A badge is like a mini-advertisement for your blog. It’s usually an image link, and can be posted in the sidebar or post of another site to drive traffic your blog. Fashion bloggers exchange links all the time, and badges are just another (prettier!) way to do this.

Creating a badge
1. In an image editing program, create a new document 210 pixels wide by 100 pixels high (Note: your badge can be whatever size you like). You can use a program like Photoshop, The Gimp, or PhotoFiltre, or a browser-based application.

2. Add the desired text and images to your document. You can create something as simple as text on a colored background, or dress it up with pictures. It’s best to include the name of your blog in a prominent position.

3. Save the document as a JPEG, GIF, or PNG and upload it to your favorite image hosting service– try TinyPic, ImageShack or PhotoBucket.

Adding the badge to your blog
The HTML code for your link will be as follows:

<a href=”http://YOURBLOG.com”><img border=”0″ src=”http://THELOCATIONOFYOURBADGE.jpg”></a>

If you’d like to add a textbox with the code so visitors can easily grab it for their own sites, you’ll also need to include the following:

<form><textarea rows=”7″ cols=”20″ readonly=”readonly”><a href=”http://YOURBLOG.com” target=”_blank”><img src=”THELOCATIONOFYOURBADGE.jpg”/></a></textarea></form>

The number of rows and columns (cols) can be changed to fit your blog’s sidebar as needed. You may have to experiment with that a bit!

Adding your badge to this site!
Once you’ve added your badge to your blog, post the image’s address and your blog’s URL (the complete address with the http:// included) in the comments here and I’ll add it to the sidebar on this site! *Please note that we’re only posting links to fashion & style blogs at this time.

To grab someone else’s badge, simply copy the code from their textbox and paste it into an HTML widget on your blog! Speaking of that, go on and grab my badge…you know you want to.

Update 11/09: We’re no longer able to add the badges that were created based on these original instructions to the site as they’re too wide for the double sidebar. We’ll figure something else out!