H(ij)acking the Flickr badge

If you’re looking at my blog right now (as opposed to my feed), you can probably tell that I’m going crazy with Flickr badges. They’re all over my sidebar, in one form or another, and I’m finding so much use for them, it’s hard to quit.

One thing I’m increasingly fond of is the randomness they add to my page. With diligent use of tags, they can add a number of different ‘feelings’ to your blog. Here’s some I’ve been using recently:

1. My Flickr stream (latest)
2. Tag: ‘texture’ (random)
3. Tag: ‘inoveryourhead+portrait’ (random)
4. Tag: ‘hip hop’ (random)

In #2, I’m choosing a particular tag (‘texture’) that I know will consistently deliver unique photos taken by good photographers – it takes a while to find one that suits your purposes sometimes, but when you do, it can be gold.

Also, look at #3 – here, I’m actually manipulating tags to my own benefit. By adding the ‘portrait’ tag to the ones I want to use, I can grab the photos that I want for my badge, adding tags that I know no one else on Flickr is using.

You can flip these up in the code pretty quick to change up the look of your site from day to day and, using CSS, you can get them to fit amazingly well into your look. Here’s a tutorial I found that helped me do it.

Anyway, you should try them out on your site if you haven’t already. If you need some help, let me know – I’ve fiddled around with them so much I pretty much know them inside and out.

Filed by Julien at 3:31 pm under random

Hi, I’m Julien Smith.

I help people lead more productive, awesome lives— one day at a time. This is my blog. If you like it, please subscribe below.