A Good Alternative For Blogger Official Search Widget__Google Custom Search Engine

Many Blogger owners might have same doubt: why I can't find my posts by using Blogger official search widget? Indeed, this widget was out of order for a long time.

As providing the function of search is very important, all blog owners might wonder what are the suggested alternatives. In this post I would compare 3 solutions for Blogger blog and guide how to install Google Custom Search Engine(CSE), which is the best among 3 choices.

jQuery Slider Plugin (Camera) With Fancy Transition Effects__CDN Easy Installation

"Camera" is a great jQuery slider plugin. It not only provides dozens of fancy transition effects, but also support RWD image, which is an important feature for mobile device. Besides, you can customize almost everything you could imagine.

However, it's not easy to install any of the jQuery slideshow plugins. The reason is that these plugins need web hosting space which support "directory structure", such as Google Drive.

But Google has announced "Google Drive deprecating web hosting support" in Aug 2016, now it's very hard to find free web hosting space which support "directory structure".

The good news is, WFU find this "CDN service", which hosts official Camera plugin files. It means that blog owners don't need to worry about hosting space any more. Just follow the tutorial in this post for easy installation.

Click to see DEMO page

Blogger Recent Comments V2__Avatar + Post Title + HTTPS

After "HTTPS support coming to Blogspot", if you ever installed my old version "Blogger Recent Comments" in your blog, it will cause "mixed content".

To let this widget compatible with HTTPS, I release this new version V2 and make some improvement. Please see the introductions as follows.

(pic from: pixabay.com)

Dropbox Direct Link Generator__Workable For Non-Public Folder

As "Google Drive deprecating web hosting support" in Aug 2016, now it's really hard to find free and reliable (as Google) hosting space. This is also a bad news for Blog owners, because blog needs space to host various JS/CSS files.

To help blog owners find a solution for free hosting space, I made this Dropbox direct link generator.

If you registered in Dropbox before Oct 2012, then you can keep the Dropbox "Public" folder, which can host files and generate direct link. If not, then you need this generator to convert Dropbox "share link" into "direct link".

Make The Scroll To Top Button Sticky And User-Friendly

It's very common to see the "back to top" button on many websites, but it's not usual to see it with user-friendly design.

Sometimes you might find the "back to top" button not so convenient under the following situations:

• If it's not sticky, you need more time to find this button.
• If it's sticky, it might cover some content of that page.
• Your need to move mouse cursor for a long distance in order to reach this button.

This post will provide a better design for "back to top" button, and let visitors scroll to top easily.

Click to see DEMO page

(pic from: pixabay.com)

How to Make Blogger Official Navigation Menu Floating When Scrolling?

Using floating navigation bar on your blog provides an user-friendly browsing experience, and such design can be found from many famous websites.

It brings visitors many advantages if the menu is sticky, and we'll talk more about it later. You might find some tutorials of how to make a sticky menu on Blogger blog, but another question is "how to make Blogger official navigation menu floating?".

If we could make official widget floating, then it will be much easier to manage (add, remove, rearrange) all the links by the official navigation widget.

Click to see DEMO page

(pic from: pexels.com)

Blogger Popular Post Widget + Resize Thumbnail Image With Real Size

The official Blogger popular post widget, comes with 72x72(px) square thumbnail. It's believed that many users want to resize the thumbnail as desired, such as 100x100(px) in square, or 200x120(px) in rectangle.

You might find some CSS tricks from the internet, which can resize the thumbnail. Changing the width / height of an image by CSS can only make the image looks larger, but the real size of the image doesn't change. Therefore, the image will look unclear(maybe look like mosaic).

I made this tool which can resize the Blogger popular post thumbnail in real size, and it also includes some other features as below. If you would like to install this tool directly, please jump to "II. Preparation".

(pic from: magicmockups.com)

How to Backup Blog Posts Automatically -- by IFTTT

All Blogger blog posts are stored in cloud storage. Why do we still need to back up the posts? Is the cloud platform not safe? As Blogger blogs belong to Google, it's believed that Blogger is more trustful than other blog platforms.

Rather than the errors happen at the cloud end, it's more possible that the errors might happen at our end. Sometimes we might delete our Blogger posts accidentally. Or, when editing the post, due to incautious operation, we might save the wrong content which overwrite the original content.

so, we do need the tool to back up blog posts automatically, to avoid all kinds of accidents. I'll introduce some solutions in this post, including the best one -- IFTTT.

(pic from: pixabay.com)

How to Customize Blogger Template﹍(1) Skills of Adding Comments for Codes

There are 3 posts for this series of articles "How to Customize Blogger Template", to help readers find the codes quickly in correct area in Blogger template when editing.

These series posts will summarize the codes of each important section in Blogger template, guiding readers how to use them, how to make proper comments. Thus you could save lots of time when searching for the codes you need.

(pic from: pexels.com)

Use Colorful Underline With Different Styles For Your Posts

If the topic of your blog is not about travel, food, or photograph (contain lots of pictures), it means the contents of your articles are mainly text. Maybe it will be more difficult to catch readers' eyes.

To attract readers' attention, we could add some colors in our posts. Also, some colorful underline would be a great idea! This post will guide you how to add different colorful underlines for important, emphasized texts or sentences.

(Pic from: ASE Buzz-Picasa)

CC0 Free High-Quality Image Search Engine

To search for free pictures more conveniently and legally, I created this CC0 free image search engine. By using it, you don't need to visit individual websites of photo library separately.

You can search for high quality photos from all famous CC0 photo library by one time with this search engine, which could save lots of time. To experience this search engine, please click the button below. If you need to search for CC0 images frequently, just drag this button to your bookmark bar(or add this site to your bookmark):

CC0 Image Search Engine