Using CSS Styling on BlogSpot Sites

BlogSpot gives you a great deal of control over what you do with the website and serves all coding and design skill levels equally well. For people with zero skills, you can select from one of their existing themes. If you are a serious coder, you can click on "Edit HTML" under "Theme."

For an intermediary level of customization, you can click on "Customize." It takes you to a dashboard where you can change elements of existing themes in a safe manner. If you don't like what you did, each section has an "undo" option called "Clear advanced changes to (section name)."

In this dashboard, you can even add CSS styling with zero danger of permanently breaking your website. If you don't like what you have changed, you can just delete the CSS.

Here are some examples of adding CSS styling to the Blockquote attribute.

Example One
Without CSS:

With CSS:

Example Two
Without CSS:

With CSS:

Example Three
Without CSS:

With CSS:

I have done a bit of self-study for both HTML and CSS from resources like books and tutorials. I don't currently write much code from scratch, but understanding how it generally works makes it easier to google up some CSS samples and then change colors and other details to make it work for the BlogSpot website in question.

If you have no coding experience, this is still a safe thing to play with on a BlogSpot website. You can just google up code samples, copy and paste them into your BlogSpot "Add CSS" section and do a preview of how it impacts things.

Do keep in mind that CSS makes global changes. So if you add CSS styling to the Blockquote element to improve a page you are currently writing, it will also make those changes to any other pages that include a Blockquote element.

It's a best practice on an existing website to revisit other pages using that element and see if you need to clean up anything.

(Originally published elsewhere by me.)

Pivoting a Website

The website Aberdeen Art and Music began as an effort to consolidate three older websites into a single website for purposes of trying to create a local walking tour as a tourist asset for this small town. It later took on a new purpose and I was tasked with updating the site to preserve and enhance the existing purpose while making room for new functions. The older websites were static sites that each corresponded to a printed brochure. The brochures and corresponding original websites were logically categorized by type of art: Murals, Critters and Urban Art (mostly sculpture). But much of this art can be found in close proximity in the downtown area, so I wanted to consolidate that information and enhance it to serve as an economic development tool for this small town. The intent was to support a walking tour via smartphone and begin phasing out the printed brochures while still supporting the existing brochures that were still out there and had the old URLs on them. In s

Local News and Information Online

I recentely read an online article with local news. Nowhere in the article does it actually name the state and the name of the publication is generic enough it doesn't give clues as to the location. I poked around the site and found a county name somewhere, maybe in the same article, maybe in a different article. I googled the city name and the spelling is unusual such that it might be a unique city name though there are definitely other cities with names that sound the same. If this article were printed in a physical newspaper bought locally, using just the city name would be fine. You would know from context exactly which city was intended. But when an article is posted online, people can potentially trip across it from anywhere in the world. You are no longer talking to just locals and even if the city name is unique, not everyone will automatically know that. Don't assume your audience will go digging for more info like I did to try to figure out exactly where

My Work

In the movie The Pickup Artist , Molly Ringwald's character utters my all-time favorite movie line: I'm too truthful to be good. I have apparently always been socially insightful. I was probably the bratty child yelling "The emperor has no clothes" and getting away with being rude, crude and socially unacceptable because I was cute as a button. When you are four, people laugh uncomfortably and don't explain to you why they are laughing. Being four, you stupidly think you are a talented comedian and then you spend your twenties and thirties baffled as to why everyone routinely gives you the death glare and wants your head on a pike instead of appreciating your witty insight and sense of humor. Me being me, I didn't stop being honest. I just tried to find ways to express myself that were less likely to have people wanting my head on a pike. This is a large part of why I blog. I still find social stuff very interesting, I see a need in the world for hig

Doreen Michele

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