New Look

I decided it was time for a change around here.  It's not a drastic change, just a bit of freshening up.  I've been wanting to play with the new Blogger Template Designer for a while, but just haven't taken the time to do it.  Mostly I was putting it off because I knew I'd need to re-do the header.  It really had to have rounded corners to look right.  And that ended up being the hardest part of the process.

Re-doing the blog design was really easy to do and means anyone can have a nice looking blog.  If you can click, you can do it.  So, with some clicking and some dragging and dropping, I got a fresh, new look.  I love that you can try everything out and actually see how it's going to look on your blog before committing to anything.  The best part, at least for me, is that I can still get into the html and add/remove/tweak things.  I like easy, but I hate sites that just offer the 'easy' ways to do things but take away our control to do anything else we might wish to do.

I like that Blogger gives us all the options.  Beginners who don't know much about design can still have nice-looking blogs, and people who have more knowledge of html and css and design can use that knowledge.  I'm kind of in the middle.  I like a place to start, a template, and then I like to tweak little things to make it exactly (or as close to exactly) how I want it.

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• Can't Settle On A Background Image For Your Blog? Upload Your Own (blogspotforbeginners.blogspot.com)
• Google Announce Blogger Template Designer Out Of Draft (blogs.sitepoint.com)

Get PagePlus Essentials Free from Amazon

Amazon.com is offering PagePlus Essentials as a free software download.

Product description from Amazon:

PagePlus Essentials makes it a breeze to design and print stunning projects like cards, posters, newsletters and more with its amazing combination of powerful and easy-to-use desktop publishing features. It’s so easy to go from a blank page to a fantastic design just by dragging and dropping whatever you want onto your page – it’s that simple! On-screen ‘How To’ guides can walk you through tasks step-by-step, while the handy Learning Zone contains videos and tutorials as well as access to the community forums and the extensive knowledge base – help is never far away. The professionally-designed, customizable templates in PagePlus Essentials are a great way to produce amazing documents in no time at all – just add your own pictures and words for a polished document in minutes. You also get fabulous effects and instant styles to make your words and logos stand out from the page. Impressive text handling is at the very heart of PagePlus Essentials. You will recognize all the usual writing and formatting controls from a word-processor plus fast-flowing text wraps, customizable paragraph and character styles and the freedom to write text and place objects exactly where you want. It really does have everything you need to create impressive documents. A built-in PhotoLab offers over 70 adjustments, corrections, filters and effects to turn your images into works of art. With the dedicated Image Cutout Studio you can remove photo backgrounds quickly – you don’t even need a steady hand. PagePlus Essentials also supports more than 25 popular image file types so it’s a safe bet that you will be able to use any picture you can get your hands on. After you have finished designing, you can share your projects with friends and family quickly and easily by publishing documents as PDFs that can be viewed and printed on other computers. This powerful and flexible program is indispensable to anyone who creates or designs documents on a computer.

If you need publishing and design software, give it a try. You can't beat the price!

Dress Up Your Browser

Image via CrunchBase

I just installed Personas for Firefox last night. How long has this been around? I'm not sure, but I'm really loving it. Personas lets you dress up your browser with easy to install and easy to change 'skins' for Firefox.

watch a quick video demonstration:

Getting Started with Personas from Mozilla Labs on Vimeo.

Not only can you choose from the many 'skins' available on the site, you can even create your own. The instructions are right on the page. Here are some my brother, who found this first, has created - Personas by krayeg.

I had a little trouble getting this to work at first, I think because I had a theme installed. When I went back to the default firefox theme and restarted my browser, it worked just fine. The fun with Personas is that you can very easily change the look of your browser, and you don't have to restart your browser for the changes to take effect. You can even preview the look before you intall simply by mousing over the designs in the gallery. I'm having a lot of fun doing that, but you don't have to visit the Personas gallery. You can choose and change your selected Persona any time simply by clicking on the little fox mask in the lower left-hand corner of your browser window.

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• Personas Gallery Welcomes Its 20,000th Design (labs.mozilla.com)

Free Blog Designs from Shabby Blogs

I came across another site for free Blogger templates tonight. It's called Shabby Blogs, and there are plenty of blog backgrounds and accessories to choose from. All of them are 100% free, and it looks like a lot of them are customizable, such as being able to add your own photos to the headers.

I haven't had time to browse through all of them, but there are some really cute backgrounds here, with headers and extras to complement them and help you put together your own custom blog. Did I mention it's free? Yes, yes I did! Free, cute blog backgrounds - and once again I'm tempted to change my blog design.

Free Help for All Things Web Related

Image via Wikipedia

I keep coming back to this site when searching for web design information. The tutorials and explanations are simple and easy to understand, at least the ones I've used so far. They have tutorials on basic html, javascript, CSS, and beyond. You can also find tutorials for using popular graphics programs to create some great effects, free online tools and resources, and a whole lot more.

No wonder I keep coming back - there is so much here! As they say:

EchoEcho.Com is your one stop free help site for all things web related.

I think it's definitely going to be my first stop.

BloggerStyles Free Blog Templates

Here's another source for blog templates.

BloggerStyles converts Wordpress themes into Blogger templates. There are some really nice looking templates here. All templates have been tested and rated, using criteria such as browser compatibility, proper display of images, links, comments, and more. There are 27 pages (as of now) of great-looking templates to browse, preview and download. Is your new template there?

Another Template Source

Falcon Hive - Wordpress themes Bloggerized. There are some really nice templates here. There is one that I especially love, and I'm tempted to start using it. Still thinking about it, but I definitely want to be able to find this site again. Check it out and see if you don't agree.

Personalize Your Twitter

There are about a dozen themes you can choose from on Twitter. They're not bad, but if those are the only backgrounds you have to choose from, that means that 1 in 12 twitter users will have the same twitter theme, minimum. Kind of like going to the big ball only to find out that a whole bunch of other people are wearing the same dress. So what do you do if you want your twitter page to stand out from the rest? Luckily you can upload your own background image.

I think the best advice is to personalize your twitter profile as explained on BenSpark.com. He did mention something about making a template available, but I don't know where things stand on that. Even without the template, I'm pretty sure I can create my own personal Twitter background, if I can only figure out what I want and then take the time to do it. Drew's is really cool - be sure to check it out.

Since I haven't yet created my very own background, I tried Flickr my background which uses your latest Flickr photo as your Twitter background. That's pretty neat, because it changes every time you upload new photos to Flickr. The downside is that it changes every time you upload new photos to Flickr - so your Twitter page won't be easily recognizable and something that people will associate with you. I think it's best to create or choose something and then stick with it a while.

This weekend, since I still haven't created my own, I tried a nice Twitter background from Twitterimage.com. They have some nice free images. They also offer professionally designed custom backgrounds.

And here's another source for Twitter backgrounds - U Stand Out. You can simply grab the image file and upload that to twitter, or grab the Photoshop file and customize it. Add your own pictures, text, etc.

follow me on Twitter - and please don't criticize my Twitter background, because for some reason Twitter keeps eating it.

Templates and Tools

This looks like the most comprehensive list of Blogger template sources I've ever seen. I'd heard of some of them, but there are a whole lot I hadn't, so I'll want to check them out. Do I need a new template? Well, I don't think so, but that doesn't mean I can't look!

If you're looking for a new template, I'd say this is the place to start.

• Blogger Toolbox: 100+ Tools and Themes

Free Blogger Templates

Once again I am talking about free blog templates. I can't help myself - when I see a blog layout I like, I want to know who designed it, where they found that layout. So, I click. This time I found Our Blogger Templates. They have over 100 free templates available and the instructions for installing them on your blog and adding your own header image. There is even a tutorial for designing your own template. With all these great, easy to customize templates available, I don't know that I will ever need to design my own, but I would love to learn how.

I installed one of the free templates from Our Blogger Templates, created and added my own header image, and customized all my colors. I actually found another template I thought would go with my new header better than the one I originally installed, but I was having some troubles getting Blogger to cooperate with me, so I just changed the colors of the one I had already installed. I wasn't sure I was going to like the 'New' Blogger, but it does make changing colors easy. Most of these free templates say that 99% of the colors can easily be changed, and I have to believe them, because I changed an awful lot of the colors.

I grabbed my header image from Pixdaus. I hadn't heard of it before, but Our Blogger Templates used some images from there for their blog headers, so I clicked and found all kinds of interesting images. I liked the frogs, 1) because I like frogs, and 2) because they look like they're so excited about something that they just can't keep their mouths shut and they 'just gotta share this' - or am I stretching things a bit? Anyway, lots of images on Pixdaus.

When you click template installation guides and instructions on the Our Blogger Templates site, there's a link to more sources for header images. I figure, with enough sources, you're bound to find the right image or template, right?

Browsershots

I use Firefox. Sometimes I use Netscape. I never, never, never use Internet Explorer. I just don't like that browser. One of the main reasons is that it just doesn't play nice with normal web design and web elements that the other browsers have no problem with. What I tend to forget is that other people still use IE. Yes, I'm always asking "Why?" - and I really don't think, "Because it came on my computer" is a good enough reason.

Whatever. They use it. When I put together a web page or change my blog templates I need to remember to check what it looks like in IE. I usually forget to do that until someone complains that they can't load my page properly. Tonight I found out about a web page that will make screenshots of any web page using multiple browsers. So, even if I don't have every browser available on my computer, I can see how my page will look to someone who has a different browser than I do. There are browsers listed here that I've never even heard of. All the screenshots show up on the page, and then you can click on each one to see it better and find out more information. You can even download them all to your computer.

If you're wondering what your web pages look like in different browsers, visit Browsershots and test it out. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl, and I think it will come in very handy.

I noticed that IE does not like my blog Beth & Cory's Mom. I knew that. I did my best to fix it, and it looks fine on my IE browser (I do have it - under protest), but these screenshots say different. What I don't know, is how to fix it!

Design and Layout for Your Site

#2 from the list I mentioned before, 75 Ways to Increase Your Site's Traffic is:

2. Have a good design and layout. If your site or blog’s design is messy, sloppy, hard to navigate, a rainbow of colors that don’t match or are hard on the eye, or full of errors, you will instantly go down the drain.

We certainly don't want to go down the drain, do we? I keep an eye out for nice looking blogs and websites. When I find one, I look to see if I can find out where they found that design. Some people pay to have a professional design their site. I'm cheap, and I look for the free designs and layouts. I know they say you get what you pay for, but I have found quite a few very nice FREE layouts.

1. FinalSense.com, where I found the layout for this blog, has some really nice ones with all kinds of themes.
2. Blogskins, layouts and designs of all kinds. Not all of them are good as far as being easy to read, but there seems to be something for everyone.
3. Pyzam also has a whole bunch of free Blogger templates. The hard part is picking one.

Once you find a layout you like, it doesn't hurt to know a little html and css so you can tweak it and make it yours. Just watch that rainbow of colors!