Image by Brett L. via Flickr
So what do you think of the new look of my blog? I spend a solid two weeks looking for free templates, headers, widgets and other cool things to remodel my Blogger blog. I want to pass along some linky love to all the people that helped to inform, instruct and inspire me to create a new look for Oh My Aches and Pains! via their websites and blogs.
My new blog template is courtesy of Our Blogger Templates and I picked the one titled Blogger Theme.
My new blog header I discovered at Smashing Magazine.com under the post Blog Headers For Free Download. The artist is Heavena Rayan of India and she said this at Smasing Magazine.com about her design, "This design was inspired by my thought process. Whenever I need some ideas, I think, research & analyse and then I just let my thoughts go blank. This is when the ideas begin to flow. I tried to visualize this whole process & this is how I imagined it. I am sure a lot of people out there would relate to this process as well."
After reviewing several different blogs, I wanted to add "subscribe by RSS" and "subscribe by email" icons to my sidebar. Thank goodness for the Blogger Sentral blog and the post by Greenlava on Adding RSS button to your blog. As you can see on my sidebar, I learned how to add the buttons RSS, email and more to my sidebar thanks to this tutorial.
Did you notice the "Share the Love" social bookmarking widget at the bottom of each of my blog posts? The widget is called Sexy Bookmarks version 2 and I learned how to embed it into my Blogger html code at the CSS Reflex: web design & inspiration blog.
Don't you just LOVE the LinkWithin widget at the bottom of each post that brings up five related stories to the blog post you just read? This is one awesome widget that beautifully showcases my past posts. How does it work? How can you get it for your blog? Click here to learn more.
Did you also notice the new orange toolbar that appears at the bottom of the page, with all the cool features like: search, translate, recent posts, random post, subscribe to my feed, share this post, Facebook Commuity chat, Twitter and a nifty post-it like notifier? This very cool blog tool bar is courtesy of my friends at Wibiya.
Finally, I have to mention my long-time blog helpers that came to my new look from my old layout: Wowzio widgets, Lijit search, Zemanta and Stat Counter.
Let me share with you the real secret to creating my daily blog posts: every week I get emails from Lijit and Stat Counter letting me know how many people visited my blog in the previous week. Just knowing how many of you come and visit me each week inspires me to keep writing. I can honestly say that you, my blog readers, are the best blogging helpers of all.
Thank you for reading Oh My Aches and Pains!
3 comments
Selena, your blog's redesign is lovely and I'm glad that Lijit made the move with you.
Thanks for your continued support and if you (or your readers) have any questions about Lijit, feel free to send them my way. I'm tara [at] lijit [dot] com and I'm happy to help!
Thanks Tara for your comment and thanks for making Lijit a free resource for bloggers. :-)
I forgot to mention the Add Your Comment button that I added to my blog template. The graphic is courtesy of Iarfhlaith Kelly at his blog of the same name. Here is a link to the post: http://www.iarfhlaith.com/2008/05/19/comment-buttons-for-all/ Here are the instructions on how to add the button to your Blogger blog courtesy of PT: http://ptanham.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-put-comment-button-on-your.html
This step makes it so much easier for your blog readers to figure out how to leave you the comments you crave!
Post a Comment