Blogger is not only the word for someone like me who writes on a blog but it is also the name of the most used web application in the world to create blogs together with Wordpress. The fact that Blogger (also known as Blogspot) is the most popular blogging system does not derive so much from the fact that it is the best available (this is questionable) but from the fact that it is the easiest to use to create websites of the type blog, on the fly, without any need to know even the slightest notions of the internet.
Basically, to create a blog with Blogger, just connect to the site www.blogger.com, sign up with a Google or Gmail account (blogger is actually from Google), give a title and a description, write the internet address that will be of the type www.pomhey.blogspot.com, choose a graphic model among those proposed and start writing new posts that are published on the site. Practically a crap from a technical point of view, which allows anyone to create a website on the fly, even if it only serves to celebrate a single event, to report a project, to publish their curriculum vitae, to upload a photo album ( blogger images are uploaded to Picasaweb with 1 Gb of space) and so on. Optionally, paying 10 Dollars, you can buy the domain name without blogspot with Google, such as www.navigaweb.net .
All of this is free and easy .
The main flaw of blogger however is that, if you do not have any html language skills and are not good at managing advanced settings, you must be content with a clearly amateur blog, lackluster in the very rough, standard, two-column graphics and most importantly, a thousand other blogs. The recent news is that finally, the new function of the Template Designer has been implemented, easy and immediate, to create templates and graphic models for the personalized design of the website .
Until yesterday, to customize the graphics of a site created with the blogger.com editor, it was necessary to download a model developed by expert programmers, from sites such as Btemplates or gooyaabitemplates. The big problem is that these models must then be modified by entering the html code because those templates, certainly beautiful to look at, have elements that cannot be customized automatically.
So, for example, the menus in English must be translated into Italian, the colors, the writings, the background images, the individual elements and many other things, can only be changed by the code, so rather complicated even for those who studied as a webmaster (because modifying things done by others is more difficult than doing them from scratch). Basically, therefore, Blogger, for many, has always been the platform for test blogs or temporary sites or for private diaries without success.
From now on, however, anyone can create a nice personalized site thanks to the Template Designer, available as an additional tab in the control panel of the Blogger blog.
In Blogger, going to the " Layout " section, the model designer button appears. This online designer works really well and shows every single change made with a preview of his website.
At the beginning you choose the model among those available that change among themselves based on the background behind the site.
The second section is the choice of the background which can be full color or, by pressing on the small box, you can access a gallery from the iStockphoto site, with many backgrounds organized by categories such as: technology, business, travel, science, hobbies, nature and so on. You can also use personal images to make backgrounds and you can play with the designer to create a complete and professional website page. In this part, various combinations of colors are suggested to be used and the degree of transparency of the backgrounds can also be set.
The third step allows you to decide, finally in a simple way, the arrangement of gadgets and columns .
You can then choose, without having to look for difficult instructions on the various specialized sites, whether to make a blog with one, two or three columns, whether to put the sidebar, the column with the buttons and menus, to the right of the posts or on the left, whether to add a footer plus a new gadget called Attribution, where you can write copyright information and the author's name (this was also complicated before).
Moving the gadgets cannot be done from here but you have to go to the Layout -> Page elements screen .
Finally, you can also decide the width of the blog and the individual columns inside.
The fourth and final section is that of advanced settings .
From here it is possible to customize, in a simple and intuitive way, any parameter concerning the graphics of the site thus creating a new and unique model. In fact, you can decide all the colors of each section and the background of the various columns (also changing those previously chosen), you can also set the writing font and the size for the titles and content of the posts. The more experienced can also add a new style sheet in CSS.
You can use the live preview to view the new model without changing the blog. Then when you find the right look and are satisfied, just press " Apply to blog " to publish it online.
Those who already have a blog can (must) make a backup of their current template, before using the Template Designer, by going to Layout -> Edit HTML . If mistakes were made like this, it would easily return to the previous situation, without losing the previous customizations.
If you use the horizontal menu above the articles, like the one I have on this site (Home, Archive, Most read ... etc) you must add the gadget of the pages, from the Layout, above the Blog Post.
This new function of model creation, so simple to use, constitutes an added value that will allow anyone to create a new beautiful and professional-quality blog for free, at least in graphics.
