Fun Under the Hood

I’ve been traveling about and have seen a number of blogs that people have out there that are just really, really interesting. And, I want one too. However, just as I wanted to become a psychic rather than have it done for me, I feel the urge to do this myself. In fact, tonight I did a very, very small tweak on this site.

I added a threesome of Google Ads at the top of the page and in doing so separated the title area and the body of the blog. There were these teeny tiny little curved things at the corner of each side of the blue which would have given a rounded aspect to the lower edge of the blue of the title area. Unfortunately, with the Google Ad in place it looked funny, like a piece of spinach stuck to your front tooth. It bothered me. I considered removing the Google Ads, but then decided I wanted them up high for folks to see. I’d seen others placed in the same area that’s where I want them.

What I had to do, though to remove extend the blue and square off the rectangle involved firing up both Adobe Photoshop and my XaraX program, neither of which I am proficient in. Turns out Photoshop was the one that did the trick. Though I had to painstakingly move gif by gif through the template of my blog to finally isolate the area of cruddy corner I finally found it, saved it to my computer as the only way it would save as a bmp file. Then, I loaded it up into Photoshop, changed it to what I wanted it to look like, saved it as a gif file and then uploaded it to my own website. I changed where my template was going to access that particular file from and voila, it worked.

So, in getting under the hood I am seeing the template as it is composed and beginning slowly to have an idea of what goes where. Because Blogger templates must necessarily fit within the parameters of the Blogger program I’ll need to color in the lines. But, some day I’d like to create my own graphics and upload them to be as original as some of the other wonderful blogs I’ve seen. Tonight was just a very tiny first step.