Blogging?

There is a really humourous trend going on among my A-Level classmates - Switching from Friendster blog to Blogger's. I might not lead the trend but I'm the very 1st one to change to blogspot. LoL~ There were only 2 RSS feeds in my blog in February, Darryl's and Zennway's. Now, there are 10. (Zennway and Teckhong are using wordpress.)

Blogger allows users to customize blog template and add HTML/Java widgets.

Template:
- The easiest way is to download .xml file and upload it.

Dashboard > Layout > Edit HTML

There are thousand of webs offering free templates for blogger, Google is your best friend. These are my top rated sources of template. Since I only got 1 blog and cannot use all. I contribute:

InfoCreek: Mainly creating Wordpress template but sometimes there are blogger version.
(For your info, Cyril, Jovie and Darryl are using templates created by them.)
Gisele Jaquenod: Simply cute! (I modified mine from a template of this blog.)
blogger-templates: Not creating, but sharing nice templates the blogger found.

- Writing scripts is a work for pro, but we can modify some simple codes to make our templates unique.

For example:
If you wanna change the background image:

body {
background: url('http://www.imagehost.com/yourimage.jpg');
margin:0px;
text-align: center}

Find this line and replace the highlighted with the link of the image u wish to use. You may need a image host to upload the image, like photobucket or imageshack.

If you wish the background image stay still and not repeating:

body {
background: url(http://www.imagehost.com/yourimage.jpg) no-repeat;
margin:0px;
text-align: center;
background-attachment: fixed }

Add the highlighted words according to the location.

ps: You can learn more from BloggerBuster and W3Schools.


Widgets:
Layout > Page elements > Add an element


- Feed : RSS feeder that allow tracking updates from other blogs without visiting the page.

To add feed, you cannot use the normal web address but need a RSS address.

Find and click this icon when you are visiting the blog, either in the blog page or your internet browser.

For Firefox:

For IE7:

It'll lead you to RSS page of the blog. Copy & paste the RSS address as feeder's url.


- HTML/Javascript : Add 3rd parties gadget by copy & paste the codes provided.
Some great source of gadget: SpringWidgets, Widgetbox, Myflashfetish

- Click counter : Record the total visits to your blog.
There are many click counter, but I'll recommend the 1 I'm using - SiteMeter. Because it can ignore your own visits so you can know the exact visits of your blog. (Since the person visit your blog the most must be yourself)

ps: Blogger is now working on the gadget library of itself (Layout > Page elements > Add an Gadget). But since it's Beta version, the library is still a bit messy.

End of Craps.