Designing a Website 101: Blogger blog basics

Making a nice Blogger blog is fairly easy, although it requires some playing around to the proportions and colors pleasing.

I suggest putting down the $10/year to reserve your custom domain name, which allows you to not have /blogspot/ in your address. However, that's up to you.

When you're setting up your page, you'll first use a template:

Choose a layout you like. It doesn't have to be exact, because you can change it.

The next thing to do is to change it. Hit "Customize."

This opens a page with a header at top (shown) and a preview of the page on the bottom of your screen. I began by selecting "Background" and choosing a different image than the default as my background.

You can also adjust widths of the columns under "adjust widths."

The "themes" are the colors of your text. Don't worry, you can change those, too. I suggest choosing a theme with at least one color you like, so you don't have to change it manually.

Once you've gotten a background and theme color you more or less like, choose "Layout."

This lets you select how your blog page is laid out. You only get one blog per blog; all the other pages you can start from scratch and lay out however you want. If you want more than one blog, you can make another--I made four, one for practice, the main blog, one for short stories, and this one, for random how-to posts that don't quite fit the theme of the site.

Once you've chosen your general blog layout (I went with a sidebar for links and 2 columns of possible gadgets at the bottom, simple and not too overwhelming), hit "Advanced" to play with your color scheme.

A second column opens up with "Font," "Blog Title," etc. Each piece can be individually selected and the font and/or color set to your taste (Post titles are link-colored, so you don't get to adjust the color of those). When you select something, the preview will highlight it below (usually), so you see exactly what you're choosing a font for.

Some give you multiple options (namely, links).

I suggest choosing colors for "Link color" and "Visited color" with enough contrast from your background that they're still readable. Already-visited links appear in "Visited color" and not-yet-visited links appear in "link color."

The pre-made palates below each option are pre-chosen colors from your theme. If you dislike them, hit the black box with the color rectangle beside the #aaaaaa (6-number/letter color code) and select a custom color. Or just fill in the custom code manually if you know the color code you want--I took a palate I found elsewhere and chose colors that I thought complemented my color scheme, and entered those manually, then adjusted slightly if they weren't perfect.

After you've gotten the color selection you like, save and hit the "Back to Blogger" link in the top. Then go down to Layout.

This lets you add Gadgets, such as follow buttons, recommended links, and your "About Me" from your G+ profile (if you have one, or if not, you can make a custom one). You can move the gadgets around by clicking and dragging them around.

You should individually select and edit your Header. Click on the edit button (the picture below shows you the menu that will come up). This will allow you to edit the blog title, add a description (and don't be like me and misspell a word in that description when you first set it up--the misspelling continued to show up for 2 weeks after fixing it!). You can also add a custom image if you'd like.

When you've gotten the gadgets laid out as you like, if you want to have several pages to your blog, or link to external websites, click on the "Pages" gadget edit button.

You don't have to show every page in your tabs. Deselect any you don't want a tab directly to--you can still link to those pages internally within the site, but they won't show up in your tabs.

You can also link to external sites by clicking "+Add link page." You'll get a pop-up menu asking where you want to link to. Here, I've linked to my Blogger blog that has a few short stories and to my WordPress website.

You can't add pages to your tabs you haven't made yet. If you want to add a couple of pages, you'll have to the main sidebar's "Page" tab and make a new page.

When you're done, hit Save.

And that's Website Design 101: Blogger basics--using the Blogger features to customize your page!

Here's my main page: www.rebekkahniles.com

For Designing a Website 102, are there any custom features you see that you'd like to know more about?

Getting Notifications on Google Spreadsheets

Notifications on Google spreadsheet changes do not occur automatically. If you have a shared Google Spreadsheet and would like to receive notification when changes occur, you'll need to turn the option on manually. Here's how:


To get notifications when changes are made to a spreadsheet, begin by opening the desired spreadsheet.

One of my own spreadsheets from Google Drive.

In the menu bar, click Tools. This will drop down a menu, one of whose options is "Notification Rules". Select this option.

You may then select the notifications of your choice. Most spreadsheets will have only one sheet, so the second option will probably not be used. If you wish to notified whenever a change is made directly to the sheet or whenever someone submits information via a form, you would select the first two circled options.You can also choose if you would like to receive a separate e-mail for every change, or if you would like all the changes made in a single day to arrive together in a "digest" e-mail. Select "Save".

You've now got notification alerts, and may close your spreadsheet.

Using the Google Spreadsheets

In order for the data to be sorted, I've had to create two Google spreadsheets. The one labeled "Enter New Tea Reviews" cannot be sorted (or, at least, I haven't figured out how yet), so we'll put new tea reviews in there. All reviews entered into the blog-post form will automatically be entered into that sheet. The "Browse Tea Reviews" can be sorted for easier browsing of what's already been reviewed.



To find the spreadsheets:

This is if you are logged in to Google. I'm not certain if it's different if you don't have a Google account.

"One of These" means "My Drive", "Shared with me", or "More"

To sort data:

Circled section reads:
Sort sheet by column B, A->Z
Sort sheet by column B, Z->A

To copy/paste data from the "Enter Tea Reviews Here" spreadsheet onto the "Browse Teas" sheet:

Begin on "Enter New Tea Reviews Here" spreadsheet.

This process only works if you have standard PC keyboard shortcuts.

You may also use the form to enter new data, and copy/pasting it on to the "Browse Tea Reviews" is entirely optional. I will do so on a regular basis, probably once a week or so.

For those who would like to work directly with the spreadsheets:

Feel free to add teas that you already own and would like to review to the "Tea Name" and "Type of Tea" sections without reviewing them immediately. Assume that any tea entered into the spreadsheet is owned by at least one other person. This will help tea reviewers find a reviewing partner without reviewing every tea they own (efficiency!). If someone reviews a tea that you have posted but not yet reviewed, please review the tea yourself at the next convenient opportunity (unless someone else beats you to it ;) . If  the tea is particular to a certain place (such as Teavana teas), also fill in the "Where You Got It" column. For brand-name teas, please include the brand name as part of the tea name (such as Celestial Seasonings: Sleepytime).

Let me know if you have any questions, or if you figure out any new tricks!

Tea Reviews