Add a Lightbox-Style Contact Form to your Blog

While researching customization methods for my forthcoming eBook, I was really impressed at how easy it is to add a Lightbox-style contact form to our sites using ThickBox:

Using Thickbox to display a contact form in this way enables your readers to email you without having to leave the page. We can add this functionality in a simple HTML gadget, and there is no need to edit the HTML of our template at all.

In this post, I'll explain how easy it is to add a lightbox-style contact form to your Blogger blog using Thickbox and a free Kontactr account.

Host Template Images for Free on Picasa

If you use a third party template or customize the design of your blog, chances are you'll need to find hosting for images used in the design.

Many Blogger designers use Photobucket, Flickr and other free image hosting solutions. It's also possible (albeit unnecessarily complicated) to upload images to Blogger or Google Sites.

But my personal favoured image hosting service is Picasa Web Albums. This free Google powered service offers unlimited bandwidth and a generous 1gb of storage - perfect for serving up any images you need for template visualisation.

Sleepy Hollow - A Free Blogger Template for Halloween

It's been a long time since I designed a free Blogger template, so since Halloween is one of my favourite holidays I decided to design "Sleepy Hollow" - just in time for October 31st!

"Sleepy Hollow" is a simple, customizable template built to be used with the new Blogger Template Editor. It features:

• Halloween themed background images (designed by Iaroslav Lazunov)
• Customized fonts for titles, using the IM Fell font family (via Google Web Fonts)
• Elegant, customizable colour scheme
• As customizable as Blogger's new templates (width, height, colours, layout)

View Demo | Download Sleepy Hollow Template

How to Add a Featured Content Section on your Blog's Home Page

One of the customizations I use most when designing Blogger templates is creating a "featured content" section to be displayed only on the home page. I often use this technique to display a content slider, mini-portfolio or slideshow above the main posts section.

Take a look at the home page of my site, Just Great Film, to see an example of this in action (click on images for full screen previews):

Here's an easy way to restrict the display of a gadget to your blog's home page.

What Type of Blogger Template are you Using? (Poll)

I'm curious to learn which type of Blogger templates are most popular among Blogger Buster readers.

Do you prefer to customize the design of your blog using the new Template Designer? Perhaps you're happier to use a third-party (free or paid) template, or have edited the HTML to create a design which is unique to you?

If you have a moment spare, please let me know about your Blogger Template preferences by voting in this poll or leaving a comment below:

How to hide the Blogger Navbar - Updated for 2010 (Quick Tip)

With all the changes to Blogger's template system, it seems no wonder that my original tutorial for hiding the Blogger nav-bar no longer works effectively (particularly for newer template designs).

In case you were wondering, it is possible to hide the Blogger nav-bar (which displays a search box and useful links). The principle is the same as in my previous tutorial in that we simply need to add a few lines of CSS to our Blogger template code.

Here's how my updated technique to hide the Blogger nav-bar in a few simple steps:

Infograbbit: New Premium Template

Infograbbit is a premium resume template designed for those wishing to promote a simple yet stylish online presence:

Infograbbit is available to purchase from ThemeForest for $17 (or $15 for pre-paying members) and includes six colour variations for this theme.

This template is designed to be used primarily as a one-page portfolio site, making it a cost-effective and reliable solution for those wishing to develop a simple online presence to show off their skills.

It uses infographic-style presentation, including some exclusive Blogger gadgets and is very easy to customize to your individual requirements. Take a look at the live demonstration to see this template in action.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Posting with Blogger

Keyboard shortcuts are a feature I find incredibly useful. Most of our favourite applications offers shortcuts to perform tasks, such as the generic CTRL+S to save or CTRL+B to generate bold text in word processing programs (the "Command"/CMD button for Mac users).

Blogger offers us a range of keyboard shortcuts we can use when creating and editing our blog posts to perform some most-used tasks without having to scroll around to find their appropriate buttons.