Blog Toppings

Some Fair Ribbon Icons For Your Blog

Crunch — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:41:44 +0000

I intended to make some total different blog icons this morning but ended going a different direction. For some reason I ended up illustrating these free fair ribbon icons which I guess are pretty popular flair items for blogs and websites right now. Come to think of it I actually need some ribbon icons for an upcoming project so these little graphics should work out nicely on that website. Anyway, once again we have a 500px by 500px layered Photoshop file with several colors (blue,red,silver,green and yellow) to get ya’ll started. All you need to do is make visible the layer of the blog ribbon image you want to use, resize and save. You can put your own graphic in the center of the ribbon image or use one of the graphics from one of my other icon sets.Hope you enjoy these ribbon icons. Happy blogging.

Freaky and Fun Face Silhouettes Edition 1

Crunch — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:38:07 +0000

Here are three free face silhouettes for your blog or website. Silhouettes is a hard word to spell. I don’ thing I’ve ever spelled it correctly on my own. There are three faces which I am loosely calling the freaky face, the angry face and the happy face silhouette. These graphics can be used on there own or with another Blog Toppings button set. The file is a layered Photoshop file at 500 x 500 pixels. Each face is on its own layer with transparency. All you need to do in order to use these free blog things is change the background, resize and save. I hope you enjoy these free blog images. Happy Blogging.

Glassy Rectangle Button Things For Your Blog

Crunch — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 12:19:49 +0000

Here is a layered Photoshop file containing some glassy rectangle button type things for your blog. The .psd file has some common blog button text already on layers and has a text layer for your own text. By default there are 6 colored blog buttons. Make your own colors by using Photoshop’s CTRL+U (hue and saturation) command. You can see what the button looks like in use by looking at the download link below. I hope these glassy rectangle blog buttons. Happy Blogging!

Post Ideas. A Wordpress Plugin To Manage Your Ideas.

Crunch — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:54:21 +0000

If you’re anything like me you like to keep a list of possible blog post topics or article ideas. Additionally, I like to research my posts a bit by keeping track of source links, thoughts and the keywords I plan to target. Typically my blog article ideas and blog post topics ended up as Wordpress drafts or in a Google doc somewhere. A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to keep track of these blog post ideas inside of Wordpress. I looked around for a few Wordpress plugins but couldn’t find anything I liked. So, I decided to write “Post Ideas,” a Wordpress Plugin that allows you to manage your blog post ideas or blog article ideas from within Wordpress. Post Ideas allows you to add, edit, delete and send to the editor your post ideas while keeping track of the possible post’s working title, description, keywords, source links and priority. It generates a sortable list of your blog post ideas so you can quickly pick a post or article to write. Just click on the “write” link and the editor loads with the working title inserted. I hope you find Post Ideas useful. Happy Blogging!

update: This plugin will automatically create the required mysql table. If for some reason the table is not created. The zip file now includes a .sql file which can be imported into your Wordpress database using phpMyAdmin.

Killer default theme man!

Crunch — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 13:09:27 +0000

So, how many of you noticed the little mistake I made when I was moving blog toppings over from the development server to the live one? I was using a “theme test drive” plug-in which allowed only admins to see the custom wordress theme while everyone else just saw the default Kubric theme. There were a few snags when migrating the site to the live server and once I got them all worked out I guess I was so relieved I forgot to turn off the test drive plugin. So, there I was thinking the site was up and running and when really people were just seeing the generic blue Wordpress theme with some fairly uninteresting posts. I only noticed the problem when I went to test the site on my mac. Gulp. It’s all up and running now and luckily I caught before I went to crazy submitting to digg, reddit and mixx.

Glassy Half Rounded Square Blog Icons

Crunch — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 12:54:39 +0000

Today’s blog icons are a customizable set of glassy half rounded squares. This layered photoshop (.psd) file comes with everything you need to use these graphics on your blog or website. The set, which could be used as icons, an article header graphic or as a blog button, includes layers for every letter, number and most symbols. To use these blog icons on your site simply make visible they layer which contains the color of the icon you’d like, make visible the letter, number or symbol you’d like (or make your own text layer), resize to meet your needs and save. Like most of our photoshop blog icons the .psd file is 500 pixels square, hopefully that is big enough for your project. Hope you enjoy. Happy Blogging.

I must confess it’s Wordpress.

Crunch — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 13:40:51 +0000

A few people have asked what content management system I am using to run Blog Toppings. Early on I looked at a few different options but, in the end, I am really comfortable with Wordpress and decided to stick with it for this project. Being that Blog Toppings is an image and file blog of sorts it took some work to integrate the look I wanted into Wordpess. The first little hurdle was having these news items not appear in the main list. Wordpress makes this very easy to do with a simple conditional category check in “the loop”. The next major hurdle was how to get each post to have a featured image and a post image while displaying neither in the RSS feed. I used Wordpess’ custom fields to accomplish this. After that it was just a matter of formatting all the different templates for the custom theme. So far, it seems to be working pretty well (other than the fact that one mis-type in the custom fields boxes can mess all the formatting up). If anyone has anymore detailed or specific questions about the site please feel free to comment below. Happy Blogging.

Simple Round Blog Icons

Crunch — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 13:09:19 +0000

Here are some very handy and simple round blog icons. This layered Photoshop file comes in 6 color variations, has a bunch of symbols and the standard alphabet and numbers. All the layers have blending options already applied and come ready to use. To use these blog icons all you need to do is make visible the blog icon color your, select which symbol or letter you want, resize and save. Some of the simple round blog icon symbols include: check, arrows (all 4 directions), heart, paw and speech bubble. I hope these help with your next blog post. Happy Blogging!

Smooth Rounded Rectangle Blog Buttons

Crunch — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:48:17 +0000

Add a little style to your blog’s download, sign up or subscribe link with these smooth rounded rectangle buttons. They were inspired by the Wordpress download buttons and come in 3 colors (red, green and blue). These blog buttons were created in Adobe Photoshop with all the content in groups and on separate layers. I threw in 3 default phrases but you can easily change are add your own text. I hope they bring your blog more downloads, more sign ups or more of whatever your looking for. Happy Blogging.

Blog Toppings Launches

Crunch — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 08:34:14 +0000

Finally. Four days after the intended launch date Blog Toppings is finally up and running. I will be posting a few images over the next day or two in order to populate the site. So, dust off your blogs and getting ready.

Glassy Star Badges: Letters, numbers and symbols

Crunch — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 05:27:52 +0000

Here are some free glassy star badges for your blog design, articles or posts. These blog badges are 32 point stars and come in 3 colors plus gray. Each letter of the alphabet, each number and a bunch of other symbols are also provided on their own layer with blending options already set. You can shift select all the text layers to change the font; Arial is used by default. All you need to do is make visible the color star badge you want, pick the letter, number or symbol you want (or make your own text layer) , resize and save. I hope you enjoy these glassy star blog badges.