The works!

I’ve been aiming to publish at least one post from my drafts last weekend but I wasn’t able to do that. My thoughts were simply disorganized that completing one seemed a very long time. Instead of pursuing it, I decided to work on my page customization in a semiempirical way. I made use of the trial and error method and that meant numerous clicks on the “preview” and “clear unsaved edits” buttons. Nah, it wasn’t all in a day’s work as it took me three non-consecutive nights to get it done. I’d say I am happy with the outcome.

Working on the template’s code using “edit html” and “add page elements” (javasript/html) were mostly what I did. And why is that? It’s because I simple don’t know how to work directly on the html codes and I don’t have the luxury of time to study it. I used google search and luckily, I bumped into Vin’s Dummies Guide to Google Blogger (Beta) blog where I found almost all I needed to come up with the layout I wanted. It was a matter of understanding the articles published and following the simply instructions provided. I didn’t even have to type codes because it was as simple as doing “copy and paste” and editing the variables to incorporate my actual blog’s name. (But I maybe asked why it took me 3 nights to do it if it’s a matter of copy and paste only – that’s another story :).

Anyhow, here are changes recently implemented in my blog’s layout …

1. Three column width – this is one thing I wanted to do since I saw several WP themes displaying such format. It even made me think of migrating to WP but eventually, the idea was shrugged off. Vin provided the codes and explained in detail what it implied. I had to make few tweaks on the width figures and alignment of the sidebar as the code provided is for right sidebar but what I wanted was a left sidebar since the opposite already existed.

2. Post expandable summaries – I may not have long posts all the time but it helps having a post summary and having it expanded independently to read the whole thing. Installing the codes made all posts have the “read more” line at the end by default so I had to edit the latest 7 posts which are displayed in the main page such that the “read more” option exist in the midst of the post body. I also tweaked the codes such that the “read more” line is shown in bold and caps lock fonts. From it, I learned several tag codes and tag termination.

3. New window view for my blogroll – a friend has already informed me how to do this before but I was not able to incorporate it at that time. I thought I can simply paste the code in the page element but no, I had to insert it in the expanded widgets code. That meant I had to scroll down the html scripts to find the blogroll widget. Anyhow, this will now enable my blog friends to open the links without leaving my blog.

4. Option to subsribe to my blog – at first, I only got the chicklet from feedburner then I figured out, there’s also an option to offer email subscription. The codes were provided separately but I thought of merging them in a single page element.

5. Recent comments display – Vin showed two options and I chose the simpler one – that is to display 5 recent comments. Clicking them will bring you to the commented post page.

Earlier than the above implementation, I also added three pictures at the right sidebar showing my daughter and hubby. I also organized all my posts categories but may still need to narrow them down. And yes, I enrolled my blog back to PPP several weeks ago but I only got to post the tools the other night. I got the codes from PPP’s customer support because I cannot view them in my explorer window but figured out later that codes show up well in firefox (that’s another story too).

So there! I still have some items left in my to-do list and that includes changing the header image because I only borrowed the image from a multiply template.