I was recently asked how to add images to your blog so I thought maybe a post with the instructions for doing so might be in order. So, here goes…

First of all, you want to have your front page of your posts to show excerpts, rather than the full posts. The reason for doing that is people will come to your blog and if the subject at hand isn’t something they are interested in, they will probably leave. They’re not likely to scroll down through massive quantities of text to find something of interest. Also, seeing a page with a large amount of text on it is not very appealing, even if it is a subject that might be of interest to the reader.

So, I was instructed to do it differently, by just showing excerpts and by adding images to the page. Images are considered “eye candy” and people will interact more. I have two blogs that I do this on, and as far as I can tell, you do it differently depending on the theme you are using. At least the first part is done differently; that’s the part where you tell your theme that you want to show excerpts of your posts rather than full posts.

Here are a few instructions:

I use the Mystique theme for this blog.

First I went to Appearance, then clicked on Mystique settings.

In that section, I went to Content and chose the drop down menu for Post Previews & chose Excerpts.

Now, on my UltimateListBuildingTips blog I use the Decker theme, and on that one I had to go to Appearance, then choose Editor and had to adjust the code in Main Index Template (index.php) Rather than giving the instructions for that here, I would just tell you to determine how your particular theme works and adjust it accordingly.

Now, go to your posts and you’ll see an area underneath where you write your post called Excerpt. In that area, add this code:

< img src="http://YOUR_IMAGE_URL_GOES_HERE.jpg" class="alignleft" height="100"/ >
(Please note that in order for the code above to actually show up in this post, I had to goof around some with the code by putting a space after the opening tag < and before the closing tag >.)

The image should be no larger than about 125×125, the code above decreases the height to 100 pixels. That reminds me. I found a great free tool for resizing images. Go to http://picnik.com, upload your image, resize it (additional editing available), and save it. Works great! Very easy to use.

After you put that code in with your image url, put a few lines of text in directly after that closing tag > then add this code to the end: < br style="clear:both;"/ >
(I also had to adjust this code by adding spaces after the opening and before the closing tags.)

And, here’s how it would look when finished:

< img src="http://ultimatelistbuildingtips.com/images/ulbt125x125.jpg" class="alignleft" height="100"/ > If you want to know the best way to build your list, you’ll want to get a copy of the new ebook just released to the public. The name is UltimateListBuildingTips, and you can get a copy for free. Go to this http://UltimateListBuildingTips.com to learn more.< br style="clear:both;"/ >
(Again, I added spaces after the opening tag and before the closing tag so you could actually see the code “in action”. Be sure to take the spaces out when actually doing this so that it works properly)

Below is an example of how an excerpt with an image would appear, using the code above with the spaces taken out.

If you want to know the best way to build your list, you’ll want to get a copy of the new ebook just released to the public. The name is UltimateListBuildingTips, and you can get a copy for free. Go to this http://UltimateListBuildingTips.com to learn more. Not only can you get the ebook for free, you get giveaway rights or you can even purchase rebranding rights and earn up to 50% commission.

I always manually add the text that I want included in the excerpt. I’m pretty sure there is a way to have it select an excerpt automatically. But this way, I know that it has the amount of material that I want included.

Its really pretty simple to do. The biggest challenge is finding an image that pertains to your post. Just a quick recommendation for some free clip art. I found this site while looking for clip art that didn’t require a subscription or didn’t have copyrighted material. It’s called HassleFreeClipArt and it really is! I hope you enjoyed this post and learned how to add images to your blog excerpts.