Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging - Blogoninja » Blog Designing Tutorials

How You Can Design Your Theme?

chetan — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:20:24 +0000

O.K. I ask you a question? If you open a website or a blog, what do you see the first thing? Your answer would be the top of the page, that is header. That means a header is the thing that gives your users the first impression. Header is the place from where you can show the true potential of your website/product/blog. So we should know how to design your header. There are many softwares that are going to be used in this path.
You all know about Adobe PhotoShop, it is used in editing the image files, but it can be used to design not just a header but it can be also used to make a mind blowing design for your website. Next comes logo, LaughingBird’s Logo Creator is a good tool to do this work. It has readily created themes for logos, plus it is more customizable than others. AAA Logo Creator also can be good alternative for it. Next comes image resizer. FastStone PhotoResizer is good one for doing this work.
Now comes the practical work. Just think about what type of logo you want for your website. Search for images that will suite your websites header. Now create your imagined logo in TheLogoCreator. It has both predesigned logos and thousands of fonts to create your logos design. When you are finished, just copy the whole thing to Adobe Photoshop and do any modification in background color or any extra effect in your logo. Now when you are finished just save it and resize it as much as you want. In the end just upload it to your image directory and set your header image. And now you are done.

How I Added Favicon To My Wordpress Blog

chetan — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:21:11 +0000

I have already told you how to add a favicon to a Blogger blog. And this time, as we have moved to Wordpress I will show you how I added favicon to this site. So here it is:
Follow these steps:

In your Wordpress account open Design and then Theme Editor.
Then open your Header.php file and in that file search for a line similar to this one:

Now in that line you can see that YOUR-IMAGE.ico. Just replace that URL with the URL of your image. The extension for the image can be ico or jpg or something else.

Save the template and you are done. If you want to read how to add favicon to a blogger blog go to Blogger Favicon Tutorial.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

7 Days to Better Looking Blog-Day 7

chetan — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:36:00 +0000

In the last 6 articles of Blog-o-Ninja I gave the tutorials related to designing your blog and making it look better while being impactful. Now in the last day of your Blog Designing Tutorial I will tell you how to make your site more impactful. So read on[...]

You must understand that your articles are most important for your blog. So these are the things you can do to make your blog posts effective.
1) Write about what you like or what you have expertise in; and don’t just copy the matter from somewhere else.
2) Try to be the first to write about something in your niche.
3) Try to entertain your readers by adding something creative in your blog posts. I include images, not just everytime but wherever necessary. I also try to vary the position of the image.
4) Include videos wherever necessary. For eg: You are writing a “how to” article. So with your article you can include a video from Youtube so that your readers better understand your article.

O.K this is it for today’s tutorial. If you think you need more help with Blog Designing just read my Blog Designing Tutorial.

7 Days to Better Looking Blog-Day 6

chetan — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:34:00 +0000

This is the day 6 Tutorial where I will show you how to add contact and about pages, some important widgets and finding great font styles and images for your blog. Previously I told you how to add post footer, bookmarking and subscription elements to your blog posts. So read on[...]

You can create a separate blog post and include information as “about me” page and title it as “About ME” and then provide the link of about me page on the top or elsewhere. If you don’t want the page to appear before other blog posts(on your homepage) you can edit the date of the “About ME” post. Similarly you can add Contact page to your site. I use Kontactr for my contact application.

If you want to display a selected amount of text from the beginning of each post as a teaser so that each post can be expanded from the main page of your site just like I have then read How To Add The Blogger “Read More” Expandable Posts Link.

Da Font offers great font styles that you can use in blog designing just like I do. And if you want great images for site you can try Flickr, Photobucket, Dreamstime and Stock Exchange.

This is it for today. To read about adding post footer, bookmarking and subscription elements go to Day 5 Tutorial. For the last tutorial go to Blogging Tutorial Day 7

7 Days To Better Looking Blog-Day 5

chetan — Wed, 28 May 2008 08:22:00 +0000

Yesterday you saw tutorial related to Navbar, blog header editing and creating your own ad banners for advertisements of Clickbank products. Today I will show you how to add some important post, bookmarking and blog subscription elements. These elements are important if you want to not let your readers go away. So keep reading.[...]

I include “Add This” and RSS subscription link after every post on my blog so that my readers find it easier to bookmark and share my blog’s posts or subscribe to my blog. Subscription of RSS allows them to read my articles at their own ease(and of course in ad free format). So first if you want to add an “ADD THIS” or “SHARE THIS” button or just want to add the buttons of all bookmarking sites individually do this.
First go to Add This or Share This and get the code for your button or get the individual buttons of different sites. Now go to “Template”, then “Edit HTML”, then “Expand Widget Template”. Now find this line:

Now below this line copy the code given by AddThis or ShareThis. And it’s done.
For adding RSS subscription message after every post you may find this article useful written by GOSU: RSS Subscription Message.

Apart from this you must have noticed that while my blog is powered by BLOGGER it still has comment box after every post. In order to know more go to Comment Box Tutorial

That’s it for today. If you want to read about how to create your own Clickbank banner, hide navbar and edit header go to Day 4 Tutorial

7 Days To Better Looking Blog-Day 4

chetan — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:03:00 +0000

Yesterday I told you how to create favicons, ad banner rotators and similar things and install them on your blog. Today I will show you some other tricks like creating your own banners for Clickbank ads, hiding navbar, editing header and footer, etc. So keep reading in order to make your blog more attractive.[...]

First is Navbar. Its upto you hide it or let it be there. There is practically no difference. If you want to hide the Navbar just open “EDIT TEMPLATE” copy the following code and paste it just before the “body” element and below the “variable definitions”:

#navbar-iframe {
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none;
}

Next comes creating banners for ad networks like Clickbank where they do not provide you with pre installed banners. First search the product, that you have the affiliate link of, on the net(like in Google). Try to get image of that product from somewhere. Save the image on your computer and then upload it to any image hosting server or alternatively you can just use the same URL of the image. Now wherever you want to add the banner click “add page element” in your template and paste the following code:

NOTE: Before pasting the code make sure to change YOUR-CLICKBANK-HOPLINK with your hoplink of the product that you get from Clickbank. PRODUCT-IMAGE-URL must be changed with the actual image URL of the product(direct image URL or the URL given by the image hosting server for the uploaded image). Change ALTERNATE-TEXT with the text you want to appear if the image doesn’t appear.

Next comes editing your header. You can find the info about editing your header at Edit Header Tutorial.

This is it for today. If you want to understand how to install favicons, ad rotators and other similar hacks on your blog go to Day-3 Tutorial.

7 Days To Better Looking Blog-Day 3

chetan — Mon, 26 May 2008 18:24:00 +0000

Yesterday I told you how to find great templates just like mine and implementing them to your blog. Today I will show you how to make minor but important changes to your blog template in order to make it more attractive like including favicon, images, banner rotators and much more. So just keep reading.[…]

First comes finding good images on the net( or if you have them already in your computer that’s great). If you just include text in your blog it will make your readers bored and they will switch to something else. So in order to not have your readers “drained” away include images also between posts. I am not saying to fill your blog with just images but just include them wherever necessary. BLOGGER provides you with the uploading tools in your blog’s posts. So while writing articles you can just use BLOGGER to upload images. But sometimes there is a need to have some other 3rd party image hosting service. So read my article on Image Hosting by Photobucket.

Next comes favicon. If you use BLOGGER, you must be bored of that small old BLOGGER icon that appears in the browser box everytime you open your blog. This also affect your readers. In order to have an expert impression on your readers you should have something else as your favicon. In order to learn how to create and include your favicon go to Favicon Tutorial.

If you are thinking of monetizing your blog by including ad banners that’s a good idea and if you are going to try more than one ad networks that’s even better. So now you have more than one ad units or lets take example you have in all 6 ad units 3 of which are 125×125 and the rest 478×60. But just think so many ad units, how to show all them without compromising with your readers? In such situations Ad Banner Rotators come in use. To know more go to Ad Rotator Tutorial.

In order to understand how to find great templates and how to install them to your blog go to Day 2 Tutorial
This is it for today. See you tommorrow in the Day 4 Tutorial where I will show more techniques to design your blog.

7 Days To Better Looking Blog-Day 2

chetan — Sun, 25 May 2008 13:05:00 +0000

Here is Day2 tutorial on how to make your blog more attractive and impactfull. In this tutorial I will show you how to find great templates and apply them to your blog. So here you go Day2 Tutorial.[...]

The best way to find cool templates for every one can be searching on the internet but I bet you will not get what you want. So either you can go to my article on 70 Fresh Blog Templates or you go to E Blog Templates. You will definitely find something of your interest here. Download the template that you like to your computer.

O.K so now you have the template but if you are beginner then you may face many difficulties in applying the template to your blog. So I recommend you to go to David’s article on How to Install Blogger XML Template. Read that whole article and apply the methods step by step and I bet you surely will get your template up and running within half an hour. If you have any problem just leave a comment.

This was Day 2 Tutorial on how to make your blog more attractive. If you have not read the Day 1 Tutorial go to 7 Days To Better Looking Blog-Day 1. In the next tutorial I will show you how to include favicons, ad rotators and other similar hacks on your blog.

7 Days To Better Looking Blog-Day 1

chetan — Sat, 24 May 2008 19:18:00 +0000

Here is the Day-1 tutorial for exactly how you can make your blog more attractive and at the same time user friendly. I have been blogging for quite sometime now and have the experience to tell you how one could start a better looking blog within 7 days. However I am not so creative at designing but I know much about how to design your blog and if you are creative you can do this better than me. So here you are, Day-1:[...]

First decide the keyword or theme you want to build your blog on. Next step is to create your blog. For more information on how to create your BLOGGER blog go to BLOGGER Tutorial. However there are more free blogging platforms out there, so read my article on Free Blogging Hosts.

Now comes the interesting part. First write some articles for your blog. These articles also play a key role on appearance of your blog. Make sure your blog’s title and title description contains the keywords of your theme. To make your blog more impactfull also try to include the keywords in the article titles, first and the last line of every article and the hyperlinks in the articles. This will not only help in your page rank but also tell your readers what your article is all about. The articles should not be forcibly elongated but they should be sufficiently long that your readers can understand what you are saying.

This is all for Day-1. On Day-2 I will show you how to find great templates for your blog just like this one and applying them to your blog. SEEYAAAH!