Coding your RedBubble Journal

energymagic said this about 5 hours ago in my last post :

Hi Stephen, I am trying to grasp a few of the technical tips you have very kindly been sharing. I am impressed with your website and your RB page and love your Kangaroo Island series.
I read in Sarah Wheatons page how to do the tags and I printed it off and have had a go but not sure, because it is not working for me.
I would like to add these links to the profile page. I would also like to learn how to make paragraphs? My question, where do I write the http line?

Firstly let me say this: Thank you ever so much, it helps my ego to hear words of encouragement and affirmation of my abilitiy.

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“HTML” & “CSS” vs The RedBubble Format

I have been teaching myself “HTML” and “CSS” [and other web-design stuff!] for over 7 years. I’ve created a few sites along the way, and have two clients currently in progress.
When I discovered redbubble, all I had to was adjust my thinking. This is what I had to learn:

A. To bold text, wrap it with asterix.

B. To put text in italics, wrap it with underscores.

C. To strike out text, wrap it with dash’s. (Discovered whilst editing this post!)

D. To put a link into text, it is a bit more interesting, but there is a real simple method:
1. First hold the SHIFT key down and hold; now press the quot-symbol key twice, then the colon key once. Done?
2. To the RIGHT of the colon, put the link, ie http://www.redbubble.com/people/stephentrepreneur/journal/show/18520
3. Inside the quot-symbols put the text you want. ie Advantage of Choosing RedBubble
In text format, this should read as:
quot Advantage of Choosing RedBubble quot colon http://www.redbubble.com/people/stephentrepreneur/journal/show/18520 (without any spaces)
Advantage of Choosing RedBubble

^{If this doesn’t work, it’s probably a real simple error. Even I do it blush ! To save errors from happening, type your message in any external editor – MS Notepad is probably the most accessible format-free program on your computer.}

^{TIP: Find MS NotePad in your Start Menu to create a shortcut on your desktop. Even XP users can do this! (I use XP and keep TWENTYSEVEN icons on my desktop!)}

Anyhooo, moving on.

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Here are a few more simple key-commands for use in RedBubble. Sure you may not use them – but they are fun to know.

In HTML, both text and links can have what are casually called ‘hover-over messages’ but are actually the ‘title’ elements.
Why am I telling you this? Because sometimes you don’t want to write everything so you use shorthand. So we say TY for thank you, IMHO for In My Humble Opinion, and I call my wife SWMBO – She Who Must Be Obeyed. If you ever watched the ABC program “Rumple of the Bailey”, you’ll understand this.

Again moving on…

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Right, let’s create a ‘title / hover-message’. Guess what? It uses the same method as putting a link around text:

1. First hold the SHIFT key down and hold; now press the quot-symbol key twice.

2. Backspace once till your cursor is BETWEEN the quot-symbols.

3. Hold the SHIFT key down whilst pressing NINE and ZERO. Yep, this creates an open and close bracket symbol. (Sorry if this sounds so simple – but you’ll be amazed at how many people won’t get it right!)
Done?

4. Between the first quot-symbol and the open bracket write the Acronym (or Abbreviation for those pedantic CSS-creators!). ie SWMBO

5. Between the close-bracket and the final quot-symbol write the full text. ie She Who Must Be Obeyed

In text format, should read as:

^{quot SWMBO open-bracket She Who Must Be Obeyed close-bracket quot}

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Right. That’s enough for now. You want more?! Ok, one more trick, but for this one you need to keep your fingers crossed and your redbubble account active (and an open wallet – I’m not cheap! KIDDING! Well…)

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JUST ONE MORE LESSON

Want to make cells of text? Don’t know what I mean. Check out the “DISCLAIMER at the base of the last journal entry . See how the two cells sit left and right of each other?

Ah, now you want to know more. The answer is relatively simple, but has to be done right – otherwise the results look a little skewiff.

It’s all in the pipes. The what? Pipes. Don’t know these? Ok, take your hands off the keyboard. On the right is your ENTER key (if not, return to purchase for refund ASAP!) Just above that to the far right before the numeric keypad is a forward-slash key. Hold the SHIFT key and press this key. Woooh… Neat trick hey?! Yep this is a pipe. Don’t ask me, I don’t know why it’s called this – it just is. Maybe the maker of the keyboard was smoking one when he..

Anyway, here goes my attempt at teaching this technique. Right. Put your hands back on the keyboard.

1. Create one pipe. You know how!

2. Hit the SPACE key, Type Cell 1, hit SPACE again. (The SPACE’s are for formatting, but I prefer to put them in.)

3. Don’t hit ENTER – just keep writing on the same line – and put another pipe here.

4. Type Cell 2, then another pipe.
Euphorically, oops, I mean theoretically, this should appear like this:

cell 1

cell2

The other interesting effect of this is that the text within is about 1point smaller than the normal text. And apparently you can have an infinite number of columns in a table – but don’t go testing this too much I don’t think the RedBubble boys would want us to break their system! I hope their coders are working weekends!

cell 1

cell 2

cell 3

cell 4

cell 5

cell 6

^{TIP: Remember to put that last pipe in, or all you’ll get is a lot text with pipes in it!}

Ok, this might sound a bit daunting. webgrrl has a very colorful image that can be printed off. I’ve also made an image of just The BASIC FORMAT Codes

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As for the redbubble sales, I am pleased to say that it is working for me and that I have been here for a couple of months.

Me too!
RedBubble is certainly inspirational to both amateurs and professionals. It’s thankful that a few Aussie blokes decided to put the effort in to provide such a great service for everyone ‘Down Under’.

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I have also purchased quite a few of my own works because the quality is excellent and a very easy way of getting my work quickly and affordable to my clients.
My website is “www.energymagic.com.au”; If you get a chance I would appreciate your feedback. It definitely needs some upgrading.

And now you have purchased one of mine. Lucy, thank you ever so much for purchasing this photograph. Not only am I happy, my wife [ “SWMBO” ] is very happy!
Somehow she thinks the money is going toward her own dSLR…

I’ve checked out your website. The colors are good, the aesthetics are great … I’ll contact you privately about how I can help you a bit more.

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^{This post will be periodically edited as either I or commentors notice any errors. Yes, please let me know if something is completely wrong or grammatically incorrect.}

AMENDMENT and ADDITION
webgrrl gives greater information to help improve formatting your text on RedBubble. Her visual-download is very impressive with a large range of formatting-codes.

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Tags:

adelaide, ascii, asterix, australia, bold, canon, cells, code, coding, eos, ezcreate_com_au, format, information, italic, photograph, photographer, photography, pipes, redbubble, stephen_mitchell, stephentrepreneur, tables, tutorial and underscore