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New Stone Soup: Customizing Your Blog

02.06.07 (7:05 pm)   [edit]

What Can I Do With Links?

After finishing off several posts about creating various sorts of Tables of Contents, I received several comments and tMails concerning the creation of Links. Here's a quick hyperlink breakdown so you can make links work overtime for your blog.

When you write a link into your blog, you should always consider all the different pieces of code that make up a hyperlink. For example, here is the code for a link found on Taboo Monkey Blue Blog: Writing on Writing:

<a class="white" title="Care to Revise Your Story?" target="_blank" href="http://tabootenente.tblog.com/post/1969938454#newpost"> INTRO: CARE TO REVISE YOUR STORY? (2.06.07)</a>

All of that blather produces this link: INTRO: CARE TO REVISE YOUR STORY? (2.06.07)

The skeleton of any link looks like this:

<a href="http://youraddress.com">Your Link</a>

First, substitute in your own link address, then substitute the name of your link for "Your Link". Very simple.

Now, there are several other pieces of the hyperlink that you should know:

1. Title: Your link title is exactly that: a formal title for your link. Search engines like Google will look through your code, pull out several details from your blog such as these formal link titles. The more accurate and explicit you are with your titles, the better chance you'll have of attracting readers to your blog.

2. Target: A link target is the location of the window where your link will open. Have you ever noticed that when you click a link, sometimes you leave the page you were reading, and sometimes your browser adds a new window--leaving you with the old page while opening a second? That's the work of your link's target. If you do not add any target information, your links will change the readers' browser window; if you add

target="_blank" to your link, then your readers will have a new window opened, while keeping your original blog page open. Nifty.

3. You'll note that in Taboo Monkey Blue Blog's link code above, his address has a funny little "#" number sign inside his link:

<a href= "http://tabootenente.tblog.com/post/1969938454#newpost"></a>

The "#" sign takes the reader to an anchor. An anchor is like a bookmark that you can place at any location within your blog page. One way to make this work, is to drop an anchor in a post with this code:

<a name="SomeAnchorName"></a>

Then, when you want to link your reader to the anchor, write your hyperlink like this:

<a href="#SomeAnchorName">Go to Some Anchor Name</a>

Here's our hyperlink to an anchor we dropped near the top of our page: Anchor to Taboo.

Any questions?
01.27.07 (6:43 pm)   [edit]

Code for Round Corners Table of Contents



In New Stone Soup's discussion, Table of Contents: Clever Looks, Clever Design, we tacked a colorful table of contents with round borders to the top of our article. Feel free to use the following instructions to spruce up your own table of contents.

If you use these instructions, please stick a link to "New Stone Soup: Customizing Your Blog" somewhere on your blog. Much appreciated!

Rounded Index for your Sidebar
Rounded Index for your Articles

Rounded Index for your Sidebar

1. Look at the code below, and scroll down until you find the for the form information. You're looking for the info beginning here:

<li><a target="_blank" title="Table of Contents Introduction" href="http://newstonesoup.tblog.com/post/1969936514">

** Replace New Stone Soup's Links with your own. There are four or five links here, but feel free to add or delete as many as you like.

2. When your links are replaced, Copy and Paste everything into your ADD/EDIT HTML page. Whoo-hoo! You're done!


Rounded Index for your Articles

1. Open a simple text document:
** Right-Click on your empty desktop screen without any browser windows open.
** Go to: NEW -- Text Document

2. Look at the code below, and scroll down to the form information (a tip on how to find the info can be found above) and replace New Stone Soup's links with your own.

3. Copy and Paste everything to your New Text Document:

4. Save your Text Document, then go to: WRITE A POST, and write a post.

5. READ ALL OF STEP 5 BEFORE PROCEEDING! Switch your post VIEW into Plain VIEW, Copy and Paste everything from your post into your Text Document, between the following tabs:

<div style="clear:left;"><!--space--></div> AND </body>

6. Save Your Text Document once again, then Copy and Paste everything from your Text Document back into your WRITE A POST page. Make sure that your new code REPLACES your original post.

If at anytime you'd like to edit your article once it's been posted, we recommend that you do your editing from your Saved Text Document.

Is that it? Yes, indeed!

Part I: Introduction to Table of Contents
Part II: Table of Contents: Clever Looks, Clever Design
Drop Down Index: Nifty Table of Contents Trick
01.27.07 (4:14 pm)   [edit]

Drop Down Indexes: Nifty Table of Contents Tricks


Above, you can see a different, nifty design for a table of contents. I'll post the code for the table of contents here which anyone can use with a few customizations.

A quick note before we begin: your browser must allow Javascript to see the list in action.

Drop Down Index for Your Sidebar
Drop Down Index for Your Article Post

Adding the Code to Your Sidebar

1. Look at the code below, and scroll down until you find the for the form information. You're looking for the info beginning here:

<option value="http://newstonesoup.tblog.com/" selected="selected">Stone Soup Home</option>

** Replace New Stone Soup's Links with your own. There are four or five links here, but feel free to add or delete as many as you like.

2. When your links are replaced, Copy and Paste everything into your ADD/EDIT HTML page. Whoo-hoo! You're done!


Adding a drop down index directly into your article posts takes a few more steps, but it isn't really any more difficult.

Adding the Code to An Article Post

1. Open a simple text document:
** Right-Click on your empty desktop screen without any browser windows open.
** Go to: NEW -- Text Document

2. Look at the code below, and scroll down to the form information (a tip on how to find the info can be found above) and replace New Stone Soup's links with your own.

3. Copy and Paste everything to your New Text Document:

4. Once you've pasted the code into your new Text Document, SAVE with a name you'll remember.

5. Here's the tricky part: at tBlog, go to WRITE A POST. Then write a post. Told you that was the hard part. Just finish it up but do not actually click POST YOUR ARTICLE quite yet.

6. On your WRITE A POST page, switch your VIEW over to PLAIN VIEW if you're not there already.

7. READ ALL OF STEP 7 BEFORE PROCEEDING!! Copy and Paste everything from inside your article box into a very specific place within your New Document: the place between the last FORM tag and the last BODY tag.

8. Save your document, then Copy EVERYTHING and paste it ON TOP of everything in your article box:

** MAKE SURE YOU PASTE OVER THE ENTIRE POST! It might be easier to delete everything inside your article box before pasting your new article there--in any case, just make sure that you realize that the document you just saved contains your whole post, and you don't need your previous version. And that's all there is to it.

** If you use this code, we wouldn't mind if you posted a link on your blog to the New Stone Soup Blog!

There you go! Nice and nifty content box at the top of your nice and nifty post. Here's one last tip: if for whatever reason you want to edit the article once you've posted it, try to do your editing within the document you saved. Once the article is edited there, save it again, the Copy and Paste it into your Edit Article content.

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