Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Technical Difficulties

Can anyone here teach me how to put the cute little buttons on my blog? I want the baby in the pea pod, I really do! I just..don't know how . Thanks.

10 comments:

Jean said...

Hi Kim. I did it BUT I'm not at ALL sure if I did it right. I'll tell you what I did and if I've done it wrong, I hope someone will correct me and then we'll both be the wiser.

They say to save the button to your own server, so you're not "pirating" from someone else. That's the part I'm not sure if I've done right. I don't want to be a pirate, anyone is welcome to make me walk the gang-plank if I am.

Start by right clicking your mouse on the button image you like. You'll get several options. You want the one that saves the image to your computer. This creates HTML code for that image (which theoretically is now saved to your server) -- I THINK.

Next go to 'Layouts' on your blog. Select 'Add Page Element'. That should give you a list of types of page elements to add. Select 'HTML/Java Script'. You'll get a dialogue box. You do not necessarily need to give it a title (I didn't), but you can if you want. What you do need to do is put the HTML code in the box. First you enter the code to create a link to the Pea Pod KAL. Next you enter the code for the image of the button. This tells your computer to show that picture, but make it a link to this site.

I manually wrote in the HTML code (pain in the arse.) I have a Mac and use Safari as my browser, I couldn't figure out an easier way, I'd love to know if there is one.

I tried to cut and paste exactly what my HTML looks like, but the tag is not allowed in the comments. Ack.

Instead, here's the link that helped me out:
http://knit1blogtoo.blogspot.com/2006/11/how-to-add-link-to-button-or-photo.html

Again, anyone, please tell me if I've got it all wrong.

Valerie said...

Phew, Jean. Good thing for you. I noticed Kim's question about buttons a couple of days ago, but I kind of pushed it to the back of my brain because A) I knew it would take a while to type in the directions, and B) was afraid that I was doing it some sort of wierd backward way. I do it the same way you do. Thanks for taking the time to spell it out! I will just add that after saving the button on my computer, (1) I go to 'Add Page Element' and select 'Picture'. Then I have Blogger upload the button onto the Blogger server from my computer. Then I right-click on the image of the button in the dialog box that appears after it has uploaded and select 'Properties', then I copy the URL for the picture to my clipboard and use that URL to write my HTML code in the next step. (2) Next, I go to 'Add Page Element' and select 'HTML/Java Script' and proceed just the way Jean described in writing the code. (3) After I've written the code and verified that my button is showing up on my blog main page, then I go back and remove the picture of the button that I put on in step 1.

I'm going to try spelling outthe HTML code; just replace the brackets [] with the greater-than and less-than symbols that are above the comma and period on your keyboard. So:

[a href="http://peapodkal.blogspot.com"][img src="http://URL-FOR-YOUR-BUTTON.com"][/a]

My most common mistake is forgetting to put the end quotation mark after the URL. :)

Let us know how it goes.

As Jean said, if anyone knows a better way, speak up...

Valerie said...

So Kim, what I'm trying to say here is: I'm sorry that I ignored your question!

Valerie said...

Okay, it was Nicole who asked about buttons originally, so I'm sorry to both of you!

Since we're talking about blogging things, I'd like to know what y'all think about replying to comments. Should I email replies to the commentors--is that the polite-blogger thing to do? Does it matter?

Nicole said...

I am so glad you asked this on the blog!! I had the same question, but asked in comments so not as many people would see that I am not so blog saavy!! LOL

When I ask a question in comments I go back to the comments to look for a reply. An email would be dandy too, but I'm cool with whatever!

Nicole said...

I am so glad you asked this on the blog!! I had the same question, but asked in comments so not as many people would see that I am not so blog saavy!! LOL

When I ask a question in comments I go back to the comments to look for a reply. An email would be dandy too, but I'm cool with whatever!

YarnThing said...

Ya'll crack me up!

Marly

Kristen said...

So, Thanks for all the direction everyone. I learned from Valerie and, like her, I put off typing the reply because the process is so convoluted.

So Jean, you intelligent Mac user you, I have a question! I'm also on a mac, and use Safari predominantly, but I can't seem to post pictures with Safari, so I've been using Firefox to manage my blog. Does Safari work for you? This is listed as a known issue with Blogger...maybe they fixed it!

Nicole said...

I gave up safari like 6 months ago, becuase it seemed like half the internet wasn't compatible. Last I heard post pictures was still a problem. I do love my mac though!!

Jean said...

Hey Kristen,
Quelle conincidence, I just recentlly installed Firefox! I'm going to start using it to manage my blog, too. Because, yeah, Safari seems more difficult than it should be. I can post pictures with safari when writing a post, but I just see the code, not the picture itself (I only see the picture when I preview). And I can't easily make a hyper-link. I have to write out the HTML for that. Eh, life's too short, right? The thing I do like about Safari is how easy it is to subscribe to RSS feeds. Since I've subscirbed to lots, I'll probably continue using it for that. But I think you've got the right idea using Firefox for bloggy stuff.