Day Eight :: How To Make A Button {that links back to your blog}

You thought I forgot about this series!  It has been awhile...I think this pregnancy has made me a little lazy, or tired, or something along those lines {or both}.  Add recovering from a week away, and starting a new business, which doesn't leave as much time for blogging as I would like.  :)

So back to our topic...10 Ways to Beautiful Your Blog.  If you haven't seen the previous steps, you can find them here...

1. Find a layout you love
2. Post LARGE pictures
3. Peek-a-boo NAVBAR
4. Create photo collages
5. Add a FAVICON!
6. Background Patterns
7. Change Your Font
8. Create a Button!

Today I will explain how to make a button that links back to your blog.  A button is simply a picture or icon that you can click and it will direct you to whichever website you choose. Often you see them when people show they were "featured" on another blog.

So you can have one of your own!  And if you want to increase traffic, you can always switch buttons with a friend and "advertise" your blogs for each other.  Or whatever.  I experimented with making a few and you can see them on the bottom right part of my blog.  Not everyone may be interested, but for those who are...

Here are the steps.

1.  Make an image you want to use for your button.  This can be any mix of text, pictures, whatever.  If you need ideas, look around.  I've found the easiest way to do this is with either an advanced photo editor or a paint program.  You can to make sure your image's width is around 200 pixels.  Most people's buttons tend to be square-ish.  Save this as a Jpeg.

2.  This step has been on about every "beautify your blog" post that I have done, so I'm sure you're now familiar...Upload the image on Picasa, Flickr, Photobucket, etc.  Make sure to make note of the image's url (this should end with .jpg).

3.  Ready for this?  Create an html gadget on Blogger.  To do this, simply go to "design" (used to be called layout), then "add a gadget," and choose "html/javascript."  Then you will want to paste this into the html box, replacing YOUR BLOG'S URL with your blog's url {for example, mine is www.BambinaBabe.blogspot.com}, and YOUR IMAGE URL with your image url from where you uploaded your image.

<a border="0" href="YOUR BLOG URL/" target="_blank"><img src="YOUR IMAGE URL" width="200" /></a><br /> <textarea cols="20" rows="10"> <a border="0" href="YOUR BLOG URL" target="_blank"><img src="YOUR IMAGE URL" width="200" /></a><br />;

Also, I've chosen a width of 200. If you would like yours wider or narrower, you can change the number 200 to whatever number you would like.

Good luck! I hope this works for you!  Enjoy and share...and feel free to link back to this blog if you use these steps.  :)