minimalist blog design
minimalist blog design forces you to decide what is important. almost nothing on a blogger template is completely useless. for example, i removed the “followers” widget because i think it is ugly and huge. however, i may get fewer followers now. minimalist design allows you to emphasize one thing at a time, but you must leave out other things
removing things from blogger templates
the main thing i did with my blog is remove things from the template i had. some things are easy to remove. to learn how to remove more confusing things, i usually search “how to remove ________ in blogger” in a search engine, and someone has written about it. usually you just have to add or delete a couple lines of html (see below for the “edit html” tool)
here are links for basic things to remove
+ remove navigation bar
+ remove “subscribe to posts (atom)”
+ remove “home” and "newer" "older posts" links
directing traffic within the blog
other than appearance, one of the main ideas in web design is to encourage people to visit the pages you want them to visit
i used to have a link on my sidebar for book reviews, but in the past two months i decided i didn’t care if a lot of people check out my old reviews, so i removed the link. my review archive is still linked from my “about” page, but it doesn’t get nearly as many views from there. i am thinking of re-adding some links to the sidebar, but it’s hard to choose what is most important
also, i recommend making it quick to access things you want people to access. i had a “poetry” page that was just links to my poems around the internet, and i noticed a lot of people clicked on my “poetry” page and never followed any of the links. now i have poems right on my “poetry” page
making helvetica look good in blogger
helvetica is the only font i use on my blog, with arial as the second choice if the computer doesn’t have helvetica. (the order of font choices can be changed in your html: wherever there is a list of fonts in the html, you can add fonts or rearrange the order)whenever i use large sizes of helvetica, i tighten the letter spacing and leading (line spacing, line height). this is an important part of making helvetica look good in my opinion
the letter spacing and line height are counted in “em,” a unit that is relative to font size. you don’t have to change it much to get tight spacing; the letter spacing for my date and post title is set around -0.05em
changing the blog “icon” to something else
this was another thing i searched in a search engine, but it was a little more confusing than other things. i think i had to convert a file to “.ico” format
using the “edit html” tool in general
most of this stuff is on the “edit html” page under the “design” tab. most people recommend that you back up your html (save in a text document) before you edit it
at the top of the html, there is a bunch of information you won’t probably change. then there are a lot of lines about fonts and colors, which you can change in the template designer as well
a lot of the html is broken into sections titled with “/* ________” and within those sections, smaller sections like “# _________.” most of the changes i’ve done manually are in these sections
other tips about this:
+ “#outer-wrapper” includes sidebars and the “#main-wrapper,” which is where posts are.
+ i use “text-transform:uppercase” for my date and post titles. but if you want to bold, underline, or italicize, the code is “text-decoration:____”
+ for me, the section for the date is labeled “h2.date-header”; the section for the post title is “.post h3”
+ usually if you need to move something up, down, or across, you can use margins, like adding “margin-top:50px;”
at the bottom of the html, there is a section with a lot of “div” lines. i don’t usually change these except when i’m following a how-to that says to change them
ok, if you have more specific questions, i can try to help. my main suggestion is to search in a search engine for how to remove things
note: my goal with this post is to help people design their own blogs, but if you want to hire me to design a blog instead, email me: steveroggenbuck[at]gmail.com
thank you everybody
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