How To Put A Blog Award On Your WordPress Blog

Hi Everyone

I have recently been asked for the third time, how to put a blog award on a WordPress Blog, so rather than email you individually I have decided to put the instructions in a post. I hope you can understand them and follow them. I have a Mac and have tried to make the instructions applicable to a PC aswell.

I have written these instructions as if the person were trying to put the One Lovely Blog award on their blog but if it’s another award then you just use another award instead and give it the appropriate title.

I have broken the process down into two stages. There may be quicker a way of doing it but I am no tech genius so if you have a quicker way then please share it. Let me know how you get on and what you found difficult to understand.

Stage One:

In WordPress, under Posts, click Add New, to create a new blog post. Give the Blog post a relevant title and click on the Draft save button.

Go to the post in which you were nominated for the award. To do this you can either open a new window or click on the comments symbol in the top right of your dashboard then click on the post link and go to it. Scroll down the post until you come to the image of the award. The simplest way to make the award visible on your post is to highlight the award and hold CTRL and click on C to copy the image, then go back to your blog post and hold down the CTRL button again and click V to paste it directly into your post. Alternatively, highlight the award usually by right clicking on it and save it somewhere such as your media library, my documents or downloads folder, remember to give it an identifiable name, such as One Lovely Blog Award and the format should be jpeg.

If you haven’t been able to copy and paste it directly into your blog post then you will need to upload the image from where you saved it. Click on the Add Media button under your Post Title, find the image you want from the folder you put it in and highlight it, then click the upload button.

Stage Two:

Left click on the image in the top left corner and click on the little picture icon that says Edit Image. A new box will appear. You can change the size of the image. If you need the image to fit in with your sidebar width, you may have to play around with the sizes in the Advanced Settings screen by clicking on the Advanced Settings tab. In the normal Edit Image mode you can choose to change the alignment of the award. You can give it a title – One Lovely Blog Award and it’s best to type this in Alternative Text too, to enhance your SEO. You can write a caption in the caption box such as “I Won” if you want to.

Very Important – In the Link URL section, click the Link to Image option and this will come up with a long code, highlight the code and hold CTRL and click on C to copy it. Then click on Update to save the settings.

Click Save Draft to ensure you have saved the image into the post.

Go to Appearance in your Dashboard and click on Widgets. On the right hand side you will see a list of Widget Areas and to the left you will have a list of Available Widgets. Go to the Image Widget and click on Add. This will bring up two boxes, one is asking you for information about the Widget. Here you can input the following:

Widget Title = One Lovely Blog Award

Image URL is usually the URL address that you would re-direct people to if they clicked on the image. You may want to do this if you have another site that you would like your followers to visit.

Alternative Text: This is for SEO, I would just type One Lovely Blog Award the Image Title is usually the same and I don’t necessarily use that aswell.

The Caption is what else you want to say, such as “I Won”.

You can change the Image Alignment and the size. To be honest, sometimes I find it easier to make the adjustments in this screen rather than in the previous one.

Very Important – Put your cursor in the box under Link URL and hold CTRL and V to paste in that code that you copied from the previous screen.

Finally, decide what Widget Area you want the award to be in and click on the arrows to choose its position. Then click Save Widget. If you don’t save it, you will have to repeat this process again.

If your Widget Area Positions are full then you will either need to let the image over-ride something else or choose to have a page for your awards.

Ensure you click on the Read Blog option from the drop down menu under your name in the top right of your dashboard, to see if you have successfully put your award where you wanted it to go. You may have to go back and change the size if it is not in alignment with the other widgets displayed in that area of your page.

As you probably know, it’s polite to follow all the blog rules and to do a blog post regarding your award. This will encourage more traffic to your site and increase your followers.

I hope this is helpful?

Write soon

Sandra