Do you have a badge on your blog, telling people you’re a member of 20 Something Bloggers?
Why A Badge?
There are quite a few reasons to do so. The most common is so that your readers who are also on 20SB can find your profile there. You also might convince someone to join the community because they want to know more about you, or connect with you in the forums or groups.
Readers often find you via other bloggers, twitter, or facebook. Leaving them to search the community for your profile means that they may end up wading through all the profiles with the same name as you…or they may not know your name at all. Providing them with a link directly to your profile helps to skip all the trouble.
Below we’ll outline our badge options, and suggest a tweak to make sure the link points to your profile.
The Static Badge
We put together a simple badge, below, because so many bloggers have trouble with the Flash option originally provided. That’s usually not their fault; WordPress has a a particularly hard time with the code.
Tips: When you go grab the badge here, right click (or ctrl+click on a Mac) and choose to Save Image As… Pick a name for the badge and save it somewhere that you can find it. Upload it to your blog, put it in your sidebar, and link it to your profile.
If this is a bit too techy for you, you can copy the code below into your sidebar (or a sidebar widget in most cases), but replace “YOURPROFILE” with the username at the end of your link address when you click “My Page” on the 20SB network. As an example, I would replace it with “d“.
<a href="http://www.20SB.net/profile/YOURPROFILE
"><img src="http://api.ning.com/files/G4pCztZsSY9bLt-kDupAv-8S1LK6vIz*9xuYLXH4Tk*LdzRMLr*Yw33c5VjwSS0VCuYOK9c1JmfZzGoVijVWpqmthv9GaFLt/20sb_member.png" alt="" /></a>
The Flash Badge
It’s called the flash badge because that’s the language this badge is coded in…not because it’s more flashy. This badge is our original, and may give you some trouble depending on your blogging platform. The page it’s found on gives you three size options; these instructions went with the small size, but work for them all.
Tips: This customizable badge is found here. You tweak it, and you simply copy the embed code that’s produced. The problem is that the code you receive does not link to your profile. It links to the front page of 20SB. In order to fix this, you will notice the following section of the code you receive looks like this:
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="206" height="104" codebase="http:/ / download.macromedia.com/ pub/ shockwave/ cabs/ flash/ swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"></ object>
<small><a href="http:/ / www.20sb.net/profile/YOURPROFILE">Visit <em>20 Something Bloggers</ em></ a></small>
You need to add the bold language to the code, and it will send readers to your profile. You’ll notice that the example badge up there links to my profile, as I’ve tweaked the code accordingly.
Hopefully these tips help you put a great badge on your site so that everyone is able to find you in the community. You never know…they might be nominating you for awards, or just want to be friends there! Either way, help them out!
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
FYI — The code for the static badge needs a single quote replaced with a double quote, right after the YOURPROFILE part…
i use the second badge and the trick didn’t really work…sorry!
i don’t really mind, just thought you might want to know.
thnx
The second tip didn’t work. I added my information and it still links to the main page of 20SB.
Okay so do you add a badge to your profile before you get accepted? Or is it kinda like an award for being accepted? I am a little confused.
Brittany, no you don’t need to add it to get accepted into 20SB. Are you in the queue?
hello! referring to u all above
it worked for me just try clicking on the part above that mentions customizable badge found here 
Cheers!
The new blogger/blogspot customize options will *not* let me put either in? Help?
I just put this badge up! Thanks!