Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Edit The Read More And User ID In Blogger

Editing the read more and user ID appearance in posts is a small change but can help make your blog look more like how you want it. Changing the user ID in particular makes your name stand out, which is always good!

blogger

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Editing The Post Box In Blogger

This guide is a description of how to edit just the area where the posts are written, from just above the title all the way down to, and including, the labels. Editing the post box is something that I found difficult to tailor properly in the Template Designer, jumping into the CSS and HTML turned out to be the best way of adjusting the look to what I wanted. The problem with this is that there is a lot that can go wrong when making these specific changes to a site that you haven’t coded yourself as you have no idea where to start looking for the specific code. One trick that I use to find the relevant sections is the Inspect Element option provided in Google’s Chrome browser.

Writing a Post

To access this open any website you want in Chrome, then right click on the section you are interested in (menus, text, boxes anything) and choose Inspect Element from the drop down menu. This then shows you the applicable HTML and CSS code for that section. You will then notice something else that is quite frankly amazing, as you move the mouse cursor over different parts of the HTML code shown on the bottom of the screen, Chrome will in turn highlight the applicable section of the site page that is being affected by that part of the code! This is incredibly helpful and I use it to speed up page coding massively. Anyway, back to editing the posting box.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Format The Date Header In Blogger

Sometimes you may not want the date to be on the left above the post title. I didn’t, so I looked at ways to change this. This guide may not be the most in depth in terms of editing the date but it does give the basis for doing more if you know some CSS. By adding your own background to this section you can further customize the look allowing for some interesting effects, enhancing the look of your posts dramatically. On a side note, remember that submitting more than one post in the same day causes the date to only appear once at the top of the most recent post. Bare this in mind when editing the look of the posts as it may result in unwanted effects.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Default Justify Blog Posts In Blogger

I tend to think of a blog as a book. If you were to print your diary and publish it for the world to see then the print would most likely be justified. This may not always be the best solution though. A lot of websites, including news website, do not justify their text. This may be because as the horizontal space for text reduces, the formatting may start to look out of place. I, however, always prefer justified text as I like having the straight lines. If you decide you want to justify your text then do the following.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Change The Blogger Favicon

EDIT: Blogger now incorporates a favicon uploader in their "Design" page on the Dashboard, so you no longer need to do this!!!

Pretty much all websites now have their own favicon. A favicon is a 16x16 pixel image that is shown in the explorer bar and when people bookmark your site so it is nice to have one personalized. You can either draw your own picture in paint or GIMP, or resize your own picture. The advantage of dawing your own is that it can be perfectly personalized. The advantage of resizing is that you get the advantage of automatic software blending, so that the edges don’t seem as sharp. The choice is yours. Once you have your image (jpg, png, gif, bmp, ico or tiff for this method) take the following steps.

How To Remove The Blogger Navigation Bar

The main reason behind removing the NavBar is to make the blog look more like a website. I also find that it disturbs the flow of whatever design you have in mind. If you think that your readers may actually want to use the NavBar then leave it, other than that, get it off! One explanation I have heard for leaving it on is as an easy access for you to switch back to your dashboard. Personally, I always have 2 tabs open when editing anyway, one for the dashboard and one for the actual blog. This, for me, is a much easier way to make edits and see them work, as the Preview button may not always show you everything you want to check. Should something be wrong it is much easier this way to go back and undo what you just did.

Blogger Navigation Bar