redesigning your blog

So far I’m very happy with the response I have had and the way that I feel about the redesign of this site. Its odd how simply making it look different makes you feel different.

It took long enough to do though, a whole evening trying to teach yourself HTML and art when you have no real skills in either. Clearly I’ve used an easily available template which takes no skill at all but then I had to tweak it a bit. The template wasn’t quite the right size and just did not look right at first.

So I had to try and locate the parts of the script that covered the widths of the different areas and where the margins were and adjust them all. Then I had to keep on adjusting them until I repaired the damage that I had just caused. Several hours later I was back to square one and scratching my head.

Eventually I’d managed to get it looking how I liked and proudly I decided that it was time for bed.

As I was about to switch off for the night I noticed my favourite widget was no longer working. This widget was my first and shall remain my favourite for some time, I think. If you are wondering what I am referring to it’s the simple, little prompt in the top left hand corner that invites you to have a look at an old post. So simple, it’s brilliant. I nabbed it from Experiment Garden when I first set up the blog and love it. I’m proud of a good 70% of the posts that I’ve written here. Consequently the idea that these posts, that are otherwise forgotten about get a mention, really appeals to me.

It might only be me that does it but often I do find myself thinking “Oh yeah I liked that one!” when I see the prompt and then click and re read it. Sometimes I can see how I could have done it better, sometimes I cringe yet sometimes I pat myself on the back.

To get to the point (at last) I had a good look at it the next day and went back to Experiment Garden to find out why it had broken. Any one reading this with any knowledge at all will already be jumping up and down with their arm in the air shouting “Miss”, at this point, but for the rest of us…

It turns out I needed to add a line into the actual HTML of the template separate from the widget. The new Template wouldn’t have that in so it needed re adding.

So now I can relax as my favourite gadget is back up and running, though I’ve got a niggling feeling that I’ve missed something.

I know I’ve added some other lines like that into the header before – can’t remember what they were but I feel they were important, possibly for Google searches or Adverts? Any ideas anyone? I’m starting to panic that I’ve missed something important.