How to add tabs to your Blogger blog

Tutorial: Saving and Sizing Your Images for Blogging

This tutorial will show you how to resize and save your photos in Photoshop so they are sharp, crisp, and perfectly sized for your blog.

If you’ve ever posted photos on your blog or Facebook, you may have noticed they are not as crisp and clear as the original image.

This is especially frustrating if you’ve spent time editing the photo, only to have it not show up as well in the image you are sharing with everyone!

In my last photoshop tutorial, I showed you how I edit my photos. I almost always do these two steps:

1. Sharpen

2. Run an action (usually Fresh & Colorful from the Pioneer Woman actions)

But if I’m going to be sharing these images here on the blog (or Facebook or email) there’s one more thing I do to get them ready.

1. Determine How Big Your Photos Should Be.

Left: Internet Explorer. Right: Firefox.

Most blogs are between 400 and 600 px wide. This blog is 600 px. To determine the width of your blog, right-click on a photo that’s already on your blog. From the menu that pops up, click on Properties (if using Internet Explorer) or View Image Info (if using Firefox).

Left: Internet Explorer. Right: Firefox.

Look at the Dimensions. The number on the left is how wide the image is. This image of my Cookies ‘N Cream Oreo Fudge Brownies is 600 px wide. That means we’ll want to resize our images for this blog to 600 px wide.

2. Resize.

Open the image in Photoshop and edit to your liking. For this image, I did a sharpen, Fresh & Colorful, then ran the Topaz Adjust Color Blast filter. Love that filter for fall pics! :)

When you’re done editing, click on Image > Image Size…

Change the width to 600 (or whatever your size is) and click OK.

Great! Now it’s the right size, but it’s not quite as sharp as the original image…

3. Sharpen.

First click CTRL-J to create a duplicate layer.

Then click on Filter > Smart Sharpen…

Change to these settings:

Amount: 60%

Radius: 0.4

And click OK.

Perfect! If it looks too sharp, you can always adjust the opacity until it looks right. (Another reason to always make a duplicate layer.)

4. Save.

Now we’re ready to save. Click on File > Save for Web & Devices…

From the screen that pops up, make sure you are saving as a JPEG and that the qualityis around 60. That’s a high enough quality for the picture to still look good, but not so huge that it will take forever to load on your page! :)

Here’s the before….

And then after we sharpened:

Or roll your mouse over the image below to see the before and after!

It’s subtle. Look at the eyes…

Note: You’ll need to be here on the blog for this to work, not reading from the email or RSS feed.

That’s all there is to it! :)

Add a Signature to Every Blog Post on your Blogger/Blogspot Blog

If you have a blog, you may be wondering how to add your signature after every post on your Blogger or Blogspot blog. This simple tutorial will show you how to do it in just a few easy steps! :) This method of adding a signature will add your signature after *every* post- even posts you’ve already written! This is not like the “template method” of adding a signature, which will only add your signature on the new posts that you make- and not the old ones. Oh and stay tuned ’til the end of the post- there’s also a tutorial on how to add a post divider after your blog posts! :)

So, to add a signature, first, you’ll need to create a signature image like the one above (click here for a tutorial on how to do that) and upload it somewhere like Photobucket, TinyPic, Flickr, etc. Then…

1. Go to your Blogger Dashboard and click on Layout then Edit HTML.

2. Check the Expand Widget Templates box.

3. Click CTRL-F and copy and paste the line below in the search box to search for it in your code.

post-footer-line post-footer-line-1

It may say :

<p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1>

OR

<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>

Or something similar- either is fine. Just look for that line.

4. Under that line, paste this code and change IMAGE URL to the url address of your signature image (it’s the Direct Link on Photobucket).

<img src='IMAGE URL' style='border: none; background: transparent;' /><br/>

5. Preview it and Save it! You’re done!

If your blog background isn’t white…

This tutorial doesn’t cover the making of the actual signature, but I will give this tip for blogs that don’t have white backgrounds- here’s how to make a signature so it doesn’t have a white background around it and it will blend in with any background! :)

If you use Photoshop, when you create a new image, make sure the “Background Contents” says Transparent. Then create your signature, and when saving, go to File > Save for Web and Devices.

Make sure you save the file as a PNG-24 and that Transparency is checked. The white and grey checkerboard must be around your signature for it to work! :) If you save it like this, then no matter what background you put your signature on, it will blend in (and not have a white background around it).

Want to know how to add a post divider after your blog posts?

Follow this super-easy, thorough, and beginner-friendly tutorial from Megan at Shabby Blogs!

While you’re there, take a look around! :) Don’t forget to check out her *awesome* shabby blog backgrounds and shabby blog extras!! :)

Here’s one of the new backgrounds she just added. Wouldn’t this make the *cutest* recipe blog background *ever*??? :)

Read More

 http://www.kevinandamanda.com/whatsnew/tutorials/add-a-signature-to-every-blog-post-on-your-bloggerblogspot-blog.html#ixzz1iXBRNX1o

How To Use a Custom Font for Your Entire Blogger/Blogspot Posts

Okok. So you want to change your *entire* posts to a funky font. Well, it can be done… Sort of.. I can’t figure out an easy way to change the font of your existing posts, but it can be done for any new posts you write.

click here to see a live demo of what this tutorial does

First- the boring stuff. Disclaimers. Warnings. Etc.

1. This tutorial is a continuation of my How To Use a Cute Font for Your Blogger Post Titles, so you’ll have to do all the stuff in that tutorial before this one will work. :)
2. I don’t really recommend writing every single post, all the time, the entire thing, in a custom font.
3. sIFR is best used for changing titles and headers, not entire blocks of text.
4. It will make your page load slower.
5. It will make your page be all jumpy and crazy-looking as it’s loading.
6. It won’t look perfect- you can only use one font color/size for everything you write and there may be some extra spacing/padding at the bottom, but there’s no that I know of to get rid of it (see what I mean about the padding on the demo).
7. I kinda like plain, easy to read fonts for the main content of a blog anyway.
8. If you created an account with Geocities, be sure and read this!

So! If that doesn’t bother you and you’re totally ok with all of that and you still really want to change the font of your entire blog posts… Then this tutorial is for you. :)

First, if you want to use a second font, different from your post titles for your main blog posts… Go to your blogger-sifr.js file and find the lines that look something like this:

var kevinandamanda = {

src: 'http://username.webs.com/fontname.swf'

};

sIFR.activate(kevinandamanda);

Copy and paste a duplicate of that right underneath it.

1. Convert and upload a new SWF font file, then replace the URL for the current SWF file with the URL to the new font.

2. Change the two instances of kevinandamanda to blogpostfont.

So when you’re done, it may look something like this:

var kevinandamanda = {

src: 'http://username.webs.com/fontname.swf'

};

sIFR.activate(kevinandamanda);




var blogpostfont = {

src: 'http://username.webs.com/anotherfont.swf'

};

sIFR.activate(blogpostfont);

Next, paste this down at the bottom of your blogger-sifr.js file:

sIFR.replace(blogpostfont, {

selector: '#main-wrapper h3',

fitExactly: true,

tuneHeight: -5,

css: ['.sIFR-root { color: #000000; font-size: 24px; font-weight: normal; }'

,'a { text-decoration: none; }'

,'a:link { color: #000000; }'

,'a:hover { color: #000000; }'

],

wmode: 'transparent',

ratios: [6, 1.93, 10, 1.92, 13, 1.86, 17, 1.82, 21, 1.8, 29, 1.79, 32, 1.78, 33, 1.77, 36, 1.78, 43, 1.77, 44, 1.76, 47, 1.77, 70, 1.76, 71, 1.75, 74, 1.76, 75, 1.75, 76, 1.76, 1.75]

});

Now if you didn’t use a second font and just want to use the same font you’re using for your blog post titles, then you’ll need to change blogpostfont back to kevinandamanda.

You can still play around with the font size and color.

Save the blogger-sifr.js file when you’re done customizing.

Next, to get this to show up on your blog: Write a new post and  switch over to the Edit Html tab.

Wrap any text that you want to appear in your custom font with <h3> tags, so it might look something like this:

<h3>This text will be converted to a cute font!</h3>

This text will appear in the default blogger font.

That’s it! :)

click here to see a live demo

Read More 

http://www.kevinandamanda.com/whatsnew/tutorials/how-to-use-a-custom-font-for-your-entire-bloggerblogspot-posts.html#ixzz1iXArRPQr