What's your non-reading guilty pleasure?
Trashy TV?
Trashier movies?
Junk food?
One of my guilty-pleasures is blog related. It all started with the wonderful Melissa. First, she taught me how to get favicons on all my blogs. Then she was kind enough how to share the magic of how to make sidebar widgets scroll. Then at some point, I can't remember if this is Melissa's fault or not, but I stumbled upon Blogbulk.com. Man, that place is evil. Evil in that after discovering it, I just couldn't leave it alone. I had to keep going back again and again and again and again. I added a comment icon to the post footer. I did the tutorial on how to make a comment link more "attractive and visible." Added a signature under posts. Added dividers between posts. Added an icon beside the post title. And Used his fix on how to get embedded comments to show up on a customized template. Discovered My Live Signature. This past week--I think it started last Sunday?--I've probably spent a good fifteen to twenty hours working on codes for my blog. (It could be pushing twenty-five, actually. If you count all the time spent working on customizing colors and such.) Speaking of which, one site that I've relied on probably for about a year at least is Big Huge Lab's Palette Generator. It is the BEST site ever. Just upload an image and wait for it to give you all the matching and complimentary colors (color codes which you can use (by cutting and pasting and hitting enter (I don't know why the enter is so important. But you hit enter and voila the color is added. If you don't hit enter, then the color stays whatever it was before.) into your "fonts and colors" layout page) I haven't had any feedback on the color changes yet. But I haven't asked for any either. Not that I'm opposed to hearing feedback, but I'm not a slave to it either. I can't promise to change colors based on polls ;)
Becky's Book Reviews Before:
Becky's Book Reviews After:
Young Readers got a complete redesign. It went from a perfectly ordinary minima +cutest blog on the block design to a customized three column design. By the time I got through with it, it's a bit different than the template I downloaded.
Template I used for Young Readers (Original, As Downloaded)
You can't tell how cute it is. But visit it. I like the greenness and polka-dottness of it all. And the sidebars are a delicious cream color. It was not easy to customize. You had to search the html code to find each little element's color. This wasn't a case where you could just use the fonts and colors layout page. The elements I wanted to change the color of were not editable. So it was a matter of perseverance and stubbornness on my part to get it to do what I wanted.© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
10 comments:
Man, I'm scared to click on some of that stuff for fear I'll end up at the computer for 20 hours straight! BUT, I have wondered many times how everyone does everything. I bet this answers all that.
And you are using blogger, right? So all this stuff would work for me if I'm using blogger too?
Suey, I am using blogger so it should work for you if you're on blogger/blogspot too. :) And it is addictive. I did most everything over Sunday-Monday. (Except for some stuff I played around with on Friday) So I had nightmares of html codes. Now when I was awake, it wasn't scary. But asleep, dreaming of codes and such was not fun.
Becky, your sites look GREAT!! Blogbulk.com is actually not my fault, but now I get to blame it on you!! :-) I am going to check it out this week if I get some free time. I'd love to add the dividers and icons like you did...
Thanks, too, for your kind words. I'm so glad I was able to be of some help to you :-)
I love the redesign... and while I tinker here and there, I try to stay away from doing a total overhaul. I just don't have enough hours in a day!
Nice rework of the blog. My WG post is here.
How fun - the time we can spend re-tooling, I'm impressed with what you know and what you do
Thanks for the link to the pallet generator -- I've been looking for one of those but never come across one that I like.
I love the look of your blog, it is really lovely! I have tried myself for ages to make a three columned blog, and I also know how, but it makes all my other stuff disappear, and I haven't gotten around to accept that yet, because I don't have the time to write up everything again. Will have to have a look on some of the links you provided later! I so follow your guilty pleasures about spending too much time on such pages ;-)
Oh no Becky! You might have started a guilty pleasure for all of us! I've been wanting to figure out how to do some of those things, and I've been following Melissa's blog, now I'm sure I'll be stuck at the computer for hours on end......and I'm at work!!
Now you are going to have to leave this post up, I suggest a sticky post, because I am going to be obsessed with coming back to get your links.
Your blog looks great!
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