Monday, January 14, 2008

Messing With Your Template

I was just reading some comments on Rantings of a Woman. Carrie just changed the design of her blog, and it's really nice. Reading the comments, I see that a couple of our friends would like to change their templates, too. Why not? It's fun to have a new look - kind of like like a new haircut or a new wardrobe. We like that kind of thing.

A while back I posted a list of good sources for free blog templates. I could say that's the easy part - picking a design you like - but it's not really so easy when there are so many to choose from. But put that aside, say you find the perfect template. Now what? Yes, I'm reading those comments. I see that you are afraid of messing with your template. Honestly, I am too. So here's what I do. I created a Test Blog. I play with everything on that test blog. I tweak. I change. I do everything I want to do with the layout and make sure it works before I ever touch my real blog. I'm still using the old Blogger on this blog, so I also copy all of my sidebar scripts and links, etc. into that test blog.

Then, when I get it perfect (or as close to perfect as I can manage) I copy the entire template from the test blog (under the html tab) to a notepad file on my computer. Note: maximize your Notepad before pasting into it. If you have javascript scripts on your page and they get broken into multiple lines, some of them won't work when you put them back into the blog.

Then, before messing with the template of my real blog, I copy that one to a Notepad file, too - so I can quickly put it back if I need to. Once that's copied and saved, I copy the test blog template from the Notepad file into the html of my real blog. Preview to be sure it looks right and then save.

The main points are: do all your playing around with a blog that doesn't really matter, and always copy and save your current template. I hope this helps a little.

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5 comments:

  1. Great advice on messing with our blog templates. I just re-designed mine. Thanks and have a great week! :)

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  2. And...I just added you to my blogroll too! :)

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  3. I am scared to death to mess with mine! I just "cheat" and add pictures to mine. Once you start talking about codes and stuff, I'm hopelessly lost!

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  4. You've always got great advice and make things make sense! You ROCK!

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  5. Good advice, I follows through with Buzzfuse I am anonymous on it.

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