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| Lunafy Blogger template |
As you can see, we have a new look. After yet another session of tweaking my template, I was disgusted. It still looked like a kindergartner's attempt at making mom breakfast. Everything was cobbled together and it showed. There had to be a better way.
I thought,
Maybe Wordpress has better theme options. So, I toddled over to
Wordpress.com. It was
—disappointing. I had a Wordpress website once upon a time, as Michaela McGregor. But that was
Wordpress.org. Wordpress.com is a whole different kettle of fish.
If you don't have a clue what I'm talking about, you aren't alone. Most people have heard of Wordpress. Wordpress is to blogs what the Colonel is to chicken. They redefined blogging or maybe defined it. But there are actually two different blogging entities named Wordpress.
Wordpress.com is a blogging platform/community that hosts free blogs for the masses and is similar to Blogger.
Wordpress.org is also a blogging platform/community, but it's for websites. If you have your own website, (i.e. a domain and host) you can download Wordpress and build your site with it. I loved it. It was very easy to deal with. There were tons of themes with every layout and color you can imagine. And the plugins rock! Alas, Wordpress.com doesn't have plugins. And the themes or templates they have didn't do what I wanted them to do.
Finally, it occurred to me to look for a custom made Blogger template. Talk about your
DUH moment. I'm still kicking myself for all the time I wasted. Whatev's. It's done.
So, I typed
Blogger templates in Chrome's handy-dandy omnibox and... Whoa. It was going to take a while. And it did. It took two weeks to find a Blogger template that did what I wanted and that I liked the look of. The main obstacle was finding templates that weren't black text on a white background. It kills my eyes to stare at black text in a sea of white. But most websites are still black on white. As a matter of fact, the template you are looking at was the ONLY one that had the features I was looking for and something other than white as a background. Sad. So, so sad. But, if my daughter hadn't given this one a thumbs-up, I would have bitten my tongue and gone with white as a background.
If you are looking for a Blogger template, I have some suggestions.
- Make a list of all the features you are looking for and keep it where you can see it. It's like going into a model home. It's easy to get lost in all the shiny newness of it and forget to imagine your furniture in the rooms.
- Make sure you test out everything. Don't make the same mistake as the designers. Use the demo. Click all the links. Where are they? Are they convenient? If you didn't like it, neither will your readers.
- Find out if there is any kind of support. Most of us are going to use free templates. As a rule, free automatically means no support. But I saw a couple of themes where the people who paid the $10 for a license couldn't get a simple question answered. That's pretty bad. I didn't bother trying to install either of them.
- Read through the instructions first. Are they complete? Can you follow them? I had a few false starts with templates, strictly because the directions were so poorly written, I couldn't follow them.
- Before you install a new template, backup your current template first. If you don't know how, see this post.
- Before you install a new template, remove any CSS or HTML you have added to your current template. Any alterations you made will probably mess with your new template and might even break it.
Here are a few links to Blogger template sites.
- gooyaabitemplates.com
- btemplates.com
- mybloggerthemes.com
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Wednesday, October 21, 2015