You can get a bit more information on this when you move the pointer to the button.

This is not an alarm, but do heed the advice and shut down or restart the computer when you take a break. Pat yourself on the back for having set up your machine to perform updates automatically.

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

If no group name is specified, a sub-folder is created with the date when the photos were taken as the name followed by a number. For most of us, this is just fine. But what do you do if you don’t want sub-folders, but all the photos imported into one folder? Can that be done?

The process described above is for the default setting in Windows Live Photo Gallery. You can change the way photos are imported in the Live Photo Gallery Options menu.

Click the blue File tab, then Options. Click the Import tab in the options dialog.

Click on the Folder name: selection, it is probably “Name”. The last item in the drop-down menu is (None). Click on this, then click OK.

When folder name “(None)” is selected, no sub-folders will be made and all photos will be imported into the folder specified in “Import to:”. Note the Browse button which allows you to specify any folder on your system for storing your imported photos.

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

SkyDrive in the root location, the first one you come to when you click SkyDrive in the top bar, can contain documents and folders. Folders in the root location have a Folder type parameter. Sub-folders, folders inside other folders, do not have a Folder type. You can see the Folder type in the information pane under Information.

In the root location the Folder type may be fixed for some folders (legacy Documents, Favorites). Other folders, and all newly added ones, can be of Folder type Documents or Photos and the Folder type can be changed.

When you click Documents in the left pane, only folders of Folder type Documents (and Favorites, if you have any of those) will be shown in the main area.

When you click Photos, only folders of Folder type Photos will be shown in the main area. These are the albums.

There is one other distinction: Only albums, i.e. folders of Folder type Photos, will show in Windows Live Photo Gallery in the upload dialog. So you can only upload photos to “albums”.

You can change the Folder type of folders in the root location. In the information pane, under Information, you can see the Folder type. There is a Change link.

Click on Change and a new page allows you to change the Folder type.

The two options are:

• ● Documents – Store documents, spreadsheets, and other files
• ● Photos – Store photos to show on your Photos page

To summarize: Albums are folders of folder type Photos. They are located in the root of your SkyDrive. They will be shown in the main display area when you click Photos. These albums will also be shown as album options when uploading from Live Photo Gallery.

Other folders and subfolders may contain photos – by moving individual photos or folders into them. When a folder, or subfolder, contains a photo, the folder icon will show that photo. When a folder contains more than one photo, the folder will play a continuous little slide show of the photos inside on the folder icon. You can see this by clicking the folder illustration here.

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

Many folks have more than one account, a personal one, and maybe a work-related account. Linking them makes switching easy, but does not affect the files or organization of either account. Each account still keeps all its settings and preferences, all the folder and album organization.

Linking the accounts is also straight-forward, here is how to go about it:

Click on your name or move the pointer over the down-pointing arrowhead behind your name (top-right of window). See the illustration. On the drop-down menu click Account.

Sign in to the page with your password. On the Account overview page, toward the bottom, in the Other options sections, click on the Linked IDs link.

The Manage linked IDs page shows what accounts are linked and has an Add linked ID link.

Click it to proceed to the Link a Windows Live ID page.

Once more your password is needed. Type in the credentials for the account you wish to add. Then click Link.

The Manage linked IDs page now shows the linked accounts. Note that there is an Unlink option to the right of each linked account name – you can unlink an account at any time.

How do you switch accounts?

With linked accounts all you need to do is click on your name or move the pointer to the down-pointing arrowhead behind your name.

The drop-down menu will show the linked accounts at the bottom. The active, displayed, account is highlighted. Just click on another account and the switch is made.

Note the other options on the drop-down menu. I like to assign different themes to my different accounts to keep myself reminded of which account I am in.

I also set Keep me signed in on the sign-in page. This way I do not need to sign in each time I want to visit SkyDrive or my mail.

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 16,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Sending photos to a prime-level SkyDrive album via email is another very useful option. The procedure must be enabled first.

Here is how:

Log in to your Windows Live account. In the upper right corner click on your name. In the drop down menu, click Options. See the red pointers in the illustration here.

On the options page in the lower right corner find and click Email publishing.

This takes you to the Email publishing page. Most of the page is greyed out until you click the Turn on email publishing check box.

When the form is enabled, there are four steps:

1. Enter the email address (up to three) from which photos can be sent to a SkyDrive album. Note that photos sent from any other address will not be delivered to the album, the email will just be lost.
2. Enter a “secret” word. This will become part of the address for sending the photos. This is just used to make the process more secure. (No spaces in this word!)
3. Select album codes. This is an optional step, codes, three-digit numbers, are pre-assigned to your albums. You can change these, but the ones offered will work just fine.
4. Click the Save button.

Once you have saved the information, there will be a display of the email addresses for sending the photos. Each album – and this is only for the prime-level albums, it does not work for albums inside other albums – has a unique email address. The address looks like this: name.album.secretword@spaces.live.com. Where name is a name derived from your name, it may be slightly different from your user name – be careful with that! The album will be the three digit album number (or other, if you changed it) to identify which album it is. The secretword is the word that you specified.

To send photos to an album you must originate the email from an email address you specified on this page. Attach the photo or photos to the email. Do not use the Photo album feature in Live Mail. Do not “Change to photo album”.

Be sure to use the correct email address from your Email publishing page.

If using Hotmail use Insert: Attachments, do not use the Photos link.

Enter a subject and message if you like so you can find and see the email in your sent messages. Only the photos get to your album, no messages, no hint that they were sent via email. Only JPG photos can be sent to albums, this does not work for sending documents, just pictures.

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

Picasa has a “Create Photo Collage” tool right under the folder name in Library view. The tool can also be launched from the Create menu where it is called “Picture collage …”. If you click the button, all of the photos in the folder will be loaded. If you want just some of the pictures select them (Ctrl+click) before launching the collage tool.

To use one photo as the base and to superimpose one or more others, first set the aspect ratio of the collage. My camera produces images in the 35mm camera aspect ratio of 1 to 1.5, so I select the “4 x 6: Small print” setting. This way the base picture will not get cropped. The “Picture Borders” setting allows putting a border on each of the superposed images. Click on the image to use as the base to select it, then under “Background Options” click “Use Image”.

The base photo will now fill the collage area and all selected photos will be superimposed. Since the small version of the base image is not needed, right-click it and select Remove. This will leave just the image or images that should be placed on the base photo. In the example here there is just one. It can be dragged to the desired position. Click on the insert image and a four-pointed arrow shape pointer tells that the image can be dragged for positioning. Move the pointer toward the center and a control ring and control handle – a little bulls-eye button – is displayed. drag the control handle sideways and the image is made larger (to right) or smaller (to left). Move it up or down and the image is rotated.

Really, this operation is faster than you can read about it. In no time at all, you can place the insert photo or photos just the way you want – in size, position, and rotation.

To finish, click “Create Collage” in the controls pane. The collage image will be created and saved. The default file location is in Pictures – Picasa – Collages. The finished collage will likely be much larger than the original image, so you may wish to resize it.

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

Load your photo into Paint. With the Text tool (see illustration) draw a text box starting approximately in the upper left position of the intended text.

The text box will resize when you release the mouse button. You will now see a dashed box in your photo and the Text Tools ribbon opens. Type your title.

The Text Tools in Paint

As long as you keep your pointer in the text box you can modify the text and the text box. There are resizing handles on the box – you know you can resize when the pointer changes to a double-ended arrow shape. You can select the text by dragging the pointer over it. You can change to any font on your computer. The font size box shows sizes from 8 to 72. You are not limited to these sizes. Just type in the size you want, even larger or smaller than the shown range, and the font will be changed to that size (note the size in the illustration above – it is set to 90).

The text will be set in the Color 1 selection. For 3D-effect, shadowed text, select the darker, shadow color. Position the text box to place the text. When the pointer is placed anywhere on the box outline, except near the resize handles, it changes to a four-headed arrow indicating that you can drag the box to another position. When you are happy with the text, font, and placement, click anywhere outside the text box. The text is now set. If it isn’t right, click Undo (or Ctrl+Z) and start over.

Next set the top color, normally a lighter shade, and open another text box and retype your title. Don’t worry about alignment, you can drag the text and place it precisely.

Drag the text box to position the text just the way you like. When you are satisfied, click anywhere outside the text box.

There are applications that can do a nicer job, but for shadowed text, Paint is easy and probably just as fast.

Lagniappe

(A lagniappe, pronounced “lan-yap”, is a small extra given to a customer at no charge, mostly in Cajun country.)

In Paint the selection of color is more flexible than you might think. There is an array of twenty colors to choose from. To set the color click the color number, Color 1 is the main one, Color 2 the “right-click” color, then click the box with the desired color. If that does not provide you with the exact shade, click Edit colors. This opens an Edit Colors window. Here you have a wider selection of fixed colors and an opportunity to define custom colors. In the larger area you reposition the mark (drag it) to define the hue and saturation – color and intensity. The vertical slider control sets the luminance of that color. You can even enter numeric values in the fields to define the color. Click Add to Custom Colors and the specified color is added and will appear in the bottom row of color boxes. Click OK to complete the color selection.

When you open the Edit Colors window the color presently set as Color 1 will already be set in the custom area. I find this particularly useful when I want a lighter or darker shade of a particular color. The luminance control can be used to select the shade without affecting the hue or saturation. Remember that the Color picker tool (the eye-dropper in the Tools area) can be used to pick a color from any place in a photo. This color can then be adjusted with Edit colors. Neat!

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

There is no obvious way to select the photo that should be used as the base. But, of course, there is a way.

Photo Fuse picks the thumbnail that is closest to the top left – first in the sort order – as the base photo. So the trick is to make sure that the photo you want as the base is the first one in the sort order. Normally photos are sorted by file name, this can be easily changed, but for this particular purpose, my method is to use the rating system. Assign a 5-star rating to the primary photo, and either not rate the others or assign lower ratings. Then sort the thumbnails by Rating.

Here is how to do this quickly, I will use only two photos to demonstrate, but you can have any number in the folder. Click on the thumbnail of the desired base photo, click Rate in the Organize group of the Home ribbon. Click on 5 stars. If you have rated any other photos as five stars, rate them lower.

Click the View tab. Click Ratings then click Reverse sort. Your 5 star rated photo is now at the top.

Just select all the thumbnails from which you want to use portions. Click the Create tab, click Photo Fuse in the Tools group.

Photo Fuse will come up with the 5 star rated photo as the base. You can then move the selection window to the desired area and select the area you like best..

Photo Fuse does an amazing job of stitching in the selected area. One caution: Be careful in setting the selection area so you don’t include some unwanted detail.

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

Can you re-import the photos? You can, provided that you did not erase them on the camera. We are assuming here that you have set up your computer to use Windows Live Gallery to import photos from your camera. Just click the Next button (see illustration). In the next window you will see the photos on your camera arranged by date. It will say “0 items selected in 0 groups”. Note that the check box in front of the groups is not checked.

Click on the group check box that you wish to import again. There is also a “Select all” option. Make sure you have selected just the ones you wish to import once more. Click Import and the process starts.

While the photos are being imported you will see the progress in a dialog like the one shown here. Note the check box with the legend “Erase after importing”. This means “erase from the camera after the photos have been imported to the computer”. I always leave that unchecked, which is also the default. This way the photos stay on the camera.

So what happens if you already have the photos on your computer? A new set will be imported, if the file name already exists, the import process will add a number in parenthesis at the end of the file name for the new file. You will wind up with duplicated photos. No harm will be done to photos that are already on your computer. Of course you can delete the duplicates.

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

On the left the folder “Bob” is inside folder “Ann”. You can tell by the little arrowhead. In fact, until you expand (click on) folder Ann you cannot see folder Bob in the navigation pane.

To move it so it is on par with – at the same level as – folder Ann, proceed as follows: Drag the folder to the name of the folder where you want it. In this illustration we want folder Bob to be inside My Pictures. So it is dragged to the My Pictures folder name. Notice the little note (screen tip) that says “Move to My Pictures”. When it says the correct folder name, drop it (let go the mouse button). You have moved the folder.

You can use this procedure to move any folder to be inside any other folder, even inside sub-folders.

Sometimes the procedure will not succeed, such as when a folder is open in an application. Just close the application and try again.

You can reorganize your folders in the navigation pane of Windows Live Photo Gallery or in the navigation pane of Windows Explorer. (Do not have both open at the same time, see warning above.)

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

]]> http://askludwig.com/2011/09/20/how-do-i-move-a-sub-folder-up-a-level/feed/ 0 ludwigkeck image http://askludwig.com/2011/09/13/why-can-i-see-an-https-site-without-signing-in/ http://askludwig.com/2011/09/13/why-can-i-see-an-https-site-without-signing-in/#comments Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:33:05 +0000 Ludwig https://askludwig.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/why-can-i-see-an-https-site-without-signing-in/ Continue reading →]]> The “s” in “https” stands for “secure” (“HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure”). This used to show up mainly when shopping or banking online, where you normally signed in to your account. Many other sites use “https” to provide a secure communications link between the site and the user’s browser. In particular Windows Live SkyDrive uses https full-time, even if you are not signed in or are viewing a friends SkyDrive albums.

The “secure” part applies only to the connection, not the site nor your browser. You must still be careful about the site – make sure that you really are on the site you wish to visit.

Only the connection is secure. This protects you from someone snooping in the next booth or from a car outside. You are not protected from the person looking over your shoulder!

The Google Chrome browser provides information about the connection when you right-click on the little padlock icon in front of the web address.

Setting up the secure connection happens when you first get to the site. You wont notice this fascinating routine. First the site’s server performs a key exchange with your browser. This too is done securely, in the illustration you can see the listing of “RSA as the key exchange mechanism”. If you are interested in the inner workings, you can find plenty of information on the Internet. Normal traffic after the key exchange is then done with a faster method that uses 128-bit encryption.

Be careful when reading your email in a public place. Not all email services have switched over to https. Gmail, as an example, uses secure communication. Moving documents to and from SkyDrive is done with secure connections.

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

]]> http://askludwig.com/2011/09/13/why-can-i-see-an-https-site-without-signing-in/feed/ 0 ludwigkeck image http://askludwig.com/2011/09/04/can-i-pin-my-hotmail-inbox-to-the-taskbar/ http://askludwig.com/2011/09/04/can-i-pin-my-hotmail-inbox-to-the-taskbar/#comments Sun, 04 Sep 2011 20:13:12 +0000 Ludwig https://askludwig.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/can-i-pin-my-hotmail-inbox-to-the-taskbar/ Continue reading →]]> For users of Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 9 it is easy to pin a Hotmail icon to the taskbar or to create a link on the desktop. This makes access to online mail just a click or two away.

Using Internet Explorer 9 sign in to your Hotmail account. Move the pointer to the small icon in front of the web address in the address field. Note the little message balloon that says: “Drag to taskbar to pin site”.

As you drag the – now larger – icon across an empty space on your desktop the message now says: “Create link in Desktop”. You can do that by just dropping the icon on an empty spot. This gives you a desktop shortcut.

If you continue the drag to the taskbar, the message now says “Pin to Taskbar”. Just drop it on the taskbar.

The desktop shortcut when double-clicked starts your browser and takes you right to your Windows Live home page (if you selected “Keep me signed in” when last you signed in to your account).

When the icon on the taskbar is clicked it also takes you to your Windows Live home page. Right-click the taskbar icon and the jump list shows the options Home, Inbox, Calendar, Contacts, Send email. This makes getting to those services really easy.

There is another little feature that you might find useful. When you launch your browser from the taskbar or the desktop link, a small icon is placed in front of the Internet Explorer 9 “back” button and the little “home” icon on the right is removed.

The message balloon for that link also shows you the keyboard shortcut method for getting to your home page, Alt+Home. So, wherever to roam to on the Internet, you can get right back to your Windows Live home page.

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

]]> http://askludwig.com/2011/09/04/can-i-pin-my-hotmail-inbox-to-the-taskbar/feed/ 0 ludwigkeck image image image image image http://askludwig.com/2011/09/02/can-i-put-a-shortcut-to-skydrive-on-my-windows-7-desktop/ http://askludwig.com/2011/09/02/can-i-put-a-shortcut-to-skydrive-on-my-windows-7-desktop/#comments Sat, 03 Sep 2011 01:12:58 +0000 Ludwig https://askludwig.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/can-i-put-a-shortcut-to-skydrive-on-my-windows-7-desktop/ Continue reading →]]> You certainly can, however, you need to use Internet Explorer 9. Sign in to your Windows Live account. Click “SkyDrive” on the menu bar to display your SkyDrive contents page.

If your browser is maximized, click “Restore down” and resize the window so you can see some blank area of your desktop.

In the browser address field note the small SkyDrive logo in front of the address. Move your pointer to that symbol. The message balloon will say “Drag to taskbar to pin site”. Drag the little logo to a blank area of your desktop. The SkyDrive logo will be bigger and the message balloon will say “Create a link in desktop”. Just let go the mouse button to drop the link. You will now have a desktop shortcut to your SkyDrive.

If you opted to “Keep me signed in” the last time you signed in to Windows Live, this shortcut will launch your browser and take you right to your SkyDrive page. Just double-click the icon.

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

]]> http://askludwig.com/2011/09/02/can-i-put-a-shortcut-to-skydrive-on-my-windows-7-desktop/feed/ 1 ludwigkeck image image http://askludwig.com/2011/09/02/how-do-i-pin-skydrive-to-the-taskbar-in-windows-7/ http://askludwig.com/2011/09/02/how-do-i-pin-skydrive-to-the-taskbar-in-windows-7/#comments Sat, 03 Sep 2011 00:47:59 +0000 Ludwig https://askludwig.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/how-do-i-pin-skydrive-to-the-taskbar-in-windows-7/ Continue reading →]]> The Windows Live SkyDrive is easier to use than ever. Here is how to pin a SkyDrive shortcut to your taskbar in Windows 7.

Note: You can do this only when using Internet Explorer 9.

Sign in to your Windows Live account, on the menu line click SkyDrive. When your SkyDrive page is displayed note the browser address field. It will show a little SkyDrive logo ahead of the address as shown in the illustration here.

When you hover the pointer over that logo the little message flag says: “Drag to taskbar to pin site”.

Do just that.

The SkyDrive logo will then appear on your taskbar. Whenever you want to open SkyDrive just click on the logo.

If you have elected to “Keep me signed in” the last time you signed in to Windows Live, Internet Explorer will launch and go right to your SkyDrive when the taskbar logo is clicked.

That’s all it takes.

But wait! There is more: That link on the taskbar can do more than just take you to your SkyDrive files. Right-click on the icon and you can select to go directly to see just your documents or just your albums. The same way as if you had clicked Documents or Photos on the drop-down menu from SkyDrive on your Windows Live home page.

You can even start a new Web Apps document, but, alas, it will be in the SkyDrive root, not inside any document folder.

Want to go to your Windows Live home page? Click on the taskbar SkyDrive icon. When your files page is displayed, click on “Windows Live” in the upper left – that takes you right to your home page.

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

]]> http://askludwig.com/2011/09/02/how-do-i-pin-skydrive-to-the-taskbar-in-windows-7/feed/ 0 ludwigkeck image image image image http://askludwig.com/2011/08/28/do-i-need-a-live-com-account-to-share-a-skydrive-photo-album-with-friends/ http://askludwig.com/2011/08/28/do-i-need-a-live-com-account-to-share-a-skydrive-photo-album-with-friends/#comments Sun, 28 Aug 2011 20:15:55 +0000 Ludwig https://askludwig.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/do-i-need-a-live-com-account-to-share-a-skydrive-photo-album-with-friends/ Continue reading →]]> The short answer is “No”. You do need to have a Windows Live ID. If you use Hotmail, Live Messenger, XBox LIVE, you have a Windows Live ID. If you have an MSN or a Office Live Small Business email address, you have a Windows Live ID.

If you do not have a Windows Live ID, you can open a new account or register an existing email address from another service as your Windows Live ID. You can sign up at live.com.

With a Windows Live ID you get SkyDrive where you can store and share photos and documents.

.:.

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

]]> http://askludwig.com/2011/08/28/do-i-need-a-live-com-account-to-share-a-skydrive-photo-album-with-friends/feed/ 0 ludwigkeck http://askludwig.com/2011/06/21/can-the-defaults-for-wordpad-be-changed/ http://askludwig.com/2011/06/21/can-the-defaults-for-wordpad-be-changed/#comments Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:41:07 +0000 Ludwig https://askludwig.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/can-the-defaults-for-wordpad-be-changed/ Continue reading →]]> In Windows 7 the default word processing program is WordPad which offers basic features including font and paragraph controls. The default settings are fixed and not easily changed by the average user. This article shows a work-around for “pre-setting”  font and paragraph properties to more desirable settings.

The approach creates a desktop shortcut for WordPad that opens a “template” document, thus loading the desired settings. The template is set to read-only so is is not accidentally over-written when the document is saved.

Prepare a WordPad “template” file

• Open WordPad in the normal manner.
• Set the desired features such as font, font size, paragraph spacing, tab positions, without typing any text.
• Save the document to your normal document folder using a name such as “WordPad-template”.
• Open Windows Explorer and locate the “My Documents” folder (or the folder you are using for documents).
• Locate the file and right-click on it. Click Properties (at the bottom of the menu).
• In the properties dialog click Read-only so the box is checked.
• Click OK.
• Click in the address bar of Windows Explorer. The folder location will be shown and selected.
• Click Ctrl+C to copy the folder address for use later.

Now your template file is ready.

Create a shortcut that loads the template

The next step is to create a shortcut on the desktop that starts WordPad and loads the template file. 

• Click Start, type “wordpad”. WordPad will be listed at the top of the start menu and be already selected. Right-click on that program listing for WordPad. 
• Move the pointer down to Send to then to the right and click on  Desktop (create shortcut).
• Right-click the newly created shortcut icon and click on Properties (at the bottom of the menu). The WordPad Properties dialog opens with the Shortcut tab selected.
• Find the Target: text box. Click anywhere in the box and press the End key to get to the end of the text that is already in the box.
• Press the spacebar to enter a space then type in the full name of your template file. You can see that illustrated here. I have enclosed my template file name in quotes, this is only necessary if the file name contains spaces, but it does not hurt.
• Locate the Start in: text box. Click in the box then press Ctrl+V to paste the saved address of your documents folder.
• Click OK.

Using WordPad with your defaults

Your shortcut is now ready to use. Every time you double-click this shortcut WordPad opens and loads the template file. Your presets will be applied to any text you enter. You can still use all the controls.

When you click the Save icon or select Save or Save as the “Save as” dialog will open and you can enter the name of your document. Even if you try to overwrite the template file Windows will not let you do so. You will see a warning like this:

So you can safely and effectively use this approach to preset WordPad to the font and other properties that you prefer.

Happy writing!

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

.:.

First you need images. These need to be stored on the Internet so they can be accessed and displayed. Lastly they need to be an acceptable size.

Let’s start with that last item, the size. Sidebars come in various sizes. You want images that fit the sidebar of you blog. Don’t know how wide your sidebar is? In your WordPress Dashboard, click Themes (under Appearance in the navigation pane on the left). Your current theme is shown on the top. There is a link, “Read more about …”, click it and scroll down to find the “Quick Specs” panel about your theme.

It will list the column width, the sidebar width and the header image size. Note the sidebar width. I suggest you make your images about 10 pixels narrower than the sidebar so that they will fit nicely. For this blog, the sidebar width is 212 pixels, I make my images 200 pixels wide. The height is not so important, but the Links list looks best with strip images so it does not get to be too long.

Now what images should you use? If you link to other blogs or sites, the headers of those pages make excellent images. They show a visual of the target page even before your visitor gets there.

Making the logo images

Open your browser to your target page. Do a screen capture. I use the tools built into Windows 7, so Alt-PrintScreen captures the open window. Next open Paint and click Paste. The image of the browser will now be shown in Paint.

Click Select and drag a frame around the header image or header area of the page. Click Crop. The header image is now the only thing in Paint.

Click Resize. In this dialog click Pixels. Then enter the size for the width of the image. In my case that is 200. Leave the checkmark on Maintain aspect ratio so the image will not get distorted. Click OK.

The image will now be shown in the small size that you have selected. Save it into your Pictures folder (or another location) giving it a name that tells you what it is later on.

Do this with your other target pages that you will want to link to on your blog.

Windows 7 Paint saves the images as PNG format – that is fine for this intended use.

Upload the images to your WordPress Media Library

Once you have made your link logo images, upload them to the Media Library. In your WordPress Dashboard expand the Media section (click on Media) then click Add New. The Upload New Media page opens.

Click Browse. In the File Upload dialog locate the folder with your link logo images. Click on one of them. Click Open. Then click Upload in the Upload New Media page.

Repeat for your other images.

Now the images are in your Media Library.

Add images to Links

Open your Media Library – click Media -  Library in the navigation bar. All your images are listed. Click on the one you want. The Edit Media page for that image opens. Under File URL you can see the full web address of the image. Select it (hold down the left mouse button and drag over the address). Press Ctrl+C to copy the address.

Now click Links – All Links, then the one of interest. Scroll down until you see Advanced – Image Address. Click in the address text space then press Ctrl+V to paste the address. Click Update Link. That’s it. Do this for the others.

Be sure to check your Links Widget to make sure that the the Show Link Image box is checked. If it is not, click it so it’s checked and click Save.

Now your Links Widget displays your links with the logo images you prepared. Hurray!

Also see:

How do I show links to other blogs in the sidebar of my WordPress blog?

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

.:.

Your blog already has a number of links in a category called “Blogroll” that were set up along with your blog. You can modify this group, but it is easier to add a new “Link Category”. You need to add the links you want, and finally you need to place the Links Widget into the sidebar. Lets take these up in order.

Set up a Link Category

On the WordPress Dashboard, in the navigation pane on the left, find Links. If it is not expanded click it so the tabs “All Links”, “Add New”, and “Link Categories” show. Click Link Categories to display the Link Categories page.

In the Name field enter the title you wish to show above the link list in the sidebar. You can enter a description to explain the list in more detail. Then click the button below the fields, “Add New Link Catergory”.

This will add the category to the listing on the right.

Add new links

Click the Add New tab to bring up the Add New Link page. Fill in the spaces with the name of the blog or site, the full URL, that includes the “http://” part, and some description of the link.

In the Categories field click the category that you set up earlier.

Be sure to click the Add Link button.

You will see a message “Link added.”

Continue adding the other links that you wish to show in the same way until you have entered them all.

You can go back to make correction and changes at any time. Click the All Links tab, then move the pointer to the link name. The Edit and Delete links will show up as you hover there.

Just click Edit to bring up the Edit Link page which looks just like the Add New Link page. You can make all the needed changes.

Of course you can go back at any time to add additional links or to remove some from your list.

With the list of links completed, the final step is to add the widget to the sidebar.

Add the Links Widget to the sidebar

Under Appearance in the navigation bar find the Widgets tab – you may have to expand the group. Click the Widgets tab.

In the main widget area find the Links bar and drag it to the sidebar. You can position it up or down in the sidebar by just dragging it like any other widget.

Click the down arrowhead to show the options. The default category will be Blogroll, click the down arrow and click your category.

You can check the other options. You can also define how many links to show.

Thne click the Save button and the widget will be shown on your blog.

Note: If you had your blog open in another browser window, you may have to click the refresh link to see the latest changes.

You clicked Show Link Image and there is no image with the listing there?  That another good question and calls for its own answer. It is covered in another post:

How do I add images to my WordPress Links Widget?

© 2011 Ludwig Keck

.:.