Side bar images are great little buttons for people to connect to a certain “theme” that you have throughout your site or a specific post. All of my side buttons, except for “Thrifting Beauty” are specific posts. I create mine in photoshop and illustrator, but you can do the exact same thing in picnik.
Start out with your picture:
Import it into picnik . Go to crop and type in your dimensions. For mine I always start with 300 X 300 pixels. Both wordpress and blogger can size to the correct pixels.
Crop your photo and go into Create where you can type your text. I like typing my text directly on the photo. Edit the coloring and style any other way you want it & now it is ready to save.
TO UPLOAD: Go into blogger or wordpress and choose add image. In blogger is says “picture” and wordpress says “image”. From there you choose your image and put the html link of post or group of posts that you’d like this to link to. Don’t fill out the other boxes in either WP or blogger. You don’t need to if you’ve put the title directly on your photo. All you need to do is fill in the html link and choose sizing. For blogger choose shrink to fit and WP I choose 150 pixels.
Its really simple and super useful for people who come to your blog. When I go to a blog I love to scroll through their side images and find old links that really interest me. Its also easy to go back to a tutorial that I really liked.
![[ coffee shop ]](http://tinytwistcreative.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/DSC_7330.jpg)
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
This is exactly what I need, thanks so much!
Thanks Erin! I’ve always wondered how to do those. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I don’t know why I assume nice blog features require a lot of html code and crap.
I’ve tried to follow your instructions but it just doesn’t work. When you say save to do you mean in picnik or onto the hard drive? Where is the url from the photo and where does it need to go? Which field should the photo url be pasted into? And how do you link to the posts. I’m not very strong technically and I just can’t follow this. Thanks for the info on picnik though.
Emmalina
• Save edited photo to your hard drive.
• Go to widgets in wordpress, choose image widget and drag it over to your side widget area.
• upload your photo to that widget (where it says image) and choose 150 px. If it doesn’t appear first time, you should be able to open your gallery a second time in the widget area pick your photo (like you would for a post). Sometimes after you edit it (like choose 150 and save) it won’t allow you to insert into widget. Make sure it says insert into widget.
•To link your post: copy and past the link to the post from your web browser (for example the one here is: http://tinytwistcreative.com/2010/07/creating-side-bar-images-in-picnik). Then hit save.
• Make sure that nothing but the text and the link is filled in.
Thanks for this. I always loved that about your blog.
I’ve been meaning to add buttons to mine as well but I keep putting it off.
Question, do you know how to link to a category ( I just know how to link to a post) in wordpress
Thanks my dear for the great tips as always.
I can’t get enough of that tshirt doll ;D
Ella
What I do to link to a category is click on the category and copy and paste its web address into the link section. For instance if you wanted to have a photo highlighting all your crafts. Put the picture in the image part and then in link you would choose: http://www.lifeologia.com/category/crafts. That would pull up all the crafts that people could view. Hope that makes sense.
Thanks. You know that totally makes sense – I don’t know why I just never tried it. Hope you can come and visit soon to see my new sidebar ;D
xoxo
ella
I think my 12 year old found pic nik on her own recently, eventually I will give it a try! Have a great weekend Erin!
I’ve been thinking about adding these to my blog. I like your sidebar photo buttons.
Do you know how to make a “button” for a particular something? I was wanting to do one for the Old Sign Sunday photo challenge and maybe one for the Ten On Ten. But I know nothing about code.
dani,
Click on a category and then select the web address and paste it in the link section. So for 10 on 10, you’d upload your picture and put this in the link section:
http://littlefistsworld.blogspot.com/search/label/ten%20on%20ten
hope that makes sense!
thanks again for this erin. i wanted the side bar button with photos for tutorials, but could only seem to do the ‘add a page’ element which would allow no photos to pop up with the text. i’ll give this a go.
as for your dolly….when is your girls birthday? i’ll help you!!
angelina