Blogger Header Customization

In January I wrote a post about customizing the header in Blogger blogs. The method worked okay but involved modifying the template.

I found out from phydeaux3 that Blogger has a new "Configure Header" widget and finally got to test it yesterday. The screenshot below is from my test blog.



Images upload okay but can't be resized or repositioned. I would have liked my test image centered horizontally.



It would be nice if images could be tiled, or moved, or a made to fit. At the very least the header widget should be given layout options like those used when uploading images to posts.



Freevlog has a video tutorial that shows how to use the widget.(via)

BBD Updates

I have been updating BBD's companion sites and puttering a bit in this blog.

I experimented with different templates for BBD Blog Feeds and found one that is easy to update and looks okay. I will continue to select two Featured Blog Feeds working my way through the list from A - Z and from Z - A.

Ridiculosity Report and EclecticBlogs will be the featured feeds for a few days.

I have added a number of useful links to BBD Delicious. I have a number of blogs to check out and will be updating the site periodically. If you have any suggestions send me an email.

I have been adding links to the Resources section of the sidebar. I will add some more after I get a chance to check them out.

BBD Swicki needs to be updated but I haven't the time right now. It works and that's what matters most.

I removed the ip2phrase widget from the blog. Today it stopped BBD from loading in my browser. I find that third party applications can cause this to happen if Blogger has problems connecting to their host websites.

Say Hello To Your Visitors

With IP2Phrase you can add customizable welcome messages to your blog. The code is dynamic and detects the visitors location.

Here is what I see:



Go to the website and choose a phrase or make your own. Copy the code into a html/javascript widget.

Html Links Within Posts And In Blogrolls

When people asked me for the URL of my blog they sometimes asked how to create the link. I created a links page and wrote:

To link to my journal:

(a href = "http://firemind2.blogspot.com")Firemind(/a) - replace the () with <>.

I then went on to explain how to link to individual posts.

I did it this way because it worked and I didn't know how to display html code in a post.

I have come across several posts showing how to display code in a post. The latest being 'Displaying code inside a post' at Beautiful Beta. A reader (Shelly) left a comment there that led me to Quick Escape - a tool which turns the html into postable characters.

Now I can show examples like this:

<a href="http://bigblogdir.blogspot.com">Big Blog Directory</a>

Blogger makes it very easy to create sidebar links now. We don't have to paste the code into the templates but just add the URL to a link list widget.



If you would like to add a graphic link, such as a button, to your sidebar you need to use a HTML/JavaScript widget and add code like this:

<a href="http://bigblogdir.blogspot.com/"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/1176/373809733834064/320/button1..png"></a>

The code will create a clickable button like this:

Smilies For Blogger

I guess it was inevitable that someone would find a way to add smilies to Blogger posts. I use them sometimes in my personal blog but wondered if actual smiley images would add to a post or detract from it. Now I can find out.

Aditya over at 'The Last Word' provides a script to add smilies to blog posts.

Now we'll have little yellow faces popping up on blogs everywhere. I may even add the script to Firemind. :)

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Note: Aditya's blog and similar hack/tech blogs can be found by clicking on the "Beta Blogger Hack Feeds" link in the sidebar.