Blog Tips No. 2 - Sizing Buttons

Do you ever want to resize buttons for your side bar or post?  Sometimes a blog button is overly large, other times, you might want to shrink it down itty bitty like I have on my party links in the left column.  It really is pretty simple to do.  First you need to get the button to your blog.  That is done by either 1) Copying the provided code from the host blog to your blog (such as my code box for CCH) OR 2) If the host blog doesn't have a code box, you need to "copy picture as" and save it with your photos.  NOTE:  OTHER BLOGGERS WILL BLESS YOU TO NO END IF YOU HAVE A PRE-CODED BOX!!!  Do you want to know how to do that?  Come back next weekend, it's my final "lesson" in this series.

For a photograph downloaded from photobucket, the code will look something like this:
<a href="http://s683.photobucket.com/albums/vv195/kim5kids/buttons/?action=view&current=DSCN480.jpg" target="_blank">

What you need to do is, after you have put the button code onto your blog, go to the area right AFTER .jpg".  After that, put the dimensions you want there.  For instance, my small boxes on the left look something like this:  .jpg" width="75" height="75"  The 75s are stating the pixel height and width.  I also used them on my larger left side buttons to make everything uniform.  I did this just because I was kind of having fun, but now I think it looks a little boring...  Most buttons are about 125 high by 175 wide, it's easy to experiment, though.

75x75

150x175

Proper Linking: If you had to copy a picture to get a link, you will notice if you put it on your post or in your side bar and click on it, it will just go to a photo screen not the proper blog.  To correct that, if it's in the side bar, on the top menu of your gadget click on Rich Text, instead of seeing code, you will see all of the buttons.  Click on the button that needs to be directed, then press your link menu item and add the url as usual (there are other ways to do this).  If it's in your post, click on the button image and add the link.

Centering: To center your buttons, especially on your sidebar, put <center> in the front of the button code and </center> at the end of the button code.

The other blog tips are:
Blog Tips 3A- Adding your signature and adding your post to MckLinky parties.
Blog Tips 3 - Removing the Lines From Around Your Header
Blog Tips 4 - Networking with Facebook and Networked Blogs

I am by no means an html expert and learn most things by trial and lots of error.  For some reason I get extra random spacing sometimes at the beginning of my posts or when I have a list of buttons from linky parties - when I look at my html I don't see any code there that shouldn't be, so if you know about that mystery, feel free to let me know how to avoid it.