I decided it was time to clean up the page layout, tweak the AdSense to make it less annoying and add some modern features.
One of the things I like is label clouds. It’s a nifty concept which before now I was never able to add to my site. I cannot take credit for coming up with it – I just followed the step-by-step instructions listed here. Note this requires you to be using the new version of blogger and already have some labels configured with your posts.
In case you are not aware, a label cloud is a list of blog labels where the more frequently appearing ones are made larger, thus giving an instant visual indication of the most popular labels.
I’ve also added a Digg button, but I’m still working on figuring out how to code it for individual posts on a blogger.com site.
Edit: I now have this working.
More tweaks this morning have led to the inclusion of an AdSense bar just between the header and the content as was there previously.
How did I do it?
I left layout mode and edited the HTML, where I found the .css element for the “header-wrapper” and “header” sections. I cloned them and renamed them – “billboard-frame” and “funkydj” respectively.
#billboard-frame {
width:730px;
margin:0 auto 1px;
}
#funkydj {
margin: 0px;
text-align: center;
}
Now scroll way down into the body of the HTML and find the “header-wrapper” tag. Below that div, you add a new section:
<div id="billboard-frame">
<b:section class='funkydj' id='funkydj' maxwidgets='1' showaddelement='yes'>
</b:section>
</div>
You can save, then go back to layout mode and add an HTML element into the new section you’ve created below the header. Voila!
I decided to give this blog site a face lift, to clean up the lines a little bit and make the posts easier to read.
This is just a dry run, there may be more changes to come. Any comments or suggestions?