What an evolution! All I wanted was to start a blog, how hard could that be? HA! My gift to you, the blogger wanna-be’s, the novice bloggers… is my 48 hours worth of blogging wisdom (I don’t think this lifts me out of the novice category yet, there must be more dues to pay or something).
Wordpress.com was my original choice. I need free and this option looks professional. Edublogs (the free version) highlights random words and makes it look as though I am emphasizing them. I don’t like that. Blogger has a limited range of themes to choose from and I wanted more “oomph”. Off to WP I went and made my blog.
All was going well and I began to write my first post. Wait, I can’t seem to embed the Twtpoll I need. No problem, I’ll just screenshot it and make it an image. Hold on, I can’t embed the Animoto video for a school project I want to tell you about. Umm, why won’t this Eco-Safe widget load, it’s a cool one that lets users save the page as a PDF or email it to save printing. The journey between point A and point B just took a detour and I’m off researching and talking to my Twitter PLN. Guess what? Wordpress won’t let me use JavaScript.My vision for my blog is largely based on showcasing various educational technology ideas, projects, etc. I need to embed JavaScript and preventing me from doing so is a dealbreaker. Sorry Wordpress, I’m outta here. Now what?
After taking a look around at other Blogger blogs from my PLN (education & technology, Not Enough Coffee) I knew that there was more to this than I originally believed. More research and I found some great free themes and free headers to upload along with the directions on how to proceed. I needed to focus and chose to look at 3-column designs that have an affinity to water. Some are cute (I can only take cute in small doses) and I ultimately choose BizFresh. Keeping in mind that I always tell my students, “impress me with content over your graphics”, I stay away from cute and head for function. I do add some fun stuff - a ReTweet button for posts and some fun widgets (the aquarium clock is a favorite). Soon I will try changing my favicon too.
Happily, the theme I chose has built in code for tabs to create “static pages”. Blogger does not do separate pages like WP does and you need to hack your way around it. That is why my About Me post appears at the bottom with a date from last year. It actually links up to the tab to create its own “page”. This is one of the unprofessional items about Blogger that I do not like. My template of choice also automatically got rid of the nav bar at the top, but there are online directions on how to do it yourself too.
Thankfully, one of my summer graduate courses was on HTML and I am comfortable enough (or is it dangerous enough?) to poke around and mess up some of the code on my own (yes, I backed it up often!). I changed the header size, some of the font colors, and I am in business. This will always be a work in progress and I like to change things up now and again so don’t be surprised to see something new the next time you visit. I'm still finding little glitches (like why does the blog name disappear when I am on a separate post page?), but will work through them as time progresses. Always learning.
Whew! Maybe my detour will help shorten your own blog journey as you begin! Good luck.
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4 comments:
Welcome to the wonderful world of blogging! So glad you finally joined us! It looks great here, and I'm very much looking forward to your contributions!
I was looking at your blog and trying to figure out why you don't have your title on the individual post pages. The only thing I see is that your template does not have a title. Could that be the problem?? Check out your settings (basic)and make sure your title is listed there. Good luck!
Thanks for sharing your journey here and on Twitter! I found some great resources from your tweets and the post above. I've had a Blogger blog for several months and tried a few things with it, but never settled on anything more than a basic template. Your resources helped me find a new template and do a little hacking on it. It will be fun to watch your blog evolve! :-)
Ann - Thanks for the welcome - let's see what I can stir up out here as a blogger in training!
Sally - my settings look correct, not sure what the deal is. I have written to the author of this template and hope that he comes up with something for me.
EdTechSandyK - I'm thrilled that you found some gems hidden here already & I hope to provide more as I go along. I look forward to checking out your new look soon!
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