CustomizeMe Blogger Template (Helplogger Style)

CustomizeMe is a highly customizable Blogger template and SEO optimized to index your blog faster. It has been designed in a way that it can be easily customized according to your needs without having to touch the code of your template. All you need to do is to hit the "Customize" button and you are ready to start customizing your blog. Just try the template settings and be creative with the theme fonts, colors and backgrounds.

Some of the Template Features include:

• Both Flat and Grid Design
• Sticky/Fixed Left Navigation Menu Bar
• Customized Popular Post
• Recent Posts
• Recent Comments
• Page Numbering
• Expandable Search Bar
• Floating Social Bar Widget
• Author Bio with Image
• Related Posts with Thumbnails
• 404 Error Page
• Seo friendly

DEMO HERE
Download CustomizeMe Template
Template with Grid Style Only

How to install the CustomizeMe Template

1) Sign in to your Blogger blog and head to "Template"
2) Backup the current template by clicking the "Backup / Restore" button > "Download full template"

3) Download and open the CustomizeMe.xml file with a Notepad

4) Select all the code and to copy it to clipboard

5) Go again to Template and click the "Edit HTML" button

6) Select all the code of your current template and delete it, then paste the code that you just copied earlier
7) Preview your blog and if everything is ok, hit the 'Save Template' button.

Please note that this method might delete some of your widgets, so if you want to keep any of them, just Browse for the CustomizeMe.xml file (step 2) and click on the "Upload" button (ignore the rest of the steps).

And that's it! Now you are ready to use the CustomizeMe Blogger template.

Adding menu items

Go to Template > Edit HTML, click anywhere inside the code area and press the CTRL + F keys. Inside the search box, type "item 1" and hit Enter to find it - see the screenshot below

Change Item 1, 2, 3... with your page titles and replace "add-url-here" text with your url. Finally, click the "Save template" button to save the changes.

Recent Posts & Comments Widgets

Search (CTRL + F) for the following address and replace it with your own (you will find it twice and you must change it in both places):

http://helplogger.blogspot.com

Please pay attention to not have two forward slashes at the end of your address, otherwise the scripts will not be able to read the blog's feeds. Save your template after you have made these changes.

Enabling "About the author" profile

Go to "Layout" and click the "Edit" link of the "Blog posts" element. In the pop-up window that appears, check the "Show Author Profile Below Post" option and hit Save.

Changing colors and fonts in the CustomizeMe Template

Go to Template > click the "Customize" button. Here you can do lots of cool stuff, like change all the default fonts, text and background colors - basically, anything you want.

Some of the customizations that you can make:
Add a Background image: Background > Upload Image > Browse and hit Done

Change Fonts, Texts and Background Colors: go to Advanced > select the Element that you want to customize > select your favorite colors and fonts.

To remove a color, just type "transparent" inside the text box as you can see in the above screenshot (4).

Once you're satisfied with the result, hit the "Apply to blog" button and view your blog. That's it!
Have fun customizing it ;)

Find things in your blog-posts' HTML by using temporary "marker text"

This article shows how to use "marker text" to help find things when you need to edit the HTML code behind one of your blog posts.

When you edit a post in Blogger, to start with you generally use the Compose mode, which shows you the formatted view of how your work will look.

But behind that formatted view, every post is actually written in HTML, ie Hyper-text Markup Language - a type of computer language that uses tags like <h2> or <a href="www.foo.com">  to say how to display the contents.

A number of articles, here and in other blogger-helper blogs tell you how to do thing by changing the HTML for the post. But if you are not used to working with HTML, it can be confusing tryign to fix the part that you need to change.

Marker-text is a technique that you can use to "mark" problem areas while you are still in Compose mode, so that you can easily find them again when you are in Edit HTML mode.

How to use marker-text to fix a problem in your post

Start to prepare or edit your post in the usual way.

Go to the place just before the problem you want to fix or change you want to make.

Add some extra blank lines.

In the middle of the extra blank lines, put a few characters or a word that do not occurr anywhere else in your post. I quite often use XXX - but you can use any letters, characters or numbers, for example PROBLEM JUST AFTER HERE or 12345.

Use the copy function to put the text you added (without the blank lines)into your computer's memory.

Optional: Go to the place just after the problem you want to fix or change you want to make, and add some more text eg PUT IT BEFORE HERE

Switch to Edit HTML mode, using the button at the top-left of the post editing window.

Start the "find" feature in your web browser:

• ctrl / f in Chrome
• ctrl / f in Internet Explorer

In the search box that opens, use Paste (ctrl / v) to put the exact marker text that you entered into the Find box, and press enter.

The post-edit window will scroll to the place where your marker text is, and it will most likely be highlighted.

You have now found the place where you need to work, so you can now make the HTML changes required.

Once you have fixed all the issues, switch back to Compose mode using the tab in the top left hand corner, and remove all the marker text and extra blank lines that you added.

Good Practise

You will be removing the marker text before you publish your post.

But just in case you accidentally click Publish before you mean to, only use text that would not be embarrassing if some of your readers accidentally see it.

Some RSS readers will see the contents of your post as they are when you first hit Publish, even if you edit them less than two minutes later.)

Leaving your Marker Text in Place

If you might need to find the same place in your post's HTML again, then instead of removing your marker-text, you may just want to comment it out.

To do this, put these characters before it:

<!-- 

and these characters after it

 -->

So it might look like this

<!-- START OF PROBLEM1 HERE -->

Make sure you get the spaces - highlighed in yellow   as well as both of the "-- characters.

If you do this, then you will not be able to see or find your Marker Text when you are in Compose Mode, but you will be able to see and find it when you are in Edit HTML mode.

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Related Articles:

How to edit a post you have already published

Using cut, copy and paste in the Blogger post editor

The Blogger-helpers search tool

How to create bulleted lists in Google Plus posts

Google Plus has only 3 documented formats: *bold*, _cursive_ and -strikethrough-. But it's a proven fact, that the one of the best arts to deliver information and to gain its visibility is to structure information into lists.

Good, with ordered lists it is no problem: you number each list line with bolded ascending numbers, *1. * etc. What is with unordered, bulleted lists? How to make bullets in Google Plus posts? For this purpose we utilize the computer's own capacity, namely the possibility to type and print unicode characters. This possibility is limited, but it is fully enough for creating bulleted lists in Google Plus posts. Other valuable usage of unicode characters is surely design of page titles, page descriptions, which are used in SERP as snippets, and ads texts. Designing of such text assets with unicode special characters gains their CTR enormously. About it at the end of article. Now lets create bulleted lists in Google Plus posts:
Read full article »

How to add a Google Contacts button to your blog, website or desktop

This article shows how to add a button that takes a user straight to Google Contacts to your blog or website.   It also distributes a picture that you can use in other places (eg your PC desktop) to make your own Google Contacts icon.

Most people have a button on their computer or smartphone, which they use to start their email.  For some, this goes straight to their Gmail account in a web-browser, while others use an system like Thunderbird or Outlook to look at their email messages in a Gmail account and/or in email accounts they have with other services.

If you use Gmail as your email system, then Google also gives you an address book, which they call Contacts. This is not the same as the address book in Thunderbird or Outlook etc, which is saved on your local computer.   Instead, the Google address book is saved on the internet, in your Google account.

Google Contacts is tightly linked to your Gmail account, and the way that most people access it is by:

• Going to Gmail 
• Clicking on the Contacts button in the left-sidebar.

But you can go straight into your Google Contacts, without having to load Gmail first.   And I often find that it is faster, especially if I just want to look up an address or phone number and not send an email.

To go directly into your Google Contacts book, just type    www.google.com/contacts into the address-bar of your web-browser.

This is easy - but some people would prefer to have a button that they can click, rather than having to manually type an address.

So I have created a picture that can be used on such a button, and written up instructions on how to add it to your website, or your computer.   This is licensed under Creative Commons:  I am giving permission for it to be freely used on any website, so long as you say where it came from in the way that I've shown below.

(If you a wondering "why on earth would anyone want that" - then please don't waste time reading further - you are clearly not the target audience of this post!   I know that there are some people who will be delighted with the idea, and that's who I'm writing for today.)

How to add a Google Contacts button to your blog or website

Set up a place to put the button

If you want to add the button to Blogger, then just add a gadget in the usual way, and choose gadget-type of HTML/Javascript.

If you want to add it to some other type of blog or website, then you need to use whatever procedure is required to add 3rd-party HTML to your site.

Add the code

The HTML code to add is:

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.google.com/contacts" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj480VvLbdF9vgh_Rrnk3IzeuTlAgS-EdyZRjVxOLE9sved7FYghcWrg-v-axrSOVBGRpDUeUy4avH1WAAO1TUoWM77RZ1ZMdTBH5cmdpUsdZdYjS2AnNcFicvy1OSvSHmlM7LXifWzqotU/s490/google-contacts-icon.png" width="50%" /><!-- Google Contacts Start button from www.Blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com   Design © Blogger Hints-an-Tips, 2014.   Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)  -->  </a></div>

Make sure you all all the code, including the Creative Commons license information - this is what says you are allowed to use the picture.

Configure the size

You can change the size of the button by changing the number in this statement:

width="98%"

On my sidebar in Blogger-Hint-and-tips, I have it set to 50%.

You can use either a percentage value, as shown, or a pixels or em measure, for example

width="50px"
width="10em"

Job done!

Save the change in the usual way, and you will have a button on your website which opens Google Contacts

How to add a Google Contacts button to your computer / laptop / desktop

This is a little more difficult to describe, because it depends on exactly what computer and operating system you have, and what you mean by adding the button "to your computer".   But here are some options.

Browser Favorites

One option is to go to  www.google.com/contacts   and then before you do anything else save it to the Favourites section in your browser - and then you know you can get to Contacts using your regular internet button and choosing it from your favourites.

In the Windows desktop

Right click on your desktop

1. Choose New
2. Choose Shortcut
3. In the screen that asks what you want the shortcut to, enter  www.google.com/contacts
4. Click Next
5. Enter the Name you want the link to have, eg "Google Contacts", and click Finish

The shortcut that is added to your desktop has a standard internet picture.   To change it to another

1. Download this file to your computer, and save it somewhere.
2. Right click on the shortcut that was created, and choose Properties.
3. Choose Change Icon
4. Choose the file that you saved in step 1

Note:   these instructions were prepared using Windows 8 - they may vary slightly for earlier versions.   But the same general approach applies.

 

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Related Articles:

Copyright, blogs and bloggers

How to add a gadget to your blog

Duck Marines, FOSS remake of ChuChu Rocket

Thanks to Tangram Games for pointing out to us that they just released version 1.0 of their local multiplayer game Duck Marines.

They describe it as:

Duck Marines is a cross-platform free software PC remake of Sonic Team’s ChuChu Rocket.
Duck Marines attempts to recreate the magic from the local multiplayer of ChuChu Rocket while adding new elements like mini games, a level editor, colorful pixel art and more.

But see for yourself:



For those not familiar with the original on the Dreamcast here is a small description of the gameplay:

The goal of the game is to get as many ducks into the submarine of your color. Gray ducks give you one point, gold ducks give multiple points and pink ducks will trigger an event or mini game.
Guide the ducks towards your submarine by placing arrows on the ground. When walking over an arrow ducks will instead walk in the direction the arrow is pointing.
Beware of the blue predators. Predators love to eat ducks and will kill a large number of your ducks if they reach your submarine. Try instead to guide the predators to the other players’ submarines using your arrows.

Source-code (zlib) can be found here, assets are licensed under the CC-by-NC-SA/ND. Build with the great Lua 2D game framework LÖVE by the way.