Blogger Tips

Since I started blogging in 2008, Blogger has improved its blogging platform immensely. However, I have still needed to tweak my blog to get it to perform as best as my limited knowledge of html/css will allow. Mainly this is done during feverish googling fits. I have collected some great resources along the way and thought I would share them with you.

• An overall great Blogger resource: Blogger Buster

• Adding social media icons via Closet Cooking
• Fun icons from Dry Icons
• Script to open all external links in a new window via Super User
• Speed up your blog load time using the Online CSS Optimizer (copy and paste any CSS from your blog html code and optimize it for faster load times)
• Widening your comment form box via Spice Up Your Blog
• Floating button tutorial via Coffee Shop Blog
• Removing the Blogger navbar via Hub Pages

I wanted a wide template so that I could use large pictures but blogger's design tool only allows up to 1000px. You can manually widen the simple template in html. To do so go to Design > Edit HTML. Do a ctrl+f to find the accents section. Under that section you should find something that says: name='content.width' type='length' value='1000px' you can make your blog wider by changing that number. My blog is 1100px.

I also removed the padding from the columns to give myself more space. I did that by going to Design > Template Designer > Advanced > Add CSS and copying and pasting the following code:

.main-inner .column-center-inner {

padding-top: 0pt;
padding-right: 15px;
padding-bottom: 0pt;
padding-left: 15px;
}

.main-inner .column-left-inner {
padding-top: 0pt;
padding-right: 15px;
padding-bottom: 0pt;
padding-left: 15px;
}

.main-inner .column-right-inner {
padding-top: 0pt;
padding-right: 15px;
padding-bottom: 0pt;
padding-left: 15px;
}

I then changed all of the padding to 0px which removed it all from my blog.

I've done some other tweaks over the years but these are the ones that I have remembered to bookmark. I am by no means an expert but let me know if you have any questions and I will be happy to help!