Ignorance Is not Bliss: Some Questions on Blogging

Melissa - Looks like you have received a lot of good info already.  We use http://www.iclipart.com/ sometimes for photos.  We are going to start to use Flickr more often as well.  The other items definitely use "Search" on Active Rain for helpful and "how to" posts.

Hi Melissa ~ Wow - you're getting some great answers here including ones I've wondered about and never ran across before - like the nifty signatures people have. I've bookmarked this as a reference.

I'll cast another vote for iclipart - the annual membership is cheap and they've got photos and photo objects too.  I'm going to check out some of the others people have mentioned.

Liz

Melissa: Photobucket .com has loads of free images. You have asked all of the same questions that we all did. I've been on since November and there is so much to this site that everyday is a new adventure.

Congrats on your feature!  For imagery, I think all of the other responses have it covered.  For a signature at the bottom of the page -- www.mylivesignature.com or www.cooltext.com is great for buttons like "Contact Me" or "Search Homes for Sale".

As for adding an image, I would say every now and then I click on the button and the next window doesn't pop up.

Best of luck to you!

Beside the search button which is great, several AR members have tutorials for newbies.  Check out the newbie group as well.  Good luck.

Melissa, You are doing great. Congrats on this feature. I hold the CTRL key down and hit the image button to upload images.  You have received some great feedback from members on your questions....and I now have great links to check out.

Melissa: I am very thankful to you for writing this post.  Believe me, you are not the ony one who needs some help with these items. I, particularly, wanted to know about the signature feature and I think I have just found some help from one of the respondents.

Best of luck and thanks again!

Melissa - Thank you for asking these questions, I am really enjoying and learning from the informative answers. Mike

Hi Melissa, congrats on getting a featured blog!  That is great, should give you a lot of points!!

1. On my computer, sometimes my pop-up blocker prevents the photo application from opening.  So I have to disable it and try again.  It's NOT the most user-friendly photo application here on AR.

2. I'm not that good at getting graphics, but you can always join the "Active Rain Newbie" group and they have lots of tips.

3. The widgets you are talking about are created at:  www.WidgetBox.com, I created one for myself but can't seem to get it posted correctly here at AR! 

4. As for my signature:  I wrote out my signature about 10 times on a blank piece of paper.  I scanned the paper to the my computer.  Using a graphics software application, I selected the best signature, cut it out, and saved it as a .JPG image.  Then I uploaded it at the end of my blog.  After the 1st upload, I copy & paste it from the 1st AR blog to others. 

5. My little Twitter bird below:  I saw it on someone else's blog, I saved the graphic to my computer as a .JPG, then I inserted it into my AR blog.  Then I clicked on the graphic and selected the "link" application and put in a link to http://www.twitter.com/GoldenPen.  Then after inserting it into the 1st blog, I copy & paste it into other blogs & comments.

Hi Melissa and congrats on a great post that is proving to be helpful to many others!  Plus a feature -- way to go.  Gosh, I love your question marks pic so you aren't doing so bad on that front either!  Here's the link for the Microsoft clipart:  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/clipart/default.aspx.  They also have some great templates you might find useful for business, etc.

Sue 

Congrats on the well-deserved Gold Star! You raised good questions, and by the looks of things in your comments sections, questions that needed asking! I learned a thing or two about a thing or two! Thanks! Cheers,

Hey Melissa,

It was great talking to you on the phone yesterday.  The one question was about buttons that seems to still not quite have a full answer for you.   I wrote a simple tutorial on how to add a subscribe button into your blog posts.  You can use this to set up any type of button you want, the principles are the same, just change the links.  The website I enjoy using is http://grsites.com.

Great post Melissa! As a fellow newbie to blogging, it's nice to see that i'm not the only one that is unsure about some things! One site that I found that has free images is stock.xchng www.sxc.hu it offers both free photos as well as a section with photos you can pay for.

Melissa, I just found out that I'm not supposed to put my Twitter bird in comments, because it links away from the blog.  Oops sorry for that advice!

Jeremy beat me to it. I was going to send you to look up his post about adding the badges. He also have other really great tutorial. I use iclipart as well. and Flickr creative commons photos on occasion. I will take and use my own photos whenever I can as well. ~Rita

Hi Melissa! 

I have always wondered about those little footers, I am in the same boat as you. I guess I need to do some searching for those little golden nuggets here in A|R!

-Lisa

Thanks for asking the great questions - and a big thanks to all who shared fixes.

Melissa, You can use the badges in your posts, you are not allowed to advertise yourself in the comment section of someone else's post.