In this blogging tutorial, you will learn how to make a blog button in five easy steps. You’ll get the blog button code and the grab box code. Plus, you will find out how to install the HTML code into your sidebar, and troubleshooting tips. I have included screenshots along the way to help you get a better picture on how to do this. I’ve done my best to make this as easy as possible for newbie bloggers. Let’s get started.

In order to be a successful blogger, you have to brand yourself and your blog. There are a million blogs and websites out there. What makes your blog different? Why should visitors take the time to read yours?

Creating a blog button is the perfect way to brand your blog. It promotes your blog’s name, look and feel, and mission in one simple image. You will use your unique blog button on blog hops, blog directories, Entrecard, on your sidebar, etc. When another blogger grabs your blog button and posts it on their sidebar, it opens you up to new visitors and more followers. In a nutshell, your blog button is your main advertising tool.

(Newbies – a blog button is a hyperlinked image or logo that takes a visitor to your homepage when it’s clicked on.)

When my blog was young and newly “born,” I was actively participating in blog hops where I was sharing my blog button. From personal experience, it definitely helped drive more traffic and get me new followers and readers.

To drive traffic to your blog, you’ll want to design and make a blog button that makes visitors want to click. Mommy bloggers create the most stylish blog buttons. I’ve found that the most successful mom and parenting bloggers have well-designed blog buttons. You can hire a graphic designer to create a blog button for you for a minimal fee, or you can design it yourself.

This tutorial gives you the steps involved in:

• How to make a blog button.
• Creating a code box that allows other bloggers to grab your blog button and place it on their blog.
• How to add and display the code box and make a blog button using WordPress and Blogger platforms.

How to Make a Blog Button – Basics

The standard blog button is 125px by 125px. You can choose a size larger than this, but don’t go larger than 150 pixels wide. Most sidebars are only 200 pixels wide, and if you use a larger blog button, the sides of your button will be cut off. For this tutorial, I am sticking to the standard size: 125 x 125. You can make it larger, but keep it a square – i.e. 150 x 150 or 175 x 175.

Step 1: Design and Create Your Logo

In order to design and make your blog button, you will need access to an image editing software – such as Photoshop. Unfortunately, for many beginning bloggers, Photoshop is too pricey. There are a number of free image editing software programs available.

My favorite used to Picnik – which  was free online photo editing site, owned by Google. It was so easy to use, but unfortunately in April of 2012, Google closed it down. Some alternatives to Picnik that you might want to use include:

• PicMonkey – A super easy to use photo editing program with a creative web interface. Simple to use, and it’s the brainchild of former Picnik engineers. I love it!

• BeFunky – This lets you edit photos, add cool filters, add text, and other basic stuff. Easy to use, and there is also a smartphone app for it. It’s an Instagram alternative, but not as cool as Instagram.

• iPiccy – An online photo editor with simple photo tools – like crop, resizing, rotating/flip, hue and saturation, and other basics.

• Ribbet – If you loved Picnik, Ribbet is a photo editing platform that looks nearly identical as Picnik. It is simple to use, and you can basically do all the same stuff with it – like adding stickers, text, resizing, cropping, frames. Premium (paid) users can play with the curves and levels.

For more advanced bloggers – if you’re familiar with Photoshop, but you don’t have a copy of Photoshop, consider using Pixlr – another free online photo editor that has many of the functions that Photoshop uses. You can crop pictures, resize them, free transform, add text, add shapes, and more. I absolutely love Pixlr.

For this tutorial on how to make a blog button, I used PicMonkey.

Creating a Blog Logo in PicMonkey – Step by Step with Screenshots

1 – Go to PicMonkey. On the homepage,  click on “Edit a Photo.” You can also “Create a collage” with multiple photos if you want.

2 –  After you’ve uploaded the photo you want to use, you will need to crop your image into the standard size 125 x 125. On the left side of the screen, you will want to click on “Crop.” For this blog button tutorial, I am using one of my headshots.

In the drop down menu on the left side bar, you’ll want to choose “square.” Click on the square to move it where you want. The rest of the image will be grayed out. Click on “Apply” to crop the photo.

3 – Once your image is cropped, play around and embellish your image in any way that you want. All the tools you need will be on the left side bar. Cropping, rotating, exposure, colors, sharpen . . . Plus, there are the smaller icons, which allow you to play with color effects, skin touch ups, adding text, frames, adding text and more.  I highly recommend you play with all the effects to create a super awesome blog button.

I also highly recommend placing your blog’s name somewhere on the image for branding purposes.

3 – When you have finished editing your photo, you will need to resize your image to 125px by 125px. (This is the standard size for most blog buttons.) You can also use 150 x 150 or any square size. Click on “Resize” the bottom of the left side menu. Hit apply.

4 –  When you’re done, click on “Save” at the very top. Save the photo to your computer.

Step 2: Upload Your Image to Your Server

After you have designed and created your blog button image, you need to upload your image to your image hosting account. If you are using WordPress, you can just upload it to your “Media” folder.

If you have a Photobucket account, upload it there. Since I used Blogger as my original blogging platform, I used Picasa Web Albums.

The following instructions work best in the Picasa web albums, not the Picasa application. 

Once you upload the image, you can easily find the URL code for the image. In Picasa, you simply need to right click and select “Copy Image URL.”

The image URL should look something like this: “http://www.YourDomain.com/ButtonImageName.jpg” – Keep the image URL handy. You are going to need it.

Step 3: Create the Code for Your Blog Button

Pay close attention – this next step is a bit technical. I am going to try to explain it the best that I can. (If you have questions, please leave me comments so that I can tweak and edit this post to help others.)

This is the basic blog button code. (This code does not contain the grab box for the blog button. This code is the HTML code that you will use when you’re writing a blog post and you want your blog button to appear within the post, or when someone else is writing about your blog and they want your blog button to show up. This is the code that shows up inside the “Grab my Button” box. If you want to make a grab box for your blog button, skip this step and go onto the next. For most bloggers, they do NOT need to follow this step.):

<a href= “http://www.YourSiteURL.com”><img src=“http://www.YourButtonImageURL.jpg” /></a>

You should replace the “YourSiteURL” and “YourButtonImageURL” with your own URLS.

The <a href=“….”> portion of the code is the page that you want visitors to land on when they click the button.

The <“img src=“….”> stands for “image source.” It’s the location of the image that you want to use. This is where you copy and paste your image URL.

*** Important: *** Don’t forget to end the code with </a>. That’s how you close the code.

In my own blog, this is what my blog button code looks like.

<a href=”https://www.mypregnancybaby.com“><img src=” https://www.mypregnancybaby.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/blog_button.jpg ” /></a>

When anyone posts that code on their sidebar, or in a blog post, it looks like this:

(I hope that explanation makes sense. Please let me know if it doesn’t!)

Step 4: Make your “Grab my Blog Button” Box Code

Now that you’ve created the code for your button, you need to create a “Grab My Button” Box so that other bloggers can grab your code and promote your blog on their site. This code includes the “Grab my blog button” box, as well as your blog code. For most bloggers, this is the ONLY code that they need to know.

This code is a bit tricky, but I’ve tried to explain it the best that I can. There are two parts to the code:

1 – Your image
2 – The grab box, where your code appears for others to grab.

Here is the HTML code for the entire thing:

<img src=“http://www.YourButtonImageURL” alt=”YourSiteTitle” /><div style=”width: 125px; height: 125px; overflow: auto; border: 1px solid #666666;”>&lt;a href=&#34;http://www.YourSiteURL.com&#34; target=&#34;_self&#34;&gt;&lt;img src=&#34;http://www.YourButtonImageURL&#34; alt=&#34;YourSiteTitle&#34; width=&#34;125&#34; height=&#34;125&#34; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;</div>

It’s a very confusing code, and all the strange symbols – such as &#34 stand for quotation marks. (For some reason, WordPress and Blogger can’t pick up the quotes that should go around the YourSiteURL, and they transform them into &#34.) A very confusing code, but it works.

Here’s what the finished product should look like:

Copy and paste the code I’ve given you into Notepad, or TextEdit (if you are using a Mac). Replace all the URLS with your own.

Step 5: Copy and Paste the Code and Use it on Your Sidebar

If you are using a self-hosted WordPress blog, you need to go to Appearance → Widgets → Text. Copy and paste the blog button code.

If you’re using Blogger, underneath the “Design” tab, you will need to “Add a Gadget.” Then scroll down until you find “HTML/Javascript.” Click on that and copy and paste the blog button code.

Save your work. Test the code to ensure that it works properly. It should.

Troubleshooting Problems:

If you are having problems with the blog button code, check your quotation marks. Each and every URL needs to have quotes before and after it.

If you’re still have issues, your quotes may have been changed to “smart quotes,” which are curved quotation marks. HTML hates smart quotes. HTML wants straight quotes. Unfortunately, this means, you will need to go back to the blog button code and carefully delete every single quote (“) and re-type it. There are a total of 6 in the code that I’ve given you.

Good luck. Please let me know if this tutorial on “how to make a blog button” was helpful. I’ve tried to make it as simple as possible. I may do a video tutorial when I have more time.

If you enjoyed this post, please ReTweet, StumpleUpon, Digg, Reddit . . . and Share this post with your friends!

(And if you can’t figure it out, I am more than willing to help you figure it out. All I I ask is for a link back to this post! I’d love the exposure!)

Please note that if you Read this Post correctly, it WORKS. A lot of people have been emailing me, claiming that it doesn’t work, or that they are confused. The reason is that you did NOT read the post in its entirety. Skipping will make you confused! The Code in Step 4 is the code that Most people are looking for.