Lay out and Page Elements in Blog

Now, go to dashboard of your blogger. Under the name of your blog, you a see a link as layout. This is very important. This lay out does all the magic in designing your blog. Now click layout.
A page opens like this.

Now you can see 5 sub tabs under lay out. They are 'page elements', 'fonts and colours', 'edit html', 'pick new template' and 'monetize'. First lets see about page elements in this chapter.

What are page elements? In my blog you can see a heading, and the posting under it, and a side bar, which contains the topics of the posts and some links. These are called as page elements. These page elements or the picture what you see above are nothing but the blueprint of your blog.

Here in this, you see, 'Add and arrange page elements', 'preview', 'clear edits', and 'save' button. Under that you see a blue colour strip called as Navbar or Navigation bar. Now there is an edit link in the bar. Just click on it. A new popup window opens, where you can change the colour of your navigation bar, to suit the template.

Below that you see the strip as header. It shows the title you gave for your blog as 'flowers'. There is an edit link in that also. Click on it to edit the title.

Now a pop up window opens like this. You can change the blog's title in the first column. And you can tell something more about your bl0g in the tab, 'Blog Description' which comes under your blog title in small fonts.

You can also add images from your computer or from the web. This is the method how I bring flowers or some pictures in my title. Again you have to decide where to place your pictures, whether behind the title or instead of the title. And if you want your picture to the size of your title, choose to tick the option, 'Shrink to fit'. If not, leave it blank. Once you finished, click on the save button.

Now you see a big square as blog posts and an edit link at the bottom of it. Click the link, to get a popup window. Here, you can choose how many posts you want to appear in a page?( I always choose one), whether you want your name, date and time you want to appear? Customize them as you wish and save it.

Again, you see something in the side bar as 'Add a Gadget'. Click on it. You get a big list. Choose whatever you want in your blog and click on the + mark in that. A pop up window opens, for each widget, where you can customize them as you wish.

If you want to insert a picture, a poll, or rich text, labels or java script, you can use them. First it will appear confusing. But I will teach you then and there, the use of some important widgets.

Now when you open a blog, you have some widgets by default, like 'Followers', Blog Archive' and 'About me'. This you can see in the page elements page. If you dont want them, just click on the edit link below that widget and there is an option as 'Remove' in the popup window that opens. Click on it and save. Thats all. Like this, you can add a widget and remove them whenever you like.

Lets see other options in the next chapter.
-Sumazla