A great way to give potential readers a quick glimpse into your blog and all you’re about is sharing some popular posts on your sidebar.  This is a pretty easy and IMPORTANT way to really BEAUTIFY your Blog!

Starting from step one on a blog can be really overwhelming, but if you take baby steps and work on one little thing at a time, then gradually you’ll realize that you are on your way to making your blog beautiful… all by yourself.

• Fabulous Fonts
• Dreamy Header
• Sensational Signature w/Graphics
• Customized Sidebar Titles
• Easy Watermark Image
• Customized Favicon
• DIY Quote Box
• Adding a Custom Menu Bar
• Sharing your pic on Comments through Gravatar
• Top WordPress Plugins
• Promote your Blog with Custom Email Signature & For Outlook
• How to NOT completely lose your Picnik Faves

Blogger and WordPress both have widgets that automatically add a list of your popular posts  to your sidebar based on number of pageviews or number of comments, but I like to be able to CHOOSE for myself what posts I’m showcasing.

Now I can go the easy route and just make a list of my posts as text links for my sidebar and call it done, but how much better to have each post labeled with a picture from the post to really draw attention to the great stuff you’ve got going on!

Step 1… Pick your Top Posts!  You can base it on number of comments or pageviews or number of pinterest pins or simply just what YOUR favorites are.  Don’t go overboard.  Narrow it down to your top five or so and try to keep a good variety.  You don’t want them ALL to be wreath projects or recipes or whatever.

This is where you can showcase what YOU think are your BEST posts.  What five posts would you want visitors to read before deciding if they are going to click away or click subscribe?

Step 2… Visit those posts and choose the best picture.  Upload those pics to picmonkey.  {Sniff! Today is the first day without Picnik!}

Step 3… Crop pics. You want all your pics to be roughly the same shape and size which can be tricky especially when you sometimes only have portrait shaped pics on a post and you need landscaped ones.   You can make all yours pics square if you want or you can select 4×6 to make them rectangle shaped.

I chose 4×6 and moved it in the general area I wanted.  Then I switched back to the “no constraints” choice and widened as I needed.

Step 4… Add Space for the Title.   Click on the frames button on the left. {If you want your pics with rounded corners, then add that first.}

Then choose “Simple Edge.”  Change your outer and inner colors to white and adjust the thickness to zero.  We don’t want any borders here.  We just need the room for the caption.

Drag the Caption Space button all the way over giving you lots of white space.  We can crop out what we don’t need.

Step 5… Add your Caption.  Click the “P” button on the left and type in your post title.  Change the color and font as needed and drag it down to the white caption space at the bottom.  Since this is going to be a smallish button on your sidebar, make the caption bigger than you think you’ll need so it will be readable by a normal person.

Now we can crop any extra white space we ended up with under our caption.  Click Save and we’re done!

You can skip the caption step if you already have your post title ON your image like a lot of us do now for easy pinterest pinning!

Step 6… Host your pics and copy the html code.  On blogger or wordpress, open a new post and upload each pic.  {Or if you’re not worried about maxing out the limited number of pageviews allowed on the free option, you can use photobucket.com.}

Go to HTML view and copy all the code.

On blogger, add a html gadget and paste all the code there.  You may need to hit enter to separate them or add the code <br> in between for a line break.

On WordPress, go to widgets, add a text box and paste all the code there.  Depending on how it was uploaded you may have to press enter for your line breaks.

Step 7… Adjust the Pic size.  You may need to add this bit of code “width=”125″ height=”125″ right after your img src code like this…

<a href=”http://www.livinglaughingandloving.com/2011/05/from-then-to-now.html” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.livinglaughingandloving.com/images/journeythroughpain.png” “width=”125″ height=”125” /></a>

Or if that part of the code is already there, you may just need to adjust the number  based on how big your sidebar is.  You can also add <center> to the beginning and </center> to the end for them all to be centered on your sidebar.

Step 8… Link each Pic to its Post.  This is the most important step!  Right now the html code isn’t linking to all those awesome posts you picked to showcase, so we need to go to each of those posts one at a time and highlight and copy the post url so we can link it up.  {Make sure you are clicked on the post itself and then highlight and copy the url at the top of the page.}

After the <a href=” you need to paste the url of the post you’re linking to.  First highlight the url of the image that is already there, and then paste in each post url that you copied.

It should look similar to this.  The bolded section is where you should see each post url.

<a href=”http://www.livinglaughingandloving.com/2011/05/from-then-to-now.html” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.livinglaughingandloving.com/images/journeythroughpain.png” “width=”125″ height=”125” /></a>

It’s also a good idea to make sure you have this little bit of code too… target=”_blank” after the url so that each link will open up in a new window.  That way the reader won’t completely leave the original page they were on.

NOW, do that for each post/pic, and we are REALLY done!  Woot!! Check your sidebar, and hopefully you see some beautifully captioned favorite post pics!

Remember that I go OVERBOARD in sharing details of the process just in case something trips you up along the way.  Sometimes, though, that makes the tutorial seem CRAZY complicated and hard.  It’s REALLY NOT!  Trust me!!  :)

What are your thoughts?  Do you like seeing popular posts with pics on bloggers’ sidebars?  Do you use it to get a quick sample of what that blog is all about???

Stay tuned for lots more bloggy diy goodness coming down the pike.  Even without my beloved Picnik.  :)

*Sometimes I link up at these parties… Weekend Bloggy Link up, Tatertots & Jello, House of Hepworths,Bowl Full of Lemons,Organize & Decorate Everything, Not Just a Housewife, Funky Junk Interiors, Shabby Creek Cottage, Skip to my Lou,Today’s Creative Blog, the 36th Avenue, Thrifty Décor Chick, Home Stories A-Z, Five Days Five Ways, How to Nest for Less, Positively Splendid, Six Sisters Stuff, and Someday Crafts. You should check ‘em out!!