Doreen Michele

The four newest BlogSpot themes are: Contempo, Soho, Emporio and Notable. Unlike previous themes, they are mobile optimized , so I no longer use the older themes. You can just use a default design package, but you can also easily insert an image of your choosing to customize your site. You can add your own image in a variety ways, such as in place of the Background, in an Image Widget or behind the Header. My sample Image for this post For simplicity's sake, all these screenshots are from a desktop PC. I am not including any screenshots from a smartphone. But if you are doing design work, always check both anytime you change anything. Contempo The background image for this theme is placed behind the header. The samples below are the second version of Contempo. Blogger Admin Panel Default With sample background image Using an Image widget above posts instead of a Background image As a Header background image Header background image paired wi...

Most of my earned income is made on the internet. I do some website work for local clients in the small town where I live, but most of it comes from resume editing, freelance writing and blogging and all of that gets done online. Trying to monetize creative work online, like blogging, is a constant challenge. One of the biggest stumbling blocks I keep running into is just trying to make it easy for people to give me money. It's surprisingly hard to make sure people can readily find that information. This post was written because I had someone email me and tell me they couldn't find that information ANYWHERE. They had looked! I verified my payment info for them and asked which of my many websites they had been on while looking for that information and they said it was my personal blog. I thought it was very prominently displayed on my personal blog. Well, maybe if you are on a PC with a big screen. Not so much if you are on a laptop, tablet or smartphone. They were...

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...

These two Word Press sites never had any traffic logs and were not mobile friendly , which is a large part of why I wanted to move them to BlogSpot, which has native support for both traffic logs (no plug-in required) and has newer theme templates that are mobile optimized. In the course of moving them, I preserved the old designs as much as possible. I simply moved existing content and design elements from the old sites to the new ones. The old Word Press site for Our Aberdeen. The new BlogSpot site for Our Aberdeen. The old Word Press site for the Healing Gallery. The new BlogSpot site for the Healing Gallery. These are just screenshots (without links to the sites) because, after I make this post, I will be shutting down the Word Press sites. (Originally published by me elsewhere.)

In May 2018, I consolidated the content from three related art websites into a single site. Urban Art On The Map, Critters On The Map and Murals On The Map became Aberdeen Art , currently called Aberdeen Art and Music . The old content was copied, pasted, edited as needed and reorganized. A plain black background was chosen to put the spotlight on the art, not the website design. Aberdeen Art And Music , Home Page Urban Art On The Map, Home Page Sculpture page (all the content from Urban Art On The Map) As You Were , Urban Art On The Map As You Were , Aberdeen Art And Music Mobile The old sites were practically unusable on mobile. Below are three cropped screenshots of the same entry to give you an idea of how much better the mobile experience is on the new site. I also have a separate page with a number of uncropped mobile screenshots from all the sites. Old Site New Site Critters On The Map , Home Page Critters sec...