Blogging 101: Making Your Blog Look Pretty

Hello Princesses!

Today I'm going to be showing you how to make your blog look pretty! ^.^

One of the first thing you want to do is figure out what side you want all your gadgets to be on. Left, Right or Both? If you want to change the way your blog gadgets are set up, click onto your Template Tab, and then onto the orange Customize button. If you're not sure how to use your HTML code, don't click onto the Edit HTML button just yet! Once you're in the "Customize" tab, click down into the "Layout" tab.

In this tab you can chose where your side gadgets and footers are placed. I prefer to have my gadgets to the left of my blog posts. You can also go to the "Adjust Widths" tab and change how wide everything looks. My Entire blog is 1200px and my Left Sidebar is 220.

You can also change your Template using the "Template" tab. I use the Simple template because I upload my own background picture. It makes it look better because the template is transparent. I'm terrible at explaining things so I'll show you what I mean! My main blog background looks like this: (don't try to steal it, I changed the colours)

It looks deceivingly small, but it's tailor made for the length of my blog. Everything on my blog is transparent, so when it looks like your looking at a white text background - you're actually seeing the white section of the background picture. If you want to do the same sort of thing with your background template, make sure that the white section on your background is a little wider than the length of your entire blog (the amount we selected previously in the "Adjust Widths" tab).

Anyway ... if you chose a different theme, expect a different outcome. Try out all of the themes before you make your pick. I'm leaving mine on the Simple template. Next, you can chose if you want to add a background, or leave it white or a simple solid colour. There are a couple of pre-made backgrounds to chose from as well. 

 I found a simple non-copywrite background by searching Blog Background Tumblr, (I'm not sure why, but it just comes up with cuter things if you add Tumblr to your search). Make sure that you're not stealing someone else's property, otherwise you will not be having a fun time. Set your Alignment to center, and play around with the tiling setting. I chose to not scroll my background, which means it stays static while the rest of the blog scrolls down.

The last section is the "Advanced" section, which is very misleading because it's not really advanced at all. This is where you can change the font, text colour and gadget colours. I suggest you stick to a colour theme for most things, and make good use of the transparency colour! I use the Veranda font and variations of pale pink, blue and purple for links and titles. 

That's all I'm going to be showing you today, next week I'll show you how I make, troubleshoot and install backgrounds, banners and pages! ^.^ 

Leave a comment if you're enjoying this series, or if you have any questions about blogging or coding and I'll try my best to answer them!