When you first start blogging, you'll find a nice assortment of templates to choose from, to serve as the foundation for your new blog. After you've developed a few blogs, or tweaked one blog for a while to get it just right, you may decide that the Blogger provided assortment isn't so comprehensive as it looked earlier.
What to do now?
One solution would be to go wandering through the blogosphere, looking for other bloggers who have experienced the same frustration as you, and see what they did. In some cases, they'll offer the results of their efforts, frequently for no cost to you.
That's a third party solution - and third party solutions have both advantages and disadvantages.
Maybe you decide that you know what you want better than they do, so if they could create their own, why shouldn't you? And now, the fun begins.
What do I do now?
If you're completely new to this, then learn how templates work, and why they don't. Take an existing template, decide what you don't like, and figure out how to change what you don't like. None of this will be wasted effort, because all of what you do will be experience when you build a template from scratch.
After you've been tweaking and removing what you don't like from the existing template, start putting what you do like into a clean template. You can develop and test your clean template in a second blog, while you work on your existing template in your first blog.
When maintaining two blogs becomes too much work, and you can get more done by making changes straight into the second blog, there's the start to your first template developed from scratch. Keep the first blog, as a baseline, and start working on the second blog.
You work on the second blog in reverse order to how you previously worked on the first. Use the pieces of the first as models, and add the pieces into the second. Where you like a feature in the first blog, simply copy the code into the second. Where you want something different, write the code from scratch. By the time you've gotten this far, you already know how templates work, so now you learn why they don't work as you like them, and how to make the pieces that you want.
Again, just one step at a time. Backup your changes, and test your changes, with anal regularity.
Oh yeah, for testing your changes, there's the New Blogger June/July 2008 feature that lets you export comments / posts from one blog, and import them into another. So work on one blog, keep the second blog as a baseline, and copy the blog contents back and forth to create a nice uniform test environment.
And enjoy the learning. Blogging can be fun, if you relax.
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Showing posts with label Coding Techniques. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Coding Techniques. Show all posts
Friday, August 1, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
The Post Editor And HTML Special Characters
Most web pages that you will view on the Internet are written in HTML.
HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language, was designed long ago to enhance simple text, giving it ability to display more than simple letters, numbers, special characters, etc. What you're looking at is mostly simple text. Here, on the other hand, is an example of bold text. And here, italicised text. And here, red text. Are you interested yet?
Here's how I coded the above paragraph in HTML:
The above paragraph was translated, from the introductory paragraph at the top, by Postable, a web based utility.
You can use Postable, other similar utilities, or Notepad, and convert your HTML to displayable text. When you compose a post, in "HTML" mode, there are several special characters, that you can't enter as simple text.
When you display HTML code in your posts, you'll have to translate each of these characters as in the above examples - or using the corresponding ASCII numeric codes - if you want your code to be selectively readable as code, in a post.
If you want the entire post to display all special characters as code, you can use the Post Editor "Post settings" feature - Options - "Compose mode", and select "Interpret typed HTML". This lets you display a block of code without requiring special character translation, as above - though it prevents you from using formatting in the post, in HTML mode.
To display """, "'", "&", "<", or ">", you enter "&quot;", "&apos;", "&amp;", "&lt;", or "&gt;", respectively.
I'll let you figure out how to display "&quot;" "&apos;", "&amp;", "&lt;", or "&gt;".
Now that the post editor in New Blogger June/July 2008 is part of Production Blogger, you can, optionally, display HTML routinely, by a selection in the Post Editor "Post settings". Or, you can still enter special characters in HTML.
HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language, was designed long ago to enhance simple text, giving it ability to display more than simple letters, numbers, special characters, etc. What you're looking at is mostly simple text. Here, on the other hand, is an example of bold text. And here, italicised text. And here, red text. Are you interested yet?
Here's how I coded the above paragraph in HTML:
Most web pages that you will view on the Internet are written in HTML.<br /><br />HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language, was designed long ago to enhance simple text, giving it characteristics beyond simple letters, numbers, special characters, etc. What you're looking at is mostly simple text. Here, on the other hand, is an example of <span style="font-weight:bold;">bold text</span>. And here, <span style="font-style:italic;">italicised text</span>. And here, <span style="color:rgb(255,0,0);" >red text</span>. Interested yet?
The above paragraph was translated, from the introductory paragraph at the top, by Postable, a web based utility.
You can use Postable, other similar utilities, or Notepad, and convert your HTML to displayable text. When you compose a post, in "HTML" mode, there are several special characters, that you can't enter as simple text.
- The quote symbol " which must be entered as """, or """.
- The apostrophe ' which must be entered as "'" (If you are reading this in Internet Explorer, you may not see this properly!), or "'".
- The ampersand & which must be entered as "&", or "&".
- The less than sign < which must be entered as "<", or "<".
- The greater than sign > which must be entered as ">", or ">".
When you display HTML code in your posts, you'll have to translate each of these characters as in the above examples - or using the corresponding ASCII numeric codes - if you want your code to be selectively readable as code, in a post.
If you want the entire post to display all special characters as code, you can use the Post Editor "Post settings" feature - Options - "Compose mode", and select "Interpret typed HTML". This lets you display a block of code without requiring special character translation, as above - though it prevents you from using formatting in the post, in HTML mode.
To display """, "'", "&", "<", or ">", you enter "&quot;", "&apos;", "&amp;", "&lt;", or "&gt;", respectively.
I'll let you figure out how to display "&quot;" "&apos;", "&amp;", "&lt;", or "&gt;".
Now that the post editor in New Blogger June/July 2008 is part of Production Blogger, you can, optionally, display HTML routinely, by a selection in the Post Editor "Post settings". Or, you can still enter special characters in HTML.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Help Your Readers Search Your Blog
When your blog gets larger, you'll want your readers to be able to find the content easier - sometimes using more detail than can be found in the Archives index.
You can generally use Labels for a more comprehensive index of the blog contents - but both labels, and titles, index the posts based on your vision of the blog. What if you want your readers to view your blog, on their terms?
This is where the Navbar, with its search box, becomes useful.
The Navbar based search is a good choice, for most readers of the blog.
It's a good choice - assuming that you don't block the Navbar, and assuming that your readers like using the Navbar - and that the navbar based blog search is not broken.
You can use search accessories outside the navbar.
But you're not confined to using the Search box on the Navbar - you can make your own search box, and position it where you like.
Setup a new HTML / JavaScript gadget, to get a very simple search box for your blog. Use the "HTML/JavaScript" selection in "Basics".
Just copy the code - a simple 4 lines - to the new gadget.
You can add this gadget, in many places.
Having setup your new gadget, you can position it anywhere on the page. Or, you can have a search box inside a post, as I show above. See "Search This Blog", above - and "Search The Real Blogger Status", at the top of the sidebar?
And, there are still more possibilities.
You can get way more fancy, for instance search multiple blogs at once, using a Google Custom Search box, but for a 5 minute blog upgrade, this is all that you need.
This is very user friendly - your readers will appreciate it. And it's so easy to add.
You can generally use Labels for a more comprehensive index of the blog contents - but both labels, and titles, index the posts based on your vision of the blog. What if you want your readers to view your blog, on their terms?
This is where the Navbar, with its search box, becomes useful.
The Navbar based search is a good choice, for most readers of the blog.
It's a good choice - assuming that you don't block the Navbar, and assuming that your readers like using the Navbar - and that the navbar based blog search is not broken.
You can use search accessories outside the navbar.
But you're not confined to using the Search box on the Navbar - you can make your own search box, and position it where you like.
Setup a new HTML / JavaScript gadget, to get a very simple search box for your blog. Use the "HTML/JavaScript" selection in "Basics".
Just copy the code - a simple 4 lines - to the new gadget.
<form action="/search" method="get">
<input name="q" type="text"/>
<input value="Search This Blog" type="submit"/>
</form>
You can add this gadget, in many places.
Having setup your new gadget, you can position it anywhere on the page. Or, you can have a search box inside a post, as I show above. See "Search This Blog", above - and "Search The Real Blogger Status", at the top of the sidebar?
And, there are still more possibilities.
You can get way more fancy, for instance search multiple blogs at once, using a Google Custom Search box, but for a 5 minute blog upgrade, this is all that you need.
- Search only the posts, in the one blog.
- Search your blog directly, not from search engine cache. No waiting for search engine updates.
- Search private blogs, with some chance for success.
- Display search results as part of the blog display, with all blog accessories and decorations visible.
This is very user friendly - your readers will appreciate it. And it's so easy to add.
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