23/04/2013 – Grab my button / Push my button

No, I’m not writing erotica yet. My post’s title is all jargon for BLOG BUTTONS. Yep… I finally got one too. And I’m going to explain how to make a blog button with a grab box. I have a WordPress blog, so these instructions apply to WordPress only.

Step 1: Choose an image, add text, bubbles, baubles… you know… make it attractive. But more importantly, make it a perfect square. [Size 125 x 125 is standard for a blog button].

Step 2: Go to your WordPress Dashboard and under “Media”, click “Add New”. Upload the blog button image. Once the image has been uploaded, right click and copy the “File URL”.

Step 3: Go to your Dashboard again, click “Appearance” and then “Widgets”. Find the “text” widget for arbitrary text/HTML. Drag the “text” widget to your sidebar on the right.

Step 4: Writing the code

(i) Copy and paste this onto a WORD document:

[div align="center"][a href="http://www.YOURBLOG.com" target="_blank"][img src="http://YOURIMAGEURL"][/a][/div]

[div align="center"][form][textarea rows="3" cols="19" readonly="readonly"][a href="http://YOURBLOGL.com" target="_blank"][img src="http://YOURIMAGEURL"][/textarea]...]

(ii) Where it says “YOUR BLOG”, replace with The URL for your blog.

(iii) where is says “YOUR IMAGE URL” replace with the image URL from WordPress that you copied with a right-click earlier

(iv) Then, while still in WORD, click “replace” and replace all ” [ " with " < " and all " ]” with ” > ”

NB: There should be a total of 28 replacements. You can do each manually, if you don’t know how to replace using WORD.

Step 5: Copy and past this finalised HTML code into your text widget. Click “save” and then “close”.

All done! You now have a blog button with a “grab me” window.

If you’re a blogger or a writer and found this information useful, subscribe to my blog from my website: http://www.thevampirecode.com

I blog about books, writing, and publishing.