iPad for WordPress: Blogsy App – imaging

Following on from my post regarding the iPad/iPhone WordPress app, I was told about the Blogsy app and that I should try it! The first major difference that I would like to point out before blabbering on is that this app is not free, it costs £2.99 from the app store – but worth it!

So this is what Mummy Constant thinks about the Blogsy app for use with my WordPress self hosted blog in regards to imaging. First impressions were that the app is very nicely laid out, a lot “prettier” than the WordPress app, when typing your posts, you see how the post will be displayed on the blog – as opposed to seeing just the text in an unformatted fashion. So you do not need to preview your posts before publishing, because what you see when you type and insert images, is what you get! This is a great feature, if you add an image, you see the image and you can align the images, resize the images and change the text wrap with a tap of a button. This is something that you do not get with the WordPress app yet,

There is a sidebar that you can add accounts from where you store your media (you need to set them up first, click on settings > system settings); you can see from mine that I have the web, camera roll, you tube, email, google and WordPress set up as this is where I usually grab my media from and it really is easy to add it to your post.

Adding an image: for this example I have just taken a screenshot of this post and I know this image will go to my camera roll. So all I need to do is tap on the camera roll icon to my right; it’s the round circle with a sunflower in it. As you can see from my sidebar its the second icon in the list.

Once you click on the camera roll icon you are greeted with an upload screen, you need to choose the image you want (from the library option) and drag it over to your blog icon on the left of the screen… then when you have finished choosing all of your images, you just tap the “tap to upload” button.

As you can see from my screenshot to the right, I have selected the library option and I used my finger to drag the image I wanted on to the envelope icon on the top left of the screen; this represents my blog. Then “tap to upload” and this uploads the image to WordPress and makes it available for you to use.

To drop the image into the post, all you need to do is click on the uploaded button and this shows you all the images that you have uploaded to WordPress. From here you can drag and drop the image into the post.

Mummy Constant top tip: when dragging an image into the post, I always Tap within the text where I want my image to drop first.

The image Settings: When you click on the image, Blogsy shows you what options are available to you; alternative text, alignment, location, size properties, link properties and a delete button. The main ones I focus on are alternative text, alignment and using the slider to change the size of the images. Alternative text is what google will see as your image and if people with impaired vision are using speech software, it is what the speech software will describe as your image. For example if I have an image of my bump at 39 weeks, I might put my alternative text as “pregnancy bump photograph taken at 39 weeks”. Alignment options are whether you want to have the image in the centre, or left/right of the text, this all depends on where you want the image! To change the size of the image you literally use the slider to make it smaller or larger.

That’s it! That’s how easy image formatting and inserting them into posts is in Blogsy, I was really impressed with how much control I have over the images and how much more efficient it is to be able to see the images in the post as i am writing. Very useful when your are writing a lot of posts all the time, as i do.

Now all that is left to do is upload the blog post… I hope it’s helpful!