New Templates Just Added To Blogger

After I posted this to one of my writer's blogs, I realized it really belongs here because it's about changing your templates on Blogger. So without further ado, I'm reposting it here:

I was really frustrated last week when I tried to tweak my Google AdSense widgets on some of my blogs. I got error messages on the blogs I was editing as well as on a new blog I created. I tried to resolve the issue by searching for answers on Google and on the help pages of Blogger and AdSense to no avail. So I crossed my fingers and hoped it was one of those issues that would fix itself if I just stopped mucking around with it.

Happily today I was greeted on Blogger by a pop-up window announcing new template software. It's been so hard to create decent original templates on Blogger. And I'm guessing that implementing that new feature was the thing that was mucking up Adsense on my blogs because today it's all working just fine. All the blogs I edited have the Adsense ads showing up again, and even the new blog is showing the ad boxes.

I've played around some with the new template features. So far it's been confusing. I did test out a few of the designs but still don't know if it will let me add my own photos to the backgrounds like Twitter and other sites do. So I still have a lot to check out. Please don't try it on your favorite blog that you've soaked hours into. Make a new blog or use one of your experimental blogs to test drive the new features.

Trying Again

Tonight I decided to try these directions: http://www.bloggerbuster.com/2007/10/how-to-use-background-image-for-your.html I love how all this sites tell me how easy it is to do, and then I still can't do it.

Shazam I just got it to work! Whew. I erased the old template and tried again with a new template and had to tweak the photobucker url a bit to exactly match the example in the hot link above. I'd about given up when it finally worked.

Collage Background

I want to start using my own collages for backgrounds on my blogs. Here are a few samples. I also want to add original music, and I don't know how to do that either.

CSS and Background

Today's quest is to figure out how to make a new and unique blog background with animations, bells and whistles and so forth and break away from the prestructured blogger templates that have made me feel locked in and confined for years. So far I'm drowning in computer lingo but I did just find out that CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. What I haven't figured out is how to download a template to my hard drive and then add my own background photo. That is quest #1.