Disable Right-Click in Blogger (Unsavable Pictures)

After the post on Unselectable Text in Your Blog Posts many people have asked how to make the images unsavable too. As before, there are always ways around this if a user really wants, but again, let's make it difficult for them!!

After trawling the internet and trying out every code I could lay my hands on there was only one which I particularly liked. There are others dedicated to just images but they did not work as well as I thought they should. In short, the best way is using JavaScript to disable the right-click function of the mouse completely on your site.

New Dynamic Templates for Blogger

Having had a quick look at the new dynamic templates for Blogger during a work break, I was initially quite impressed. HTML5 is nice, and the guys at Google have certainly done a good job. BUT, there seems to be a lot missing.

Where are the options to change anything? And I mean anything.

I am sure that at some point they will see that they must add this functionality, but why not from the start? I can't change the menu colour, what pages appear in the menu, or even the favicon! At least I couldn't find the options in 10 minutes (which is that maximum amount of time it should take).

If you can find these options, or the way to change the HTML and not just add custom CSS please let me know. I really want to play with this!!

Unselectable Text In Your Blog Posts

A lot of people want some of the text in their blog to be unselectable. This can be achieved, but as always with anything on the net, nothing will stop a willing person from finding a way around, or just retyping what you wrote. But that's no reason not to make it difficult for them!! For example, try selecting the orange text above. Not so easy is it. Here's how I did it...

EDIT: For images click here.

Upload A YouTube Video To Blogger

Adding a YouTube video in your Blog post should be a simple task, but in reality it is not as straight forward as it seems. Follow the steps below to embed a YouTube video within any of your posts.

First you need to find a YouTube video. Simple. Then, below the video box you will find a button labeled "Share", circled below. Click it.

Edit The Widget Title Text In Blogger

An important consideration in making your blog is how much coordination you want it to have. If you want individual designs for each widget in your blog then individual coding is required, if however you want to add a global effect to a series of similar attributes, then read on to find out how to edit the widget title text in Blogger.

  Old and New  

If you look at the columns on the right of this blog, you will notice that the titles to the widgets have little chevron images before each of them. Here is a guide on how to do the same to your widgets. This works especially well if you couple it with related images for your post titles.

Add A Widget (Menu) Above The Title (Header) In Blogger

Browsing around websites you may notice that the vast majority have a small menu bar at the very top of the page. This sometimes adds consistent functionality to the site on all pages, or like the one on this blog adds basic quick links and some info. Adding this is a simple way to make your blog look more professional, or just to add some fanciness.

Copying Text From Word Into Blogger

Most times when preparing a post for blogger you will first write it in Word and want to transfer the text into Blogger using copy and paste. This can present a problem as a straight copy and paste will result in Word’s markup language being copied with it, bypassing any font, size and format settings you have set in Blogger. This is an easy problem to solve, simply copy the text as you would normally, but instead of pasting into the “Compose” tab, click on the “Edit HTML” tab and past into there. Then feel free to click back into “Compose” to do any further editing or to add images. It really is that simple! Happy Blogging!

Edit The Read More And User ID In Blogger

Editing the read more and user ID appearance in posts is a small change but can help make your blog look more like how you want it. Changing the user ID in particular makes your name stand out, which is always good!

Editing The Post Box In Blogger

This guide is a description of how to edit just the area where the posts are written, from just above the title all the way down to, and including, the labels. Editing the post box is something that I found difficult to tailor properly in the Template Designer, jumping into the CSS and HTML turned out to be the best way of adjusting the look to what I wanted. The problem with this is that there is a lot that can go wrong when making these specific changes to a site that you haven’t coded yourself as you have no idea where to start looking for the specific code. One trick that I use to find the relevant sections is the Inspect Element option provided in Google’s Chrome browser.

To access this open any website you want in Chrome, then right click on the section you are interested in (menus, text, boxes anything) and choose Inspect Element from the drop down menu. This then shows you the applicable HTML and CSS code for that section. You will then notice something else that is quite frankly amazing, as you move the mouse cursor over different parts of the HTML code shown on the bottom of the screen, Chrome will in turn highlight the applicable section of the site page that is being affected by that part of the code! This is incredibly helpful and I use it to speed up page coding massively. Anyway, back to editing the posting box.

Format The Date Header In Blogger

Sometimes you may not want the date to be on the left above the post title. I didn’t, so I looked at ways to change this. This guide may not be the most in depth in terms of editing the date but it does give the basis for doing more if you know some CSS. By adding your own background to this section you can further customize the look allowing for some interesting effects, enhancing the look of your posts dramatically. On a side note, remember that submitting more than one post in the same day causes the date to only appear once at the top of the most recent post. Bare this in mind when editing the look of the posts as it may result in unwanted effects.

Default Justify Blog Posts In Blogger

I tend to think of a blog as a book. If you were to print your diary and publish it for the world to see then the print would most likely be justified. This may not always be the best solution though. A lot of websites, including news website, do not justify their text. This may be because as the horizontal space for text reduces, the formatting may start to look out of place. I, however, always prefer justified text as I like having the straight lines. If you decide you want to justify your text then do the following.

Change The Blogger Favicon

EDIT: Blogger now incorporates a favicon uploader in their "Design" page on the Dashboard, so you no longer need to do this!!!

Pretty much all websites now have their own favicon. A favicon is a 16x16 pixel image that is shown in the explorer bar and when people bookmark your site so it is nice to have one personalized. You can either draw your own picture in paint or GIMP, or resize your own picture. The advantage of dawing your own is that it can be perfectly personalized. The advantage of resizing is that you get the advantage of automatic software blending, so that the edges don’t seem as sharp. The choice is yours. Once you have your image (jpg, png, gif, bmp, ico or tiff for this method) take the following steps.

How To Remove The Blogger Navigation Bar

The main reason behind removing the NavBar is to make the blog look more like a website. I also find that it disturbs the flow of whatever design you have in mind. If you think that your readers may actually want to use the NavBar then leave it, other than that, get it off! One explanation I have heard for leaving it on is as an easy access for you to switch back to your dashboard. Personally, I always have 2 tabs open when editing anyway, one for the dashboard and one for the actual blog. This, for me, is a much easier way to make edits and see them work, as the Preview button may not always show you everything you want to check. Should something be wrong it is much easier this way to go back and undo what you just did.