I downloaded a free Blogger template. Because the one's Google provides kinda suck ass. I mean, they look exactly like the one's they provided when they first purchased Blogger back in the mid 2000's. You think a billion dollar company could offer better solutions, like their profitable rival Wordpress. Also, their free templates don't come preloaded with social buttons. (in this age, that's marketing suicide)
Here's the one I downloaded. This is what it looked like when I first got it:
And here it is after I got a hold of it and tweaked the CSS/HTML:
THANK GOD that I still remembered how to do light coding! As much as I hate it, it helped in this situation.
The problem with free templates is, that it takes a fair amount to adjust them and get them right, enough to accommodate your needs.Templates that you pay for generally don't have these problems, as they are already made for easy adjustments. Me, I don't have the ca$h for that, so I do this by hand. No bells & whistles. I don't need flashy flare, just the basics.
Notice my social buttons aren't the same ones that came pre-loaded with the template. I had to create 2 additional buttons: the Goodreads and the Wattpad ones. And the buttons had to change the web addresses where they linked out to. I set it to the front page of each, as I have yet to set accounts to them. (too busy reformatting this template) I will talk more about that in a separate post.
The top template has the Header title tag image, that reads Bloggermint. (where I got the template from) In reality, the letters are opaque and the rest of it is transparent. But the image is only about 400+ pixels in length. They did that on purpose, in order to leave room for a clickable ad image to be placed on the right-hand side. Such ads bring in revenue. This is something I will do at some point, but not right away. So for now, I extended the pixel length to 900+ pixels to show my title image in full length.
The navbar had more clickable tabs, but I removed the excess for now. The top template ends with the 'How To' tab, while mine ends with the 'RSS Feed' tab.
So yea, on & off, it took about 4 days, including a trip down the coding memory lane. So far, so good.
I like to think it's Chuck approved ;-)
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| 'Murrica! |
