Blogger Design Tips

I honestly enjoy designing blogs. I enjoy the creative part, picking out the colour scheme, adding the elements, making it look real pretty. But sometimes, I really don't want to answer all the same questions how to "do this" or "fix that". So here I am, about to share some of my favourite tricks I use to beautify my blogs! It may or may not be useful to you, but I thought I would share anyways :)
But please be aware, if something goes wrong when implementing any of these tips on your own blog, do not come running to me fix it or hold me accountable! Always use precaution and save your template before you try to edit it! :)

Simple text changes in your posts
You may or may not have noticed that some blogs have funky colours or sizes for when they make words italic, bold, underscored, or striked out. This is VERY simple!

The easiest way to show you how to do this is, is with an image. Tadahhhh!

Now of course, you MUST make sure when posting a new post you are set to "Edit Html" and not "Compose" or this wont work. Also, you must have this highlighted part of the code tucked into the backend of your design, HTML. If you have purchased one of my pre-made designs, this snippet of code is already in your template and you do not need to insert this!



You can grab the code here;

<style type='text/css'><br />s {color: #b0b0b0;}<br />i {color: #e7d69f;}<br />u {border-bottom:1px dashed #e7d69f; color:#76bbaf;}<br />b {color: #76bbaf;}<br /><br /></style>



Make sure it is at the top of your HTML, after your blog title and before this part;

You can change the colours to anything you would like changing this part; #76bbaf


Making a funky sidebar image!

I adore photoshop! But I am also very lucky to have a graphic/web designer hubster whose business purchased the program... if you are on a budget, try picmonkey.com. You can collage your images, or put wording across them. You can also edit it with like you would with photoshop or instagram to make it cleaner or have a special effect!

This is what my image looked like when I first started;

Then I played with it a bit and Tada! this is what I came out with!

It can be fun to play with and help make your sidebar images look a little more spiffy!


How to add a google font to your blog

This one is a little bit more tricky, but totally do-able.
First, search here for a font you like. Once you find one you like, click on Quick-use, and go to step #3, add this code to your website.
There should be 3 tabs, Standard, @import, and Javascript. You want @import. Click on @import and copy the code. The code will look similar to this, except with the font that you chose;

@import url(http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Rye);

Go into your blogger account, go to "Design", "Edit Html". You want to paste this code near the top of your HTML.
Here is an image to give you an idea of where you need to stick it!

Go back to the google fonts website, you will need to grab one more piece of code to make your text show up!

Grab the code where it says; 4. Integrate the fonts into your CSS: It will look like this, but with the name of the font you chose instead; font-family: 'Rye', cursive;
Once you have the snippet of code copied, go back into your blogger account where you were just editing your HTML.
Now you can paste this code into your HTML, wherever you see a font-family: tag! This will change the font family for the specific part of your blog. It can change the post titles, sidebar titles, blog posts, everything! Just play with it a bit till you find what works best for you :)


How to make text wrap around your sidebar image

If you have a small little sidebar image, and you want to wrap text around it like in this blog;

Just use this code;
<img src="PUT YOUR IMAGE URL HERE" align="left"> bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla</style>

That is all I have for now, I def plan on adding to this list when I can think of other tips that might be useful for you! If you have any suggestions on tutorials and how-to's for updating the look of your own blog, let me know! I would love to know what you are dying to figure out to update your own blog :)