Creating Navigation Tabs

Beautify your Blog

The next lesson on Erin's Beautify your Blog series is 5. Navigation Tabs. I've been thinking for a while about adding more pages to my blogs. Of course, it's important that the tabs link to related and interesting pages. To that end, I've been noticing what types of additional pages bloggers have on their sites. Here are some of the additional pages that are often found on quilting blogs:

• Quilting Tips or Tutorials;
• Link to their e-Shop, patterns for sale, etc.;
• Linking Parties (that they created or participated in); 
• Quilts and Projects (either in-process or finished);
• Quilt-Alongs (that they created or participated in);
• Speaking,Teaching and Events (especially if they are professionals);
• About Me;
• Quilt Gallery or Finished Projects (photos of finished quilts) (some divided by year); and
• Helpful Hints (theirs or links to other resources).

Here are some neat ideas about other possible pages:

• UFO Management; 
• Events that they are attending;
• Annual Plans (usually UFOs and UFO Challenges);
• Quilt Journal (links to all of the blogs related to a finished quilt);
• Ideas for future quilts (lists, links, pictures, sketches, etc.);
• Interesting Resources (on the internet, books, etc.) about design, FMQ; 
• Quilting Bloggers around the world;
• Specific interest pages such as techniques, products like journal covers or purses, original designs, etc.; and
• Specific Projects or a series, etc. (that they created or participated in).

I've been doing some research on the design blogs out there. Many are created by professional designers who have companies, so it's difficult to use them as examples of the types of pages I might want to add to my design blog. I guess the real issue is what is the purpose of the blog. For me, it's about recording my learning journey in design, be it for web, blog, e-learning or anything else. As I keep looking at design blogs, I'll be able to get a better sense of what I will want for the Design blog. I'm slowly making my way though the Top 100 Design Blogs To Follow by Ciera Design.

Technically you don't want to create and publish navigation tabs if they don't link to anything....that's why I started this process in the test site. I'll be creating potential navigation tabs and showing them off in this post, but will only upload them on my "real" site as I create actual pages to link to.

Erin suggested that when creating navigation tabs, that the image for the navigation tab should be about 50px high or less.  I did create a button using the image above but when I went to post it on Photobucket, it didn't let me download just one photo, but rather, it downloaded my entire folder. I was not impressed. It may have been my fault, but after that, I wasn't in the mood to keep at it. Maybe one day when I have more patience, I'll try again.

So, I did what everyone does....I Googled it! I found a web site that said that I can use a gadget for my navigation bar. That sounded good to me. When I searched the gadgets, it wasn't really obvious, but here it is. It worked really well and was fairly easy to install. Now, I just have to figure out what I want to place in my navigation bar.

What I learned:

• It's not a good idea to play with new apps when I'm impatient! On the other hand, it did lead me to find an alternative to creating my own navigation tab. 
• I know that I at least want to link my two blogs together. I'll be able to do this and still keep their design distinct.
• I don't really need an "about me" section, but like Erin said, it is easy to create.

Beautifying My Blog Project

Welcome back!

I've been reading many blogs lately (usually of a quilty nature of course!) and came upon Sew at Home Mummy's Beautify your Blog series. There are twelve posts in the series which started a while ago so that her series is now finished. That's how I love series...finished! Now I won't have to wait to go from one post to the next.

The series was created by Erin Davis, an incredibly busy Sew at home mummy who tries to blog at least 3 times a week (that's my objective for the month!!) The series was created specifically for those using blogger.com. I'm going to follow the series and post my results in this blog as I go along.

Are you ready for a design adventure? I'll take that as a yes if you're still reading :-)

Week one Start Here:
There are a series of videos on how to get ready for this Adventure.

Video 1 is "How to back up your blog".  Well, since I really don't like my blog's template, I'm going to take a chance and not back it up. I'm sure that all will go well. Once I've changed my blog to something I love, I'll back it up!

Video 2 is "How to make a test blog". That's probably a good idea. I have created the test blog and will copy the positive results on this blog. I can also use my favourite Snipping Tool to take pictures of the not so positive results or anything else that will help you and I learn to beautify our blog.

Learning & Design Blog - Before

I've taken a shot of my Learning & Design: What a Combo! blog as it looks before taking this course. My objective is to beautify it!

Video 3 is about inserting a button within the post and on the side of the blog. Although I had figured out a while ago how to insert a button, I did learn something I had been wondering about.... and it's so simple!

I'm not sure if you can see it in the "before" photo, but the title over the button on the right is "Beautify Your Blog Series", which is redundant since that's what the button says! I was wondering how bloggers got comments like "Participating in..." within their side bar. It turns out that they write that comment as the title! You can also include more than one button in the same gadget. 


As for inserting a button in the post, if you don't want to work in html, you can click the button in the options section to "Interpret typed HTML". This means that you can paste the button information directly on your post page and it will interpret the html code for you. This is how I posted this button. I also followed her instructions for changing the alignment of the button from center to left of the page.

I can't wait to play with my template. So far I've only changed it to Simple. Stay tuned for more changes.








What I learned:

• Although I often work with html coding at work, I didn't really make the link to using it for things like the gadgets that are inserted on the blog page. It turns out that they follow the same principle as web pages. I didn't have the code to insert the Grandmother's Choice button but I followed the code pattern of the Beautify Your Blog button and Voila! Isn't it amazing when you can apply things that you know from one domain to another? Now that's real learning.