Over the weekend I had a burst of creative energy and came up with (and finalized) some new designed for my premade design shop.
Have a looksee…
Click the images above to be taking to the premade blog design page (or go here!)
And? All themes now come with a coordinating 125x125px badge!
Enjoy!
You’ve started a blog. You’ve written the best blog post eva, and now you’re trying to insert that perfect image to finish it off. Only problem, its coming out ginormous or, at best, falling out of the posting area. What to do, what to do…?
Here’s my opinion on the easiest and best way to deal with images in your blog posts. Take a look…
The two sites I mentioned in the video are picnik.com and photobucket.com
Your turn: Have questions, feedback? How do you handle your post images?
Have you ever wondered how to add a custom signature to the end of your Blogger posts? Well, there is a way to add your name, a photo or a link…the possibilities are endless. And its automatic so you don’t have to remember to insert it each time.
This tutorial demonstrates the steps to creating and inserting a custom signature in Blogger. Below that you will find the code that I used in the video so you can copy and paste it exactly. Remember…when dealing with HTML, every character counts! If your image doesn’t show up correctly, retype the quotation marks (“) that you cut and pasted earlier.
Code needed for Blogger…
<br>
<br>
<br>
<img src=”image-url-here“>
Happy blogging!
I got a lot of feedback on my post last year about adding a horizontal navigation bar to your Blogger blog. Before a few months ago, this was no simple task for the average blogger who had little or no HTML knowledge. You had to manually change your template and use a text gadget to create pseudo pages and a corresponding navbar.
Well now that’s all changed…for the better. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to do it:
I mentioned in the video above about custom designs and the Template Designer. If you have a custom design that you paid a designer to create before the Template Designer was rolled out, you may want to consult your designer before using the Template Designer. Any changes you implement will override your current design, and may not produce favorable results. If you want to create a navigation bar without using the Template Designer, simply create your pages, then follow the directions on my previous tutorial.
Happy blogging…any questions?
Deb from Life With Birk contacted me to make some changes to her Blogger blog. She had a cute photo for her header and a great blog theme. We added a third column and a horizontal navigation bar to add a little more functionality.
Deb’s blog is all about the wonders, misadventures, challenges and blessings of motherhood with three beautiful children. The photo header says it all, doesn’t it? You’ll want to head over and get to know Deb!
Today I’m tackeling a question from Lissa. She asked:
How do you make target links in the header – an example of what I mean is http://eightcrazy.blogspot.com/
Well Lissa, in the world of web design, there seems to always be 1000 ways to do the same thing. One person will use one method, while another person will use another. There are design standards, but within that, there is some freedom and flexibility.
I think from looking at eightcrazy‘s source code (btw, you know you can peek at someone’s source code by right-clicking on the page and selecting “view page source”, don’t you? Its super handy.) that she did a lot of template customization (and btw again…Shannon of Eight Crazy is a super talented designer and all-around cool gal! Check ‘er out.).
She probably started with a basic Blogger template and went into “Layout” and “Edit HTML” and tweaked to her heart’s content. My other guess is that she did what’s called “slicing” on her header when she created it in Photoshop. She divided her header into four sections, using a very clever design. (sorry Shannon…I hope I’m not giving away all your secrets!). Within Photoshop, there is a “slice” tool that divides your design into smaller pieces and creates images from them. In her HTML code, she arranged her slices, wrapped them in anchor tags ( <a href=”yoururl.html”> ) and thus created a full header.
Eightcrazy is a great example of what you can do with a little creativity and coding. Blogger offers a good starting point for people who just want to set up a basic blog and start writing. But there are also a lot of customization capabilities built in if you dig around a little bit. Here are a few resources I use when working with Blogger:
http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggertipsandtricks.com/
http://bloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/
Hope that answers your question, Lissa. Thank you, Shannon for providing today’s visual aid! 
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