Welcome to Week 5 of Crafty Blog School - today I will answer the most asked question on Feeling Stitchy, and that is, how do you put that darned thimble guy in your sidebar to link to us!
Since the Feeling Stitchy guy is a web graphic and not a real photo, we'll be hosting him on Photo Bucket.
How To Put That Darned Thimble Guy in Your Sidebar
- Save the image to your computer
- Upload the image to Photo Bucket (it's possible with Flickr, but it's against the rules- so don't do it!).
- Copy the URL link for the image (in Photo Bucket, it's displayed right under the image)
- In Blogger, add a new HTML/Javascript element to your sidebar, and paste your code using this setup (you can use this code in any blog that lets you edit the HTML):
<a href="URL OF YOUR PAGE"><img src="URL OF YOUR IMAGE" alt="YOUR PAGE TITLE" border="0"/ ></a>
URL OF YOUR PAGE - http://flickrembroidery.blogspot.com/
URL OF YOUR IMAGE - this is the URL link you copied in step 3
YOUR PAGE TITLE - Feeling Stitchy
An example of what your code might look like:
<a href="http://flickrembroidery.blogspot.com/"><img src="http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/randomperson/thimble.gif" alt="Feeling Stitchy " border="0" /></a>
Why can't I do this on Flickr?
Because they said so -scroll on down to the "Don't" section where it says:
Don’t use your account to host web graphics like logos and banners.Technically, it can be done - but if they let you do that every Tom, Dick and Harry would use Flickr to host web graphics and images for their websites. Then Flickr wouldn't have any real pictures for you to ooh and ahh over. So, use sites like Photo Bucket to upload any old web graphic you please without cluttering your Flickr photo stream...
Why don't you give me your Photo Bucket code so I can copy and paste that?
Bandwidth, my friends. If your first experience on the internet was Flickr (like me!) it's hard to understand bandwidth. Flickr gives you unlimited bandwidth, for free, which means if a gazillion people want to look at your pictures, a gazillion people can look at your pictures with no extra charge to you. But in the real world, bandwidth costs money! Ever visit a popular blog that posts a notice that they've exceeded their bandwidth? This means they are on a paid hosting site (like Typepad or others) and they've exceeded their allowed monthly traffic.
I Don't Want to Exceed My Bandwidth!
Photo Bucket works in a similar way, but you don't get a big ol' bill when you exceed your bandwidth. They just yank the rug out from under you, so to speak, and instead of displaying your image, there's a little image saying you exceeded your bandwidth. Their limits are really high and it seems hard to go over. But if I give you the code, you give somebody else the code, and they give it to their family and pets, between all of us sharing the same image we'll definitely exceed my bandwidth!
More on bandwidth and bandwidth stealing.
Next week: Taking Better Pictures of Your Crafts
Leave a comment with any questions or email me!
All Crafty Blog School Posts:
week 1: Where Do I Blog?
week 2: Choosing a Template
week 3: Name Your Blog & Create a Header
week 4: Blogging Photos from Flickr
week 5: How to Put that Darned Thimble Guy in Your Sidebar
week 6: How to Take Better Pictures of Your Crafts
week 7: Getting Noticed
