Thursday, June 30, 2005

[Blogger] - Banner -> Home

Hidden in the Comments section of McCauliflower's recent thought-provoking post about Blog Branding was a question raised by Jen which I thought deserved its own post. She said:

"Please, if possible, make your banner work for you. Make it a link to your home page! It is so frustrating when I expect a banner to click back to a home page and it doesn't."

I am not sure about other software templates, but with blogger, the banner head works well as a home-returning device except when you are in an archive. Once in an archive, clicking on the head banner takes you nowhwere.

On my own website I was frustrated about this so I made my photo of me and Fred in the top right side column perform the function of taking me home from wherever. Trouble is, I guess I haven't made it clear to all my readers. I don't want to spoil the picture by adding the word home. Maybe I need to come up with another solution.

Anyway - anyone have an better ideas, or know how to fix blogger so that this annoying problem doesn't happen when in the archives?

3 comments:

eat stuff said...

There can be another problem too, My title is an image not text so you cant make that a link in the title. You have to make a new blank image that can have an anchor tag??? But there is a link in the bottom LH cornere still... very weird

Owen said...

It has been so long that I hav absolutely no memory of what I did, but although I do not host at blogspot, my blog is indeed a blogger blog and all my banners do indeed go home.

I believe the appropriate piece in your blog Sam is:
!-- Blog Header --

anything in the header div can be any old HTML code you want so just put a link URL to your home page around the words Becks & Posh.

William Conway said...

At NTSC, I've remedied the banner from archive problem. Here's a copy of my header code:

{div id="header"}

{h1 id="blog-title"}
{ArchivePage}{a href="{$BlogURL$}"}
{/ArchivePage}

{ItemPage}{a href="{$BlogURL$}"}
{/ItemPage}

{img src="INSERT BANNER PICTURE HERE"}

{ItemPage}{/a}{/ItemPage}
{ArchivePage}{/a}{/ArchivePage}

{/h1}

{/div}

In this case, there are two separate sets of link tags. One works only on individual post pages, the other works only on archives. Blogger has a tag for {MainorArchivePage} but not for {ItemorArchivePage}, so you have to go through this hurdle to make your banner link home.

I use a modification of the Minima Black template in blogger. I had to monkey with the borders and margins for the "header" style in order to make the banner image look right.

William