Some tips for other Bloggers

As I mentioned early on in my blog, I set this blog up in January of 2007, but, really did nothing with it until this fall. During the fall of each year, I make annual changes and additions to my website, and last year, determined that trying to incorporate a blog reference and blog was too much of an undertaking due to the other changes I was making that year.

Well, the fall of 2008 has now arrived and I determined to incorporate 'my blog' into my website so began developing the blog itself. I've learned a few things from other bloggers and doing some research on-line and the purpose of this post is to share these with other bloggers. I will probably update this post from time to time when or if I find or learn something new and usefull. Here goes:

My blog's template is 'Minima' but I believe these tips will work on other templates as their CSS/HTML seems similar. A word of warning, though, is if making changes to your existing blog, is to always save a copy of your template before trying to change anything, or, note your blog's prior settings. That way you can always go back to square one, should your attempt fail, or, you do not like the result.

One long standing problem I have had as an underwater photographer and having my photographs on the Internet was anyone else's ability to copy and save them and use them without my knowledge or permission. I've enjoyed having a website and now a blog, but the first thing that took the fun out of my having a presence on the Internet was having my images ripped. To this date there is no way a photographer can prevent this. It used to be easier to, but, that was long ago, and before many regular guys grew in their technological competencies. I am not going to elaborate here on how to copy someone else's imagery from the Internet, rather, advise what I have done to make it more difficult to.

I at least have prevented (in most cases) a viewer's ability to 'right-click-and-save' a photograph.

I added as a gadget to my blog, a piece of javascript. If you created your blog and are reading this , then you will know how to add a gadget. One gadget you can add is HTML or Javascript. To find the javascript that I added, using your browser, select VIEW, then SOURCE. Scroll down and you will find some 'html' that begins with a bracket: <> with Java inside it. The script's end tag reads something like this < / java 1.1 > . I am paraphrasing this script or tag, here in this post. Copy and paste this javascript into your 'gadget' and save. This will prevent some one from right clicking and saving your photographs you have posted in your blog. You can also find this same script by viewing my website's source code. My webmater, Bill Dunbar, of http://www.net-creations.net/ coded this for me and it was a huge favor. If you have a problem finding the javascript and need it, send me an e-mail: larry@larrygates.com .

The next thing I noticed was when I posted a post that had a photograph in it, was a person could curse over that photograph and 'left-click' and open a page with a very large version of the photograph and then, 'right-click-and save' that version! It took some study and thought for me to come up with a solution to this issue. I resolved this by using one of the blog's tool, which enables me to edit the blog's HTML. But, only the HTML within each post already posted. Not the blog's template. (This is much less perilous, if one errors)

We bloggers can post and later edit our posts and an edit choice is 'Edit HTML'. So, I make that choice just after I make a post that holds a photograph, and, I edit the anchor tag that would lead a viewer to that larger image. The anchor tag begins with: <>. com. I simply replaced the reference to 'blogspot.com' with larrygates . com. ' You could use 'anything . com '. Literally! The result of what I did was to create a 'dead-link'. Again if you have any questions about exactly how I did this, please send me an email.

On another matter altogether, I oftemtimes include links within my posts. As a reference to what I am posting about. I want the viewer to be able to 'see' the link, and the viewer to be able to 'click-on' it and go to that page or site. This saves the viewer the time and effort of having to copy and paste the link into their browswer's address bar. I managed to get this done by beginning in my blog's Dashboard. Then I selected 'Settings'. Next I selected 'Formatting'. Then I scrolled done until I found "Show link fields" and selected the 'YES' box. Then selected 'Save Settings'.

So, for now, fellow bloggers and photographers, either underwater or topside, the above are a couple things I learned that were useful to me in developing this blog. I can at least afford the same protection to the photos in this blog as I am already doing with those in my website and if I want some one to be able to view a link within a post, can do that as well.

Good blogging to you! And as the 'techies' would say: " hope this helps" .

If you want to leave a comment; 'mouse- curse- and- click' over the time stamp below and it will open this post in a new window enabling you to do so.