Change the Look of YouTube Channel

The look of your YouTube channel contributes in setting the atmosphere for your visitors viewing experience. Maybe you have seen other channels that you liked but assumed it was too difficult for you to accomplish. The truth is, it is very easy and you can do it too. Follow the directions below and create something completely personal to you or check out my free YouTube channel themes.

1. Sign into your YouTube account.
2. Once logged in you will arrive at your YouTube homepage. On the top right hand corner you will see your YouTube username. Click on your username and a dropdown will appear.
3. Click on the link “My Channel”.
4. You will see a navigation bar at the top of your channel page. Click on “Themes and Colors”.
5. Click “new theme”.
6. Name your theme whatever you like =).
7. Customize the color settings to your preference.
8. Upload a background to really set your YouTube channel apart. I recommend downloading a free pattern from DinPattern.
9. When you are finished with your customizations, click on the button “Save Changes” and you are done!

Thematic: Adding Google Analytics to Your Website

This tutorial is for those who are using a Thematic child theme. Since touching core files is a no-no, we need to add our tracking codes a different way. We can accomplish this by editing our functions.php file. Before I begin, I want to give credit to Jean-Baptiste Jung – reading his works is how I learned how to do this in the first place.

First and foremost, here is how you actually find your tracking code:

1. Log into Google Analytics.
2. Click the “Edit” button to the right of the domain name you want to add the analytics code for.
3. Click on “Check Status”.
4. Scroll down and you should see your tracking code. Highlight the code and copy it (Ctrl + C). Paste this in a notepad file for now and move onto the next part.

Next we will be adding a function that adds our tracking code to the footer. Go ahead and open functions.php and add the code below anywhere between <?php and ?>

// Google Analytics
function ga(){ ?>
PASTE TRACKING CODE HERE
<?php }
add_action('wp_footer', 'ga');

Replace the text “PASTE TRACKING CODE HERE” with your tracking code. Save your changes and you are finished!

Watch me do it:

Custom Gravatar

I’m sure you have seen bloggers with customized gravatars. Not only that, but wherever they post that same image appears by their name. By linking your custom image with your email address gravatars globally recognized.

To upload your very own custom gravatar go to the Gravatar website. Once you arrive there is a button that reads “Get your Gravatar today >>” simply click and follow the easy directions.

By doing this you will not need to add any code for this to show up on your WordPress blog. Whenever you post under the registered email address, your image will appear.

Thematic: Changing Your Page Tab’s Link URL

I have a tab in my navigation named “Tutorials” – this page is blank. Now, when I write tutorials I do them under posts, so they show up under categories.

When you click on the category “Tutorials” there is a nice display of the things I have written. My thought was, how can I link my blank “Tutorials” page to this category? I thought it perhaps wasn’t possible so my next thought was that I should create a page template. While searching out how I might do this, I checked out the Themeshaper Forums and found a topic related to what I was looking for. It turns out, my first thought is possible – you can change the URL of your page tabs. Easy.

1. Download & activate the plugin “Page Links To“.
2. Copy the URL that you want your page to link to.
3. Create a new page with the desired title.
4. Scroll down to the bottom and you will see a text area where you can paste the URL of your choice.
5. Update your page and check it out.

Credit to Chris from Thematic 4 You for posting how to accomplish this.

First Letter CSS

A trend is happening in the world of WordPress where designers are making the first letter of blog posts stand out.

Screenshot from www.adrianpelletier.com

I will teach you two ways of doing this. The first is the easiest. Simply download the plugin “Drop Caps for WordPress.”

The other way of doing this is to add a simple line of CSS to your stylesheet. *Note: This is not supported in IE.

1. Open your stylesheet
2. Paste the following code into your stylesheet:

p:first-letter {
color: #625056; /* This is the color of the letter */
font-family: Georgia; /* This is the font of the letter */
font-size: 26px; /* This is the size of the letter */
padding-right: 2px; /* This is the space to the right of the letter */
padding-bottom: 2px; /* This is the space to the bottom of the letter */
}

If you are using WordPress, you will notice that the down side to using this code is that the first letter of every paragraph will be capitalized. I think what most people are looking for is css for the first letter only. To fix this problem simply change p:first-letter to .post p:first-of-type:first-letter.

.post p:first-of-type:first-letter {
color: #625056; /* This is the color of the letter */
font-family: Georgia; /* This is the font of the letter */
font-size: 26px; /* This is the size of the letter */
padding-right: 2px; /* This is the space to the right of the letter */
padding-bottom: 2px; /* This is the space to the bottom of the letter */
}

Screenshot from www.markboulton.co.uk

If you really want to make your first letter stand out, consider adding a background or a border. There are more ways of doing this but these are the basics. Enjoy =)!