Updated blog design

I've had a lot of people asking me about my new blog design so I thought it would be easier to do a post here to tell you how I made all the changes.  I used to love other people's blogs with BIG pictures, cute fonts, etc. and I finally took the time to figure out how to do it with the help of some great directions from a few friends.

New Background

I used to use hotbliggityblog for my backgrounds, but blogger has actually updated it's designs and has a lot of choices.  Log in to your blogger and click on the design tab.  Look for the NEW template designer tab.  I played around with this, but you'll see there are lots of different options for layouts and backgrounds.

Here's what I did:

1.  Click on background > back ground image and click around until you see something you like. 
2. After you've chosen one, click on the layout tab > body layout, and choose which one you like.  I picked the second one. 
3. A tip from my very tech savvy friend, Jen ...if you want XL pictures (see directions below), while on the layout tab choose > adjust width and you will see two sliders.  Move the top slider for the entire blog far right to the MAX of 1000 px.  If you don't do this and you choose to do XL pictures, they will bleed over into your sidebars.  For the sidebar slider I just left it at 260 px. 

XL Pictures

Let's all be honest with each other, the main reason most of us look at blogs is to see the pictures, right?  I longed for bigger pictures and I knew Jen had told me there was a lot of html code I could use to get bigger pictures, but I just didn't have time.  Well, now blogger has made it really easy to make your pictures really big.  If you haven't already adjust the width of your blog see the above directions (#3).  You had to do this first or they won't fit right.  Also, I couldn't get it to work with my hotbliggityblog.com background so that is why I switched to the blogger background.  However, yours might work, so if you love your background, just try doing #3 above first to see if the XL pictures will fit.  

These directions are from my friend ERIN .

i updated my post editor

here's how:

dashboard >
settings (should already be on basic tab) >

scroll to bottom 

choose "updated editor" in post editor

when you post pictures you will see new options for XL pics!

Note from CB - The picture uploading feature on the new "updated editor" is a little different and takes some getting used to.  Just a warning for those who don't like change.  However, after you get the hang of it it's much easier to use.  When moving pictures around in the post it's a little different, but you'll get the hang of it.  Plus, you can upload an unlimited amount of pictures to each post and when it is uploaded you can click on what size you want it to be (small, med, large and XL) and also add captions.

Cute Fonts for post titles

Warning - This is the most difficult, time consuming, and tedious change!

1. Go here and see which font you would like.  Download it to your computer. 
2. Follow the step-by-step directions found here .  Warning, there are LOTS of steps and a bunch of html code you have to manipulate.  It's a little intimidating, but if I can do it, you can too!

If you follow all the steps and do everything exactly right it should work.  Actually, her directions are supposed to change the post titles, date, and sidebar titles.  I got two out of the three.  For some reason my sidebar titles are still the old font, but I have NO clue how to get it to work so I'm just going with what I've got.

Happy Blogging!