June 15, 2011

New Blog Background

Well, it took me a month of my free time of trying but I finally got kinda close to what I had in mind for a new blog background and header.

This is a computer dummy's (and believe me, I am in that group) version of a screen shot.  


Here is a screen shot of my blog "before" with a stock blogger template:

It's not bad but the flowers have nothing to do with the title or content of my blog. 

I had looked and looked at other sites to try to find a pre-made background I liked with cats on it but didn't see what I had in mind.  I even comtemplated having a custom background made but I just wanted to try to do it myself.  In the end, I spent WAAAAAAY too much time trying to figure out how to do it but I did learn a lot.  Google, forums, youtube, other blogs etc. do have lots of information on how to do your own background but if you are interested in doing your blog design yourself, just be sure of this:

THAT THE INFORMATION THAT YOUR ARE LOOKING AT IS CURRENT AND IS COMPATABLE FOR YOUR BLOG TYPE

For example, I was following a tutorial (writing down specifics, downloading sites, cutting, pasting digi-papers, etc.) for a "Minima" template on Blogger and then at the end, I find our the "Minima" template has been discontinued.  I ran into other instances of outdated advice...computer-related information changes quickly due to updates and upgrades. 

In wading through all the turorials, etc. online to try to get to the questions I had on blog design, I probably learned more about photo editing than how to do a blog background but that infomation will help me in the long run too.  Doing the blog background and header stretched me to learn more and opened up other possibilities for creativity. 

5 comments

  1. I am proud of you! I am such a computer idiot that I would be afraid of losing my whole blog when I started playing with it! xo Diana

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  2. NanaDiana, here is what I learned about the concern over "losing" your blog: you open another blog and call it a "test blog". My test blog is where I tried out elements that I had created on publisher-type sites. It is not linked to your "real" blog so it won't screw it up.

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  3. Great job! Those kitties are cute. I am following back. Can't wait to see what you are doing.

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  4. I so need to update my blog. But am scared. Once you test a blog, how do you actually change your real blog?

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  5. On the test blog you not only see if the visuals work like you want them to but you learn how to change the HTML code that controls the blog. (It sounds harder than it is). So then, when you know from your test blog what to enter into the code, you type the exact thing into the code of your "real" blog. They also suggest that you save a copy of your template "as-is" (there is an easy place to do it on the design page) in case you need to re-load it.

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