Pump UP your Blog

Blogging takes lots of practice, patience, dedication and Tortillas and marshmallows (ok so not Tortillas and marshmallows). It could be frustrating when you envy other people's blogs, feel that yours is mediocre.


Well, worry not. Here are some sites and ways to make your blog look like a genius made it.


1) Make your own template. You can jazz or rock up Fonts and Colors using the Layout|Fonts and Colors tab found on your Blogger's Design tab (Look for Edit Template). This gives you a simple way of editing fonts and colors.

Text Fonts

Text Fonts plus Style

Besides that, you can also try editing Designs and Other Artsy bits in your blog through CSS.

CSS could be found on the upper left portion of your Adobe Photoshop CS3.
Just Click on the Info tab.

 Another way is use  the TOPE PageKit. It allows you to play around and explore your creative side through a template designed for editing. 


Here is an overview on what to do with your TOPE PageKit:

1. Download the Tope PageKit and extract it
2. Create a test blog in Blogger for testing your template
3. Open a copy of Tope's index.html file in your text editor
4. Replace the top chunk of the template code with the standard Blogger code
5. Insert the CSS from the Tope template's style sheet, style.css
6. Remove the right-hand sidebar from the template
7. Upload the template images and fix up the image URLs in the template
8. Test the template
9. Add the Blogger tags to the template
10. Test again
11. Tweak the template CSS to work with the Blogger markup
12. Test the finished template

Now your templates done, let's move on with widgets.

2) What in the world is a Widget? (Try saying that for ten 'til twenty turns.) 

It's a small application that can be installed and executed within a web page by an end user. They are derived from the idea of code reuse. Other terms used to describe web widgets include: portlet, gadget, badge, module, webjit, capsule, snippet, mini and flake. Widgets are typically created in DHTML, JavaScript, or Adobe Flash.

Widgets often take the form of on-screen tools (clocks, event countdowns, auction-tickers, stock market tickers, flight arrival information, daily weather etc.).

 Mashable [n.d.] gives us 50 examples of great widgets.

Here are some of them:

a) Mashable -- Where the whos, whats and what-nots of social networking sites take on the center stage.

b) Polldaddy -- Is an online survey-type widget. Perfect for researchers and statisticians, as well as those with theses and dissertations.

c) Answers.com -- Bubbles displayed when double clicked on Answers.com. Could be applied for students or professionals who have questions which need quick replies.

d) Now Playing -- For music lovers who loves sharing playlists with the rest of the world.

Now Playing sample

PollDaddy site

Now you have the contents, let's organize!

3) Organize things you'd like to put in your blog using Picasa3

"Picasa is free photo editing software from Google that makes your pictures look great.
Sharing your best photos with friends and family is as easy as pressing a button!"

--- Picasa website

 Picasa3 also saves and manages files and folders, as well as videos.

And here is the fun part: It makes collages, makes photo trains into videos, and it uploads these in your blog -- all in just a snap. :) [Halelujah! Halelujah!]

Collage in Picasa3

Lastly, just play around. Have fun. Enjoy blogging :D