Other personalisations

I didn't want to stop at just a banner and theme in terms of personalisation of my blog and decided to add a few things. 

Favicon Icon

Icon (Image by Amadee Stenzel)

My favicon icon is designed to replace the standard Blogger one which appears on the tab. By having a customised favicon icon, it distinguishes my blog from other tabs a reader might have open. 

To create the image I used Adobe Photoshop and overlaid text onto a background the same colour as my blog theme. It was a simple process but I believe this small change will benefit the feel of my blog. I feel that the customised icon on an open tab looks more professional. 

Icon viewable on tab (Image by Amadee Stenzel)

Gadgets 

Gadgets are useful when wanting to add additional features to your blog to enhance user experience. The first gadget I've used is 'Popular Posts'. 

Popular Posts (Image by Amadee Stenzel)

This gadget is has proved to be useful on my other blog in terms of linking readers to older posts which have been popular. With this addition to my blog, my audience can have their interest peaked and click through to an article which may have been posted months prior. 

Another way I personalised my blog was through using social media links. I taught myself how to add buttons to the side panel of a blog on my other blog and it's proven to be the easiest way to get people to find my social media accounts. 

Social media links (Image by Amadee Stenzel)

To create the buttons, I took already made icons from a blogger called Carrie Loves Design who offers a variety of colours and information on how to create the links. I chose the colour shadow  #656565 because it was neutral and looked similar to the dark grey in my chosen colour palette. 

To create the links themselves I uploaded the icon photos to Photobucket and pasted the html link into a new gadget. However, this just links the photo to the side bar. To make clicking on the icon redirect to my social media, I posted the link to each page with the html photo link in a new gadget. It was complicated at first but now I understand the process and it's definitely an interesting feature to my blog.