Blog Resources

Good Afternoon :)

It's raining outside (again), and I got wet (again), and I'm now writing this post to let you all know of all the truly amazing blog (and Blogger) resources I found online while working to revamp my blog. Actually, no. I'm typing this out because people who live in my house have a really annoying habit of reloading software every few days, and whenever they do that to my browser, I lose all my bookmarked pages. So I'm now journalising them on my blog so I won't lose all the data again on my brother's whims.

First and foremost, if you want a new layout, you could try www.pyzam.com/bloggertemplates. Of course, you can see the orange strip of advertisement across the top of my page. The place has great resources, and they're not limited to stuff for Blogger only.

The subscription links widget is a Blogger page element.

For acquiring any widgets on this or any other blog, click on the link provided on the widget to get it's code. It's pretty simple, and they'll provide you with further directions on the website. Sometimes, you may have to create an account on said website to use a widget. Generally, you have to copy the code they provide you with, and then get to your own blog-> Layout-> Page Elements-> Add a Page Element-> (a new window will open) HTML/Javascript.

Once you've clicked on the HTML/Javascript option, a new window will open where you can paste the widget code you copied originally, give it a title, and then save. Once you do that you'll come back to the 'Page Elements' page, and here you can adjust the position of the new widget on your sidebar. By default it'll come on top of your sidebar, but you may not want it there, so change it accordingly. After that save your settings, and you're done.

I got the directions for creating the tag cloud (the 'I write about...' bit on the side bar) from here. It's really well explained, and easy to follow.

Tip: When they ask you to find bits of html code typed into your template use 'Ctrl+F' to generate a 'Find Box' on the page and use it to find whatever code they've asked you to.

The link to the RGB colour list on this site is not functional anymore, so I used this site.

The Blog Roll is a page element, and you can find it if you click on 'Add a Page Element'.

A favicon is the tiny icon you can see in the address bar, before the address of the page you're currently on. For example, for Google it's the fancy 'g', and for blogger it's the white 'B' on the orange background. This page told me all I needed to know about putting up a favicon.

Sometimes, the favicon generator on this site will not work if your JPEG image file is too large. You can resize your image at this website.

Lastly, I played around with some colours and fonts on my blog. I changed the colour of the title, font, links, visited links, etc. To do this, go to Layout-> Fonts and Colors. You can immediately see the effect of any changes you've made on your blog here.

Bloggerbuster and Madtomato are cool sites for bloggers in general with lots of great resources and tutorials.