Utilising Unused Space in Blogger Header

This is an interesting question from a Blog reader - Jamie. Jamie wants to know if there is way to utilize the unused space in Blogger header. The answer is yes. When you use an image in your header, your image will be aligned to the left. Some of you would want the image to be centered and you'd settle for that. But if you want your image to stay where it is (left), and add a gadget at the unused space on the right side, wouldn't that be cool?

Blogger New Year Banner

Not long ago, I did a tutorial on how you can add a Christmas banner to your blog to convey your Christmas wishes to your readers. Well, Christmas is technically over, so let's prepare for New Year now. This tutorial is similar to the Christmas one, but I figured no one will be looking for it anymore, so here's another one.

Highlight Blogger Author Comments

It has been awhile. This time, I'm going to show you a quick and easy way to make your comments (author comments) look different. In a thread full of comments, one might feel the need to isolate the author's comments from readers' comments, probably by highlighting it or making it look different.

UPDATE: THIS TWEAK WILL NOT WORK WITH THE NEW BLOGGER REPLY COMMENT SYSTEM. CLICK ON 'REVERT WIDGET TEMPLATES TO DEFAULT' TO UNDO THIS TWEAK. I'VE PUBLISHED A NEW WAY OF HIGHLIGHTING AUTHOR COMMENTS FOR THE NEW THREADED SYSTEM, CHECK IT OUT.

This tweak works with both Layout (Minima, Harbor, Denim, Rounders, etc) and Designer (Simple, Picture Window, Awesome Inc, etc) templates. Basically, it'll work with all Blogger 'built-in' templates, probably third party templates as well. Consider this my Christmas gift.

Blogger Christmas Banner

It's that time of the year again. What better way is there to wish your readers a Merry Christmas than to place a Christmas banner in your blog? This is a request from a blog reader (KitchenMorph). I thought it was a good idea, so I decided to write a tutorial on it.

Add one now to your blog in 1 easy step!

Adding Syntaxhighlighter to Blogger

Sorry for the lack of updates for the past few days. I have been really tied up with some stuffs, and it will remain like this for the next few days. I'll try to make this one quick and simple. This is a request from a blog reader (RainDropSoup). In this tutorial, I will share with you guys how I added my Syntaxhighlighter. Syntaxhighlighter is an add-on that can be added to Blogger (and other websites). It makes your code snippet looks pretty. Here's an example:

Pretty, ain't it?

Usually, Bloggers that post programming codes would want to add this one to their blogs, as it makes everything easier and tidy. You can still use this add-on to post normal texts, if you want your text to stand out from the rest of your contents. There are lots and lots of tutorials out there that teach you how to add it to Blogger. When I first added it, I tried some of these tutorials myself, and not all of them work. So, here's how I added it.

Google Translator Blogger Widget

You might have noticed the drop-down menu at the top-left section of my page. With this widget, I let my readers translate this site to over 50 languages without sending them to other websites, thanks to Google Translator. The Official Google Translator widget allows your reader to quickly and automatically view your page in a different language. In this quick tutorial, I'm gonna show you how you can add this Official Google Translator widget to your blog.

Repositioning Blogger Title and Description

As per request from a blog reader (Leigh), here's a tutorial on how you can reposition your Blogger's title and description. This is a short and quick one.

Centering Blogger Picture Gadget Image

Here's a quick one. For some odd reasons, the developers of Blogger's Picture gadget did not feel the need to center the images when they are added. This gives an awkward look, depending on where your pictures are aligned. In some templates, it works fine (I can't remember which). For those of you who want to center your picture gadget's images, here's how.

Before

After

Enlarging Blogger Profile Image

By default, Blogger displays your profile image at 80x80 pixels. That's small, and some users want their profile images to be larger than this. In this tutorial, I will show you how you can quickly make your profile image bigger.

Changing Blogger Title Link

In my previous post, I have showed you how you can change your Blogger header image's link. But in order to do this, you'd have to disable your blog's title. Some might not like the idea of having their titles removed just to make way for some links in their headers. Well, you don't have to remove your title to include a link in your header, as you already have your title linked. When you are not on your main page, your blog's title will be automatically linked, to itself of course. In this tutorial, you will learn how you can change this link to point elsewhere. And best of all, this link will appear on the main page itself. I have also added a quick step on how you can get your description linked as well.

Changing Blogger Header Image Link

If you choose to either place your header image 'Instead of title and description' or 'Have description placed after the image' while uploading your header image to Blogger, your image will have a link on it. The link acts like a home button, as it brings you to your main page. However, some prefer to have it pointing elsewhere, to a private website for example. In this tutorial, I will show how you can quickly change the target destination of this link.

Getting the Best Responses from Blogger Help Forum

http://www.southernspeakers.net/2010/12/getting-best-responses-from-blogger.html


Blogger Help Forum is a place where you can shoot your various Blogger-related questions, and kind helpers will help you out to resolve issues that you are facing. However, many questions are still left unanswered - and one can hardly blame the helpers for this. As an asker, it is your responsibility to make sure your questions get attended. If your question is not answered, you have yourself to blame. Either that or no-one knows the answer to your question. In this post, I will list out as many tips that I can think of to help you get the best possible responses from the helpers at Blogger Help Forum.

Adding a Third Party Gadget

This one is for beginners. Advanced users, please ignore this post. Lot's of users are having trouble in placing third party widgets. You can't blame them, Blogger is not user friendly when it comes to this. To add a third party gadget, you ought to use the HTML/Javascript gadget. But this is not readily known. If I were a non-technical person, I wouldn't have any idea what a HTML/Javascript gadget is. In Blogger Help Forum, I have captured dozens of screen shots to pin-point exactly where the HTML/Javacript gadget is. With this post, I hope I won't be capturing anymore screenshots.

Show Date for Each Blogger Post

I tried to figure this one out a long time ago but I had no luck back then. Today I've found a way. When you publish more than a post for a given day, only the most recent post (last post) will have it's date shown. Moreover, certain templates (like Awesome Inc) make it worse by grouping all these posts together as though they are all one single post. Although it makes sense to group posts published on the same day under a single category, lot's of users prefer to have the date shown on each post separately.

UPDATE:

I've improvised this tutorial by adding some Javascript. The timestamp does not have to be sacrificed anymore. Check out the new improvised tutorial below:

Show Date and Timestamp for Each Blogger Post

Adding Buttons to Blogger Header

It isn't possible to directly add a button to your header. There isn't such feature in Blogger. But there's a workaround. Using CSS 'position' and 'z-index' attributes, you can place an image (button) on top of your header and make it clickable. Check out a live demo here: