5 EASY STEPS:

So far I am holding to the original - classical- non-customized view. I am sure if I stay long enough, it will be as precious, as the original Coke bottle.

Brad, this is great, especially for all the newbies, to add that personal touch to their pages.

man, Jorgen is quite the supah stah... Check him out! Kuddos to AR and crew for always looking to improve.

Brad - as always the improvements are welcome. I assume we need do nothing with our custome blog unless we want, but the change will be easier to deal with. And yes, we saw the tag change - I wrote about it this morning since "my tags are gone." LOL

Jeff

I noticed the drop down...I like it...and glad to see the customizer back running strong!

Brad,

Looks like I will have to take a look.

Thanks for the updates as usual!

Tom Davis

World Class Delaware Realtor

Nice I'll have to check it out. Love the Chihuahua pic btw, its great;p

Great, Brad, my new partner and AR member will love this post.  Thanks also to Jorgen for the cleanup - No I didn't notice it.

Nice to see this integrated with our My Home page. What are the dimensions and file size limits for the header and background images?

Thanks for all the tag clean-up Jorgen Hahn! And thanks, Brad, for keeping all these gears turning in front of us.

Brad - I noticed the tag change earlier today.  Will this affect SEO for our blogs?  I was just wondering how Google or other search engines view dropdown menus.

I used to have a skylne and the AR logo on my header... but at some point the AR logo disappeared.  I can't figure out how to have both... I suppose I have to do something to make the two images one picture file... I am not good at that kind of stuff.

Brad - it was probably covered somewhere, but what are the proper dimension for the header? I am trying to create my own. Thanks ~Rita

Jason- read Bob's post on tags...they are now set as no-follow to push traffic to the channels

Thanks Brad - this is great that we can customize right from within the Rain now :)   Thanks again!

Jon - that's ok to do, I know many here who like the "Original Coke" bottle and there's nothing wrong with sticking to what works for you and what you like.  It's your Blog, and it's always nice to have your comments here on mine.  Thanks.  :-)

Gary - it is nice to allow folks the option to have that unique and personal touch if they choose. :-)

Nick - great to hear from you buddy, you're kinda a Supah Star too these days, how's everything going with the Rail Life stuff.  I See you around a bit more now, hope you and the family are all well. :-)

Jeff - they are not gone, just placed nicely in a box.  This will not affect anything other than you won't have a mile long list of tagwords scrolling out the door on your sidebar.  :-) LOL~

Brad - I love the tag clean up-I started working on it myself and got overwhelmed!  And I just notice the custom blog button - today - so much simpler, except the reason I went looking for it was because I now have a double header on mine and I don't know how it got there or how to get rid of it!  :-)  

Jason - Bob Stewart did do a great post andvideo explaining the thought process and concept behind this. I spent some time on the phone with Bill Gassett as well showing how the "tags" were not showing up in searches as much as title, topics and groups.  Check out Bob's post, it's very informative. Call me if you have any questions.  :-)

  I just customized my blog, i love the new look, it  rocks ! Thank you AR for your ongoing efforts. Now how do i customize my right side bar?

DJ - glad you liked the Blog... I mean Dog! lol~  He just has that YEAH look about him so I thought he was appropriate for this post. haha  The customizer was down for a couple weeks so YEAH was certainly in order.

Virginia - congrats on your new partner!  I hope he likes what you can do using the new customizer.  No more passwords, logging in etc.  Just click and go!  Hope all is well in your side of the world.  :-)

John, thanks for the reminder, I went back in and edited the post to include the dimensions now.  Hope that helps you with your header and background images.  :-)

Mara - the gears need oil once in a while eh?  Jorgen does a great job keeping the machine running and up to speed.  Poor guy has been dealing with the dreaded Proxy Errors for a few days now, just like us.  Hopefully some of that great oil will get into those gears of AR soon too.  LOL~  :-)

Maureen - AR removed the logo from the right side of the screen and moved it over to the left.  In doing so, it left many of our headers and banners with a spot or empty space.  In some cases it blew out the headers all-together.  Then if you went into the AR Customizer, it said the site was temporarily unavailable.  Now that it's moved over from the Dakno servers and on the AR servers, we'll have a lot more opportunity to enhance and keep making it better.  Try using some of the photo editing apps on the web to create your new skyline or whatever banner/header you want on your Blog.  Have fun with it.  :-)

Kenna - the dimensions are listed in the post above. :-)

Kara - I agree.  Brad Carroll from Dakno Marketing was kind enough to help create the original AR Customizer and allowed us to host it on his comany server.  We just got too big too quick taking up all the space on his server.  Now we can access it from our AR server with a click instead of havng to leave AR, login with ID and Password, and now we don't have the logo or image on the sidebars of Blogs anymore. 

It is and will just keep getting better here, this I know for sure.  Thanks.  :-)

Mike - congrats, now I have to come check out your Blog you got so excited!  To customize your sidebar, you'll have to read the post I wrote that's included on the "Getting Started" link on AR's main front page.  If you still need some help with this, don't hesitate to let me know. Thanks.  :-)

Brad:  Hopefully I will be able to make some sense of this version of your Blog Customizer.  I am very non-techie... and tried to make the last version work perhaps five or six times, and never could figure it out.  Hopefully this time I will have an easier time.  Thanks so much for sharing.

This is great!  I am looking forward to using the new tools to personalize my blog. I had a difficult time with the other version (user error I am sure).

Great job, I will go in and change the color of my descriptions so folks don't have to squint to find where to go next. I like the tags being hidden, much sharper look, cleaner. Thanks Jorgen!

I just noticed this earlier this morning.  I will play with it today and, hopefully, not destroy my Blog.  Design has never been my thing ;)

You know I saw it the other day and I went to update it and it already had my banner, but the banner didn't show up on the blog, but once I went back and it saved, even though it was there already is when it showed up! Thanks, but I have been trying for a couple of weeks to get that banner up!

Thanks for the easy instructions. I will bookmark this post and may use it some day.

This feature will be enjoyed by all. Thank you activerain once again for making it easy for non techies like myself.

I am looking forward to trying the new customizer. Thanks for the info.

Thanks Brad. I was wondering where my banner was yesterday and new something had to be in the works:)

Glad to hear it - I have a seasonal background and was going to change it to Fall - thsi will make it easy.

Brad I saw this yesterday and noticed the cloud clean up as well.  Jorgen is rockin and rollin' cool - I was so busy I didn't have a second to comment but I saw it and am having trouble keeping up what with twitter , facebook and getting rid of my customizer widget :-)  Thanks

Brad, I  think I need to get you a mighty mouse t shirt...you saved the day yet again.

I tried fixing mine and got nothing, and had to change it to something I didn't like.

And no wonder there were proxy server issues....all makes sense.

Thank you for continuing to keep us posted on the changes to the AR site.  It is always helpful to read you posts for tips and updates.  I like the new pic by the way.

Thanks Brad.  I will look for Bob's post on this.  It sounds like Bill Gassett had the same question that I did.  Have a good one -

Hi Brad, I did notice all the great changes and figured great things were happening this past weekend since I get getting those error messages - but it was worth it.  Love your changes too - nice pic!  The other pic was mysterious and tough - I like this one!  Hope you get a chance to see my thank you to you in my blog on Friendship ball.  Have a great week.  ~Anne Marie

Wow Brad, we having 4th of July in September!  I like your new profile pic too man!

Nice new backdrop..........although I used to keep trying to find my photo on the other one (never did, lol).......and nice new personal photo!

While the tags are in the drop down, there is no "Tag Cloud" to see AT A GLANCE what tags are used most.  What does "no follow" mean?  Are the tags no longer valuable for SEO?

Brad,

I'm so excited to check out these new customized features. You must enjoy watching AR's changes over time and watching it grow!  As you guessed I'll be leaving here and going over to the new blog customizer! ;0) Thanks!

I see you did a seasonal as well - I like the pumpkins - cheerful

Lynn - Bob did a great post with a video that explains the tags, the SEO, and more. Here's a link to it.
http://activerain.com/blogsview/710576/ActiveRain-Using-no-index

Karen - this is really easy to use, just follow the 5 steps, then let me know how it works for you, also let me know if you need any help. :-)

Rebecca - you were not alone, there were many of us that had some technical difficulties with version 1.0, but like everything here, we learn, we fix, we grow, and we move on.  :-)

Jeannette - if you need any help getting that banner up there, you just let me know, I'll help you out anyway I can. 

Nancy - I don't have a mighty mouse shirt, but Christine Bohn sent me a "Gators" shirt from Florida yesterday, hope that will do! lol~  Thanks Christine, love it, and will sport it around the office today. :-)

John - thanks, I was due for a new photo I guess, my son took that one this summer so it's more current.  I was going to use the one this morning that my other son took when I just woke up, but that would have scared off and lost a lot of subscribers and associates!!  LOL~

Brad - Hey man. Just used the new customizer and yay it worked. Now my blog is seasonal like your's. My only question is that jeff t posted a tutorial saying the header had to be 950x115? Is it back to 950x125 now? Just curious. Thanks for the update. BobH

Thanks for keeping us in the loop Brad!

This is great news.  It is incredible how far things have come and it really adds a lot to the blogs to have the customizer.  Thanks and I look forward to using this tool.

Jason - here's a link for you, I also edited the post and added it at the end. Thanks.

http://activerain.com/blogsview/710576/ActiveRain-Using-no-index

Brad, this is AWESOME!  I'm off to try it out after I read your last post that I missed!  I DID notice the tag pull-down menu and am probably the HAPPIEST AR member about that--if you never noticed, I think I've listed 1000 tags!  (not really...then again, I really don't know how many there are).  I've been trying to clear them out but, just have not had the time to get to all of the posts!

Thanks again!

Anne - Mysterious and tough?  It was the only current picture I had at the time, so I used it, then forgot about it.  When I saw another members post with 10 or so member photos, I was the only one wearing the "Maui Jim" shades.  Also wearing an affliction shirt from the UFC,  So this seemed like a great time to change it, especially since this one is more recent.  Glad you like it. 

Now I have to go see what you said about me in your post, I hope you didn't use my old photo..haha.

Jeremy - I'm still experimenting...fireworks are gone, now that the customizer is working and so smoothly, I am setting up all kinds of seasonal backgrounds of photos I have taken over the years.  I find that I am having to resize each one to different dimensions to get them to look just the way I want.  You will probably see more changes over the next few days to my Blog as I test each background image to see how they look. 

The pumpkins are obviously the ones I'll be using for this month, but from now on, they will change each month.  This should keep my blog interesting and always changing.  :-) 

Can anyone tell me how to add a photo into the text area of my blog posts?  I've noticed others doing that and it looks great.

Thanks in advance.

I guess you'd be the one to complain to and perhaps get things fixed.  When I clicked on your blog, all I saw was pumpkins for a long time.  Then when I put this comment in, I saw pumpkins for a long time again.  How do you get rid of the over exposure of the background?  Time is too valuable to have to look at backgrounds for so long.

Cathy - the pumpkins are fitting for this month, gonna be hard to get a "Turkey" or "Ham" on here next month! lol~

Brad, do you guys ever sleep...always coming up with just the best for each of the members and making yourselves available to help.

Hey, KUDOS to Jorgen! It's hard to work with all these perfectionists but WOW what powerful outcomes we all get when you do. Thank you.

Bob - 115 or 125, which ever looks best.  Rich told me yesterday that Jorgen said 125, but 115 will work too.  Just look at it closely after you load it to see how it looks.  I did 125 on my banner above and you can see a touch of white going across the bottom.  135 might be better for mine in this case.

Liz thanks, your photo was in there somewhere, just covered up by my BIG BLOG! lol~  I'll bring that background back sometime, it will change much more often now...    All depends on my mood and the season. haha.. Thanks for the compliments, love getting those anytime!  :-))

Debe - I think mine was worse than yours, mine had 2000 and rolled right out my front door 300 ft away! LOL

Hey Brad, Love your pumpkins!! Thanks for all your work on this. Thanks to Jorgen too!! I will be leaving here to look at mine. Again, thanks guys!! 

Sandpoint Sothebys - you will find the instructions in the "Getting Started" link on the AR main page.  It's right under the channels area in the "More Information" box.  You'll be using the little tree image on your edit tool bar to add new photos to a post or to comments.  :-)

Barabara - I know they are working on the network right now trying to correct some of the proxy errors, It just happened to me as well, but this won't always be the case.  Just a temporary glitch in the network right now.  We'll get it smoothed out shortly.  :-)

Teresa - thanks.  The customizer makes it so much easier to add photos like this, it allows each member to make their Blog unique and stand out from the crowd.  It's kinda fun too...   :-))

BRad thanks you so much, very helpful information, I have already made changes!

Gena - did you say sleep???  ROFL  :-))

Barbara - I also just noticed that it's only doing that in the Internet Explorer browser, not in the Firefox browser.  I'm sure they are looking into it right now.  Let me know if that's happening on any of the other members customized Blogs. 

Thats great that they've come up with a blog customizer! i forgot my password to my other one and couldnt get a new one sent to me! I didnt even recoginze you with the new pic! oh and i love the pumpkins! Wonderful

Patt

Brad, it does it on a lot of the member's blogs.  I find it so annoying I just quit going to the blog at all.  And it has been that way for a long time on other blogs.  Please figure out what is wrong and announce it.