I changed the header image on this site recently. I had been using the default blue image which ships with Kubrick (the default theme which ships with WordPress 1.5).
I am not a graphic designer and I don’t have graphic design tools at my disposal so I needed a method of doing this which was idiot-proof! Fortunately I came across Owen Winkler’s fabulous Kubrickr - Kubrickr is a tool that lets you replace the image at the top of your WordPress 1.5 blog with a nice photo from Flickr.
Here is how it works:
- You browse to the Kubrickr site
- Type some words that relate to your blog into the search box and click Submit (at this point Kubrickr searches through the images on Flickr for tags which match your search term)
- Scroll through the search results until you find a suitable image, select it and click Submit
- On the next screen, drag a selection box inside the image to mark the area you want to use for your header image and click Crop
- When prompted, save the file to your local disk
- Using your ftp client application, log into your blog, locate the existing header image (/wp-content/themes/Default/images/kubrickheader.jpg) and rename it
- Now upload your new kubrickheader.jpg file and hey presto! new header image in place.
So easy, even I could do it!
The only quibble I have is that the grey borders on the image don’t quite match the grey of the blog’s background. Other than that, I love it.
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That’s funny I just put my own picture over the blue header myself a couple days ago. I had some pictures already available to me. What I did to get the appropriate matching border is the following (note this is on Mac OS X):
1. Using “GraphicConverter” crop or resize the photo to the appropriate size (760×200).
2. Under “GraphicConverter” open the original kubrickheader.jpg
a. using the magic pen at a tolerance of 70 select the white part of the border
(this should highlight both white and gray parts of the border).
b. then do
3. Go to your picture under “GraphicConverter” do postition the border
correctly.
4. Save and ftp new graphic where you would like.
I initially used the “personalheader.jpg” place holder but found out that is really used
when you want to have a photo on top of the header.
Anyways, I found GraphicConverter under Mac OS X good enough to do most picture manipulations.
Great Terry,
I haven’t tried GraphicConverter - I must try that.
Thanks for the tip - I’ll let you know how I get on,
Tom
Oh, I did notice your background gray really doesn’t match the gray boundary on at least my kubrickheader.jpg. Not sure if you changed the background color or what. But that is probably the reason for the mismatch problem you are having from kubrickr. I expect the only way around that is the change the boundary color. You should be able to do that with GraphicConverter too.
–td
Ah!
Terry, you are a star - you set me on the right path. I don’t know how, but I appear to have a darker version of the Kubrick images than normal, well spotted!
I uploaded up-to-date images, and all is well now.
thanks,
Tom
was wonderin whether changing header image has any affect in SEO??
u have any idea?
anusharaji,
I don’t see why or how changing the image would have any affect on seo.
well
thats one of my comment sayin he read it in a book…i didnt mean anything to me either
I had a problem changing the header picture. Thanks a lot about Kubrickr. I hope I can find a suitable header