A few random things.... (and a request for my readers - yes, YOU!)

Hi everyone, hope you all had a great Holiday Season and New Year!

I have a few random things to mention in this post, so please bear with me. Time permitting, normal programming will resume shortly.

I would love to write a few simple tutorials, so if you're a reader and have a good idea, please leave a comment and let me know what you'd like to know and I'll try and help. Of course I might not be able to explain everything but hit me up with a comment and I will get started.

• I have now opened a twitter account just for this site. HOORAY!
  I realise I had previously linked to my personal one before now but most of the time I complain about the public transport system in Melbourne (ie: nothing to do with Blogging). Therefore, I have made a dedicated Twitter account which I will post random Blogger points/info etc. Follow me: Yummy_Lolly
  
  
• I had a request from Dana to make the "She May Adore Me" template with a post divider image - ie: between the posts. Yes, that is easily done, so what I have done is removed the image from under the sidebar headers and put it under each blog post.
  I guess I'm not 100% sure if that's what Dana meant but you can see what it would look like below:
  
  
  
  (click for a larger preview)
  
  
  
  
  
• I also had a request to have the lovely font "Mountains of Christmas" used for block quotes from 'Owner of the Blog' (great name).
  
  So yes, as I am a nice girl, I have done that too:
  
  
  
  (click for a larger preview)
  
  

  You can download this code below:
  
  
  

Hey, you! Get ride of that horrid blue Blogger Navbar!

Have you noticed that the Blogger navbar is now more customisable? (well, in an ultimate world I could select the background colour myself!) but now there are more options than the horrid blue and tan!

{yeah, a lot of people remove/hide their Blogger navigation bar but I find it quite useful for searching and "following" a blog, and I'm always a bit bummed when it's removed. So there!}

My personal favourite is the Transparent Light - which means you can see the background pattern (or colour) behind it. See what I mean on this Christmas Baubles template. Cool, yeah?

You can find this feature under the LAYOUT > PAGE ELEMENTS (click on "Edit" in the Navbar area and a pop-up window will open).

A lot of you may have known about this but for those who haven't - enjoy!

Easily adding your Blog list via GOOGLE READER (which I love!)

One of the biggest annoyances I encountered when uploading a new template for myself was losing my Blog Reading List from the sidebar (as installing a new template erases your widget data). However, I noticed last night that you can import your blog list from Google Reader!

If you don't use Google Reader, then I definitely recommend you get going and start using it! RIGHT NOW! I love it to bits - it enables me to easily add blogs I read (and manage them) and it's all linked to your google/gmail account! No more copying and pasting blog URLs into a widget and then losing it when you change your template!

Gosh, I hope I'm making sense here!

I use gmail and would never consider using any other email these days - I left my other email as soon as gmail came along 5 years ago. How convenient that Google also own/run Blogger too - this is how it's all linked and this is how you can insert (quickly and easily) your blog list:

1) Go to LAYOUT > PAGE ELEMENTS.

2) Click on "Add a Gadget" in the sidebar of your blog. Select the "Blog List" one:

3) Click on "Add to List" (see below):

4) Instead of adding each blog by the URL (time wasting, anyone?) you can either add the "Blogs I'm Following" or "Import subscriptions from Google Reader".



You just have to select which blogs you want and then "add" them.

The "Blog's I'm Following" are those Blogger blogs that you've clicked on 'Follow' (like mine?) and/or you can always import your subscriptions from Google Reader. Using Google Reader means that you can add blogs from any blogging platform and not just Blogger.

This is sooooo easy!
Most other widgets are really easy to move across to a new template but this makes easy work of the thing I always hated doing. Yay!