buttons

This post is the Match.com of buttons. If you make buttons or if you need buttons, find each other in the comments.

On October 1st (or actually let’s do this the night of September 30th) we’ll all come here and link up our different topics. I’ve always given a place to load an image and this year is no different. It’s nice to have a little button all ready to load up so that anyone scrolling through your category can have two ways to identify your topic–you’ll have a place to enter your topic name (20 characters so be forewarned) and a 100 x 100 pixel sweet little image that we are calling a button.

Here’s a screen shot of the first twelve buttons from last year (these are not clickable here, see the real, clickable version here):

Screen Shot 2013-09-24 at 4.51.54 AM

If you have questions about button making OR if you can make buttons and would like to offer your services for a small fee, leave a comment after this post and get together. If you are a smart button maker and want to give button making advice, please do so in the comments.

My personal tips, love them or hate them:

1. For crisp reading:

If your button keeps loading blurry you could make a special button that is 100 x 100 exactly, load that into your blog post you want to link to, hit publish, then when you come here and link up with your permalink, choose the 100 x 100 sized button for your image. Once it loads, you should be able to go back to your post and delete it if you don’t want that tiny size in your post and it should still show up here. Practice that here.

2. Simple.

The more simple the button, the easier it is to read. You could create a different button for your link up button and for your regular use-it-on-your-posts-image for your series if you need to. Also, when in doubt, white space is your friend.

I set up a special practice page so you can link up your button and see how it looks. Also, remember, only permalinks will be accepted on the day we link up–other links will be deleted. Find out more about permalinks and practice your linking here.

31 Days starting September 30th What?!

Instead of all of us getting up at the crack of dawn on October 1st to coordinate with 8am east coast time, how about we meet here Monday night and open the linky then? We did this last year and although it throws off the whole ’31 days starting October 1st’ thing, it actually makes sense because the majority of us will be awake in the evening. See you September 30th between 8pm and 10pm EST.