Monday, September 27, 2010

Grab my button widgets/gadgets and styling a blogger blog - Ask Candy




This week's question is actually 2 from Lindy of Crafted by Lindy. She's got some serious blog envy going on
Okay you guys are going to get sick of me. I've got two more questions for you....
  1. See the lines on this blog (One Pearl Button) that go around each of the three columns? How do you do that? It may be very simple, in fact I'm sure it is but I can't figure it out. Thank you!
  2. Also on the blog (link above) see how on the right hand side she has a badge with code under it that I as a reader can copy and paste to my blog? I want to know how to add this to my blog? I'd love to either be able to able to put a "grab this badge" widget on the side or on another "page" of my website.
Okay I'll leave you alone for now. Thank you! : )
So, she's talking about these lines:

They're very faint, but they are there. I am LOVING the gray/yellow color palette of this site, great job Allie! (Alli is the crafty archaeological grad student who writes this blog!)

So Lindy, I'm a Wordpress gal, and your answer is a Blogger specific question. So I did a little googling and found what I think is a fabulous site that tells you how to do this: Borders in Blogger Template from BlogBulk.com. I'm hoping that this will answer your question, there's no way for me to figure this out without setting up my own Blogger Blog and digging around. And I can tell you that my 1st blogging experience was done in Blogger 4 years ago and it didn't last too long. So I really hope this works for you!  
 [Although I LOVE writing this column, I can share with all of you that blogger makes it VERY HARD to do simple simple things. I know it'll get easier for me, but seriously, there is just so much extra crap whenever I switch over to the HTML tab to see what's going on...so consider this my public announcement of how much I LOVE wordpress! end rant]
Lindy, I LOVE your header:
I'm gonna bet that it's gonna be hard to get rounded corners outlining your columns, and I'm thinking that you may be unhappy with straight corners contrasting with your lovely rounded boxes in your header. I'm sorry this isn't much help...

HOWEVER! I can help with the second question! You want to do this:

You'll need to upload the picture that is your button to your site, and make a note of it's location. Then, go to this lovely site:

(My awesome bloggy friend Amy of Amy's Creative Side turned me on to this site - huge thanks Amy!) You just plug in your details, and customize the colors (LOVE this feature), preview it to make sure it looks the way you like, and then hit the "get code" button. Copy all the code in the lower box (NOT the preview code) they provide and paste it into a gadget (or a widget in Wordpress) in your sidebar. Click save and go take a look, and then DON'T freak out when you just see the little box of code (like I did). If you'd like to show what the button looks like, you'll need to actually insert that picture above or below the code you just generated, which is just for the box o'code itself!

Here is the code I put in my gadget/widget:

In order to have this on my sidebar:

Pretty nifty, huh? Thanks so much Lindy, I've been meaning to do this for myself....and now it's done! Woot!

Got a question? Ask it here!

[Candy lives in California with her husband, 2 boys, and dog. Aside from being wife, mom, teacher, crafter, web guru and all around doer extraordinaire she manages her own business,Candied Fabrics. You can read her blog here.]

3 comments:

  1. LOL! I do have serious blog envy! You crack me up. So glad you include my questions exactly as written. Shows my wicked writing skills first hand. haha!!!!!

    Thanks for saying you like my blog header! Gives me warm fuzzies.

    THANK YOU so much for these answers!!!! I'm so excited to try them. I'll come back and let you know how I do once I've had a chance to play around! Sweet!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It worked! It worked, it worked, it worked! Thank you Candy! I added a Grab our Badge gadget to my team blog! http://etsyalberta.blogspot.com/ Awesome!!!!

    Now I just need to actually design myself a logo so that I can add one to my own blog. That's easy right? haha!

    Thank you again Candy! You're awesome!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi,

    I'm happy you liked my "Grab My Button Code Generator." Because your post made me realized that others may freak out if they don't see their image but just the box with code, I decided to modify my code so that it displays the button image as well.

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

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