coxy's blog

It's not like me to post anything useful to others on my blog, but I've discovered how to set up the 'Blog This' button on photo-sharing website Flickr to work with your Opera Community blog. It's not rocket science, but up until today I didn't know how to do it, and couldn't find any reference to making them work together online; so I thought I'd write a quick tutorial for anyone that was struggling with this.

For those that don't know what the 'Blog This' button does; pressing it will automagically post that Flickr photo to your blog without you having to write any HTML, BB Code or go to any trouble of even logging in / visitng your blogging service (in this case, Opera Community).

Step One

First thing you need to do is go to Flickr's 'Add a Blog' page. To find this yourself, click on the dropdown arrow next to 'You' in the main navigation, select 'Your Account', click 'Extending Flickr', click 'Edit' alongside 'Your Blogs' and click 'Add a Blog'. You should see a page that looks something like this:

Step Two

Select 'MetaWeblogAPI Enabled Blog' from the dropdown, and click 'Next'

Step Three

On this screen you need to enter some important information. Your API Endpoint is your Opera Community account URL with /api/ on the end. This means mine looks like this: API Endpoint: http://my.opera.com/coxy/blog/api/

You should replace 'coxy' with the username you use to login. Your API Endpoint will look something like this: http://my.opera.com/USERNAME/blog/api/

Hopefully you're intelligent enough to fill in the 'Username' and 'Password' fields by yourself, but if you need a hint, it's your Opera Community login details - and not your Flickr login details. Hit 'Next'.

A completed form looks something like this:

Step Four

Some people have more than one blog tied to their Opera Community accounts - if you're an owner or moderator of a group, for example, you have access rights to post on multiple blogs. This screen shows all the blogs you can post to, and it's where you get to select which blog you'd like to add to Flickr.

Most people won't need to worry about this as they only have one blog tied to their Opera Community account, or their main blog will be selected as default anyway. Before it all gets confusing, just hit 'Next' and we'll proceed.

Step Five

The next two screens are just confirmations. The first one is for you to read and verify that all your details are correct. If they're not, make amends. If they are, hit 'All Done'. The second one you'll see after this is a congratulations screen. This means you're all set up and ready to go.

The End

So, that's pretty much it - I told you it wasn't rocket science.

From now-on, all you need to do to post your favourite Flickr photos to you blog is just hit the 'Blog This' button. It really is that easy.

If you feel like you can take it to the next level though; there are a number of different layout options to pick from, or even the option to totally customize your templete. You can edit these by clicking 'Layout' on 'Your Blog' settings.