Pretty much since I switched over to WordPress, now three years ago this month, I’ve used Picasa as the source for my media files. My original thought in doing this was that I could better organize my media libraries and keep them all separate from the WordPress infrastructure. Three years ago this seemed like a good idea. I had a decent plug-in I could use to insert images into my posts, and WordPress didn’t handle media libraries very well.
Recent changes to my plug-in that caused (temporarily) unwanted behavior, made me reconsider this. WordPress’s media infrastructure has improved a great deal in three years. I also began to find it cumbersome to get images into my posts, because I typically had to go through 2 steps: first getting the image onto Picasa and then into the post. This may not seem like much, but considering how much I blog, any shortcuts save time.
So I recently decided to switch. You probably didn’t even notice. Instead of using Picasa, I am now using WordPress’s native media manager for my blog media. I’m not moving the old stuff from Picasa into WordPress, but anything new goes into WordPress, eliminating an entire step and making it faster to insert images into posts.
What is the different for you? Well, you tell me. Here I am in Picasa:
[pe2-image src=”http://lh4.ggpht.com/-Qn6PJR-ZUE4/URzby6CQXCI/AAAAAAAAaYU/aHaMxg_RFwQ/s144/photo.JPG” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/103316545008269282896/JamietoddrubinCom2#5844788084038720546″ caption=”photo.JPG” type=”image” alt=”photo.JPG” thumb_w=”550″ thumb_h=”” thumb_crop=”false” ]
And here I am in WordPress (looking a tad happier because it is easier and saves me time):
I suspect there are only two real differences you’ll see:
- If you click on the image, you get to different places.
- Since the images are now hosted within WordPress, they should load a little faster, but this is marginal at best.
There are other advantages for this down the road, but for now, I’m just happy with how much time it saves me each time I want to add an image to a post.
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