Create a Google Toolbar Button for Your Real Estate Blog

By Reggie · December 24, 2006

Google’s Toolbar is very popular and they’ve made it easy to add your blog articles to your reader’s toolbar. All we need to do is make a custom button feeding off your RSS feed. This button not only makes visiting your blog easy with a one click shortcut, but it also itemizes your recent topics.

Start by opening notepad, and copy the code below into the new notepad document:

<?xml version=”1.0″?>

<site>http://www.YourSiteHere.com</site>

<title>Your Title Here</title>

<description>Enter your brief description here</description>

<icon mode=”base64″ type=”image/x-icon”>Insert base64 output here

</icon>

</button>

</custombuttons>

Now we need to make a few edits to customize the Google button for your blog.
Start by editing the bold areas of the code above:

Replace http://www.YourSiteHere.com with your blogs URL.

Replace Your Title Here with the title of your blog.

Replace http://www. Site.com/feed.rss with the path to your RSS or ATOM feed. Keep in mind Google requires RSS 2.0 or Atom Feed 0.3/1.0 XML.

Replace Enter your brief description here with a brief description of your blog. This description works like a tooltip, and pops out when a user moves their mouse over your button.

Now you need to think about the icon you would like to use for the toolbar. (Hint: images with 24 bits of color –RGB work best.) Once you’ve identified the icon or picture you’ll use, click here to convert your image to base64. Then copy the code it produces, and paste it over the text the reads Insert base64 output here.

Now its time to save the notepad document we’ve been modifying. Click “File” then “Save As.” Now give the file a friendly name and add .xml after the name. For example, I named my button MyTechOpinion.xml.