Tuesday, June 13, 2006

And Now for Something Just a Little Different

Inspired by the numbers of D-bloggers who've made changes recently to the look of their sites, I've done some tweaking of my own.

It's been kind of fun, this messin' with my Blogger template.

And more than a little frustrating.

You see, there were times when I'd make a change, and it looked really good in preview, but totally messed up when saved and re-published.

Hmmmm.

Or worse, I'd get the thing just the way I liked it, and the site would look fabulous in Mozilla Firefox (my browser) and Netscape, but all kinds of weird in Internet Explorer (seems IE is not terribly fond of the equal sign (as in color= #931), it's got to be a colon or it just ain't gonna work.

Grrrrr.

Anyhow, here's what's new-- a slightly different color scheme with a softer background; web & site search in the sidebar, and no more Blogger tool bar at the top.

Also, I put a photo from an earlier post in the header-- seems to capture the general idea here.

So hey, nothing too drastic (I'm somewhat limited by what I can do within Blogger, and of course, by my own inexperience with this sort of thing).

If you have a moment, I'd love some feedback (i.e., I pretty much kept the same font size-- would you prefer it smaller? Colors okay? I'm thinkin' I'd really like to do more.).

And yes, I'll be posting soon about something a bit more interesting-- we had a recent incident involving food that wasn't too pleasant. Hopefully, I can get that post up before we leave for vacation next Monday-- more on that as well.

24 comments:

Scott K. Johnson said...

Looks great for me.

I had to chuckle because almost anytime I do the "preview" thing it looks bad, but it's fine when I publish. Exact opposite!

If not a mother... said...

I love that picture!

Anonymous said...

The colours (sorry, I just can't type it without the 'u'!) and font size look good to me. And I love the picture Sandra. You're right, it does kind of capture the theme.

I'm getting inspired myself...

art-sweet said...

Damn you all, you're making the rest of us lazy bloggers look bad.

I like the new design, btw.

Shannon said...

I love the colors. The background and the green are colors in my kitchen.

The photo looks great too...very sharp.

I guess I should get cracking on my blog design...it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

Angie said...

I would change the font a little, maybe make it bold. But I like the changes. Great job. I hate making changes to my blog template, confuses me everytime. Not to mention, I always lose my links when I change. I hate that!

Anonymous said...

It's lovely. Clean, readable, nice colours.

Jamie said...

I like it! I got all inspired and made some changes as well - must be that time of year or something. June must be the month to redesign our blogs .... just like changing the clocks in the Fall and Spring ....

Yes - June should be "Clean Up That Blog" month .... whaddya think?? LOL.

Sandra Miller said...

Thanks for the input, everyone.

Shannon- these are the colors in your kitchen, eh? Cool.

And Jamie-- LOL! I love it-- "Clean up that blog month," indeed.

Hey, I just came from your site-- looks really sharp.

Kerri. said...

I love Clean Up Your Blog month. I'm quite a fan.

I definitely love your new look here. After all this time blogging, it's nice to treat yourself to a facial! (Blogging meets spa treatments ... I'm up way too late tonight.)

Major Bedhead said...

Ooh, I love the picture. And please don't change the font. My poor old eyes like the larger font size. I need to make mine a bit bigger, but I'm afraid I'm going to screw the entire thing up. I'm good at that.


I like the post title. :D Quasi-Python-esque.

Sandra Miller said...

Kerri,

Ah yes, a "blog facial" sounds just lovely... And given that I've been neglecting the site a bit (read: not posting as regularly as I'd like), a little pampering seemed in order...

Julia,

I kinda figured the title might flush out a fellow Python fan or two :-)

Jenny said...

I love the new look!

Say "Hi" to Joseph!

Anonymous said...

Totally digging the picture...very apropos! And the colour scheme is muey bella! (you can now picture me doing that little italian finger kissing thing...does that have a name??)

Thanks a lot...now I have that line running over and over through my head... ;)

J said...

Looks good ! I am still tryin to figure out how to do this changing thing and shoping around with sites that julia gave me so hope I can do some changing soon too

Sandra Miller said...

Jenny & Tommy-

Joseph says "Hi" too!

Tiffany-

Glad you like the changes, and, uh, sorry... ;-)

J-

Good luck with the template search... I actually went to the sites Julia lists and never found anything that felt right (though there are a lot of cool templates out there), so I slogged through my original template, until I got the thing looking the way I wanted it.

And you know, what took me more time than I care to admit, would probably have been the work of a moment for one of those template pros... ah well.

Kelsey said...

Am I the only one who is completely dense about the whole blog template thing?!

It looks great Sandra!

J said...

Sandra Julia sent me some good free sites but i have not found anything that i like only one site actually made things easy to copy and paste but I would like to just add my own flare into my blog like you did sandra but i am not sure how to do that I have copy and pasted pictures I like put into my template and hit save changes and nothing happened ? any advice on how to do this would be appriciated .

Sandra Miller said...

J-

Have you hit "republish" after saving template changes?

Also, where are you trying to insert your photo-- if it's in the header, you want to make sure you're copying and pasting your code in the right spot, and that the photo has an url from which to grab it (I uploaded my photo using a program called "Hello" ).

This is what my code looks like this:

/* Blog Header
*/
#header {

background: url("http://photos1.blogger.com/hello/260/4533/1024/P1010225.jpg") bottom right;

I indicated "bottom right" because my photo was too big for my header (and I didn't want to compromise image quality by resizing it)-- also, the bottom right section of the snap was just what I wanted in the header.

Hope this helps... if you have other questions, feel free to email me directly, and I'd be happy to help. Though I'm leaving town on Monday for 10 days, so if you don't hear from me then, that would be why...

Good Luck!

Anonymous said...

Sandra your new look is great! :-)

J said...

Thanks Sandra I will email you I did download Hello but I was about to put photos on the hello but could not figure out how to transfer them to my blog anyway no hurry I will email you and when ever you get some time .. thanks again J

Jess Riley said...

Great photo on the masthead! Also, have a fantastic road trip. Looking forward to reading about the highlights!

Anonymous said...

I love the font size because I am having trouble reading small print these days. I thinkk the print on my own site needs to be darker!

Anonymous said...

I didn't see the template before, but it looks nice now. Much more interesting than default Blogger. They do make free, downloadable templates; a Google search should turn some up. But this one looks great as it is.