How To Make It Work: March 2007

After close to about 16 hours straight of staring at codings, I've finally completed upgrading my new template. The reasons for doing so besides improving the interface for easier reading is to improve on search engine optimization and maximizing usage of ad space. This beloved blog of mine have certainly come a long way since it was started back in 2nd of Jan 2007 and I would like to take the opportunity to thank all my fellow money minded bloggers for their support.

Prior to starting off on this new design project, I checked the Google Analytics stats for the most used browser accessing this blog in order for me to plan ahead which IE just pipped Firefox by a very slim margin. Then I scoured the net for a suitable 3-column New Blogger Beta template but couldn't find a design that captured my attention. Thankfully I found Blogcrowds.com where they feature a huge array of templates for various platforms. I finally decided on Andreas08 template as I really liked the navigation bar located on the header which I can make use to save some space off my sidebar but I faced a huge obstacle as it was only a 2-column template.

Since I only have very basic html knowledge, I turned to the net again for a solution and found it at Beautiful Beta. Even with the detailed guide, it was still a daunting task to make it work properly and this was perhaps the 2nd most time consuming process for me. Once I got it just right, I then imported all the widgets and elements from the old template and then start repositioning everything to fit the new template. When it comes to 50/50 decisions, I decided to go with what will look best in IE although I am a Firefox user but it was only for those small details. At this juncture I am still having an issue with the Blogger Navbar which seems to drop down when viewing individual post pages with Firefox and I can't seem to find a solution to it thus far.

With the new template, I've moved the Useful Links to the navigation bar in order to make more room for the ever growing links for monetizing blogs which I will be re-evaluating tomorrow. I would like these links to be of good quality and up to date blogs to benefit my treasured readers so I will be taking down link of blogs which have not been updated in the past 21days. I understand that life can be very demanding and sometimes takes us in a different direction, so if your blog link was omitted and you are back in blogging action, just drop me an email and I will gladly re-list it.

At the end of the day, I am glad I took the effort to do it as I've learnt quite a fair bit on CSS and more importantly blogger codes positioning which I am sure will come in handy in the future when placing ads or banners. Overall I am very satisfied with the new look but will work on tweaking the navbar and perhaps re-designing the header at a later date cause at the moment, I really need to catch up on some much needed sleep.

Technorati Tags: blogger template, blog design, optimize blog

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