Photos & Photobucket & Unwelcome Changes

A few years ago I made a decision for my blog which now turns out to have been an almighty error and will take me many hours to fix. Of course, I didn't know it was an error at the time and thought it was the right thing to do. I'd read it on a blog, you see, on more than one blog, so obviously it was a good decision. What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, I now discover.

What did I do?

I decided to move the hosting for images on my blog to another platform, which would then relay the images to my blog. I'm sure part of my reasoning for doing this was the battles I often seemed to have with Blogger (my blogging platform) and a feeling that a different way of managing visual content on my blog might be a fix.

And it was until now. I developed a system of editing my photos, shrinking the size, and then uploading them to the web and linking them to the blog post in question. Sorted and relatively simple.

The platform I chose to host my images was/is Photobucket, one that was often mentioned and recommended by those helpful blogs I read. Photobucket have recently, and abruptly, changed their terms and conditions, and the service of hosting images on other sites has gone up from free to $399.99 per year. Pretty much overnight. And retrospectively, meaning that all the images I've previously uploaded using their service will most likely disappear at some point to be replaced by an image like one of these.

In fact, you may well have seen this image on other blog, auction sites, craft sites, and chat forums, as I was not alone in using Photobucket for image hosting and am also not alone in finding the new cost prohibitive and the rapid introduction of it, with no warning, a little lacking in courtesy.

I'm going to slowly move my images away from Photobucket and have decided to let Blogger handle them again and see whether a few years break has given me a bit more experience and/or allowed Blogger to iron out any of those glithes I used to experience.

So if you visit one of my older posts (all posts after this one should be fine and dandy) and discover the images are looking a little typographical, shall we say, then the reason will be that I've not got around to fixing those ones yet. But I will.

A lot of people have been very angry at Photobucket for both the introduction of the change with no warning or preamble, and the price of it - from what I've read this seems to be quite a high price for this type of service. I'm frustrated and disappointed but some of the reading I've done on the topic has been interesting - a frequently held view is that we've come to expect the web to be free (I'm talking about the content here - I'm well aware  that line rental, broadband access, and the devices used to actually get online are all rather expensive and a long way from free and get slightly annoyed when some people don't appreciate those costs are not insignificant - but I digress) and yet much of it isn't and that much of it is used to generate income, jobs and wages. The theory is that advertising, which was meant to help keep things online free, isn't covering the costs companies and business need it to and that other avenues are being explored.

I can't really argue with someone wanting to be paid for a service, and if I find the cost too high, as I do here, then I can choose to walk away, which is what I'm doing. Yes, it's annoying. The rules have been changed, and fast. And yes, it is going to take me a lot of time and effort to ensure my images will display correctly. But it seems the web is perhaps a more fickle place than I previously thought and so I will bear that in mind in my future interactions with it...

This also shows how important it is for all of us who use images online to back them up and remember that they're our responsibility to look after. This also goes the same for blog posts and probably nearly anything at all you put online - it's wiser not to trust that it will always be accessible to you, with terms and conditions that don't alter and systems that don't change. If it matters to you then keep a copy (or ideally two).

If you've also been directly affected by this, then you have my sincere sympathy. Unfortunately I know of only two options - either pay the subscription or do what I'm doing and slowly and painfully move your images. After a little searching I have found a detailed post from blogger Lauren Wayne about how she's trying to deal with the problems created, which is worth a read.

In the meantime, thanks for reading this and please bear with me while I update those photos.

Designing your own Blog Graphics with Canva

Designing and creating your own graphics, banners, and buttons online is nothing new and is, in many ways, easier than ever. On this blog I've previously created my own banner heading as well as the side buttons for quick links to collections of blog posts - see them on the right hand side.

I also created the main image, above, for this blog post using Canva, after playing around with some of their templates and changing colours and font.

I've dabbled with using both PicMonkey (the free version) and an old copy of Photoshop Elements, plus recently I've also been looking further afield and that has included Canva. Yes, you do have to sign up to use it, but you also have to do that for PicMonkey now as well - PicMonkey used to be handy for 'quick' edits when I didn't want the hassle of either signing up or signing in, trying to remember my password, failing, having to reset it, etc... Now, however, both PicMonkey and Canva both require an account, even for their free versions.

While Canva is, obviously, different from PicMonkey, many of the tools and techniques they use work in a similar enough way that means it's easy enough to pick things up quite quickly if you've used the other, and if you've not utilised online image editing before (and even if you have!) then a brief web search on a specific problem can provide answers.

It's often better to learn as you try to create something (this applies to jewellery too!) than to try and gain a working knowledge without using it practically, so to teach myself a bit about Canva I decided to spend some time experimenting. I began by trying to create a new side button for my blog, and then ended up creating a whole set of them.

Here's what I made first:

And here's what I made when I'd worked out what I was doing and decided to be a little more ambitious and create something more specific to my overall blog design:

I created a custom-sized template and used one of Canva's own backgrounds, before adding text and choosing font, size, and colour. I may well re-do the buttons with an image of my own, to make it more personalised to my blog.

At the end of this flurry of time on Canva I very quickly chose a template for this post (see the first image, above) and adapted that to use some of my own blog colours, taking just a few minutes to complete.

I created all my images using used free components on Canva although they do have a paid version as well, with more options. I prefer the free version of such applications and tend, in general, to avoid paid versions as they often involve subscription models (as Canva does) and they just don't suit me - I'd rather pay up front and own something than hire it. Also, I don't create enough images to justify paying a fee and so it is helpful that places like Canva have a good and usable free version.

Canva allows you to upload your own images to incorporate into design elements, and although you can also upload your own fonts this is unfortunately only available on the paid version. One very handy part of Canva is that is has the facility for you to copy an image you're working on and adapt it or alter it slightly, without having to start over again - you can also chart your own progression as you do this, and change your mind and use an earlier version without having to undo changes you've made.

If you've never used this kind of graphic design and image editing software before then, when you first start out, it will take a little while to create anything you're happy with, but using a web application like Canva will, with a little practise, allow you to make banners and buttons and pretty much any graphic you care to without much fuss at all. If you are more adept in using such software then you should adapt to this quite fast and may well enjoy having some different options for new designs.

PS. I designed this alternative post banner as well, a few days after I'd created the above graphics, just to see how much I remembered. It was still very easy and also a lot of fun.

~~~~~

Please note - I was contacted by a representative of Canva about creating this post. However all the content has been designed and created by me and I have received no payment of any kind and am not connected with the company in any way. Nor are any of the links in the post affiliate links. The opinions in the post are, as always, my own, and have been given honestly.

How to create a Blogger Favicon

You know when you open a blog in a tab, and you have a little icon to the left of the blog title in that same tab? Well, that's a favicon. It also shows up in bookmarks, and sometimes next to the blog name itself in the address bar on your browser.

If the blog is a Blogger blog, then the default setting for the favicon is a not-very-attractive white stylised 'B' on an orange background. This standard favicon is eye-catching but not necessarily for the right reasons...

Even if you do think that design is pretty, it still does nothing to distinguish your blog from any other Blogger blog someone may be reading. It just tells everyone your blog is a Blogger blog.

To help you stand out, and to make the overall design of your blog a little more cohesive, you can, using your own images, create your own favicon and use that to replace the Blogger one.

Interested?

Read on...

Chose your image

 

You can use a stock image (either free or paid for, but do check conditions of use) for a favicon, but for the purposes of this post I'm going to assume you have a pile of your own photos that you use widely on your shop and blog. A good idea can be to take a detail from the header you use on your blog, and that way common colours and images it may display will also be apparent in your favicon.

Size is everything

Do bear in mind that favicons are tiny. I know, that's kind of obvious, but it does have a bearing if you wish to use an image of something specific, rather than just a colour or a letter - it needs to be well defined enough that people can recognise what it is. And if that isn't possible, then the colours it displays should make sense within your banner or blog colour scheme.

What I did... 

 

Chose a photo 

 

I decided to stick with my current muted colour-scheme of silver and grey, and so chose this image from my virtual stack of photos -

 

Edit the image

1. I uploaded it to picmonkey, rotated it, and then cropped it square.

I lost a little bit of the top and bottom of the leaf, but figured it would be easier to work with if it was a square photo from the outset, as favicons are always square. Making the dimensions exact can be tricky in picmonkey, so just get them as close to equal as you can.


2. Then I resized it to around 70px square, to make uploading it later on easier - it's only going to get smaller, so image quality loss isn't an issue here. Also, resizing at this stage gives you an idea of how small the photo is going to get, and how well, or not, your chosen image may work. Concentrate on light, shade, and colour and that should give the best result - you can always resize the image even smaller in picmonkey, to see how it works as a tiny image.

I saved the image to my computer in picmonkey, using a simple filename that made sense. Also I saved it to my desktop, somewhere I could easily find it again as I needed it straight away

Create the favicon

Next I opened up favicon.cc - this site helps you actually create the favicon itself, turning the small photo into a favicon.

3. On the left hand side of the page, I clicked on Import Image.

4. Then I was taken to an upload page - (this is why you need to know where you've stored the image) - to browse and find my edited photo.

Here I also chose Keep dimensions as I'd already made my photo square, but if you haven't cropped it already, you can chose Shrink to square icon - if you think your image is too far from square, despite your best cropping efforts, then chose this option, but do bear in mind it may well change the way it looks a little too much.

Next I clicked on Upload. My file size was small so this didn't take long.


5. The site took me back to its main page... and my extremely pixelated favicon...

This is normal. And correct. The favicon is so tiny that it can easily be shown pixel by pixel like this.

(It also gives you the opportunity to experiment with changing the colour of pixels, if you wish, by using the Color Picker to the right of the favicon. This is fun, if potentially disastrous! I couldn't find a back or undo button although I would imagine one exists somewhere.)

Save the favicon

Anyway, I then saved the favicon by scrolling down the page and clicking on Download Favicon. When given the option in the pop-up download screen, I clicked on save. (The file was saved to my downloads on my computer automatically - I wasn't given the option to chose where I wanted to save it, as happens on picmonkey. If you have trouble finding where your downloads are, and consequently the favicon, you're looking for a tiny file named favicon.ico)

Upload favicon to blog

The final thing I had to do was upload the favicon to my blog.

6. I went to layout in Blogger, and clicked on edit in the Favicon box

7. I then browsed to where the favicon.ico file was - I'd moved it to my desktop - and clicked on save to upload it to blogger.  

8. My new favicon showed up on my blogger layout screen straightaway but took a little longer to filter through the system and show up when I opened a new tab, so give it time if this delay also happens to you.

You can edit or change your favicon whenever you like. I redid mine after the first attempt looked vague and unclear when downsized to such a small size. I also edited using the pixels on the favicon site, adding brightness where the leaf was a little shady. I'm still not entirely convinced I'll stick with this one, but it's good enough to be getting on with.

Do leave a message if you've made a new favicon, I'd love to go and have a look at it!

More info

You can do a lot more with the favicon.cc website. You can find and use favicons that other people have created (click on Latest favicons and Top Rated favicons on the favicon.cc site), and that have been released under a CC (Creative Commons) license which means you are able to use other people's work. Or you can try creating your own favicon from scratch, by filling in pixels with various colours. If it's any good you can use it on your site or release it for others to download and use.

Happy pixelling!

No-reply blogger, no-reply comments, what does it mean?

Just so you know, this post is about using the Blogger/Blogspot platform. If you blog on TypePad, WordPress, Tumblr, or any other platform then this doesn't apply, but you can still read it if you fancy though... ;)

(Also, to avoid any confusion, if you use Google+ then your default setting is to be a no-reply blogger. Check out this tutorial and this one to help you change this situation.)

What does being a no-reply blogger mean?

Like a lot of people, I only found out I was a no-reply blogger when someone told me. Before then I had just merrily posted and commented and had no idea of this other way of blogging that was going on around it. It may be the same for you. If you are a no-reply blogger then, when you leave a comment on another blog, it will be impossible for the blog writer to drop you an email, saying hello, thank you, or anything at all.

When you write a post on your own blog and some nice person leaves you a comment, then that comment is also emailed to the address that is connected to your blog. You can respond to their comment on your blog, but if you want to be sure they get your response (without returning to your blog) then you can email them straight from your inbox. Except... if on their blogger account they have no publicly visible email address. This means that they are a no-reply blogger.

How to find out if you're a no-reply blogger

A couple of ways exist to discover if you are a no-reply blogger -

1) You can leave yourself a test comment (don't worry, you can delete it afterwards) and then check your inbox - you'll have a notification of the comment you left, and if you are a no-reply blogger then you'll also be able to find the words 'noreply-comment@blogger.com' next to it.

2) Another easy way to check your no-reply status is to click onto your blogger profile page.
To find this when you're logged in to Blogger, go to the top right hand of the page where it displays your name, your chosen icon, and a little downward facing arrow. If you click on this area a drop-down will appear, containing the words 'Blogger profile'. Click on this.

Hover your mouse on your profile page...

On the page that opens, beneath your photo on the left hand side, you should find an area which says 'Contact me'. Beneath this should be a link to your email address - if you hover over 'Email' (see image to the right) then your email address should appear in the bottom left hand corner of your screen. If it does, then you are NOT a no-reply blogger. You're okay, people can find you and contact you (and also spam you, but, hey, that's a whole other post).

How to stop being a no-reply blogger

If you have no email link, and you want to (because half the fun of blogging is contacting and chatting to other bloggers), then here's what to do.

In the top right hand corner of your blogger profile page you'll see a button that says 'Edit Profile'. Click on it. On the page that opens, the second line down will say 'Show my email address'. Tick the box next to this. Scroll down and click 'Save Profile'.

And that's it. Now when you leave comments, people can respond to you via your inbox.

A bit more info...

If you need anything clarifying then do contact me in the comments section and I'll try to help, or check out this post, this one, this one as well, and this one too, for other tutorials.

And if you're not sure you want to have people respond to your comments, then stay as you are - the web is a bog place, it takes all sorts, and you're as entitled to your view as anyone else!