FBC Member: Show your true colours

You've been asking, and we've been promising!   So here we have it, the FBC Member badge for your website.

The badges aren't mandatory - blog's are very personal and everyone is different.  But many of you have asked if you can show your "colours" so to speak, and we're happy to oblige!

Installing Your Badge

Installing the badge is quite simple and some of you won't need a tutorial at all.  If that's you, then carry on! And if you're using WordPress, just scroll down to get the code you need.  For the rest of you, here are instructions for both WordPress and Blogger.  All you need to do to get started is right click on the badge to your left and save it to your computer.  The badge won't have the grey border around it - that's just how our site formats images.

 

For WordPress

If your blog is in WordPress you will probably want to install it in your sidebar, using a text widget.  The first step is to upload the image to your Media library.  In your Dashboard, click on the Media button in the left hand menu.  When the Media Library page comes up, click the Add New button:

Upload the image just like you normally would and when the screen comes up asking you to fill in the title, alternate text, etc, copy and paste the File URL into a text editor like Notepad (PC) or TextEdit (Mac) - you'll be needing that shortly.

Next you'll add a widget to your sidebar.  In your Dashboard, select the Widget menu item (located under Appearance) in your left hand menu.

Different WordPress themes may have different widget options for you but to keep it simple, the best choice is to use a standard text widget that's always available.

WordPress has a nice drag and drop functionality for widgets so just click on the Text Widget choice and drag it over to the right, to your sidebar list.  This will allow you to put in whatever type of text or HTML  you like, which is exactly what we want.

Now, open up the Text Widget you just added to your sidebar by clicking on the small down arrow in the right corner.

You don't need to add a title.  Instead, you are going to want to paste in that File URL that you saved earlier.  But you're also going to need to add some code around it so that it shows as an image and not a line of code and links back to the Food Bloggers of Canada site for all those curious people who stop by your blog.   Here's what you'll need:

[box]<a href="https://www.foodbloggersofcanada.com"><img title="FBC Member" src="https://www.yourblogname.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/white_member.png"></a>[/box]

Make sure you swap out yourblogname with your actual blog name.

RELATED:  Blogging 101: How Bloggers & PR Pros Work Together

And there you go!  Now, you might notice that this doesn't neatly centre your badge in the sidebar.  If you want to fix that, you need to add a little bit of CSS.  But, that's not hard.  I'll show you how:

[box]<div style="padding-left: 75px;"><a href="https://www.foodbloggersofcanada.com"><img title="FBC Member" src="https://www.melissahartfiel.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/white_member.png"></a></div>[/box]

By adding the style div we can "pad" the image so it's forced to move over to the right.  The 75px amount may need to change depending on the width of your sidebar.  My sidebar is 300px wide.  The badge is 150px wide.  300-150=150 so that means I have 150px of space still available to the right of the badge.  To centre it, I need to divide that in half again, giving me 75px.  So I added an extra 75px of padding to the left of the image and there you have it!  You can go check out my blog to see it in action if need be.  Make sure you add the ending div tag at the end of your code!!  You can use this little trick for centering other badges you might have in your sidebar as well.

For Blogger

Now, I'm a WordPress girl so I'm not as familiar with fine tuning Blogger.  But the easiest way to add the badge is to go into your Design tab in the Blogger Dashboard and select Page Elements and then Add a Gadget

When the Add a Gadget window opens, select the Picture option and follow the instructions for uploading an image.  In the link window, add the www.foodbloggersofcanada.com link.  Make sure you also add a title!

You won't have the fine control to place the image exactly how you would like, as you do in WordPress, but you do have a much quicker way to upload it!

And there you have it! A new badge and a little tutorial on how to add a little bit of CSS to fine tune your sidebar.  A two for one!

FBC Member Blog Badge (and how to install it!) was written by Melissa Hartfiel, FBC co-founder and author of the food photography blog Eyes Bigger Than My Stomach where she sometimes put her tutorial writing skills to work by writing Adobe Lightroom tutorials.  She is a web and graphic designer, WordPress addict,  photographer and the resident FBC geek.  Melissa lives just outside of Vancouver, BC.  Twitter: @mhchipmunk

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72 Comments

mary
Reply

Hey Mel
I’ve tried and tried and I can’t get the widget to work! I get a question mark, and when you clink on it, It leads to a dead link

Melissa
Reply

Hi all,
We’ve figured out what’s causing the issue, for wordpress. It’s so silly actually. When you copy and paste the code from here, it changes the quotes from straight to curly. All you need to do once it’s in your widget is delete all the double quotes and then retype them in. They’ll automatically become straight. Programming does not like curly double quotes! It seems to work for everyone who’s had problems so far.

Valerie
Reply

Thanks so much for the widget, great idea!

However, I’m not the most tech savvy and having some issues with the icon display. The actual widget image isn’t appearing, only a broken link icon.

Help?

Melissa
Reply

Hi Valerie – take a look at my comment a little further up. I suspect that’s probably your problem if you’re using wordpress!

Jacquee
Reply

Hi, I am a new member and just added the badge to my site, but have no control over how it appears, i.e.centered. Any chance of HTML code for the Blogger badge?

Melissa
Reply

Hi Jaquee,
I’m not terribly familiar with Blogger but I think in order to do that you need to host the image in photobucket or somewhere similar and then you can insert it as a text widget, just like the wordpress example – you can probably use the same code but swap out the photo links.

Melissa
Reply

Hi Heather,
I just popped by your site and it looks like it’s working just fine. But let me know if you still think you’re having problems!

Pam Blacker
Reply

I have tried to enter this several times now and I am just seeing a box with an ‘X’ in it. Ihave removed the curly quotes. Just to confirm this is the code I have entered into the text widget. I have not used the title cell can entered the text into the cell below. My blog is http://www.homespuncafe.com. Is his right or am I doing something wrong?

Melissa
Reply

I can’t see where you’ve tried to install it. if you want, email me at melissa[at]foodbloggersofcanada[dot]com and I’ll try to help you out.

Melissa
Reply

Hi Darlene. I checked out your site and it looks fine to me. I viewed it in Firefox and Safari. Seems to be working great!

Moe Tousignant
Reply

Would love to see a wider image offered. something that fits some of the Blogger templates a bit better.

Can we modify the image ourselves or would you rather we stuck to this image and this image only?

Either way I’ll be proud to be flying this flag.

Moe Tousignant
Reply

Just realized I wasn’t logged in.

I was wondering if there were any plans to make a wider version, that better fits some of the blogger templates. If not would you mind us messing with it in photoshop ourselves to get something that fits a bit better, or would you rather we use the logo as is?

Melissa
Reply

Hi Moe,
We’d rather you used this one. We’re pretty picky about our branding :). You can center it in blogger with a little CSS.

Melissa
Reply

Hi Ron,

Did you get the actual code as well, or just the “see more” part? If you got the code as well, you should be able to just delete the “see more” piece. Otherwise you may need to type it out yourself – our wordpress install has just started doing that add on bit recently and I’m not sure why. It’s very annoying!

Tatum
Reply

Hey Everyone.. I got it to work on word press heres how :

type in your blog address where it says “your website”
when you upload image into your media library and click “edit” there will be a box in the right hand corner and it will say “FILE URL” copy and paste that in the section below

Julie Costanzo
Reply

Hi Melissa,
I have tried re-typing it and have tried all of the above suggestions.
I only get a box that will link back to FBC page.

Help me.

Melissa (FBC Admin)
Reply

I see you’re on wordpress.com A lot of people have had issues adding it to the .com version of WordPress and I haven’t been able to figure out why – it looks like you’ve done everything right!

Valeria
Reply

I need help! I had tried everything suggested but still no working 🙁
no image-no link-nothing…
is there any other way I can upload the FBC Member Card?
Thanks 😉

Danthanh
Reply

Hi fellow food bloggers,

So I had the same issues as everyone with adding this badge onto WordPress! However, I finally figured it out and wanted to share my solution in hopes it will help you too. 🙂

In your text/html widget box, use this code:

Instructions: After you right click on badge image, save the pic. Upload it onto WordPress through your Media Library. Click on image and you should see a URL on right side. Copy and Paste that link. Insert it into the brackets above. Make sure to delete brackets though. So it should read src=”http://your media url.png” For sizing, change the 150 to whatever size you want.

Hopefully this solves your problem!!!!

Danthanh
TorontoFoodie.net

Ratna
Reply

I am having trouble installing the badge to my wordpress blog. I have pasted the code given and place my blog name, uploaded the photo but it isn’t working. The url for the image, where does it get placed? Are there still issues will wordpress to use this badge? Thank you.

Ratna
Reply

I am wondering if I am doing something wrong. This is what I am pasting into the text widget “content” area…

I see the FBC image in the side bar but when I click it it shows “nothing found”.

My blog address is http://www.cookingsutra.com I have left the badge on so you might be able to look and see if there is a solution. Thank you for your help.

Ratna

Thank you but I do have that part in there. I’m just not sure where I place the image url, or if the code I have is right.

This is what I have in the text widget

Devon Katrina
Reply

I cannot for the life of me get this to work. When I copy and paste the File URL it looks nothing at all like what you have posted here. It looks like this
http://www.thebohemiankitchen.net/wp-admin/upload.php?item=1872

I am unable to edit the image the same as you have done here. The screen that pops up in my WordPress editor looks nothing at all like what you have here, I guess because WP has updated its appearance.

I tried using my File URL and it doesn’t work. I tried copying and pasting the code here (changing all the ” from curly to straight) and it doesn’t work.

Melissa (FBC Admin)
Reply

It’s straight up HTML CSS Athena so you should be able to insert it. I’m not very familiar with squarespace so I don’t know how much they restrict your ability to add a snippet of code but it’s pretty simple and I see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to! Let us know how it goes.

Athena
Reply

Thanks, Melissa. I tried directly copying and pasting then inserting my website URL and it didn’t work. I also tried changing the curly quotations to straight ones but it still didn’t work. Generally, I have no issues with Squarespace and copying HTML code, so I am not sure what the problem is. I have the zomato widgets on my page and they work beautifully.

EatWithMao
Reply

Hi Athena,

I use Squarespace too and just got approved as a member. I’m taking a look at the tutorial to see what it’s doing and you can mimic it with an “Image” module.

Upload the image to the module and go to edit. You can tell it go to a URL when the image is clicked which is the same functionality as the code snippet above.

Hope this works for you. Feel free to reach out to me if you’re continuing with having issues.

@Melissa, if you want I can update your blog post to include Squarespace as part of the tutorial

Kelly
Reply

I should have read the comments before i tried! i wrestled with this for an hour..ha! A programmer friend helped me. 🙂

I also like having this badge and will display it proudly, however, it would be great to have a few different colour choices, so that it fits into various styles of blog. In many companies’ style guides they have a few colour choices for logos, in case other companies will be using them on their sites. I don’t use bright, primary colours anywhere on my blog, so a black and white version would be great to have. Something to think about?

Samantha
Reply

Hey Melissa, I’ve tried on a few separate occasions to install the badge and it’s just not working for me. Unfortunately, it’s most likely user error at my end (I’m horrible at the tech side). I’ve followed the additional advice in the comments and it doesn’t seem to be working for me as it’s showing a question mark in lieu of the badge.

Tina
Reply

Hi Melissa,

I am trying to upload the badge…it is there although the image is distorted – I have tried to resize, thumbnail, etc and it isn’t working – any suggestions?

Thanks,
Tina

Melissa (FBC Admin)
Reply

Hi Tina,
It’s showing up as distorted because you are trying to make it bigger than it’s meant to be. The badge is 150px by 150px but you’ve got it set to 210px. There’s no way to englarge an image without distorting it.

Tina
Reply

Thank Melissa – I will try again as I uploaded the image (for some reason did not get a url link?) as per the instructions and this is what happened as I did not adjust size it just seems to be the size its adjusting too??? Thanks again!

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