Wednesday, January 30, 2013

New Blog Design!

I was going to post another one of my oldie-but-goodie book reviews, but then I got distracted sprucing up my blog. (I hope you like it!) There were a bunch of things I thought were way over my head, but once I started playing around, I realized they weren't actually that difficult. So I thought I'd share a few of the links and tutorials that helped me learn all this behind-the-scenes bloggy stuff in case it might help someone else!

Yesterday's post from Bookshelvers Anonymous taught me there are lots of great (free!) blog backgrounds available out there. I chose one from Shabby Blogs, but Shelver also recommends The Cutest Blog on the Block and The Background Fairy. (She's also having an awesome giveaway for her one year blogoversary, so you should definitely go check it out!)

PhotobucketThis post from Projects Around the House taught me how to create my own blog button. Photobucket and PicMonkey are your friends.

This tutorial from The Book Vixen taught me how to create progress bars for my 2013 Reading Challenges page a couple weeks ago. I was also able to use this post to figure out the basic HTML for turning an image into a link and changing it's size (it's just the first portion of the code provided). Learning this one simple code proved very helpful for three different things: creating my review archive using book covers, creating subscribe/follow buttons for my sidebar, and also for cleaning up my Blogs I Read page. I love including blog buttons on that page, but it used to look like a jumbled mess with all the different sizes. Once I knew which part of the code changes the size, I was able to make them all the same height and neaten things up.

Trust me, I am no expert on this stuff, so if I can figure it out, you can too! And if you have any questions, I'm more than happy to try to help :)

6 comments:

  1. You did an amazing job - love the new look!

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  2. Love the new look! It makes me smile. :)

    I read the post from Bookshelvers Anonymous as well and it really inspired me to get my blog updated and nicer. Then I noticed you did that to yours and now you have given me even more inspiration. I will have to get cracking today.

    Thanks for the tips and the site links!

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    1. Glad to help! Before I read the Bookshelver's Anonymous post, I had just finished a bunch of little updates and decided the one thing I wasn't going to bother with was the background...but then I saw just how easy it would be to fix (and what a black mark it was against me!) and starting looking right away.

      You're already one step ahead of me since you don't have the ubiquitous Blogger "bookshelf background," but it's fun to play around with things -- time-consuming & distracting, but fun! :)

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  3. New look is great! And yeah, you'll totally have to help me with my blog. LOL I'll check out the tutorial before I beg for help.

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    1. Thanks! And I'm more than happy to help if I can :)

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I'd love to hear what you think :)