Have you ever wondered where all your photographs go after you upload them into your post? Well they reside in a new home set up for them by Blogger and you might not even know it exists! When you create an account with Google or Blogger you are given access to
Picasa Web Albums. Picasa Web Albums are free online photo albums provided by Google and where Blogger stores your pictures for you. Once a photo is uploaded onto a Blogger blog, it is given a new home in a web album. This is where the picture in your blog post lives. If you were to remove this picture from that album that picture would disappear from your blog post! You can see all of the pictures in your blog album by going to your Blogger Dashboard. On your Dashboard scroll to the bottom and under Tools and Resources you will see an option to select Picasa Web Albums. Here you will find albums set up for your blog that contain your pictures. Once pictures are uploaded to your blog you can return to these albums and select pictures from there. This is where you will find your blog headers, blog graphics you use regularly, etc. To select a picture from a Picasa Web Album, follow the instructions above except instead of choosing Upload, choose the From Picasa Web Albums option. This will show you all of the albums located in your Picasa account. Following the instructions above choose the picture you want from your Picasa album and place in your post. You can also choose the option From this blog which will let you choose from any pictures that you have ever loaded into posts. Is there a difference? Yes. Because you can upload any pictures you want into your Picasa Album straight from your computer. You can also edit photos in Picasa using their editing program called Picnik. These photos can stay there until you need them for a post or for your blog. This is where we place all of our pictures for sidebars, advertisement, sponsors etc. As well as our generic graphics (such as my Blogging 101 graphic) and we then edit them as we need them for the blog. From this blog is strictly pictures that currently are in blog posts, this is handy if there is a picture from a former post you want to use in your current post. Usually, we just select pictures from our web album. Now that you know more about your Picasa account, your homework assignment for next week is to play around in it a little and become familiar with it.
I want to take one additional moment to answer a question that was asked by several readers last week. How did we get the Label List at the top of our blog under our header. This is a super easy quick tip for you! Go to your Dashboard. Select Design. Select Add and Arrange Page Elements. If you already have a label gadget located in your sidebar, just grab it and drag it up under your Header. Our is located under our Header and under our Pages gadget. If you don’t have the Labels gadget already located on your blog, Choose Add A Gadget. Choose the Label Gadget. It will then give you the option of choosing to have all labels displayed or selected labels. We only display our most relevant ones. If you have tons of labels (and you shouldn’t) then make sure to choose no more than will fit on one row along the top. Once you select Save, it automatically appears at the top of your sidebar.
Grab it and drag it to the top. It should look like this:
You can then Preview your blog and make sure you like how it looks! And that’s it! Every time you add a new label, you will need to decide if it is one that should be added to your Label Header. This is a great way to create clickable links on your blog to popular topics. You can also place an label list in your sidebar that includes all of your labels. We have this as a Label Cloud but have titled it Categories. Label Lists, are one of the gadgets that you can have several of on your blog. I wouldn’t recommend having more than one in your header and one on your sidebar though.
I know this is quite a bit of information to digest. The technical side of blogging isn’t always as fun as the creative side (except if you’re a blog geek like me..grin) but it is often what makes our blogs great blogs instead of ho-hum blogs! If you are new to our Blogging 101 Series you can visit the other installments by clicking on the Blogging 101 link in our sidebar. Stay tuned next week to Part 2 of our Photo Series!
Greetings from Southern California
I believe God put me on earth to accomplish a certain number of things and I will live until my work is done. Visiting blogs is high on my list of things to do. Right now I am so far behind I don’t think I will ever die! 🙂
God bless you and have a nice day 🙂
I came.
I saw.
I read.
Now, I’m going to study the label part a bit more and practice.
Thanks!
This is a great tip, and one bloggers really need to keep in mind. You never know who is looking at your photos. I love large photos for the simple reason I feel like I am paging a magazine and reading when blogs have them.
Listen, thank you SOOO much for posting this. I am running on about 4 hours of sleep and have to get to bed to be at work by 5:30am…but I am saving this to come back and read it word for word when I have time to play. I desperately need this tutorial! Thanks again~ xxoo Diana
You are one mean picture taker!
I totally agree with tip #4, and had to learn all your other tips on my own 🙂
Wish I’d known then what I know now!
This is a most excellent post!
Great advice. Thanks. Following you,
This is all such great advice! I always struggle with my pictures and hopefully now they will turn out a bit better.
thank you!!!
-emily
nestnestingnested.blogspot
Heather,
Thanks so much for all the tips…you gal’s are GREAT!
Blessings,
Cindy
Wonderful tutorial! I am looking forward to reading all of them. You take beautiful pictures and it is so nice that you would share your tips!!
Great post. I think you tried to answer my question…but I now realize I need to ask you how you got your pages gadget (the one that says Home…About Us…Featured etc). I want to try to “neaten” up my blog and have a line like that instead. Thanks.
Thanks for posting this info Heather! I’m looking forward to your photo editing tips. Your photos always look so gorgeous!
@Jo (I emailed you but will answer here too for everyone else) This is what we do. We have all of our comment sent automatically to our gmail account. We set one up as At The Picket Fence@gmail.com. There is a setting on your dashboard to choose to have comments forwarded to an email account. Then we respond to the comment from our email, just like I’m doing right now with you! 🙂 It is the same as clicking on their comment while in your blog but it won’t take you away from your blog page. Also, if you have selected the option for comments to open up in a new window, then if you respond to someone’s comment from your blog it should only take you away from the comment window and not your whole blog. Which would be another way to reply. I think the best thing though, is to have your comments go to an email account and check it regularly. I just bookmark my gmail and keep it up when I’m on my blog. For instance just while I was writing this it notified me I had two new comments, it’s a nice feature!
Heather
Thanks so much for such an informative and helpful post! I have a little point and shoot camera and I’m frustrated with it when it comes to pics for my blog. I would love a DSLR camera. But editing the photos I know nothing about. Can’t wait for more photo tips.
great post and awesome information – i hate the automatic settings in blogger and this will help with my pictures! 🙂 yay!! thanks again! 🙂
I really needed this post! The poor quality of my photos is a constant source of shame. It may help if I would actually buy a camera and stop using my daughter’s.Thanks for all the helpful tips!
Ann-Marie
Thanks so much, Heather! I knew some of this, but much of it was new information. It’s nice to have it explained:) I’m going to bookmark this page. I sure appreciate your time in helping us out!
Hey Heather, I have a question, could yall tell me the best and quickest way to reply to comments on my post, I like to visit the blogs that have commented on a post, but I’m having difficulty, when I go to reply, I lose my blog and have to go back and sign in to read my next comment,help!
~Jo
Lazy on Loblolly
This is a great post. I struggle with the whole photography aspect of blogging, and I completely understand the importance of having good pictures on your blog. I have bookmarked this page and I’m looking forward to more photography tips. Thanks!
Heather you are the BEST!!!! Finally took the time to figure out this picture business stuff. . . thanks to you!
Great post, thanks. I often upload 20 or so pictures to each post and I have to manually resize them to X-Large.
Is there a way to do the resizing automatically during the importing process? So that I don’t have to resize them later on. Thanks.
I like all your posts about photography and the tips so I linked this one to my post today on blogging & photography, thanks!
I’m a new blogger and am so thankful that you have taken the time to help others like me through this series. I’ve already changed my photo sizes to be bigger, changed the width of my columns, added labels as tabs, purchased my domain name, and taken off the verification for comments (didn’t know that was turned on!) Thank you so much for your help!
Kelly
http://www.NotableNest.blogspot.com
Heather, Thank you so much for a very informative artice. I didn’t know you could do so much with Picasa. I’m new to blogging and have been trying to learn all I can about food photography. I also posted a photography article but mine is mainly about where to go to learn more. I don’t really have my own tips yet. I love your before and after photos, it gives me hope I will improve. I will pin this to save and re-read later and I will also link to this in my post on food photography. I think it will definitely help a lot of bloggers out there, myself included! Thank you so much!
Thanks, This was very helpful. Headed back to read again.