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Hello world! Me? An eccentric living organism that ponders the supernatural abilities of humanity

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

How to add your own blog icon to your blog

The icon that appears next to the URL of a blog is called a Favicon. Have you seen blogs that have a different logo(other than the Google's default blogger logo) in the address bar? That adds some professionalism to your blog and says to the world that you know something more than what the average blogger knows. Take a look at the URL of this blog. Can you see the animated red-yellow logo at the beginning of the address bar? That's what I'm talking about. Today, I will tell you how to do this with your own blog. It is quite easy and it took only ten minutes for me to do it. So follow the steps below...

Step 1
Create a 16x16 .gif or .jpg image using any photo editing software(MS Paint, MS Picture Manager, Photoshop etc.). If you don't know how to do it, you can use a free online tool for that. I recommend this site to create your favicon because it's so easy and it's completely free!
Once you create it, download it and save it on to your desktop.

Step 2
Upload your image(the favicon you just created) to a photo sharing website. I suggest you use Google Picasa which is available to all blogger account owners. You can use this service to host all your blog-related images and again the good thing is it's completely free! Here is how you upload your images to picasa
  • Log in to your picasa account using your gmail username and password.
  • Select the blog that you want to apply the favicon for.
  • Click upload button.
  • Select the image/favicon from your desktop.
  • Upload the image.




Step 3
Click on the newly uploaded image. Then you will be taken to a page that has information about that image. On the right-side of the screen, you will see a link called "Link to this Photo". Click on that link to expand it (see the screen shot on the left of the window).
Under the "Embed image", tick the "Image only (no link)" checkbox.
Then copy the URL of the image. Make sure to copy the URL provided in the second text box (I have encircled it in blue). This value will be different from what you see in this screen shot.


Step 4
Now go to your blogger dashboard and click "Layout" and then the "Edit HTML" tab.
Before you do anything, download the current template(in case something goes wrong).

Now comes the tricky part :-)
Step 5
Locate the following line of code

<title><data:blog.pageTitle /></title>

Step 6
Immediately after that line, paste this code

<link href='theUrlOfTheImageThatYouObtainedInStep3' rel='shortcut icon' type='image/x-icon' />

Make sure to replace the part in red by the URL of your image. Everything in the above code is case-sensitive, so don't make any changes except replacing the relevant URL. The quotation marks are very important so don't omit them either.

Step 7
After doing that, save your template and preview and if everything went well, you should see your new blog logo in the address bar instead of the orange blogger logo.


So that's all there is to customizing your own blog logo. I hope this article will be useful to you and if you encounter any problems or error messages while editing the HTML, feel free to leave a comment below and I'm very happy to help you with it.
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Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Privacy Policy

At mindrising.blogspot.com, I understand that privacy of your personal information is of great importance to you. Thus, I am committed to safeguarding your privacy while online at this blog. The following discloses how I gather and disseminate information on this blog. This information is not sold to third parties or used in any form for any illegal activity.

Links
This blog contains links to other websites/blogs and be aware that I am not liable for the privacy and data collection practices of those external websites/blogs. It is important for my visitors to be aware of this when they leave this blog through a such link and I suggest you read the privacy statements of every site that collects personally identifiable information.

Log Files
As with most other websites/blogs, I collect and use data contained in log files for analytical purposes. This information includes, but not limited to, IP(Internet Protocol) address, ISP(Internet Service Provider), browser type, visited/exit pages, referral URL, platform, date/time stamp and demographic data. However, this information is not linked to personally identifiable information in any manner.

Cookies and Web Beacons
This blog does not create or store cookies by itself. Nevertheless, I use third party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit this blog and these companies use cookies on this blog and they may use this information(not including your name, address, email and telephone numbers) to provide advertisements about goods and services that interest you. It is generally used for geotargeting purposes(for example, showing Florida hotels to residents of Florida). For more information about this process and to learn your options about not having this information used by these companies, please visit Google's Advertising and Privacy page. Google AdSense uses DoubleClick DART cookie. The DART cookie enables Google to serve targeted ads across its AdSense network. You may opt out of the use of DART cookie by visiting Google's Privacy Center. If you wish to opt out of advertising companies tracking and tailoring ads that match your surfing patterns, you may do so at Network Advertising Initiative. You can also choose to disable or selectively turn off these cookies by adjusting your browser settings.

Advertisers and Third Party Sponsored Advertisements
Advertisements that appear on this blog are sponsored ads by Google AdSense and I do not personally endorse the products and services advertised in those ads. Those companies are not affiliated with mindrising.blogspot.com. The only affiliation is the one between mindrising.blogspot.com and the company that serves the ads.

Affiliate Programs
This blog employs affiliate programs for monetizing. I consider my role as an affiliate marketer very seriously and therefore, I have chosen to recommend only the products I use or have thoroughly researched and I do not directly sell any product through this blog. If you have questions or need more information about any affiliations on this blog, please don't hesitate to contact me and I will be able to provide more information where possible.

This privacy policy applies solely to information collected on this blog. If you have any concerns regarding the contents of this blog, you can contact me through my personal email address- stallionb547[at]yahoo[dot]com
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