I know some of you have noticed and commented on the changes I made to my blog. I wanted to share the things I changed because I did it all myself solely by googling and finding instructions for the things I wanted to change. I did think about paying for someone else to redesign my site, but I didn’t want to completely change everything because I like my color scheme, plus I know how to do some basics on my own so I didn’t feel I needed to spend the money. Here are the changes I made and where I found the instructions on how to make those changes.
1. Sidebar:
I removed a bunch of the things on my sidebar, including ads that never generate any income. They just serve as clutter. I also added a background color on my sidebar titles. [Tutorial]. Finally, I changed my photo and the text about myself.
I also had a line going down the middle of my page in between the main text and the sidebar. I wanted more white space, so I removed it. This post shows how to add a line, so I found it in my template and removed it.
2. Post Layout:
I decided I wanted my date header to come after the title of the post. I found how to do that here. I also adjusted the sizing and spacing and played around with things a bit as when I adjusted the date, it was also adjusting my sidebar size!
I changed the font that my site was using. I did that in the blogger template section as adding custom fonts seemed a little more complicated.
I had never used the “Read More” option before and I wanted to start, so I customized how that text would appear. [Tutorial].
3. Header:
I designed my new header myself, using Paint Shop Pro. I would normally have used picmonkey, but you are no longer able to save (export) images without becoming a paid picmonkey member and I was not happy about that! I got the background image here and I added my own text to it.
I then needed to center my header, and I also wanted to remove the space above it and make it reach across my whole page. (You may notice that it doesn’t exactly stretch across the whole page – I had a few issues with that one!)
I was going to add a section of images from my recent posts, but once I finally got it to work I decided I didn’t like how it looked. I was also going to add more links in the top section under my header image, but I haven’t done that yet.
4. Body:
I wanted to maximize the white space on my blog, so I removed my background via the blogger template and adjusted the widths. I had to play around with the widths multiple times and the content still isn’t centered correctly, so when you make your browser too skinny, it cuts off my sidebar. I didn’t know how to fix that!
5. Footer:
I added my recent Instagram photos and removed the “powered by Blogger” attribution from the bottom of my page.
What do you think of my recent blog changes? Any suggestions?