Circles Crop: This Is Simply A Symbolic Image
This is a link to David's "Wordless Wednesday" picture post. He asked for comments, in the form of guesses, as to what the picture signifies.
Most of his visitors are regulars who are familiar with, and love, his 'phraseology' and the majority have guessed at Cymbals (that's the correct spelling, folks!), based on the clue in his sub-heading.
I will go along with the majority. 'Cymbal' it is!
Warning! This could seriously damage your health! Following these instructions could send you loopy trying to jump from one 'screencap' to the next. I'll try and make things easier by opening each of them in a new window, but your 'method' of working may vary, so I shall leave it up to you how you approach the task. CTRL+N will open a new window (or tab) and that might be a better solution for you!
First, a brief explanation. The 'Backlinks' feature enables you to keep track of other posts on the web that link back to your article. It is also an excellent "link-love" attribute that, in its simplest form, raises your page ranking with Google!
You must first turn ON backlinks by going to your Settings | Comments tab and choosing to turn it on. You can turn OFF backlinks for individual posts by expanding the "Post and Comment Options" when you are composing your post and choosing the option.
Finally, in this intro, to answer one of the questions posed by Lee, you choose to activate a backlink on the post you wish to link to, not on your blog. The backlink feature will build a new post on your blog, but more about that later.
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1. Backup your old template!
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2. Edit the "nofollow" instruction that appears as the default in all Blogger templates. If you don't, Google won't bother to follow the link, which slightly defeats the object, huh?
When you've edited the template, SAVE it.
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3. When you find the post or article that holds your interest, and you decide that it is worth linking to it, click on the "Links to this post" in the comments section of the post.
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4. The next window that opens is the 'page' that the post occupies on your Blog. You probably already knew that each post has its own page and that the Blog 'front' page is a composite of all the posts, but I thought I'd mention it, just in case! At the bottom of the display you will see the "Create a link" invitation:
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5. When you click on that you are shown a new window. This is a 'Post' window that will create a brand new post and lodge it on YOUR Blog. It is actually a very clever bit of coding by the developers. You don't have to leave the Blog you are visiting to be able to post something new on your own Blog. Now, how cool is that?
The things you need to change have been highlighted in the image below, so I won't repeat myself here. Follow the cryptic clues I've added to the image:
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6. The following image shows where I made my own alterations and it is something you should consider before getting to the end of the process:
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7. This is the confirmation that YOUR blog post has been published. If you have your own Blog open in a new window, hit refresh and you'll see that this confirmation message is not a lie:
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8. The next image shows that, indeed, the 'Post' has appeared as if by magic on the blog of origin. Remember, you did this on somebody else's site. Way to go!
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9. My preference is to now call up this post on my own site and add, delete or edit the post so that it has a relevance to the post that it has been linked to on the other site. I've added this screen shot to remind visitors that editing in HTML is a cinch with Blogger, because it won't let you post anything that doesn't meet strict validation standards. Shame the templates don't meet the criteria, but that's another story!
For those that are unfamiliar with HTML, or just curious, the instruction to justify the paragraph alignment is missing a double quotation mark ( " ) after the word 'justify'.
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10. The next image is the same post that appears in #8. above with a little bit of eye-candy and text added. Something you would automatically do to any post that appears on your site:
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11. The next image is a shot of the original post that you elected to link to. Darn, doesn't seem to have worked!
Patience, people. The Google search engine that finds, itemises, logs it somewhere and then publishes it, is fast, but not as fast as you!
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12. Voilã, 2 minutes and 37 seconds later the link has appeared. That was the time it took for this link to appear; yours might take longer - or less time! The job's done.
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I know the explanation seemed to go on FOREVER, but I wanted it to be simple enough for a novice to follow without getting him or herself into a bit of bother. I hope I succeeded.
Standby for a variation on this theme ...
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I've never used the "Backlinks" feature in NEW-Blogger, but I couldn't see what the problem could be. So I decided to find a post and link to it. This has got to be an easy one, yeah?
Hmmmm... Bummer!
Tried it FROM; tried it TO; tried it OLD; tried it NEW (hey, that rhymes!). No way, Jose. All I got was a 'New Post' on my Blog, and that wasn't what I, or Lee, or David, wanted. Time to start hunting for a solution from the Guru's on the web. Much good stuff out there, but it all seemed to fall into the usual 'techy-trap' of assuming that everybody knew the basics. They also seemed to concentrate on the "NEW-Blogger Beta", which I assume is when the feature first surfaced. Nada, nada, nada about the current NEW-Blogger that we are all using.
Other, real-life matters intruded, and since time was obviously of the essence I emailed Lee and David and grudgingly admitted defeat. But I promised to continue investigating. As I said in a previous post, "You win some; you lose some!", but it shouldn't be that way. Help should be easily available and just as easily understood.
There is a happy ending, though. More information in the next post ...
You compose your 'post'. That's the hard part. You post your 'post'. That's the easy part. You sit back and wait for somebody to visit, read and comment. That's the satisfactory part.
In between you get on with your life. As we all do. But isn't it amazing that when the Blogging-bug has struck that we all appear to schedule our everyday tasks around our (sacrosanct) blogging time?
So, why not make it easy on yourself? Why not pre-plan how you compose and publish your blog posts so that when you hit the "PUBLISH POST" button you can be assured that they will appear exactly how you envisaged they would?
1. Select 'Dashboard' or 'Customise' (depending where you are on your Blog) and you will be taken to your 'Template' page. Select 'Settings', then 'Formatting' and you will be faced with the page you can see in the pic below. Take note of the two areas I mention. These are the main changes you may need to make, but check the rest of the boxes in case you've overlooked something. Don't forget to "Save Settings" after you've made your changes. These changes aren't critical, unlike changes you make to the template; they can always get changed back if you aren't satisfied with what you've done!
2. In the pic below you will see that I have already inserted a few 'justified' paragraph 'starts' and 'ends', because that is how I compose my posts. Your mileage will vary. I also have the whole code for the 'Up Arrow' that I use at the end of each post. This makes life easy for me as I don't have to remember the exact code, and since it appears in exactly the same place in each post (repetitive coding) I decided to insert it into the formatting template for all future posts.
I also have a series of 'hyphens' (dashes) included as a standard divider between 'sections' of a post. It was something I started in my earlier posts and something I decided I would continue to do for subsequent ones. I could find a post with a dashed line and copy/paste it into the new post, but this way is so much easier, don't you think?
You may wish to use a horizontal rule instead and you can achieve that by using the 'Compose' feature and selecting it from the menu, or if you are using the HTML feature just type the following ...
<hr width="50%" align="center">
... to give you a horizontal rule that is 50% of the width of the display area, and which is centred in the middle of the page.
More tips to come ... !
I blithely motored on describing how to implement the new banner headers that you are all impatient to try out, and managed to gloss over a hint or two about the images you are preparing to replace your current banner header.
This isn't a show-stopper, more in the way of a 'tip'. If you have a template that uses rounded corners then you should attempt to imitate the same display so that the new banner header integrates seamlessly. I have to assume that you are perfectly adept with your imaging software and that it can handle 'layers' - or this tip won't work.
You can slave over your imaging software and build your rounded corners laboriously. Or you can cheat!
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1. Navigate your way to the HTML code of your template (I shouldn't have to explain how!) and find Blog Header, and you should see a couple of URLs that are clearly pointing to graphics lodged on the Blogger servers:
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2. Typing in those URLs will get you a page with the graphic, but I will make it easy for you if you are using the Rounders-3 template: just click on the following URLs to take you there - in a new window! Each template uses different backgrounds and it is important that you 'lift' the graphics for the specific template you are using.
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Both sets of corner images are GIFs on a transparent background. You need to copy them (right-click, 'save image as') and then all you need to do is to 'import' them to the banner image you are constructing, align them top and bottom overlaying the original image, and you now have an image with neatly rounded corners!
Easy, huh?
NEW Blogger instructions, probably for the majority of users, and probably the one that will interest most of the visitors to this site looking for simple instructions on how to change a 'Header' or 'Banner'.
Have you got your image ready? Is the image width set to the width of your current template? Please remember I am dealing specifically with 'Rounders-3' and 'Rounders-4', and in those the width of the image is the same as the width of the template - 740 pixels. The height of the image is what you choose to make it, but I suggest 150 pixels for a balanced display.
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1. Backup your old template. Either by using the built-in backup feature in Blogger, or by copy/pasting it to a text editor of your choice, and saving it in a location you can find easily and with a name that makes sense to you!
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2. Clicking on 'Customise' on your main page, or 'Layout' on your Dashboard will bring you to the "Add and Arrange Page Elements" of the 'Template' tab. This is the new feature of NEW-Blogger in which you can literally 'drag-and-drop' modules wherever you wish. The one we are interested in is the 'Header' panel at the top:
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3. When you click on 'Edit' (see pic on top) it takes you to a new window in which you are asked to make a few choices. I have annotated the choices you should make so I won't reiterate them here:
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4. Nearly done - but not quite! Those pesky codes in the /* Blog Header still need to be changed so that the image will sit exactly where you want it, centred at the top of the page. It is exactly the same criteria that was edited in OLD-Blogger, so take a look at the graphic below and do the editing . . .
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That's it. You wanted more?
The examples for this sort of editing are all around you. The banner header on this site was inserted using exactly the same editing techniques. The banner header on David McMahon's blog (using the Rounders-3 template), and the banner header on Cecilia Mercado's blog, Dance with the Sun (using the Rounders-4 template), were also edited using the same instructions I've posted above.
If things don't work out first time, just restore the site to the way it was by using the saved template you copied before you started. Then e-mail me directly and I will visit your site and see what I can do for you. Don't forget to add as much information about what went wrong.
Over to you . . .
OLD Blogger instructions. Here we go. Please bear in mind that this will come in two parts - OLD and NEW-Blogger. Why? Because I hacked away at both, and it would be a waste if I didn't at least mention OLD-Blogger for some 'peeps' who are still using it.
So, before we get down and dirty with the template changes, have you got your image ready? You probably have or you wouldn't be interested in attempting to change it. Make sure that the image is the width of your current template. In 'Rounders-3' and 'Rounders-4' the width of the image is the same as the width of the template - 740 pixels. The height is whatever you want it to be, but I suggest 150 pixels for a balanced display.
The following is the picture I settled on after much editing in Photoshop. You will see a screen-caliper I use as an aid when 'measuring' stuff for the web and it clearly shows that the width of the picture is 740 pixels. Measuring things using the 'artists thumb' method isn't much good for web design. It has to be precise or your display will look shoddy!
OK, we have the replacement ready so let's go see what we need to attack. Once again, please let me remind you that this is OLD-Blogger that we are working on. If you want the information for NEW-Blogger, read the post that follows this one.
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1. Backup your old template. Either by using the built-in backup feature in Blogger, or by copy/pasting it to a text editor of your choice, and saving it in a location you can find easily and with a name that makes sense to you!
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2. Upload your image so that it gets to lodge itself on Blogger's servers, because you're going to have to call it up during the editing process. You can do this in a new draft post that you won't be publishing:
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3. The highlighted bit is what you need when replacing the template's own image. The rest is superfluous:
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4. Now choose the 'Template' tab and choose to 'Edit HTML' (if you're still reading this and you are a NEW-Blogger user, please note the differences in the options offered to you). Follow the instructions in the graphic below:
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5. And here are the changes:
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6. Still in the 'Edit HTML' window, find <!-- Blog Header --> and delete the bits that I've highlighted. This is so that the 'Blog Title' and 'Blog Description' don't show up over (or through) your carefully constructed graphic!
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7. That should have been all you needed to do, but when I made the changes to David's blog, one of his visitors commented that the 'link' that the original header provided back to the home page of the blog was now broken, and that she found it disconcerting that clicking on the new banner didn't take her anywhere! That's the strength of 'feedback', that a simple oversight made a visitor's browsing experience less than satisfactory. So I went back in and did another small change that the next couple of graphics describe. I would recommend that you do it as well. This graphic shows what needs to be edited . . .
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8. And this graphic shows it after it has been edited . . .
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That's all folks. If you haven't already done so, take a wander across to David McMahon's blog. What you see is precisely what was achieved editing his banner while he was still using OLD-Blogger.
He is, of course, now using NEW-Blogger. Which means I can use his site as an example for the 'tute' on changing things in NEW-Blogger as well. Watch out for the next post . . .
A gentle comment left by papoosue reminded me that I've been putting off publishing the 'Banner/Header' tutes, using the switch to the new computer and the new OS as an excuse.
Well, a week has rolled by since I switched off the trusty 'old' computer and I haven't been tempted to turn it back on again. Looks like I managed to snatch all the files I needed, so it appears that the time for excuses is over!
My dual monitor display of a Vista desktop.
Photograph: © Terry Fletcher
I've put up that pic just to prove that life has moved on and that I have truly changed things. I should be able to get my head down now and become productive.
Give me a day or two, OK?
New computer. New OS (Windows Vista). Same old problem. And NO, it isn't connected to paraskavedekatriaphobia, or what is commonly known as the "The Fear of Friday the 13th"!
Can't build a local network because M$, in their wisdom, have changed just about everything as far as Administering your account is concerned. They claim that it 'hardens up' your computer against vile on-line attacks. Sure! What they don't say is that they've changed things so much that, you can barely access the internet. Which makes your computer pretty safe!
It is now a game of 'trial-and-error' to build a local network, and until I've managed to do that then all my old files are sitting on the old computer and thumbing their collective nose at me.
Figuratively speaking, of course!
Bear with me, folks! I will be good to go in a few days . . .
