The Blogger Team has announced the Blogger Template Designer. The Blogger Template Designer will allow free bloggers greater customization of their blog templates (which dictate the presentation of the blogs) without knowing HTML or CSS.

The Blogger Team states:

The Blogger Template Designer allows you to create effectively infinite number of designs templates instead of being restricted to a limited number of rigid designs by making it easy to customize your blogs design, layout, background and much more. — The Blogger Team.

 

Features of The Blogger Template Designer:

• Beautiful new starting templates
• Choices of blog layouts with one, two and three columns
• You can now select from hundreds of background images
• Colors, fonts, and other parts of the free blog can be customized

Here is a video released by Blogger about the new Blogger Template Designer:

For too long the template choices at Blogger have been in need of updating. If you were capable with HTML and CSS, then Blogger did allow you to tweak your blog template as desired, and some were able to design their own unique Blogger templates. Overall though, most free Blogger bloggers stuck to the default and common template offerings. The end result was that for too long, too many free Blogger blogs looked like too many other free Blogger blogs. Free blogs with the same looks just kept getting stamped out one by one.

The new Blogger Template Designer is a step in the right direction for Blogger. However, if you want to have complete control over your blog the best solution is still to Own Your Own Blog by self-hosting a WordPress blog installed at your chosen web host and using your own registered Top Level Domain name as your blog’s URL.

Learn more about the Blogger Template Designer at Blogger in draft.

CSS is used with XHTML and HTML to define the way a web page appears and is formatted. For example, with CSS you can fancy-up and design your web pages so they have attractive text, create unique headings, have paragraphs with different looks, divide your page using columns and banners, arrange pictures and graphics with precision, and have text that is enhanced with rollover effects or styled however you imagine. There is much, much more you can do with CSS. CSS is cool stuff.

CSS is way to separate the presentation of a web page (the way it looks) away from its structure (its XHTML/HTML). XHTML/HTML is used to provide the structure of a web page, while CSS adds the design to the web page that makes the XHTML/HTML look good. Separating the structure of a web page from its appearance (CSS) will make your web page creation and management easier.

CSS The Missing Manual

If you want all paragraphs in your Web site to always appear in a certain font family, size, and color, you could accomplish this by adding a Font tag with the needed formatting attributes to each and every paragraph in each and every web page of your web site. This adds a lot of work to your web development, and swells the file size of each of your web page files because many instances of the same Font tag and its attributes will have to be added to format each paragraph.

With CSS, you can designate and define the look you want for all paragraphs on all the web pages of your Web site. You can place all of your CSS styling for your Web site into an external file and link to the CSS external file from within your XHTML/HTML web pages.

The web pages will use the style sheet to determine how the different parts of the web page look. When you associate an external style sheet with a web page, then the web page will use the style definitions in the external style sheet to create how the web page appears. This makes changing the way your Web site or blog looks very easy.

With an external style sheet, you can quickly and easily change the way how all of the paragraphs look on all of your web pages by simply editing the styles sheet file. There is no need to go back to each and every web page and change the Font tag and its attributes in each and every paragraph when you want to make the paragraphs look different.

With CSS external style sheet files, you change one file. This CSS file then is used by every page on your Web site to display content and information with the style you want. Can you see how much of a work and time saver CSS is?

CSS Benefits:

• CSS gives you many more formatting options than XMTL/HTML does.
• CSS can add a background image to your web pages, and you can control whether or not the background image repeats (or tiles).
• Because CSS eliminates the constant use of the Font tag to create a web page’s look, web page file size is less when CSS is used. Web pages will load faster when CSS is used.
• Because all of the styles that create how your Web site looks can be put into one special style sheet file, changing or updating the way your Web site looks is much faster and easier. Change one CSS file, instead of many XHTML/HTML files.

Here are some very simple examples of how CSS can change the way your content appears. I’ve created three separate paragraph styles and added them to the style sheet of my WordPress theme for this blog. The example text in the paragraphs feature an excerpt of The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln:

A paragraph CSS styled using font-size: large; font-weight: bold; color: Red;

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

A paragraph CSS styled using font-size: medium; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; color: Blue;

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

A paragraph CSS styled using font-size: x-small; font-weight: normal; color: Green;

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

This paragraph is another example of CSS styling, a red border was added to this paragraph using CSS. All of the above example paragraphs had their styles changed without using the Format HTML tag. CSS was used instead, for example, here is how the first paragraph appears as code:

<p class="RedPara">“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”</p> <p>

class=”RedPara” is the code where the CSS styling is applied to the first paragraph. The class=”RedPara” means that I have created a CSS rule (or style) in my external style sheet named RedPara, and that CSS style should be applied to that particular paragraph. In this case, the text of the paragraph is shown in red, with a large font size, and in bold. Likewise, I created other CSS rules (or styles) for the above paragraphs shown with blue and green text.

You can do many, many, things with CSS to enhance the presentation of your Web sites and blogs. This explanation does not even scratch the surface of all there is to discuss about CSS. I’ll have more to say about CSS later!

PHP helps you do magical things with Web sites. Long ago, way back in the 1994 dark ages of the Internet, a very good thing happened. A genius named Rasmus Lerdorf wanted a way to track how many visitors came to his online resume. So to count the number of his online resume visitors, Lerdorf created PHP. At that time, PHP stood for "Personal Home Page."

Today counting Web site visitors is something we take for granted, as there are many tools and gizmos available for this common analytic. However, back in 1994 when dirt was still new, what Rasmus Lerdorf did with his PHP visitor counter was BIG MEDICINE. Lerdorf’s PHP would go on to become a very, very powerful and popular Web site development language. PHP is a rich language for dynamic web site development, it has many commands and functions that can perform many web site operations.

PHP is now known as "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor." So what does that mouthful mean? The official PHP Web site (www.php.net) defines PHP; "PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML."

PHP is a server-side scripting language designed for use on the Web. This means you can put (or imbed) PHP code into a HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language, it’s the code that makes up web pages) web page. Each time the web page is displayed, the PHP code will run at the web page’s host (PHP runs at the web page’s server) and generate output to the web page that is shown on the viewer’s (or client’s) browser. Often the generated output shown on a web page by PHP code comes from a database. PHP is very good at interacting with MySQL databases and PHP is often used with the MySQL database management system.

A Web site developer using PHP will include PHP script/code within the XHTML/HTML code of a web page. The PHP script/code can do many things that make a Web site dynamic, rather than static. A dynamic web site can change its content, it can change what information is shown to a visitor.

An example of a dynamic Web site is one where visitors can view, search, and add information to the online database, and then display that information by calling it up from the database during a search operation. You happen to be viewing a dynamic Web site right now.

This blog is powered by WordPress, and WordPress uses PHP and an MySQL database to display the content shown here. A blog is often updated and changed by adding new posts … which means new data is added to the database powering the blog. Each new post to a blog changes what information is shown to a visitor.

Dynamic Web sites are easier to maintain, upgrade, and build on than static Web sites. Updating a dynamic PHP and MySQL developed site is as easy as entering new contents to a database, no web pages need to be laboriously re-coded by hand. In contrast, a static Web site requires a Web site developer to hand-code each and every web page that has content changes.

Take An Online PHP and MySQL Course
Introduction to PHP and MySQL

A WordPress theme is what makes your WordPress blog look the way it does.

A theme is made up of many files (they are called template files) and they work together to create the presentation of your WordPress blog. The colors, where certain parts of your blog’s interface are placed, the graphics, are all part of your blog’s theme. A WordPress theme provides the Graphical User Interface (GUI) for your blog, it’s a way to "skin" your blog.

Many WordPress themes are available, many of them are free and some are premium themes that you pay for. There are good WordPress themes and there are bad ones too. Designing a WordPress theme is something you can learn to do. Many talented people design WordPress themes and earn money for their efforts.

When you have your own self-hosted WordPress blog, when you Own Your Own Blog, you can have whatever theme you want for your blog. You can even design your own WordPress blog theme from scratch if you want. Learn more about WordPress themes from the horse’s mouth at WordPress.org

You are not stuck with your WordPress blog theme once you choose it. Through the WordPress Dashboard, you can choose a different theme from the various themes you have installed with your WordPress blog. Changing to a new theme is as simple as making a few clicks. If you are like most WordPress bloggers, when you start your blog you probably will install a number of themes to experiment with until you find the one that’s perfect for you and your blog. That’s a great thing about WordPress themes … there is no "correct" theme. You select the blog theme that you want. A WordPress theme is not cast in stone, if you know how, you can tweak a theme and customize it the way you want.

WordPress has an official directory for locating themes you can use for your WordPress blog. These WordPress themes are free for you to download and use. You can search the WordPress Theme Directory for different styles of themes and you may preview the themes. Free WordPress Theme Directory

The theme I chose for www.wpblogsandwebsites.com is DeepBlue by Daily Blog Tips. This theme has two columns and I use the version with the narrower column on the right.

The description of this theme by its designer; "DeepBlue is an elegant, two column WordPress theme. It is advertising ready, and it comes with several advanced features, including Feedburner integration, author comment styling and search engine optimization."

I chose this theme because I like it and I think it represents well what I want to do with this blog. I am capable with PHP, XHTML, and CSS so I have tweaked the DeepBlue theme somewhat. I replaced the top horizontal navigation menu bar that came with the theme, to a drop-down horizontal navigation menu bar that I prefer. I also altered the header.php and the footer.php files (these are some of the theme’s template files) to change the appearance somewhat of the top and bottom of this blog. I am using various plugins to add some features to this blog, so I have gone into some files of the theme template and added some code to make these plugins work the way I want them to. Nothing to complicated really, just some minor PHP, XHTML, and CSS tweaking.

I wound up with a blog presentation that I like. Over time, I’m sure I’ll tweak it more, and maybe someday I’ll switch to a different theme if I think that needs to be done. Remember, WordPress themes are not cast in stone! You can switch themes and tweak theme as you desire.

It’s very easy to find free WordPress themes. Perform a Google search for "free WordPress theme" and you’ll get more results than Carter has oats. I got 45,600,000 results as I wrote this post. Browsing around for that perfect theme for your blog may take some time. Find one you like.

Here are a couple of videos about WordPress themes I think you’ll find helpful:

You might need to increase the volume with this below video. Or, maybe I need my ears cleaned out. Yeah, hunh!

URL stands for:

Uniform Resource Locator

A URL is the way people find your blog or Web site. It is the uniform way to locate a file (a resource) on the Internet. Really, all it is, is a fancy name for web page address. It tells a browser where a file is, and what to do with it. A unique URL belongs to each file on the Internet.

The URL is the unique address by which a file can be found on a web site. A visitor to your Web site will use an URL and software called a browser (like the common Internet Explorer or Firefox browsers) to retrieve a file of your Web site from the server of your web host, and display that file in their browser.

Here is the URL used to view this blog post that you’re reading:
http://www.wpblogsandwebsites.com/what-is-an-URL/

As you can see, a URL is made up of words (usually!) that are easy for humans to read, understand, and remember (usually and hopefully!).

For computers, URLs are really made up of a set of four groups of numbers separated by periods. This is known as an Internet Protocol (IP) Address. An example of an IP Address is: 64.202.189.170 which happens to be the IP Address of www.wpblogsandwebsites.com.

An overly simple explanation of Internet Protocol Address is that it is the numerical label that is assigned to a URL. Since these IP Address numbers are really too difficult and cumbersome for human beings to read and remember, they are instead associated with an alphanumeric form so we human types can more easily remember and use Web site addresses. People usually find it easier to remember a short string of words, rather than a list of numbers.

The alphabetic and numeric versions of a web site’s URL are reconciled through the Internet Domain Name System (DNS). DNS translates the alphanumerical address to the numeric, which is the way non-human things such as computers, browsers, and servers prefer a Web site’s address to be represented. The DNS works for you in the background as you surf the Internet.

Let’s examine the fictitious URL of:
http://www.wpblogsandwebsites.com/blog/how-to-blog.html

The format of a URL looks like this:
Protocol://site address/path/filename

So, the http://www.wpblogsandwebsites.com/blog/how-to-blog.html example URL breaks down as:

• Protocol: http
• Host computer name: www
• Domain name: wpblogsandwebsites
• Domain type: com
• Path: /blog
• File name: how-to-blog.html

If you see an URL like: http://www.wpblogsandwebsites.com/blog/ where no file name is part of the URL, then a default file will displayed by the browser. Usually the default file is something like index.html, index.htm, or maybe index.php.

There are different types of Protocols. All web pages will use some type of Protocol to transfer their data. HTTP is the most common. HTTP means HyperText Transport Protocol and it is the common way hypertext documents (web pages) are served, or transferred, over the Internet.

While the com domain type is the most familiar, there are other types of domains. Listed below are some of them:

• com: commercial entities
• net: networks or network providers
• org: organizations that are usually non-profit
• edu: education, used for colleges and universities
• gov: government
• mil: United States military entities

To get your own URL for your blog or Web site, you must register a domain name. Learn about domain names on this page: Get Your Own Domain Name.

WordPress is an excellent choice for your blogging or Web site platform. There are many reasons why WordPress is so great, here are a few:

• WordPress can do just about anything you want to use it for. It can be a blog only, it can be a Web site only, it can be a Web site with a blog, it can cut your grass … okay, okay, WordPress can’t cut your grass. You can use WordPress to blog about everything your cat does, or you can use WordPress to blog about your doctoral study of lions, tigers, and bears and how to save them. You can use WordPress to create a Web site or blog, or both, about your small business and have customers order your goods and services online. Or, you can use WordPress as a site for your huge corporation. Your imagination will lead you to what you want WordPress to do for you.

• WordPress is free. It won’t cost you a penny to use the WordPress blogging platform. There are no license fees to use WordPress. Owning your own blog is something I highly recommend. If you want to Own Your Own Blog, you will have to pay a fee to a web hosting service, and a fee to register a domain name. These costs are not great, and for the control you gain over your site, they are worth it. Web hosting costs vary considerably, but there are many fine web hosts that charge a very affordable fee. Domain name registration should cost you very little.

• From humble beginnings in 2003, WordPress has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging platform in the world. WordPress is used by millions of Web sites/blogs and these sites are viewed by tens of millions of people each and every day. WordPress is not small potatoes, WordPress is the Big Kahuna. WordPress is a mature and stable product.

• Documentation and support of WordPress abounds. The WordPress Web site (wordpress.org), is jam-packed with information. You can’t search the Internet without finding tons and tons of places that have information on WordPress. You’re looking at one of those sites right now. You can’t sling a dead cat on the Internet without it landing on a WordPress Web site of some kind. Information about WordPress is readily available.

• WordPress is constantly being worked on and improved. It’s already very good, but it keeps getting better. There are people from all over the world working on WordPress to improve it because it is an Open Source project. They are busy right now coming up with the next WordPress release. They always are.

• When a WordPress update comes out, with the current version of WordPress it is as simple as clicking a button to get a WordPress blog caught up to the new update.

• WordPress follows XHTML and CSS (this is code stuff that helps make the blog work) standards put forth by the W3C. This means your WordPress site will display properly when viewed in standards-compliant browsers. This is a good thing.

• Compared to other blogging platforms, installing WordPress is user-friendly. It can be technically challenging to install any blog if you are a newbie or a decided non-geek, and sometimes even for experienced geeks too, but WordPress installation can be considered to be less threatening and challenging than some other blog installations. You can find people who will provide a service of installing and setting up a new WordPress blog for you. These services will get your blog installed with a theme (more about themes below) of your choosing and install and setup a selection of plugins (more about plugins below) to get your new WordPress site ready for the big-time world of blogging. HINT: I provide a WordPress blog installation and setup service for a modest fee. This will protect you from the geeky technical code stuff, and get you ready for what you really want to do – which is blog! Please contact me using my Contact Form if you would like to know more.

• In order for a web host to be able to run WordPress, there are two requirements of the web host that must be met: PHP version 4.3 or greater, and MySQL version 4.0 or greater. PHP and MySQL are the backbone code of WordPress, they are what make WordPress work. Most web hosts meet these PHP and MySQL requirement easily, and probably exceed them.

• You can easily change the way your WordPress blog looks simply by installing and choosing a new theme. WordPress uses themes for the way its blogs look and feel. Themes are all about the presentation of your WordPress site. There are more free themes available on the Internet that you can use for your blog than Carter has oats. If you want, you can also buy a premium theme developed by a WordPress theme design expert. Choosing your theme for your WordPress blog is a personal choice. You have many places to look for your theme, and many, many themes to choose from. WordPress installs with some basic default themes, so you’re all set from the get-go. If you want, you can also design your own theme, or have someone tweak a theme so that it’s just right for you.

• WordPress is very flexible and customizable. WordPress plugins are gizmos you can add to your WordPress site to give it more functionality. There are tons of plugins available. Whatever job or chore you need your WordPress site to do, chances are someone has developed a plugin to do just that. There are many things you can do yourself without knowing how to code in XHTML, CSS, or PHP and MySQL (the code that makes WordPress work – WordPress is based on PHP and MySQL), depending on the theme and plugins you choose. If you are capable in these Web site development languages, then you can tweak your WordPress site to your heart’s desire. If these languages are nothing but gobbledegook to you, and you just can’t find a plugin to do what you need done, then there are WordPress coders you can hire to make the changes you want.

• WordPress provides strong aggregator support. Many standard RSS configurations are included. This means your blog readers will have choices when they choose to subscribe to your blog. Another good thing.

• WordPress will let you communicate your passion, your expertise, your knowledge, skills, and abilities, your business, to the entire world. You can do this from your top-floor corporate office, or from the spare closet in the extra bedroom of your sister’s apartment. All you need is a computer, an Internet connection, WordPress installed at a web host’s server, a domain name, and your imagination, smarts, and effort. You could change the world, or your life … for the better. It can all begin with a WordPress blog.

This Is Important
When you host a WordPress blog on your chosen web host’s server, you have total control. When you Own Your Own Blog, you are the Czar of your blog. Its future is always in your hands. Your work will not be jeopardized by the policies enacted by a third-party that hosts your blog for free.

When you install a WordPress blog at a web host of your choosing, and use a domain name for that blog you have chosen and registered, then you are going first-class with your blogging efforts.

I think WordPress is wonderful. I think you will too.

What are you waiting for?