How I Made This Blog

PLEASE EXCUSE ME. AT THE MOMENT I AM SORTING THIS OUT AS IT HAS BECOME A BIT OF A MISH MASH.
To create a Blog in Blogger. I was told it is was sooo easy! You’ve got to be kidding.
I have fumbled my way around for hours and some things have still not been fixed. By the time I realised I was in trouble and that I really needed to keep track of all this information I had created 'things'. I have gone over some of it so that it could be placed here but I’m sorry to say, some of it is still missing. What is here works. See LINKS  below for relevant info.


Contents:-
1.    Before you do anything you MUST do this.
2.    Naming your blog IMAGES.
3.    Keywords Choosing your blog name.
4.    When can people see your blog?
5.    Choosing the URL address Stats and your posts
6.    Choosing your template
        6.A     Layout
        6.B     Background
        6.C     Tabs in the Advanced tab
.   
7.    Labels and Tags
8.    Header

9.    When Can People See Your Blog?
10.   Images

11. Adding a Shopping Cart 
12. Adding a Feed Gadget
13. Adding a New Page
14. Change the Position of the Tabs
15. Adding a Visitor Counter
16. Meta Tags
17. Adding a Pinterest Hover Tag
18. Other Problems and things to remember

Now Let's Start -

1.    FIRST BEFORE YOU START UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO BE DOING.


2.    Naming Your Blog & Keywords
When you sign up for Blogger you will start up with a page titled Name Your Blog. Now choosing the title is VERY IMPORTANT. It NEEDS to have keywords in it.


 1st July 2011 - I am looking at how I can encourage people to visit my blog. I made a big mistake NOT finding this out FIRST. I should have named my blog title page (the blue http band at the top of the screen) Welcome to 'My World of Miniature Models'. I have not done this. It is titled 'gourdhouses'. I have looked at changing it but have decided against it. Why should I have had that name because search engines use this information to find my blog. I have chosen to do some of the other things mentioned to achieve the desired effect.
1st go to 


3.     Keywords -Check which keywords would best suit your blog and place these in the FRONT part of your TITLE.
In a second blog I'm considering I chose 'How I Built My Garden' but that didn't work as there was no one searching the web with those words. I have choosen to use the title 'How to Build a Garden' even though there are over 210,000 searches A MONTH! using those words. At the moment I am not worried that people WILL NOT be able to find my blog inamongst such a lot of others. I am only using it to help with this article. I can always go and change the name later.


Google Keyword Tool. It helps you find out what word or words people are using to find the information they are looking for. To learn about it go to You tube. There are lots of people talking about it. The best one I have found so far is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2M1tXtAc18&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL This person is not the only one but is a good start. The Google Tool is amazing with the information that it has.

Anyway back to my problem. In the Configure Header I can put in a lot of keywords into the Blog Description (which I need to search their suitability when I have time with the Google Keyword Tool.) I can have 500 words. Because I have used an image as my header I have chosen to click to have the image in-front of my description. That means that any words I put in the Blog Description will not show up on the Blog but will be placed behind my image and the search engines will still find them. I have inserted the words ' Visit a miniature world I am building using gourds as the base for the miniature houses. Learn about the children story I am writing and my art dolls.' Now by rites this should be used for two things. One for the search engines to pick up on the words 'miniature, world, gourds, children, story, writing, art, dolls'. Second I think this information will be used as the description people will read when searching for my site. (I have to check this) Pretty neat hey (if it works)!


4.    
When Can People See Your Blog?
 22 June 2011 - I have just come back to put this in. I did not realise that as soon as I signed up for my blog account and put up one post on the home page that the blog is out there for everyone to see. I thought I had to 'set it off' somehow but that IS NOT SO.
SO I strongly recommend that you go into Dashboard - Stats (which is located on the far right). Go to Week. Now there should be somewhere to your right a highlighted sentence and it should say To Block Your Own Page View. Click on this and click YES you want to block your own pageview. I wish I had found this earlier. I have had over 450 page view to my blog BUT I know that MOST of those are mine and now I don't know how I can separate them from my visitor numbers. BUT remember to keep checking this as it keeps undoing itself and you start tracking your own visits again.


4.1     How to insert a Jump Break - read more here. Open up your post and choose where you would like to break the blog up so that only a paragraph and an image are visible. On the top panel, you will see a smiley face. To the right of that is what looks like two pieces of paper which is torn. Click this. This will break up your post for the home page. When people click on the READ MORE link that will show up on the home page the entire post shows.

5.      Choosing the Blog URL
This really needs to be the same as your blog title. The reason is that it will help the web spiders to find your blog.
In my case it will be http://howtobuildagarden/  Check for the availability. In my case it was accepted.


6.     Choosing a template
You are now told that you can either start your blogging or you can alter your template. I would suggest that you alter your template from here. You can always play around with it later. So assuming you have clicked onto altering your template you now can see Blogger Template Designer. This is completely up to you what you want you pages to look at. My first blog is a template called Simple. My second is a template called ...............


In template designer you will be offered lots of design elements at the top of the page and you will see the result of your selections at the bottom. DO NOT worry you have not chosen anything UNTIL you hit the tab at the top right Apply to Blog.

6.A     Layout. Now as I'm not happy with the Simple layout I have gone to the Layout tab. Choose a layout design and click on it.

6.B     Background I have decided to change the colour of the background so click on Background. Now there are two things here. If you look to your right there is Main Colour Theme. By clicking on this it changes the colour of the fonts. Now if, like me , you would want a different background go to the large block of colour in the middle of the side tabs titled Background Image and click on the grey arrow.  You can see that there are lots of background patterns to choose from. You can also choose to upload your own background image. Click on Upload Image at the top of the fly-out.
Now I have clicked on the little grey arrow and chosen Textures and the second one along the top. The green texture.

6.C     Tabs. Now even though I haven't set up my tabs yet I thought I would set the colour
for them now. The Background Colour works for all the tab colours except Home. Selected Colour deals with the Home tab. Click on Apply to Blog.

Now I have only played with a few of the buttons but you can clearly see there is a lot more than can be done to enhance your blog. When you have finished with this section (remembering that you can always come back at anytime and change things later) click on Back to Blogger which is in blue writing and far left of the orange Apply to Blog tab. You will now be taken back to the Design Layout. It is from here that you will move within your Blog.

You will be creating one page called HOME that all other posts will be able to be put onto. This page WILL automatically, everytime you put up a new post, scroll down. Which means the first bit of information you posted will now be a the bottom and will continue to go down the more posts you put on it.
ALL the other pages are STATIC. They can not have 'posts' added to them they will just stay the same. 'You can keep adding information to that static page by creating a space between them and adding a new date. That is one way of getting around it.
It is important to know this so that you will not make the mistake I have just made. Fortunately, this is very easy to fix by cutting and pasting.
Without realising it I have placed all my information on to STATIC PAGES. Now in some ways this is good. It still allows for comments which is good and at least I don't have to worry about the information any more. This is another good thing as I'm a busy person.

I have of course put information on my HOME page that I would now, as I now realise what is going to happen to it, have on a static page as I do not want it to end up at the bottom of a lot of other posts.

7. Labels and Tags!I have a post on the wrong page how can I move it.
Each 'page' you set up is a static page. It WILL NOT allow for other posts or comments.
The First Mistake I made. I put the information that I wanted to say using Posting - Edit Pages. The problem with this. Nothing if it is a static page that can't be added to. Everything when you NEED a label or tag. To get a Label you NEED to create your information in New Post.
Why do you need a label? A label (which is activated at the bottom of your post by giving your post a (label) at the base.

First:-
You will need a Google Account. You can make several Blog sites all attached to the one e-mail address.
When I got to the sign in page of Blogger I watched the video (good idea), looked at the trial templates. After signing in I was presented with a Blogger Dashboard. From here you can travel through the whole site.

The sight opens up allowing you to write a post, like the info you are now reading.
Soo, just to satisfy your curiosity about what your blog looks like press ‘View Blog’. Great right! No. Um, well maybe then info below will help.
1. Click on ‘Design’ up the top to the right.
2. This takes you to ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements’ known in all the web sites a 'Page Elements.'

8. HEADER
I decided that I wanted to create my own ‘Header’. This I did in Corel Paint Shop Prop as I like to use layers. Your image address (whether it be a drawing, photo etc needs to end in .jpg, .gif, .png. (HTML pages DO NOT work as a background.) I start at 850 pickles by 190 pickles at 72 resolution. I am looking at changing this as the picture is not clear enough. I have read on web sites that this is a common problem because Blogger brings the resolution down automatically so it may not do any good either. It has been suggested to have it in another blog site and then link it to this one but I'm not up to that yet.

1.       Under the blue bar called 'navibar' you will see a section with the name of your blog eg:- ‘Welcome to My World.’ Click ‘edit.’
2.       Now you have a new block of info. As I want to have my own image as my header (and my image has my description included in it) Under ‘Placement’ I clicked ‘Instead of Title and Description.’
3.       I did not put in a ‘Blog Description’ as it is included in my header.
4.       I clicked ‘Image,’ ‘From your computer,’ and then ‘Browse’ and looked for the image I wanted.
5.       I DID NOT click ‘Shrink to Fit.’
6.       Click 
‘Save.’

Now this is IMPORTANT you have been transferred back to the ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements’ section. You will now see a yellow band across the screen saying ‘Saved Changes for Welcome to My World (Header): (The information has only been saved to the header NOT the blog site.
1.      'View Blog.'
2.      Click here.
If you are happy with the positioning of your heading. Click out of that page (it will take you back to ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements.’) and press ‘SAVE’(has the orange background.) Now your header is saved to the blog.

Note:- Even if you press save and then change your mind it is fine you can change it by pressing ‘Edit" and changing the image. I had to end up creating many images all with different sizes and only by trial and error did I end up with the one that allowed me to have a nice white line around the edge of my header.

Also EVERY TIME you want to ‘view your blog’ you MUST close the last view down. The computer just won’t let you look at new version unless you do.

1.         In the ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements’ section you will see a tag named "About Me.’ Click ‘Edit’.
2.         MOST IMPORTANT. You can ONLY use 1200 character. Not words, characters. It is annoying but you can put as much info on as you like on the page BUT when you go to save it it won’t let you and you don’t know how many words and characters you have to get rid of.


I have not tried it but maybe if you wrote it in word or PowerPoint so you could count them and then copy and paste. If it worked that would solve the problem.


9.    27th June 2011 - One interesting thing when dealing with Stats is that if you write lots of posts on the one day that day is what comes up as one post (in stats) so you can not work out(or at least I can't) how many people have looked at all the other posts you put on that same day. Because of this I am now going to separate them so I can tell how many people are reading each post.

9.1.       Another problem I came up with was that when I eventually changed my lay out around (see heading Fish Gadget for the reason why) so that I ended up with a column down the left and a column down the right and my posts in the middle (because of the ‘padding’ that is allowed around images and headers and posts and I have NOT been able to alter it) I lost some of my space to fit my name in in this section. I think this is also because of the image I used. It is wider than maybe the computer is allowing for.
9.2.      To drag any of the shaded (not dotted 'Add Gadget') tags around left click on item and hold it and drag it where you want. They will fall into pre-ordained areas that have a dotted outline.
9.3.      When you are happy press ‘SAVE’.  Remember you can ALWAYS SAVE YOUR CHANGES.


10.    SECOND - IMAGES.  This site explains it better than I could.  http://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/png-vs-jpg

Adding Images
THIS IS A NIGHTMARE. Not getting onto your page that is fine it is the moving them around and adding text around them and now I'm looking at adding a shopping cart to my Gourd Seeds for Sale page - Aghhhhh!
but saying that - two things
First YOU MUST HAVE GOOD QUALITY IMAGES.
Second - I have come back to put this in May 2014
I have found that if I want to put several images in a row what I do is this:-
  1. 1. Download or copy your 1st image to a new post.
  2. Add a caption and ENSURE that it goes just a fraction past the image. This ensures that a 'box' goes around the image and the caption. You NEED to make sure that there is a small space of white boarder around your image. You can look at this by placing your cursor over the image (it will turn into a star) then left click and a blue border appears. This will show you how much space you have around your image. To get rid of the border move your cursor out of the boarder and left click. It should have disappeared. 
  3. Now download or copy a 2nd image to somewhere on your page. 
  4. Before you start joining your images it is important to left click on each image and tell it to be either a left image, center image or right image. Each one must be one of these. Two images can not fit in the same space. (not sure if this is so but it is what I have found)
  5. If you want your images to be horizontally across the page do this:-
  6. I am sure that there is an easier way to do this than I have found but at moment this is the only way I found to do this.
  7. Right click the image you want to join to another image and press copy. 
  8. Now hover your cursor over the first image you want to add your second image to and left click on the right hand side of the last letter or full stop in the caption section below the 1st image. Nothing happens - good. Now click and paste. You second image should have appeared UNDER the 1st image.
  9. Hover your cursor over the 1st image (the top one). A star should show up on the 1st image. Left click and a thick blue border should appear. This will show you that your 1st image has a border around it with white spaces on either side. You will now that the caption has been absorbed into the border of the 2nd image below. This is good.
  10. Now hover your cursor over the 2nd image (the one you want to place to the right of the first image) and left click.
  11. All borders are gone and you are left a blue block over your image.
  12. Right click and cut.
  13. Hover your cursor over the 1st image and left click. This replaces the thick blue borders. Move your start cursor into the small white space on the right. 
  14. Left Click. All borders are gone.
  15. Right click and paste.
  16. You should now have another image either right smack up to the 1st image or it may have a white space between them. You may not have copied any caption from the second image. This not a problem you just cut and past it into the caption area below. 
  17. By placing your cursor onto any of the two images and left clicking a blue border should appear. You will now see that both images are surrounded by one border and the caption is underneath surrounded by another. There will also be under the caption that belongs to the second image.
  18. First - If you have images smack up against each other and you would rather there be a space between them then place your cursor JUST UNDER the image where you want to divide them. Do NOT have the cursor turn to a star it needs to stay more like a large capital I. You can then left click your cursor and press the space bar. This will push the two images apart. 
  19. Second - If each image is to have it own separate title or information then you will need to add it all into the bottom caption section and then using the space bare, delete button and back space you will need to fiddle getting the info to come in under each image.
  20. If you want your image to go vertically down the page do this:-
  21. Start at point 7 but instead of clicking into the white border of the image you need to click on to the last word or full stop in the caption and this should send all the info from your 2nd image under the 1st.Simple.
  22. If you want to change the order or your images ie number 2 on top of number one highlight the blue boarder. Left clink on the left hand side of the image you want to become the bottom image. The thick blue border then then replaced by the partial light blue border. Right click and paste. 
  23. Then check the amount of white space there is in the caption box and try to delete it.

To help with blogger I am presently going through this entire blog and changing the images from png to jpg. The idea is to cut down the amount of time it takes for my blog to load up on to your screen.
http://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/png-vs-jpg This web site tells you the difference between PNG and JPG image files.

When I started it was taking 98 seconds. I was able to halve this by reducing the number of posts seen on my home page. I went from ten to three. Also something I think helps a lot is by only giving a small section of the article with one photo and then if you wanted to read more of the article you could by clicking onto the link.

When I have finished replacing all the images I will then have the site re-evaluated using the free web site http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
This site lets me know how all the components of my blog are going and if they are not going well then what to do about it. It also lets me know how long it is taking to load up on peoples screens.

This link talks about Meta Tags, Alt Tags, Page Names (VERY GOOD)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEoAELUnhf8&feature=related

This link shows how to add the alt tag. (VERY GOOD)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjOcNWOSiJg

This link explains how Google uses the images and why ALT tags are so important.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtiLJFH7AoE

This link helps you pick out Keywords that you will need to use in your Title, your ALT tag and your post.
https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__u=1000000000&__c=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#search.none

11. Adding A SHOPPING CART
First BEFORE ANYTHING images. Have ALL the images you want ready and in the correct file size (around the 100mb) NOW how many items you have for sale and what you are calling them. How much you are charging for each item. How much the cost of postage will be for each item. Know what item NUMBER you have. Make up your static page so that it is laid out the way you want then click the HTML button on the top left of the page and leave the page open. Minimise the whole blog. Have ALL this information BEFORE you start.

Then with you static blog page open in edit form open another web page and go to your PayPal account.
Open you account and find Profile (it is along the top in My Account- it is the last tag - click on that. Take no note of the drop down information. Then find My Selling Tools - on the left hand side - the last on the list. click on that.  Then under the heading of Selling Online click on the title PayPal Buttons - go to the right hand side where it says Update. Click on this. This will show a list of the buttons you have made(if any) go to the right hand side where it says Related items. Under that heading will be the words 'create new button'. 
In Customise Button - I have tagged - Add text field then under Customise Text or Appearance' I have ticked 'Use smaller button'. In Merchant Account IDs I have ticked the first one.  Then got to step 2. It will automatically have ticked Save Button at PayPal - I then ticked 'Tracking Inventory'. This is where you need to know how many items you have for sale. Under the heading 'Can customers buy this item when sold out. I have tagged No don't let the customer buy the item I then had to minimise the PayPay page. Open up my blog to View Blog - find the static page of my Gourd Seeds for Sale and copy the html name of the page. I then opened up the PayPal page and pasted it into the box area that says (underneath it) www: %*803473957.
Then click page 3 - Customised Advanced Features (optional). I have ticked yes the customer can add a message and yes I need to know their address BUT I haven't ticked anything else because I don't understand it. When I do i will come back and add that info. The hit SAVE CHANGES.

Add script into you HTML of your open page.

12. Adding a FEED GADGET
(The fish gadget is a FEED Gadget. The tank/pond is a made as a flash item inside an iframe. I love the beautiful fish that are swimming up and down on the left of the page. If they are not swimming then just 'feed' them by clicking your cursor in the water and watch what happens. Amazing. Just to think they are all made up out of numbers. Just Amazing!

Now first off I imported these fish into my blog (how I can not remember but it doesn’t matter because it was wrong). They were swimming around quite happily when Blogger did some maintenance for two days and I couldn’t use the site. When I came back they were gone!
1.       To get them back I opened my blog onto the ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements’ page.
2.       Clicked on to an ‘Add Gadget.’ tag on the middle of my screen.
3.       Scrolled down to 'Feed Gadget.'
4.       Minimise the blog.
5.       Went looking for the fish gadget on the web. This is where things start to go nuts. You find it and think that’s great but it doesn’t work. I won’t bore you with the frustrating details of dealing with lots of sites that have this gadget but found they did not all give the same info and so don't work. Eventually I ended up on http://www.bloggergadgets.org/
4.       I clicked in here and then to get the correct address for the link of the fish I scrolled down to the fish gadget. The image of the fish were under the information of who made them. The 'Add to Blogger' tag is at the bottom.
5.       Press on ‘Add to Blogger’.
6.       Opens up and press ‘Configure Gadget.’
7.       Now you can change the height of the ‘pond’ the fish are swimming in. I changed it to 3000px. The width seems to be set in stone at the moment (a HTML problem). You can change the colour of the background, (I changed it to Tea House Blue so that I could see the rings of water when the fish are being ‘fed’ by the cursor. I changed the colour of the fish, (One black one), the number of the fish, (eight for good feng shui). On some sites you can even put a border around the ‘pond’ but I found that it didn’t fit properly and didn’t look nice anyway and more importantly I couldn’t get it to down load to my blog site.


Oh, yes background image, jpg. Good Luck!
I finally managed to do it after h-o-u-r-s to find that it was set smaller than I wanted and as the fish are semi-transparent they can not be see properly anyway! Back to what we were doing.


8.       Press ‘SAVE’ when you are happy. The computer will ask if you want to close the page say ‘YES.’


9.       It now brings you back to the original image in Blogger gadgets.
10.     Look for 'More info URL.' Right click on the name 'Fish Gadget' this gives you 'Copy Shortcut'.
11.     Go to your minimised blog page and open it up.
12.     Paste into URL
13.     Press ‘Continue’ the computer will look for the feed and then open up in ‘Configure Feed.’
14.     It gave me a choice of saving the sites of up to 5 places to get the feed from. Choose how many you like. I am assuming the idea is (but don’t know for sure that if one site goes down there will always be another to keep the feed going or else you loose your fish? The problem with that, is that this info ends up on your page. ‘View image.’ You can remove it by going into the wrench and screw driver and pressing ‘Remove’ which is what I have done BUT I must admit I do not know if this a good thing or a bad thing.
15.     Close the blog page down by pressing ‘Design" and get back to ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements’ and drag your fish gadget where you would like. When happy press ‘SAVE.’


Customise your own colours for your background of ‘pond’.
Use HTML codes (look on web and write the code down) When wanting to customise the colours in gadgets:-

1.       To place the number, which represents a HTML colour, go to ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements’ page.
2.       Click on Edit for the fish
3.       This opens up the section to edit the fish. Scroll down and find Customise 1, 2 etc. Add your numbers into there. One section for each separate colour.
4.      To use these colours go back up to ‘Background Colour’ and open up fly out. Choose the customized colour you want and click.
5.      'Save.' This takes you back to the ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements’ page.
6.      Check with ‘View Page.’ when happy press ‘SAVE.’


The reason why the fish gadget is down the side of my blog is because I wanted it across the top BUT ONLY in the Waterlily page. Well I CAN’T have that. It, along with the header, ALL the information down both sides of my pages WILL turn up in ALL my pages. I have not been able to, after h-o-u-r-s of searching, been able to find the answer. (It is a HTML problem).
By having my little speech and my fish running along the top section, under the header, it made the 'Post' section of the blog to far down and I know that annoys me when I am looking at other peoples sites so the only way to solve the problem was to have the fish down the side. I must admit I rather like the idea of reading the posts while the fish swim about.
I wanted to put them as this gadget inside this post but again I have not been able to do that either.

I have added a little speech I came up with. To add something like this (Text or any other Gadget):-
1.        In the ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements’

2.       Click on ‘Add Gadget.’
3.       This opens up an ‘Add Gadget’ page. You can see that there are lots to choose from. To add text go down to the ‘Text Gadget’ and click on it.
4.       Create something and press ‘Save.’


IMPORTANT this has only saved the information you have just written. It can be view as to what it will look like on your blog by pressing ‘Saved changes for The Way of the World (Header): View Blog'. Click here.

IT HAS NOT been saved to your template (Blog) until you press the SAVE button with the orange background on the ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements.’ page.


13  To add a page (there are no pages as per-say but they are called it)
1.       ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements’ are called 'Page Elements' for short.

2.      ‘Posting’
3.      ‘Edit Pages’
4.      ‘New Page’ has a blue background
5.      Put a title in or leave it out and fill it in later, it’s up to you
6.      ‘Publish Page’
7.      Upon creating the first page you will be asked to locate a list of the pages you are creating. This list can be removed later if you choose to have tabs across the top of your page, under the header, as I have done. In the meantime just choose a spot.

To create another page go to:-
8.      ‘Posting’
9.      ‘Edit Posts’
10.    ‘New Page’ has a blue background. You will now see your first page located there.
11.     Put in a title
12.    ‘Publish Page’
13.    All these pages can be edited by going into ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements’, ‘Posting’, ‘Edit Pages’.


REMEMBER TO ALWAYS SAVE YOUR CHANGES

In ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements.’ If you see the list of your pages are now both down one side of your page as well as across the middle of it is is because the ones in the middle are now classed as posts. To eliminate these and start again in ‘Edit Pages’ NOT ‘Edit Posts’.
1.       'Design',
2.       ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements’ 

2.       ‘Posting’
3.       ‘Edit Posts’
4.       ‘Delete.’ Now go to Edit Pages and start again. You could link each one individually which I haven't explained here but it you start again the pages will automatically be linked to the tabs. You will notice that the list down the side is gone. 


14. To change the position of the tabs within the line below the header:-
1.      ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements’,
2.      ‘Edit’ the ‘Page’ column under the header
3.      Drag and drop the tabs in what ever order you want.
4.      Scroll down and ‘SAVE’. This has ONLY saved the action it is NOT saved onto your blog yet. You can view the blog and then when happy press ‘SAVE’.


15. Adding a visitor counter (another headache)
1.       Go to ‘Design’,
2.       ‘Add and Arrange Page Elements’.
3.       Click on ‘Add a Gadget’,
4.       Scroll down to 'HTML/Java Script' Click on this
5.       Right click onto the web address at the top of the 'Configure HTML/Java Script' page and copy,
6.      Minimise page
6.      Go to web and find a visitor counter. Be aware that the ones that say they are free maybe just that BUT you might have to agree to let them have the information about the traffic of people posting on your blog. This information I assume is then sold off to advertising companies and the like. Not sure but as I don’t believe anyone does anything for nothing. It seems logical to me. I personally am not worried and so I have chosen Amazing Counters.com


Once you have signed up and chosen you counter (in my case dogs paws) right click into the URL. that the company is asking for. If it doesn’t work go back to your blogsite and save the shortcut again. When you have pasted into the company's site just check by scrolling backwards that you haven’t accidentally got two http//:http//: Just delete one of them. Also I have just noticed in the XHTML code at the end is a link to a company such as Walmart or some Vitamin company. As part of the agreement I have signed I am not allowed to remove it. I can move it around somehow so it is not so visible but it has to be somewhere on my site. Example below.

<p style="align: center"><a href="http://www.amazingcounters.com"><img border="0" src="http://cb.amazingcounters.com/counter.php?i=2979602&amp;c=8939119" alt="Web Page Visitor Counter"/></a><br/><a href="http://www.vitamindeals.info/articles/vitamin-c.html">Vitamin C</a></p>
(The section that is in bold.)


7.       Accept their terms (if you want to continue on) and fill out the rest of the form.
8.      Go to ‘Manage Account’
9.      Left click on ‘Get HTML Code’
10.    Scroll down to 'XHTML CODE'

11.    Copy the code
12.    Open up the Blogger 'Configure HTML/Javascript' and paste into the body of the page. Make sure there is a title.
13.     ‘Save.’ Remember this is NOT saved to your page yet.
14.     You can go to ‘Page View" when happy go back to
15.     ‘Design’ and then
16.     ‘Save.’
(This is MOST IMPORTANT)

As all of this stuff could go on forever this is enough for the time being. I’m tired.
Just a note a lot of people on the net talk about changing HTML. I have NOT found one piece of HTML on my site is the same as what is talked about on the web.



16. Meta Tags -
30th September 2012
A meta tag is the description that you find under the title on the search page. Example:-
Gourd Houses, Gourd Art, Miniature Village
gourdhouses.blogspot.com/
20 Sep 2012 – Gourd Houses, Gourd Art, Miniature Village. Welcome to BRAMBLEWOOD a fantasy miniature village I am creating out of gourds and re-cycled ...
I have found that on your Blogger site go to Settings - Seach Preferences - Meta Tags. This is where you would put a description (150 words) that you would like people to read rather than a random one the computer picks out of your blog. I have written -

'See how I am creating a miniature village out of gourds and re-cycled objects donated to me by people like you.'

ALSO when I have time I shall be visiting this site
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067564/How-To-Use-HTML-Meta-Tags
Which explains them much better and probably has a better way of using them.

17. Adding a Pinterest Hovering Tag.
Go to this website. It works a treat. http://www.digitalkonline.com/blog/how-to-add-a-pinterest-hover-button-to-your-blogger-images/

18. Problems I still have: I can not change the padding in and out of the items on my pages. It means there is too much white between them all. To much space wasted.

Oh by the way if you want people to be able to comment on your work when you are in the New Post, Edit posts, Edit Pages you will see Post Options just above the Publish page in the orange border. Click that and click Allow.

Things to remember:-
1. In Blogger the names, widget, gadget and page element all mean the same thing.



As I come across really important or relevant info I will put up a Link here.
How to Insert a Jump Page on the Home Page
Eight Things To Know
Make Your Own Gadget

How Google Searches For Images
My Images Are Missing - Why?

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