How to design a blog ?

When I first started my blog I spent almost a week designing and redesigning this blog. And its daunting specially when you have so many templates ,colors and fonts to choose from. Its never ending ,everyday I used to zero in on a different layout and finally I decided to just launch my blog.Its been alomost 8 month and since then I have drastically changed my blog twice. Now I feel its time for the third change.

Sometimes what you think is the best design may not be so good for others so its a never ending journey to reach the ultimate design with which you will finally stick for the rest of your life(dramatic me!!).

So if you are starting your own personal blog then here are few tips

Blogger Tip 3- Post comment stopped working . Help!!!!!!

I shouldn't be actually freaking out it's not like I get comments left and right . Then one of my friends too confirmed that she indeed could not post any comments. Well it was working fine few days back .Suddenly this feature stopped to respond,it seems to have a mind of its own .

So I googled to find out that the below options should be set for the comments to be posted properly.

The usual fix



But hey everything is as said above then what's wrong ????

So I found a workaround after breaking my head to fix the comments .
Well this is the workaround


Select the option "Pop-up Window " instead of "Embedded below post".
So now this is how the post comment option looks when either of them are selected

Pop up Window
Will display a hyperlink which will navigate to another page where you can post comments


Embedded below post

Blogger Tip 2 -How to add related post widget below every post

I was wanting to add this feature for quite some long time now.There are many ways .I will try to jot down all them I have come across

Method 1

Go to http://www.linkwithin.com/learn?ref=widget and follow the steps given there.

You can even configure the numbers of related posts you want to show up.
I have used this method in my blog.The best part is it will show random post and does not depend on label.

When you add this there is no separation between the post and related post widget . To add a separation

Step 1
Find the below line in Edit HTML in 'Design' Section -

<data:post.body/>

Step 2
Add below lines after you find the above

<br/><br/><hr color='black'/>


Method 2

Go to the link http://www.newbloggingtipz.com/2009/04/add-related-posts-below-every-blogger.html and follow the steps.

This is how the related post below your post will look like.
But then it will not be displayed in the home page and will group similar labels together


Method 3

Go to link
http://www.bloggerplugins.org/2009/08/related-posts-thumbnails-blogger-widget.html

But this one also groups all the posts with same label as the current post.

This is how it will look.
Again same disadvantage as the second method

Blogger Tip 1 -How to enlarge an image in blogger

If you have worked on blogger you will realize that working on blogger is like plucking your hair one by one with hands . Agreed that it's free and has many advantages but its bugs list is endless .

Formatting images is like climbing a hill , the save does not work sometimes , 'post comment' option suddenly refuses to interact , font does not change sometimes , formatting really sucks ..... The list goes on .

Let me tackle the issue one by one . I will posts these blogger tips as in when I discover them .

So without wasting time let me show you how to enlarge images without their resolution being degraded

Step 1:
Go to Edit HTML link of your post .

Step 2:
See the below line . Change s400 to s640.

width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--lbXYBos8kI/TejMTjeXQ2I/AAAAAAAAAzI/h_CXUNKlhQU/s400/DSC_2050.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613961571829498722" border="0"


Step 3:
Remove width: 400px; height: 267px; highlighted in red in the above link. Its that simple !!!

Image with s400




Image with s640



Image with s700