Chapter 7. Customizing Your Blog

In This Chapter

  • Making your blog look better

  • Exploring template options

If you're not careful, customization of your blog can become an obsession. Granted, the obsession can be a pleasant one, but the relationship between a teenager and his first car is not unlike that of a blogger and his or her first blog. Hours upon hours are frittered away thinking about how to make your blog function better than the other guy's blog. It can become a time‐consuming activity that, at times, can overshadow the real reason you started the blog in the first place. This chapter is all about this obsession and how you can give in to it without letting it take over your life.

The moment your blog software is up and running, right after you click the Save button on your first blog post, the desire to customize hits you. You look at your first blog post on your shiny new blog and start thinking “Maybe I should change the color of that header….” and “How would it look if my blogroll came before my About Me link?”

These are all great questions and, of course, why wouldn't you want to make a few tweaks to your new blog? The real question is how you can turn your vision into reality. The best way is to follow the blog software's instructions on customization. Start your love affair with blog design by working within the areas where the blog software creator made customization easy.

Of course, I could be wrong. You might install your blog software, start using it, and never want ...

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