Complete redesign of my blog

TechieGuy · #1 (**permalink**) 08-19-2007, 03:45 PM

Hi all,

I have completely rebuilt my blog template from scratch. I have redone all images and have modifed the layout.

I would appreciate any comments or suggestions before I move the new template to my live blog.

You can find the blog here: http://technicallyeasydev.blogspot.com/.

The URL to my current blog layout is in my signature.

Thanks.

webdev · #2 (**permalink**) 08-19-2007, 06:47 PM

hey techiguy,

nice work. I like the colors especially the orange gradient. It sticks out. I like the big font size you have. What font type are you using? The fonts for the main content look really neat. Thou they are bit small in size but looks really clean thou. I notice you are using extra spacing between your sentences. How did you achieve that?

Not sure if the gap between the content panel and the right panel should be there. There a lot of white/empty space between the two.

Other than that it looks really good

Oh, do you know if feedburner is also available for websites?

TechieGuy · #3 (**permalink**) 08-19-2007, 07:19 PM

Thanks for pointing the gap between the content and the right panel. It only appeared on a widescreen monitor. It has been fixed.

I have increased the font size. The smaller size might have been hard for some to read. I need to balance out between font size and panel size in the Web page.

The entire site is mostly the verdana font. The spacing between the lines is done by specifying line-height: 130% in the CSS.

I think Feedburner is available to any site that has an RSS feed, since most of it's functionality is based around the feeds.

lisa · #4 (**permalink**) 08-19-2007, 08:34 PM

Whew, what a nice, crisp design. Love it! Hey did you know you can hide that top nav bar at the top of your blog by adding the following to the head of your blogger template...

<style type='text/css'>

#navbar-iframe {

height: 0px;

}

</style>

Use at your own risk, though. Not sure if it violates any Blogger terms. I didn't find where it does but I just wanted to throw that out there just in case.

GreenThumb · #5 (**permalink**) 08-19-2007, 10:07 PM

Let me just say that I usually hate a lot of green on websites for some reason but this really works for me. Maybe it's the shade of green. I love your use of white space and color choice. Nice balance ya got there.

And Lisa what an awesome tip about removing that nav bar at the top of my blog. I always HATE that thing. It looks like it doesn't belong.

TechieGuy · #6 (**permalink**) 08-20-2007, 06:31 AM

Thanks Lisa for the tip on removing the navbar. I'm not sure if it violates any of Blogger's terms, but I hid it anyway.

TechieGuy · #7 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 07:44 PM

I've decided to update my site with my new design. Both the development and live blog now look identical.

Thanks to those that provided feedback and comments. They were great and helped with the final look.

lisa · #8 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 10:07 PM

Your site looks nice too. I also like how you incorporated all the RSS feed buttons in the right nav. Very convenient for people who want to subscribe.

mclintst · #9 (**permalink**) 08-23-2007, 08:55 PM

Hey Techie Guy,

Your live site looks really nice. The green and orange blend well together.

I really like your ad placement at the bottom of the page. They actually look like older posts. How is that working for you?

What program are you using? Is it still blogger?

TechieGuy · #10 (**permalink**) 08-24-2007, 06:25 AM

Thanks mclintst. I have been trying different locations for the ad placement, and I know that at the top of the page is probably the best as that is what the visitors will see first. I wanted the content to appear before the ads, however.

I haven't had much success yet with the ads, but then again my blog is only two months old. I'm more concerned with writing content and fine tuning the look and feel of the site first.

I am still using blogger, but I'm not using one of their templates. I looked at how the templates are structured and then designed my own. I first developed the skeleton layout, and then inserted the widgets, and eventually set the final colours and images.

attackdepression · #11 (**permalink**) 08-25-2007, 10:27 AM

techieguy, what do you mean when you said you installed the "widgets" I see that word a lot now days and am not too familiar with what that means. I am getting ready to open a blogger account and want to do my own template. I understand how you can change colors, etc. but I'm a little confused about how to go about setting up the layout. Can someone who is a beginner in HTML do this without too much problem?

Nice blog by the way.

TechieGuy · #12 (**permalink**) 08-25-2007, 01:37 PM

Widgets are the components of a blog. They are pieces of code that execute to perform a specific task. For example, displaying a post for a blog is a widget. Displaying a list of categories is another. When you have a blogger account, you are presented with a graphical layout of your blog that allows you to add/remove widgets as well as move them around to get the layout you want.

When I designed my site I started a second blog. The second blog was my development blog, where I tried out new layouts. This allowed me to change my look without affecting my main blog.

Designing a blog is easy, as long as you know basic HTML. Don't worry about the widgets first, just layout your blog which includes the left and or right navigation, header, footer and of course content sections. This should be done in your development blog.

I then viewed the source to my actual blog and copied the important sections over. When you view your blog as HTML in blogger you will notice the <b:section ...></b:section> tags . These represent the individuals sections you see in the actual preview layout I mentioned earlier. These sections will contain the widgets. I copied these section tags to my development blog in the correct locations in the code to provide my navigation bars and content.

Once these sections are in place you can then add your widgets, which is a matter of selecting and placing them within the layout preview. The biggest thing about development is to do it in a separate blog from your main blog so any mistakes you make won't affect your visitors.

I hope this helps a little, if you need more info let me know.

lisa · #13 (**permalink**) 08-25-2007, 07:48 PM

This is great info, Techiguy. I'm gonna go experiment. I've been playing around with my blog template layout and this is a great help. I'm sure this will be very useful to many newbie Bloggers.

siyab · #14 (**permalink**) 11-08-2007, 11:13 PM

nice redesign techieguy!

How's your traffic going? Has it increased?

TechieGuy · #15 (**permalink**) 11-09-2007, 07:50 AM

It was higher a few weeks ago, but it has settled down now. It isn't high, but I'll keep plugging away at it and see what happens.

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