First we need to make a new image. (size 256x100, type RGB)

Open the 'Layers&Channels' -dialog window by pressing the right mousebutton on the image and choose Dialogs  Layers&Channels from the menu.

On the Layers&Channels-window click the layer name ('Background') with the right mousebutton and choose 'New Layer' to add a new layer to your image.

Your Text String. Make sure you have the New Layer selected on the layers-dialog, and choose the Text-tool and apply your text string preferably with a bold, fat font. The freefonts package has some good examples. In general, almost any font will work, but the effect looks better on blocky characters.

Try to place the text in the center of the image, there must be little free space around the text, since we must fit the frop-shadow there. Once the text is in proper place, press Ctrl-H or select Layers  Anchor Layer from the RightMouseButtonMenu(tm)

There is a tiny little button in the Layers&Channels window that says: 'Keep Trans'. This is the key to the next step we are going to take. Make sure it is pressed in. If the next step gets screwed up, you forgot it.

Next we will fill the text with a gradient. First we need to select the colors - choose yellow as the foreground-color (upper-left square in the toolbox color selector) and slightly dark red as the background color (lower-right square).

Once you think the colors are OK, select the Blend tool (gradient fill tool). Make a nice gradient from up to down and just a little to right, so that the blend looks like that orange text on the right. (See the arrow for example direction) And IF it gets ALL orange, you forgot something I told you :)

OK, you are doing fine.. Now we switch to a higher gear here.. In the Layers&Channels -dialog, right-click the 'New Layer' name (that orange-text-layer) and choose 'Duplicate Layer'. You now have 2 orange texts, though you only see one as they are identical and the top layer overlaps the bottom layer.

Click on the topmost text layer (New Layer copy) and put the 'Keep Trans' -button down again. Choose Select  All from the right-mouse menu and take the Bucket Fill tool. Choose white as forefround color (top-left color in the toolbox). Fill the text white. You notice that when the 'Keep Trans' -button is pressed, the transparent areas in the text-layer are not painted.

You should get a white text over the orange. The outline of the orange shows just slightly under the white.

Unselect the 'Keep Trans' button from the white text layer and select Filters  Blur  Gaussian Blur RLE. Set the blur radius to 6. You should see the outlines of the white text soften and the orange text shows even more.

Select the 'orange text' layer by clicking on it's name in the layers dialog.

From the right-mouse-menu again select Filters  Map  Bump map and adjust the values so that they are approximately equal to those on the picture. The only changed values are 'Elevation' and 'Depth', the rest are just default.

You should select the 'New Layer copy' as the map, since that is our white image.

The shape of the bevel can be somewhat controlled by the map type selector.

'Compensate for darkening' is usually a good thing to select also, if the text looks too dark.

Once it looks good, click OK and off we go...

Select the white text layer that is invisible by clicking on it in the layers dialog.

From the right-mouse-menu again (in the picture window) select Image  Colors  Invert so the white blurry text becomes black blurry text. In the layers dialog (again with right mouse button on the layer name) select Lower Layer to put it behind our orange text.

While the black text is still selected, click your right mousebutton on the image and select Image  Transforms  Offset - X-offset 2 and Y-offset 3.

The black text is amazingly transformed to a spiffy drop-shadow and our image is ready. Now you should save it. (At least now...) If you intend to use it in a webpage, you should flatten it (Layers  Flatten Image) and save as jpeg or convert to indexed color (Image  Mode  Indexed) and save as gif.