You can find the download and installation information for this plugin here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/frontpage-slideshow/

Usage

As an articles slideshow to present featured posts.  It displays the featured image, the title and the excerpt (if you choose to display them)

Editing slideshow Appearance

• Go to the plugin’s administration page

• Configure the slideshow as you want it and click Save the settings and apply them immediatly
• Copy the shortcode under the preview

• And paste the shortcode in the file where you want the slideshow to appear (for this you need to know how to edit and upload webpages)

Editing slideshow content

You can include up to 5 POSTS (not pages) in the slideshow.
I created a category called “Slideshow” and in the slideshow settings (see above), I made sure the slideshow only displays post that are filed under this category.
The image that is displayed is the “featured image” of that post. (this is not by default if you install the plugin, but I used the following hack: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-frontpage-slideshow-i-hacked-this-to-use-the-featured-image)
The title that displays (if you chose to have it displayed), is the title of that post.
The discription that displays (if you chose to have it displayed), is the excerpt of that post.

   1. To include a post

• Go to the admin panel, click Posts
• find the post you want to include, click  quick edit and  just file the post in the category “Slideshow” (check the box)

   2. To exclude a post

• Go to the admin panel, click Posts
• display only the post in the category “slideshow” ( choose “slideshow” in the dropdown box “View all categories” and click “Filter”) 
• find the post you want to exclude, click  quick edit and  just unfile the post in the category “Slideshow” (uncheck the box)

    3. Set featured image

• First prepare your featured image and save locally
  in my example, the picture needs to be square (or it will be cropped)
  the picture needs to be 394pixels x 394pixels (or it will be cropped)
• Go to the admin panel, click Posts
• In the list of posts, find the post you want to edit and click Edit
• In the sidebar on the right (scroll down), click “set featured image”

• Click “select files” if you want to upload your locally saved picture, browse to the picture and click open
  (or click “from media library” if the picture was already uploaded and used in the post)
• Click “use this image as featured image”

• Close the window and update the post

    4. Change featured image

• Go to the admin panel, click Posts
• In the list of posts, find the post you want to edit and click Edit
• In the sidebar on the right (scroll down), click “remove featured image”
• Proceed as explained above

NOTES

• Make sure that every post you write has a “featured image” (this will be used as thumbnail for the post all over the site)
• and an excerpt (this is the short description of your post),
  to edit the excerpt, in the write post panel, scroll down until you see the box to insert the excerpt.

Manage future events as an online calendar. Display upcoming events in a dynamic calendar, on a listings page, or as a list in the sidebar. Choose one WordPress category as the ‘event’ category, and then add posts for dates in the future. Add the calendar or event list functions to your template, or just use the ‘Event Category’ page to list your forthcoming events.

Download the plugin Event calender 3.

1. Change settings

Change settings on the ‘Plugins > Event Calendar’ options screen.

You must choose which WordPress category to use for events. (Viewing the options screen for the first time also sets up the database, and upgrades events from older versions of EventCalendar.)

2. Add the Event Calendar or Upcoming Events list to your sidebar

If you use the WordPress Widgets, then the Event Calendar is available as an easy to install widget. In order to use it you must first activate the “Event Calendar Widget” plugin.

Otherwise, you need to make a small adition to your template. Add the following code to your sidebar.php:

Event Calendar:

     <li>
          <?php ec3_get_calendar(); ?>
     </li>

Upcoming Events:

     <li>Events
          <?php ec3_get_events(5); ?>
     </li>

If you are using an older template, then you should check that your HTML header contains the following tag: <?php wp_head(); ?>

3. How to add an event

NextGEN Gallery is a Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a Flash slideshow option and a simple and easy administration back end to handle multiple photos, galleries and albums. In this tutorial you’ll learn how to add and delete new galleries and images.

1. Creating a new gallery

Once you installed the plugin, you should have a new tab Gallery in your admin panel. 

- Click the Add Gallery/Images 

- Enter a name for your gallery in the text field and click Add Gallery

2. Adding images

- in the Admin panel, click the Add Gallery/Images

- Now click Upload Images in the top navigation,
  click Browse to select the images you want to upload,
  choose the gallery in which you want to upload them
  and click Upload Images

3. Delete images and galleries

In the admin panel, click Gallery tab > Manage Gallery.

To delete a gallery, click Delete.

To delete images, click the title of the gallery. Then hover over the picture and click Delete.

4. Adding a images to your post

Use the button “add NextGEN Gallery”   on top. Select the gallery name, choose a display option (3 examples listed below) and click Insert.  There will be a code inserted in the post and when you preview the post you will see the gallery appear.

Show as Image List  [ nggallery id=x ]

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Show as Slideshow [ slideshow id=x] or [ slideshow id=x w=width h=height ]

Show as Image Browser  [ imagebrowser id=x ]

img0

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 5

You can change the size of the images and thumbnails, the colors, transition affects and transitin time of the slides in the admin panel > Gallery > Option.

5. Adding slideshow to the sidebar

You can use the same code [ slideshow id=x w=width h=height ] to add a slideshow in the sidebar.  Just copy the code into a text widget.

6.  Using NextGEN Smooth Gallery

You can download another plugin called “NextGEN Smooth Gallery“.  To us this gallery, you paste the follwing code in your post:

[ smooth=id: x; width:400; height:400; timed:false; arrows:true; carousel:true; links:true; info:false; align:center; frames:false; open:true; text:Pictures; ]

You can adjust width, height and all the other options in the admin panel > Gallery (Smooth) > Specific Options and generate the new code to paste in your post.

img0

img1

img4

img7

img8

 As you can see, the smooth galler does not resize your pictures, so make sure they are the right size before you upload!

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to manage your ads in WordPress, using the plugin  WP125.

1. Setting up

1.1 Install the plugin. In the admin panel, click the newly created Ads and click Settings.

1.2 Enter your settings:

• Ad orientation: choose the number of columns
• Number of ad slots: when you want to add more ads later on, you need to increase this number
• Ad order: you can choose “random” or “normal”, if you choose “normal”, the ads will be shown in the orderindicated in the settings of each seperate ad
• Wiget title
• Ad sales page: put the URL of the page where you have your ad information and prices
• Default style: uncheck if you want to use your own stylesheet
• Expiration Email: enter your email address
• Pre-Expiration Email
• Default ad: enter the URL of the image you want to use in empty spots (you can copy the URL form the media tab)

2. Create a new ad

2.1 First upload the ad image:

• in tha admin panel, click Media > Add New

• click Select Files, browse to the file you want to upload and click Open
• copy the File URL (select, right-click and copy)

2.2 Now create the actual ad

- in the admin panel click Ads >Add/Edit

- Enter the details:

• Ad image: paste the file URL that you had copied before
• Name
• Slot # each ad needs to have a different slot number, even if you chose the setting “random”
• Target URL: the URL of the page where the ad should link to (best copy/paste to avoid mistakes)
• Expiration

3. Edit an existing Ad

To edit an existing ad, click in the admin panel on Ads > Manage.

3.1 Active ads

You’ll find all the active ads under Active Ads.

To Edit an add, just click the Edit button.
To deactivate, click Deactivate.

3.2 Inactive ads

All the inactive ads will be under Inactive ads (simple, right )

To Edit an add, just click the Edit button.
To re-activate an add, first click Edit and make sure the expiration date is a future date, then click Activate.

To completely backup your WordPress website/blog, you need to back up

- the database tables that contain your posts, the content of your pages, the comments, …
- the files that the wordpress site needs, like template files, images, galleries, …

1. Backup your WordPress database, 

I use the the plugin WP-DB-Backup (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/)

Use the instructions to install the plugin.
Once installed, click Tools > Backup.

The core table are backed up by default, but you can choose to backup additional tables as well. Be sure to exclude spam comments and post revisions, they take up a lot of space and are not nessecary to backup!

Choose a backup option (avoid save to server, choose download to computer or email) and click Backup now! 

Save the backup file on your harddisk. It is recommended you keep at least 3 files (and delete the older backups).

You can schedule your next backups by making your options and click Schedule Backup.

2. To backup your WordPress files, use FTP (see FTP tutorial)

Download the contents of the wp-content folder.

Download all the plugins.  You need to this only once and only download again when you install a new plugin.

In the themes folder you only need to download the folder with the theme that you are using.  These are your templates files that “style” your blog.  You only need to download it once.

The uploads folder is the folder that contains all your images and media that you add to your posts.  You need to download the entire folder the first time.  After that I recommend you only download the folder of the current month. (you need to make sure in the settings that the media are stored in monthly folders).

That’s it! Now my database table and the files are backed up weekly!