Free download - Buttons for your website or blog

I had designed some buttons using MyCoolButton and thought of sharing them with everyone who reads my blog. Would love to hear what you think of them and yeah...they are free for you to download and use. So go ahead and "buttonize" your website or blog!







To save, just right click on the image and say "Save Picture As.." to save it in a folder in your computer.
If you like them, please do feel free to link back to this blog or spread the word around.
Thanks!

Free downloads - Logos

Happy New Year to one and all...

Its new year and so I thought of giving away some goodies (logos and 3d buttons) for free download. I designed some logos using AAALogo creator software. You can download this software on a free trial basis and experiment with the wide range of template logo images they provide. It would be worth if you even buy this software. Its an awesome software!

To use these logos in your website or blog, just right click on the images and "Save Picture As.." in a folder in your computer. They are free for you to use!

So here are your ten free logos for download.

Do let me know what you think of them.

My free download of 3d buttons would soon follow in my next blog.

If you like these logos, then please do feel free to spread the word across and link back to my blog. I'd appreciate it very much...Enjoy and have a blessed year ahead!

God bless!

How to add different widgets to your blog

Widgets? What are they?

Widgets are the graphical interface elements like a text box, frame, a chat window etc, that a user interacts with. They provide some basic functionalities for which they are designed. For example, a chat widget, when installed in your website or blog, will enable you to log in, search a room, let you know the online status for the users logged in and chat with them. They add great value to your website and blogs since they make them more functional, interactive, informative and diverse.

Where can you find them?

A website that I have found very useful and personally keep visiting for "widget shopping" is WidgetBox

You have a wide range of widgets from different categories to choose from and whats best is that they come free!

I have in fact installed a lot of widgets (see my comments widget, ratings widget, social bookmarking widget etc) in my blog to give an example of what they might look like.

You can even check out my chat widget (under "discussion and chat" link).

These are some other useful links that you might want to try out:

Babel Fish, add a translation tool to your blog
bLaugh, add a blog-related comic to your blog
Blog Hot or Not, add a Blog Hot or Not rating bar to your blog.
Blog in Space, feed your blog into outer space
Blogcartoons, Free cartoons to post on your blog
BlogRolling.com, add a Blogroll to your blog
Blogthings.com, add quiz results to your blog

Blogrush, to add more traffic and readers to your blog
Blue-Blooded Blogger badge, get a badge for your blog that shows your passion for blogging
Brilliant Button Maker, add a button to your blog
Bunchball, add Flash games to your blog
Cafepress, add a store with your logo or designs to your blog
ClockLink.com, add a clock to your blog
Del.icio.us, add a link roll to your blog
Emoticons4u.com, put emoticons and smileys on your blog
Feedjit, web traffic and visitor map widgets
Flickr.com, add photos to your blog
Frappr, add a Frappr map to your blog
Glassy Buttons, add a button to your blog
Google Gadgets, thousands of different add-ons for your blog or website
Gravatar.com, get a Gravatar to identify yourself when you post comments on a blog that accepts gravatars.
Haloscan.com, add comments and trackbacks to your blog
Hello, post images to your blog. Works with Blogger
ImageShack, host images for your blog
iMood.com, put your mood on your blog
Kineda Blogger Ranking Widget, determine whether your blog is an A-list, B-list, C-list or D-list blog
Meez, add a 3D avatar to your blog
Mobber, a chat tool for blogs
Moodsticker, a Moodsticker tracks the current mood of LiveJournal users
MusicVideoCodes.com, put music videos on your blog
MyBlogLog, add a community to your blog
MyChingo, add voice comments to your blog
Online Button Maker, add a button to your blog
Photobucket.com, host images for your blog
Pingoat Blog Worth Calculator, calculate the value of your blog
PollHost.com, put polls on your blog
Quizilla, add quizzes to your blog
Sideblog, add a small, seperate sideblog to your blog
Site Meter, add a counter and/or get web traffic measurement for your blog
SketchPlanet, add sketches to your blog
StikIt, StikIt from Opinmind allows bloggers to insert bloggers' opinions about a subject or keyword into their blog.
Street Sign Generator, make a street sign for your blog
Tag-Board, add discussion to your blog
TagCloud, show your blog's most popular tags on your blog
Technorati Profiles, add a profile and search box to your blog
Wanabo.com, let others tag your blog
We Love Widgets, add a horoscope widget to your blog
WebSmileys.com, put animated emoticons on your blog
Wunderground.com Weather Stickers, add a weather sticker to your blog

How will you install them?

You can click on each of these links. Some of them might require you to register.

You then browse through the widget list and pick your choice.

WidgetBox will let you install the widget to your blogger automatically - this means no copy paste of code. You just have to specify which blog you want to add your widget to. Once its added, you can go to the "page elements" of the "template" section in your blog and accordingly arrange where you want your new widget to be placed. Simple!

In case you are not using widgetbox's widgets,then after you pick your widget to add, you will be given a piece of HTML code.

You copy the code to a notepad. Log into your blogger account and navigate to "page elements" section of "Template" in your blog.

Click on "Add a page element" and choose the "HTML/Javascript" element. Once the pop up window opens, you can then enter a name for the element and paste the piece of code from the notepad. Save your changes. You are done!

Add a clock to your blog

Adding a clock in your blog…
One of my friends asked me the other day if it was possible to add a clock in your blog. And... that gave me an idea to blog it up. Most of my posts are with respect to blogger since that’s what I use for blogging. If you want any information on Wordpress, just let me know and I will look it up, test it and then blog it!
Just follow these simple instructions to insert a clock as you see in my blog (Orange clock in the top right corner)
Go to ClockLink . ClockLink offers you a wide range of clocks to choose from. Pick your choice and you will be given a piece of HTML code for your blog. Copy (CTRL+C) this code into a notepad.
Log into your blogger account and navigate to your blog’s “Layout” and then to “Templates” section. Go to “Page elements” section, click on “Add a page element” and choose HTML/JavaScript element.
Paste (CTRL+V) the code from ClockLink into the “content” section of the HTML/JavaScript pop up page. Save the changes and you are done!
You can now view the blog by clicking “View blog” and your clock should appear where you added the page element.

Adding smileys and emoticons to your blog post

Add emoticons and smileys to your blog posts. Here's how...
Adding smileys and emoticons to blog posts is easy. It makes your blogs look more meaningful and communicative besides that extra pinch of “expression” that tags along. Listed below are three means by which you can do this:

Method 1:
Click cybergifs to download emoticons for free. Right click on the emoticon that you want to use in your blog and the “Save Target As” as a jpeg image in your hard disk. You can download as many as you want and save them all in a folder for use.
When you are composing your blog, you can click the “Add Image” icon in your composer menu. This leads you to a pop up page where you can browse to the emoticon icon that you saved earlier, upload the image and click “Done”. You need to specify the image location if your want a specific pattern (right/left/center aligned) for your image to appear in your blog post. If you don’t choose any pattern, then you will have to manually drag the image (after you click “Done”).

Method 2:
Another way to add smileys or emoticons as images in your blogs (as in method1) is to download smiley central software from http://www.freesmileys.org/free-smiley-faces-download.php
The download from smiley central is free and this offers a wide variety of smileys, screensavers, cursors, fun-cards and emoticons to choose from (super smileys, talking smileys, custom smileys etc).
Once the download is complete, you will see a smiley icon in your menu bar.
When you are next composing your blog, you first place the cursor where you want the smiley to be placed, click on the smiley icon in the menu bar, browse through the smileys that show up and pick your choice. Click on your smiley to insert it. Simple!!

Method 3:
Another interesting article that I came across was posted by Deepa.
I have provided the link to her blog where you will have to copy paste a piece of code in the “Edit HTML” section of your blog layout.
(To navigate to “Edit HTML”, log into your blogger account go to Dashboard, go to the “Layout” section of the selected blog and click on “Edit HTML” button. It is very important that you take a backup of your old HTML code before you make any changes.)
Add Yahoo emoticons to your blog

Alternatives:
Links and scripts from other bloggers…

To add smileys in your blogs incase you are using wordpress, this link might come in handy:
Wordpress smileys

To add smileys using HTML code as in method 3 above, you can also use the script designed by Sumeet. Click http://sumeet.info/hacks/emoticons.html

http://emoticons4u.com/ is another emoticons gallery.

You can also try the link below

http://freeblogspottemplates.blogspot.com/2006/03/blogger-emoticons.html
And closely follow the instructions mentioned.

The instructions are very detailed and should work on both old and new blogger (beta blogger).

For bloggers using FireFox, this might be useful. http://wolverinex02.googlepages.com/emoticonsforblogger

That’s all for now….
Keep smiling!

Changing your blog skin

Not happy with your blog skin??
Blogger and Wordpress lets you choose from a variety of skins templates – templates with one column, 2 column and 3 columns. 3 columns are very useful when you have to maximize your content besides earning from your blog i.e. when you have more contents to put in your blog.
If you are still not happy with the skins and would like to have something different, then you can download the skin you want from the sites listed below. Though there are many different sites to let you download free templates for blogs absolutely free, I personally recommend the following sites for your review:

Where to download from?
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/29-beautiful-blogger-templates/
This provides 29 really neat and cool design templates for you to download.
(See emire template below for an example)

http://designs.bloggerbuster.com/search/label/three%20column
Some Web 2.0 enabled templates, 2-3 column templates, classic templates and a variety of different templates for you to choose from.
(See gourmet template below for an example)

http://www.finalsense.com/services/blog_templates/
A very good collection of template themes for both new and old blogger with fixed background, classic templates, 2-3 column templates for download, arranged neatly in different categories.
(Check butterfly template for an example)

http://www.pyzam.com/bloggertemplates/
A wonderful set of designer templates and 2-3 column templates for blogger.
(Check vintage flower template for an example)

http://www.idwebtemplate.com/category/template-categories/
Some neat templates that are also adsense optimized.
(Check Woman-auto-insurance template for an example)

How to use these templates in your blog?

1. For Wordpress:
Download the theme archive and extract the files. You need to preserve the directory structure in the archive when extracting these files. Using an FTP client to access your host web server, create a directory to contain your theme in the wp-content/themes directory provided by WordPress. For example, a theme named "ABCtheme" should be in wp-content/themes/ABCtheme.
Upload the theme files to the new directory on your host server.
To select the active theme for your site: Log in to the WordPress Administration Panel.Select the "Presentation" sub panel.From the "Select" column in the table, click on "Select" for the theme you wish to activate.To view the new theme in action, click "View Site" at the top of the Panel's screen.Your theme should immediately become active.

2. For Blogger
The sites display the HTML code of the selected theme for you. CTRL+A to copy all the contents of the code and CTRL+V to paste it to a notepad.
Now log into your blogger account, go to Dashboard, go to the “Layout” section of the selected blog and click on “Edit HTML” button. It is very important that you take a backup of your old HTML code (your previous blog layout) and copy it to another notepad. After taking a backup of your old code, delete the existing HTML code and paste the new code from the first notepad (you new template design layout).
Click on “Preview” to view how the new template looks like. If you are happy with it, go ahead and “Save template”.
Point to remember here is that old blogger templates might not be compatible with the new blogger layout and hence on “Preview” you might get an error that your file could not be parsed since it is not well formed.
Don’t worry about your page elements on copying the new HTML code. First, you already have the backup and secondly, blogger preserves page elements in the new blogger theme.

Note: All of the above links also contain template designs that are adsense optimized!