New changes to template at test Site

A few changes have occurred with this template design over at the Test Site. I've added a coloured navigation menu - each tab is individually coloured and on mouseover the colour changes to a different colour. This has been applied to all the tabs. The dropdown menu section has been colour coded for that particular coloured tab. It does look pretty cool, even if I say so myself.

Another change to the template is there is now a mouseover background colour for the page links in the left hand side column. It is almost identical to Facebook's in that respect.

I have also come up with a more appealing looking photo gallery and video section but at this point in time that effect can only be achieved manually. I really don't know how to add the code into the template itself, so I might have to do some research first before I try adding it to the template's xml file/code.

If curious about all the changes then go on over to the Test Site (see link below) and check out what I've done to date. http://bazaarplaces.blogspot.com/

Original faceblog test site

I have begun testing the xml file for this template on another one of my blogs and so far so good. The url for the test site is http://bazaarplaces.blogspot.com/ I have solved the problem with the missing body background image, and well, the missing content for the recent comments widgets seems to just be tempermental. Sometimes it will show up, other times it is missing. I am trying to relocate the css and javascript code for another recent comments widget to replace the existing Blogger's recent comments widget. I want everything to work properly, all the time.

Go the above-mentioned test site (blog) to see the progress I'm making with the changes to the original faceblog template. It should be ready in a day or two, if I don't get any interruptions.

OH WTF IS WRONG NOW!

I have found an even more serious problem than I ever thought imagineable with this template. I have uploaded this xml template file to another one of my blogs, and whenever I go to the edit HTML tab and just look around, then click on view blog I am taken straight back to this blog. The whole file seems to be corrupted or is malfunctioning and will not connect properly.

The problem I just mentioned is solved, I believed. I realized just then I forgot to change my profile id numbers. Jeez I'm stupid. But it does not solve the problems of the missing recent comments widget contents nor the body background not displaying. Further investigation is needed.

TESTERS NEEDED

This is what this blog (at the top) should look like!

Every now and then I come to this blog and there always seems to be a problem with something not displaying. Currently two things have refused to show up:

1. The dark blue background colour which is visible in the screenshot above, that is at the very top of the image (behind the word "faceblog" - top left hand corner is refusing to display.

2. The "Blogger's own recent comments" widget, which is in the left hand column, is not showing any comments or any kind of contents.

If any visitors to this blog can check to see if these two items are displayed on their computer's browser - and leave a comment attached to this post. I need to know if there is something wrong with my computer, or if this problem is occurring with other people's web browsers too. I have tested this on 3 different computers and they are not showing up on any of the three computers.

Someone please help.

A new version coming soon

Over the passed few days I have come up with a better way for the photo albums to be displayed which will mean that anybody who uses the new version of this template design will have less hassles and it will be a lot simpler to use. As a result I will be redesigning this template to accommodate these new changes. I am hoping to also improve upon the general look of this design and perhaps add a "read more" function to all the posts.

I am also going to redesign the "My Blogger.com Friends" list widget, so users of this template don't have to do so much hard work. I probably should have done all this beforehand, before I made this template available to download. Its too late for regrets now!

Soon I will make a live-demo available for the new version of this template design.

Blogger keeps crashing on me.

I wish I knew what was going on with Blogger. It keeps logging me off every time I do something. I can't even edit the Faceblog Help section or add any comments on someone else's blog. It is really peeving me off right now, and this has been happening for more than a week. So, how am I supposed to do anything on Blogger when it keeps crashing on me? I may never know. Only a few things work on blogger at the moment, and adding a new post seems to be one of them, but there's a 50-50 chance this post may refuse to publish as well.

Please read the faceblog Help page

If you decide to add this template to your own blog the first thing you must remember is when you upload it to your blog it will look nothing like this live-demo. My brother was very disappointed when he uploaded this template to his blog last night but he didn't understand at the time that he needed to do a bit of hard work in order to make it look like the live-demo. I gave him a helping hand because I could but I cannot do that with everyone, as much as I would love to.

As such it is important that you read the faceblog Help page in order to understand what you need to do to your blog to make it look like this live-demo. Without that knowledge you will probably delete the template and replace it with something else. But I ask you, if you really want this template on your blog, are you willing to put in the time to work on your blog to make it look like this blog? I hope you say yes because it will be worth it in the end.

Now you may be asking yourself how much time needs to be spent working on your blog to make it look like the live-demo version? That entirely depends upon how good you are at following instructions and able to keep focused on the tasks at hand. It should not take you any more than a few days, in reality, to get your blog looking like this one. But that is not a guarantee because we all make mistakes, and some of us may not have a lot of time on their hands all the time to do this. But persistance is the key here.

The very first thing you must remember with uploading this template is you need to add your blog's id number into the template in order to access the "Design" and "New Post" tabs/links. You need to do this by accessing the Design page and getting your blog's id number which is located in the web browser's address bar. If you don't do this and you click on either tab you will be asked to log into blogger every single time.

The work you need to do to your blog is really not all that hard. In fact it is quite easy actually. There are just little tasks to be done here and there. The tasks to be done first are the most important ones, which I will lay out here:

1. You need to add your blog's id number in two different links.
2. You then need to rearrange your widgets in your "Design" page and delete any broken or empty widgets.
3. You need to add your own profile image/s into a HTML/Javascript widget then link your "View my complete profile" page to the onmouseover image of that widget.
4. Then you delete your "About me" widget because you no longer need it and because it will look messy and unreadable.
5. Next you need to add your profile image (or a image) to be displayed next to each post to the template.
6. Then you begin to change my urls to your urls in the template, just below the header.
7. Now you can add the "Pages widget" to your blog and add your url's to it, keeping the list simple if that is your desire.
8. Next you add a Blogroll widget to your blog if you do not already have one. If you have one uncheck the "icons" option and check the option for having a snippet of information about the posts.
9. Now you begin to add the "My Blogger.com Friends" widget and content in the left hand column.

By the time you have done all of this your blog will be looking fantastic. I guarantee it! You will be really proud of yourself too because it will mean your blog is starting to look like your own with all your own stuff on it and not mine. There is nothing worse than having downloaded a template only to have someone else's stuff on your blog. But I intentionally leave my stuff on some of it so you can easily find the urls in the template itself. I believe it is easier to see a url that has http://originalfaceblog.blogspot.com/ in it than trying to look for a # symbol. A complete url is much more noticeable than a # symbol, don't you think?

So, what happens next? Well, the next two steps are easy.

10. Now add the "Recent Comments" widget in the basic list in Blogger.
11. Then add the "Facebook Comments app".

This will then have your homepage looking almost complete. And now for the harder work - the photo album page and the individual photo albums.

12. Create a static page for your "Photos" (or photo albums) page. This page will display only one image from each album that you create. No images need to be added at this point. Then publish the page with a bit of text added (like for example "add albums images here").

13. Then create a New Post and predate it, and add some images to it. Then publish the page.

Once you have begun creating individual Photo albums you then have to add one of the photos from each album and add it to the photo albums page (which is the page simply called "Photos"). You also have to get the url of each album page and also add it to the corresponding image of the photo you added in the photo album page.

Then you select one image from one album and replace one of my five images (below the header) with your own - repeating the entire thing again with the corresponding url to be added to the image below the header.

The whole process repeats itself when you create new albums. You need select only five albums to be displayed below your header, and these can be changed (manually) at any given time if that is your desire.

There are only three more steps to go...

14. When you add photos to an individual album that is when you add the Lightbox image viewer code to each photo.

15. Create a page to display all your videos in the same manner as the photos. It is better not to create a video gallery page (or a video albums page) for them because videos are not clickable like images are. However you can a video albums page if you take a screenshot of a video from each album and link each screenshot image to each video album.

16. Lastly, you create an "Info" page.

And there you have it. A completely unique looking original faceblog template that is your own in 16 steps. Adding videos and photos to albums will be an ongoing process so you will need to remember how to link everything and how to align the images, etc. This must become a long term memory skill for you but if you have a poor memory the information will always be readily available in the faceblog help page on this live-demo.

Each and every step of these 16 steps will be covered in great detail in the faceblog Help page on this blog. You will find all the information you need on that page to achieve every single step and to make you blog look identical to the live-demo. So, what are you waiting for?

Original faceblog template design finished

The main task of completing this template design is over, for this template is now finished. Now I have the huge task of writing up tutorials for adding all the widgets, editing links on this template, etc. It is a huge task and one that will take about a week to complete. So please check out the faceblog help page for all the tutorials on how to customize this template for your own use.

family and friends

UFOs

This template looks fine to me

After much consideration I am quite happy with the look of this template. A lot of the problems have now been sorted out with it and it is available for transfering to my brother's blog, with the exception of the hover link in the pages navigation menu above the posts. I should fix that first though, and get it back in alignment. I have no idea how this template looks on someone else's computer. Can someone please tell me what it looks like or if anything is out of alignment so I can fix it?

Wrench and edit post icons hidden - Don't ask me how I did it.

In trying to improve the overall look of this template I managed to hide the wrench icon and the edit post icon without knowing how I did it. It started when I was trying to manually move the post footer codes for the timestamp and date to be displayed next to each other in the template code itself. This has got me stumped because I was not trying to hide those icons. Actually, I had completely forgotten about the section in the "Design" tab where you can quickly move the post footer functions about (in the "edit post" section on that page). If you are logged into your Blogger account you will not see and wrench icons or any edit post icons at all.

Because the wrench and edit post icons are not displayed it does not seem to interfere with the actual ability to edit the widgets and posts. In order to edit them you have to either go to the "Design" tab or the "Edit posts" tab and edit the widgets or post/s from there.