Hey Andrew, I'm blogging to my student ministry website.... What advice or pointers would you give someone starting out. I know, technically you aren't bound to tell me anything, since I missed the conference in Budapest. :) What about posting pics, changing colors (or is it colours?), etc...How do you include comments from others? Any other ideas? Thanks. And glad to hear that conference went well for you. I travelled, too. Last weekend, I was speaking at a Pure Freedom.
Stacy C. Sublett from Xstream
Hi Stacey, I am assuming you can post images to another site and can link to them. I have emailed you the necessary HTML and will email to others who need it. Dang, you can take my whole site if you want, or at least hear how i have created it.
As for starting out, here are 10 thoughts and pointers that may be of assistance:
1. Get an extra blog site, make it private (not public) and use it for roadtesting new ideas and new template html. Make all your mistakes in private. Costs no money but saves lots of frustration when you screw up the html.
2. You really have to learn a little html if you are to have a decent site - Buy a book on it. Its not as complicated as you think. I bought "Introducing Web Design" by Rob Young. Print off the template html and figure it all out.
3. When you start a new blog site with Blogger, choose the "Currency" template. It is by far the easiest to use and it already has a place to add your own links. The only things you may want to change are:
a)the color of the header is not great - they are using color number #CCCC99 (find it on the template html). You can change that to another color by chaning the 6 digits. White is #FFFFFF, black is #OOOOOO, dark grey is #999999, the light grey I am using on mine is #d5d5d5, orange is #FFA500. Your book will tell you all of them or you can go to this color table.
b) The two tables should extend all the way across but they dont on "Currency" so you should change the numerical value to a percentage. When the html mentions 375, (as in width="375" which occurs twice), change it to "70%". The other table says width="175" change that one to width="30%". You could also go 60/40 or 80/20 if you choose.
4. Comments. Find the comments you like on someone's blog and find out how to get the same for your own. At present i am not using comments but I may use them soon.
5. I havethe html for images and links come up automatically on each blog entry so I dont have to type it out each time. You can get this feature with Blogger Pro along with the ability to blog to the past or future and other advantages. It is now blogger courtesy to link to each other or to things when you mention them.
6. The tallskinnykiwi template used to be based on "Currency" but is now a re-mix of blogger's "Interblued" template. It looks good but is complicated and lengthy. I dont recommend it.
7. Get a life and publish the good news daily. This should be the first one.
8. Get storage. I post my images to a free site at www.volny.cz and then link to them. its cheap and it works.
10. Optimize your photos to jpegs of 10k or less and your text images to gifs. My little ones are 3k and my big ones are always less than 20k. Photoshop Elements or Fireworks does the trick.
Stacy C. Sublett from Xstream
Hi Stacey, I am assuming you can post images to another site and can link to them. I have emailed you the necessary HTML and will email to others who need it. Dang, you can take my whole site if you want, or at least hear how i have created it.
As for starting out, here are 10 thoughts and pointers that may be of assistance:
1. Get an extra blog site, make it private (not public) and use it for roadtesting new ideas and new template html. Make all your mistakes in private. Costs no money but saves lots of frustration when you screw up the html.
2. You really have to learn a little html if you are to have a decent site - Buy a book on it. Its not as complicated as you think. I bought "Introducing Web Design" by Rob Young. Print off the template html and figure it all out.
3. When you start a new blog site with Blogger, choose the "Currency" template. It is by far the easiest to use and it already has a place to add your own links. The only things you may want to change are:
a)the color of the header is not great - they are using color number #CCCC99 (find it on the template html). You can change that to another color by chaning the 6 digits. White is #FFFFFF, black is #OOOOOO, dark grey is #999999, the light grey I am using on mine is #d5d5d5, orange is #FFA500. Your book will tell you all of them or you can go to this color table.
b) The two tables should extend all the way across but they dont on "Currency" so you should change the numerical value to a percentage. When the html mentions 375, (as in width="375" which occurs twice), change it to "70%". The other table says width="175" change that one to width="30%". You could also go 60/40 or 80/20 if you choose.
4. Comments. Find the comments you like on someone's blog and find out how to get the same for your own. At present i am not using comments but I may use them soon.
5. I havethe html for images and links come up automatically on each blog entry so I dont have to type it out each time. You can get this feature with Blogger Pro along with the ability to blog to the past or future and other advantages. It is now blogger courtesy to link to each other or to things when you mention them.
6. The tallskinnykiwi template used to be based on "Currency" but is now a re-mix of blogger's "Interblued" template. It looks good but is complicated and lengthy. I dont recommend it.
7. Get a life and publish the good news daily. This should be the first one.
8. Get storage. I post my images to a free site at www.volny.cz and then link to them. its cheap and it works.
10. Optimize your photos to jpegs of 10k or less and your text images to gifs. My little ones are 3k and my big ones are always less than 20k. Photoshop Elements or Fireworks does the trick.
