Tuesday 12 February 2008

3 Weeks and 1 Day Later

Its now been over 3 weeks since starting this Blog of mine and personally, I think it looks ok.

Considering this is my first ever attempt at anything Webby and I had no experience with HTML im pretty pleased with how it looks.

Obviously Blogger make it very easy to create a Blog and all you have to do is choose which theme and what colours you want and hey presto you have your own Blog. Very simple.

However I have applied some personal touches to this site that weren't as easy (but was still pretty easy). I have added a Favicon to my site (the little icon next to the URL in your Browser - seems to only appear with Firefox and not when I use crappy Internet Explorer - Therefore if you use IE download Firefox now). A good reason to have a Favicon is to make your site stand out more and make it easy to identify. So if you add this site to your FAVourites the "i" ICON will appear and it will make it easier for people to find my site in there Favourites list.

I have also incorporated Google Adsense into my site, which is pretty simple with Blogger as they provide a simple Adsense Widget you can add to your sidebar. Google will scan your site and advertise appreciate content. If you are looking at making some extra cash from your website or Blog there are plenty of Ad companies to choose from, but Google allow you to customise your adds and blend them into your site more easily.

The theme I originally chose only had 2 columns - a side bar on the left and the main body. As you can see I have added a third column on the right. Allowing me to add more Widgets that are easier to see.

One of the most difficult and annoying things I added was the "Continue Reading…" link which appears on the front page. I only wanted for some of my posts to show on the front page and for users to click "Continue Reading..." if they wanted to read the rest of the entry. This was pretty simple to add but started to get really annoying when I tried to change the size and colour of the link. It can also become pretty fiddly each time I write a post as I need to set where I want the break of point to be. However I am now getting the hang of this.

So does anyone actually read what I write? Well after 22 days I have had 400 visits to my Blog. Not bad really. However, there are some Blogs out there that get 40,000 hits a day. Maybe one day I will have that many… then again… maybe not!

So if anyone does read this, thanks very much. I appreciate it.

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