Every six months or so, I go through a phase when I decide that I want to change my blog template. I spend hours and hours looking through templates to see if I can find the perfect one. As a result of being completely paranoid about buggering everything up I have a private test blog so that I can see what everything is going to look like before I update it.
On Friday night around 8.30pm, even though I was exhausted from a week's work, I decided that it was a perfect time to actually install a new template. A long time I had decided that I really want a three column template and I found one, which although not 100% what I wanted, I liked a fair bit, so I start the download process.
First problem - did the download, but when I did a preview it looked completely stuffed. Go back and read the instructions and realise that there is the way I did it, and then there is the proper way, which includes changing over to Blogger Beta. No worries...
Second problem - the designer of the template quite fairly is asking for people who use the templates to host the images on their own account. Try uploading them into Photobucket, which is fine except for the javascript and icon thingies. Back to instructions and notice that it says to host them on your own Google page. Fine.
Third problem - In order to have a Googlepage you have to a GMail account. Fine...I'll sign up for a Gmail account
Fourth problem - Once I figure out how to load the pictures onto the googlepage account all is going well, until I realise that I cannot figure out how to get that page to host the javascript and icons.
GAVE UP ON THAT TEMPLATE!
Find a second template that loads like a dream into the test blog, but thing it might be a bit plain so decide against it.
Find another template. It downloads easily, no worries about hosting pictures etc etc. Decide that I will take the opportunity to clean up my links - take out a few, add a few, reorganise sections - add all the page elements that I want. In order to add all the links I sit there and add every single one of them individually.
Look at the test blog and think...yep....happy with that. Note the time as being 12.10am and think, well it won't take very long to copy the codes over into the actual blog will it?
Copy said code to the blog, press publish and then voila!
Only one problem.....even though I went and added all the content in the page elements in the test blog, it doesn't transfer over to this blog. In order to get them all on this blog I would have to readd them all individually again. At this point I notice that it doesn't have the Blogger Dashboard thing up the top of the page, which I use all the time, so that was that!
12.45am - I KNEW this was a bad idea....stomp, stomp, pout.
So I am stuck with this one for a while I guess. I am certainly tempted to get a professional to do it if I really want to change my template again!
And as the icing on the blogger crappy cake...Now that I have a gmail account Blogger won't send any comments or anything to the email account that I normally use. It is sending it all to the Gmail account instead. When I look in settings it gives me the option to delete my normal email account but not the Gmail account!
GRRRRRR.
di dum di dum (fast to sound like the Twilight zon music)
ReplyDeleteas your blog was loading just now I thought gee she has had this template for ages...ha! then I read your latest post....
i have gmail, but I must say that hey are very possessive once you get there, and you cant insert images into the emails very grrrr
i want to change my blogger address but I will loose everything if I do that, so welcome aboard the -we-do-our-best-vessel-and-hope-
it-works-or-doesnt-delete-everything
somewhat crowded ship!
I feel your pain! Changing templates is a pain in the rear. I'm keeping mine for a loooong time now that I went through the aggravation of setting it up.
ReplyDeleteMy template doesn't have the Dashboard either. it annoyed me for a while but I got used to it.
hello Marg,
ReplyDeleteI can understand your pain as I went through it just last week, setting up Breezing Through. The worst is that we had a template, but were not okay with the way it looked cos it was a bit plain, so I had to modify it A LOT. Make and add background image, banner, change the size, the colors... UGH.
Anyway, I think I can help with the Blogger Dashboard bar at the top. You're talking about the navigation bar that is black right now in your template right?
What probably happens is that it's hidden in the template code. Find "navbar" or anything that sounds like navigation bar and see if it says "hidden." If it's the case, you jsut have to delete that portion of the code and the bar should appear :)
and I know, it sucks about the page elements not transferring. Ugh.
Ouch - sounds painful! I want to change mine too, but am quite limited in Wordpress as to choice. And err... I'm lazy :-)
ReplyDeleteBlog editor
ReplyDeletehttp://u-handbag.typepad.com/uhandblog/2008/01/a-blog-editor-t.html
I haven't tried out this yet, perhaps it can help.
When I changed mine over to 3 columns I found some instructions somewhere on how you can save, copy and paste all of the links that you have set up on your blog. I'll see if I can find it (I think I saved it into a Word document - basically it gives you the "code" words to look for) and if so, I'll send you a PM over at the Historical Fiction Forum.
ReplyDeleteI would love to do something more creative with mine, but I know nothing about coding etc. and I am terrified of totally screwing it up. I might create a test blog though, that's a good idea. For now, I just change the colors every month!
Has anyone ever commented on have trouble viewing your template now? The rose picture at the top is split for me and you blog entry doesn't start till near the bottom of the blog and it's blank on top.
ReplyDeleteJust curious if it's just me. *G*
M
Been there, not quite done that ;) I once deleted my template on my main blog. Had a heart attack I did. I have 3 test blogs cause I always end up messing something up.
ReplyDeleteI have thought about 'hiring' for a blog template but I get bored of mine after a few months and I'm cheap. So I search the net and then try.
I'll be honest, I have no clue what it means to host images somewhere else. The minute I see that I back out so you went way farther than I ever did.
As to gmail - I have that but I *think* it is a secondary account. I'm not sure if I clicked something that said my real e-mail address is the main one or not. I would double check because all my mail goes to my rsmith account and not gmail. I used g-mail for the AAR polls.
Let us know if you can't get the mail thing fixed cause I'll search around to see why mine does.
Cindys
M. I didn't know that. What browser do you use?
ReplyDeleteI use IE, its been that way since the first time I saw it. It separates right at the bottom edge of the rose picture, then the bottom edge of the rose picture starts where the little ad for the yahoo groups is.
ReplyDeleteWeird. I don't know how to fix that because it looks fine in Firefox.
ReplyDeleteM. can you let me know if this new template loads okay for you. Thanks.
ReplyDelete