Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Adding Reactions to blog

Adding Reactions is done through the settings page of the Blog Post widget. From the Design | Page Elements tab, simply click the 'Edit' link under the Blog Post widget and a settings window will pop up.

The Configure Blog Post window will display a handful of options, and the Reactions feature is near the bottom of the list:



To turn on Reactions just select the checkbox, and then you will be able to customize the feature by adding words of your choosing. Finally, you can choose the exact location of Reactions by dragging the widget at the bottom of the Configure Blog Post page:



Tips
You can customize the location of the Reactions within the post by dragging the preview around in the “Arrange Items” box.


You can customize the options and their label to match the theme and style of your blog.


Additional Notes

  • This is a Layouts-only feature. If you’re using a Classic template you’ll need to upgrade to Layouts to add Reactions.
  • The buttons should blend seamlessly with most blog backgrounds. Button backgrounds are a mostly transparent grey which should coordinate with everything. The text and button highlight colors for the ratings are taken from the following skin variables:
    • Foreground: textcolor, textColor, mainTextColor
    • Highlight: linkcolor, linkColor, mainLinkColor
  • If you have customized your blog widget’s template you may not see the reactions. You will need to either reset your blog widget’s template or copy the Reactions code from a fresh template. Search for “reactions-buttons” to find the appropriate block of code.
  • A known issue: if you choose short words/phrases, it’s possible to enter enough options that the line of buttons will wrap (and not look very good).

Posted by Post by Free Blogspot Templates 2 comments
Labels: ,

Thursday, June 17, 2010

How to link authors' names to profiles on your own/team blog

If you have several people posting to a blog, you might want to set it up so that each person's name at the end of their posts links to their profile. Comments currently work this way automatically, but we don't yet have this feature for regular posts. Here's a way to get around that and make it work.

First, what you'll have to do is get the profile addresses for each person who will be posting to the blog. You'll notice that each one looks something like this: http://www.blogger.com/profile/XXXXXXX where "XXXXXXX" is a particular ID number. Make a note of that number for each person.

Replace "First Member" with the name that appears on the first member's posts, and replace "XXXXXXX" with the ID number corresponding to that person's profile. Repeat for the second member and so on, adding as many more lines as you need.

Now, look at the section of your template between the <Blogger> tags, where the posts themselves are displayed. There you should be able to find the <$BlogItemAuthorNickname$> or <data:post.author/> tag, depending on what kind of template you have. This prints out each persons display name. Replace that tag with the following:
Next, add the following code to your template, between the HTML <head> tags:
<script type="text/javascript">

var team = new Array();
team["First Member"]="XXXXXXX";
team["Second Member"]="YYYYYYY";
team["Third Member"]="ZZZZZZZ";

function makeprofilelink (authorname) {
var pid = team[authorname];
document.write("<a href=\"http://www.blogger.com/profile/"
+ pid + "\">" + authorname + "</a>");
}

</script>
(for classic templates)
<script type="text/javascript"> makeprofilelink("<$BlogItemAuthorNickname$>"); </script>

(for layouts)
<script type="text/javascript"> makeprofilelink("<data:post.author/>"); </script>

When you're all done, preview it to make sure it works, then save the changes and republish. The result will be something like this at the end of each post, with the appropriate profile link for the name:
... blah blah blah and that's the end of my post.
# posted by Free Blogpot Templates at 12:09 AM.
Notes:

  • You will need to update the list of members and their ID numbers anytime you add new people, or any time they change their display names.
  • Each member will need to have a unique display name, so they will be linked to the correct profile.

Posted by Post by Free Blogspot Templates 2 comments
Labels: , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)