Are you running a blog but you are struggling with adding correct pictures? If you want to avoid being contacted by some law firm or original author of certain photos, then you need to be careful when selecting photos that are then added to your articles. The best choice here is to start making own pictures, but sometimes there just isnt enough time to create own copyrighted pictures.
What should we do in such cases? Luckily there are some free image databases like sxc.hu but images available there are usually low quality and selection if poor. What about WordPress plugins? Yep, this is the right answer or choice! If you check plugin repository, you can find many plugins that offer access to Creative Commons photos that can be used for articles. In this article I will present you three plugins that I think they are worth being used in our blogs.
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#1 Editorial Assistant by Zemanta
Zemanta is interesting company which is currently operating in USA and Slovenia, small country in the heart of Europe. Two founders are actually from Slovenia and their willingness to succeed forced them to go overseas – to United States. They are the creators of interesting plugin that makes it possible to add related posts and related images to our blogs. By doing this, we not only save time but also become part of their large network of over 120.000 blogs. Zemanta automatically analyzes articles and then shows related posts and related images. By not having to search for related posts, we save time and be more efficient.
Related posts and images? Yes, you read that correctly. We can add to our posts related articles from other bloggers and not only in the form of links but also in the form of thumbnails! Adding images is also very simple, credits (very important) are added automatically, so no manual work is needed. Images from Zemanta can also be used as featured image for our posts and only one click is needed for this.
How does their interface look? It is located in the right site ofWordpress text editor. It offers us possibility to search for images and at the bottom of “images selection box” we are presented with the list of related articles. Adding them is very simple of course, so I won’t go into details here. You may be asking yourself when do we get this black window which is located beside “Content Recommendations box”? You get this by clicking a desired image. Here, you can decide to add image to your post (position and size can be changed of course) or click “Set as” which will automatically set selected image as featured image.
I highly recommend that you install this plugin. It is also completely free of charge!
#2 Free Stock Photos Foter
This plugin claims that is offers access to more than 180 million free photos! You can use it by clicking on ADD PHOTO text (or image) at the top of text editor in WordPress. It opens small window where you can search for photos. You can try “money” for example, and you will get money related photos. After selecting desired image, new window opens and here you can select between WordPress or Foter hosting. I recommend that you select hosting on your server. Of course you can also change picture alignment, size and other values. Credits are automatically added to the image, so you can be without worries!
As you can see, this plugin is fairly simple and lacks advanced features of Zemanta. It does not offer automatic analysis of your article and does not offer related articles and images. Its up to you to find and select proper images for adding them to the post.
#3 Flickr – Pick a Picture
Last and final plugin to be presented here is Flickr – Pick a Picture plugin. It states that you get access to tons of Creative Commons pictures from Flickr. You can use it by clicking on little camera picture at the top of text editor in WordPress. After clicking you are presented with small window where you can search for Flickr images. Pretty straightforward behavior! After selecting desired picture you are then redirected to standard WordPress image settings (alignment, size, name, etc.). You however cannot change hosting of pictures as with Free Stock Photos Foter plugin. You can only host it yourself but this is actually preferred decision.
Conclusion
I recommend that you install all three plugins and use them combined. Its always better to have wider selection of images. If one plugin does not have desired image(s), you use other one and I bet you will get desired photo!
The overall winner is plugin made by Zemanta. It does offer best features which no other plugin can beat!