog is easier than you think. You need two tools to do it quickly and easily. A Slideshow creator that outputs your gallery into a .swf file and the Wordpress plugin, Kimili Flash Embed for Wordpress. There are other ways to do it but I found this the simplest and fastest way and it requires very little skill or programming knowledge to get great effect.
Responsible Use of Flash on Your Site
I am by no means encouraging users to cram Flash into and all over their site. I am quite shocked I am even traveling down this path after dealing with several sites in the the last couples of years that were and SEO nightmare- compiled almost entire of Flash. Do not go crazy with Flash on your blog- it does look cool and it might be tempting. If you are going to use a slideshow gallery and embed into your posts or pages pages- make sure you are also using good titles ( post tiles that use keywords) and have some content in the post i.e. viewable text that will “support” your gallery.
I personally would avoid putting a flash banner in your header , footer or sidebar and do not recommend doing so.. Don’t even think about a splash page made of Flash.
If you are interested in extensive use of flash or want to optimize your existing Flash, Jonathan Hochman wrote an excellent article, How to SEO Flash that i suggest you read.
Where CAN I Use Flash on My Blog Then?
or Let Your Blog Wear the Flash not Flash Wear the Blog
Use your flash slideshows with discretion. Accent your blog and don’t make it integral part of your blog. I use them as part of a post or a page. They are eye-catching and often beautiful. From an SEO point of view they should compliment a post and not BE the post .
Ideas For Using Flash Galleries on Your Blog
Portfolios- Flash Gallery for Artists and Designers
A Flash gallery can highlight almost any kind of portfolio and would work beautifully on an artist or craft/hobby site. I have friend who quilts “professionally” and has many award winning designs. She uses a flash gallery in her “About Me” page and it looks fantastic.
Using a flash slideshow is a great way to showcase jewelery design , candle making, handmade bath and body products, artwork and one of a kind pieces on a blog. Graphic designers can also use a slides show to highlight their best work.
Create Flash Gallery for Your Small Business
If you are a small or home based business a flash gallery can really step things up a notch and breathe life and visual interest to a page. Use a slide show for your home based business and highlight products or services.
Catering company, hand made candles, bath and body products, craft items, etc. If you offer a service uses photo that compliment your service; e.g. Use a gallery for a new real estate listing, show pictures of sparkling blue pools if you are a pool maintenance company, lush green lawns and colorful flowers if you are a landscaper.
Effective Use of Flash Slideshows and Galleries in Niche Blogs
Almost anyone can put a stamp of creativity and splash on their blog using Flash. You can use flash to further brand yourself- using images and pictures that further underscore your expertise. Use a gallery interspersed with images of awards or special recognition you have received. i.e. ” Voted Best Flower Shop by Daily Bugle Readers 2007 ”
Personal Blogs
You will impress you friends and relatives with your incredible talent. My 10 year daughter made a flash slideshow yesterday when she saw me doing “cool stuff” ( for a change) on the computer. Her dad was ASTOUNDED that she had done it on her own.
How To Create Your Flash Slideshow
You need to output your flash in .swf format. If your application creates a simple .swf file and you are happy with results then go ahead and use it. . More complicated flash galleries with thumbnails and transition effects will also output .xml html and other files you will need.
Download and Install Kimili Flash Embed for Wordpress
Get Kimili Flash Embed for Wordpress
Follow instruction to install the plugin. If you write post without visual text editor than the “Embed Kimili” function will not work.
Create Gallery
If you don’t have a program that makes a flash slideshow or gallery all ready you can get a free one. I really like Flash Slide Show Maker Professional . Another to try is Flickr_Downloader.aspx Flickr Downloader
Create your gallery. Make sure you output your gallery into its own folder.
Some tips when creating you gallery- most software will let you add a clickable URL to your gallery- do so. Also name your images.
Also create a folder or your server to hold your flash files. Create a folder in your root directory on your server called ‘flash” or “gallery” or whatever. I will call mine “flash”.
There are two scenarios for embedding your Flash gallery into a post. Simple and Not So Simple.
Embedding A Simple .swf File
You have a single .swf file output and that’s it.
Upload the file to your server and test. Let’ say you file is called portfolio. Upload portfolio.swf to “flash” folder on your server. To test type in the absolute path to your .swf file into your browser. Your absolute file path will look something like this this:
http://www.yourdomain.com/flash/portfolio.swf
Check that that is working before you go any further!
To embed your .swf file into your blog post or page using Kimili plugin use these tags:
[kml_flashembed movie="/path/to/your/movie.swf" height="300" width="300" /]
Note: check you slide show generator app in properties for the height/width - you have to use them for Kimili to work.
Write your post and put in your flash file using the kimili tags. You should see your gallery in your blog post or page. You are done!
Embedding Flash Gallery with .xml Files into Wordpress
If you output a more complicated gallery you will have a folder of files, including an xml and html file with some image folders and files.
This is bit trickier than a plain .swf file and things can go horribly wrong if you don’t upload together or do something crazy and rename a file and think it will not affect anything ( it will.)
If you have named your gallery “porfolio” you will get a folder called “PORTFOLIO” and in the containing folder PORTFOLIO will be files that have been generated by your program -probably called : portfolio.swf, slides.xml and some other folders and files. Upload the entire folder (in this case called PORTFOLIO ) without changing anything into the “flash” folder you created on your server.
Test. Look for the portfolio.swf file in your “gallery” folder, this is what you will use. Type or paste the absolute path to the .swf file on your server into your browser to test.
Will look something like this:
http://www.yourdomain.com/flash/portfolio/porfolio.swf
If it is not working now it will not work in your blog. Figure out what’s wrong. If you are getting a “load fail” or similar error chances are you have not uploaded all the files together OR have wrong file names. Your flash viewer can’t find the right files to call up.
If it IS working- Yay! You are almost done.
In your post or page you will need to use the kimili embed tags. You also must ALWAYS define the height and width of the viewer or plugin will not work. You can look in your gallery /flash slideshow application for the sizes.
You also need to add a bit more code that tells that plugin where to find paths to images, etc.
When embedding a flash file that uses xml files this is what I use to get it to work:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.yourdomain.com/YOURFOLDERNAME/GALLERYFOLDER/example.swf" base="http://www.yourdomain.com/YOURFOLDERNAME/GALLERYFOLDER/" height="450" width="400" /]
I experimented with many other ways- including instructions on the Kimili website and had no luck . The code above is fool proof and worked ever time. If you have better code or another way I would love to hear about it.
here is code I used to embed the flash gallery at the top of the post:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.bigfootwebmarketing.com/galleries/example/example.swf" base="http://www.bigfootwebmarketing.com/galleries/example/" height="450" width="400" /]
Creating a flash gallery or slide show for your blog is easy and once you master the simple steps of using a slideshow maker and Kimili plugin you can make a new gallery in minutes. A gallery adds some oomph to your pages and punches up a dry post or page. Use om niche blogs, artists sites ad small business sites to further promote your brand.
If you are having problems embedding flash into your blog or have some other ideas or tips- please use comments section.
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Wow, thanks. When you click on the image, will it route to a post?
Susan’s last blog post..Clockwork
You are a lifesaver! Thank you for this blog posting, you need a higher page rank in google! I spent hours trying to figure out why my flash wasn’t working with kimili - there weren’t explicit instructions anywhere about how to handle .xmls and image folders.
Thank you so much!
Thank you for the fix on the kimili code. I created a portfolio/photo gallery in flash and could not get it to play on my wordpress blog. I was not using xml, but linked images in actionscript and load vars text files.Fvars declarations, as the kimili site suggested, would not work and I couldn’t find any information on where to even place my flash file on the server (in the theme folder or directly on the public html?). Your simple little code and informative post helped unravel the mess I unknowingly had created by an unclear directory structure. I think your code could help a lot of wordpress users using other types of complicated flash. Thank you, and I am going to post a link to this on my site. thanks.
Thank you! Saved me hours of headache to figure out why my XMl was not being embedded…..thanks!!
Kelly
And there is what some alternative?
Thanks, this is a good resource. Like you said though, it’s important to keep in mind not to go overboard with flash content. Not only does it leave your site open to the possibility of looking unprofessional but it also affects how well you’re picked up by search engines.
But if you utilize it in moderation it makes for a VERY effective visual aide.
Bookmarked so i don’t forget!
I was able to get my swf to show up using your above example, but couldn’t get my gallery.xml file to be used, only the default pictures would show up when trying to embed SimpleViewer into my wordpress blog.
This worked great. My only problem is that my images show up a bit distorted. When I publish preview in flash the swf file displays the images fine through the browser. any thoughts?
Dear Lisa,
You are awsome!! I was able to create my swf file thanks to your posts, and that was after a looong day in which I tried many pieces of software from the web, to convert swf to avi and then …upload to youtube!!!! and so on…which in the end showed such a tedious work that I was almost losing hope….
I feel very tired now, but happy.
Your posts here really solved my case. THANK YOU very much.
I’ll bookmark your website
:* :*
Moni
Thanks for the great run down. I really like what you said about not having flash overwhelm the blog. Yeah, I definitely don’t like sites like that. It has to be done tastefully. As for the tutorial, I’m definitely doing to try using that method for a painting portfolio I’m working on.