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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on July 9, 2009 11:46 AM.

The previous post in this blog was Deleting a Blog.

The next post in this blog is Multiple Authors.

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Changing the Look of Your Blog

Now that you’ve created your own blog, you’re realizing that it looks exactly like everyone else’s blog. Blogs at NYU starts everyone off with the same blog template, which despite being cleanly designed and easy to read, is pretty bland and doesn’t uniquely identify the blog as your own.

To customize the look of your blog, we provide you with two options:

  • Ready-made theme library using StyleCatcher
  • Access to HTML and CSS to program your own

Theme Library Using StyleCatcher

Without editing any HTML or CSS, you can easily change the complete look of your blog using StyleCatcher. We’ve pre-installed a number of good-looking themes freely available from the Six Apart Theme Repository and the Style Contest websites.

In order to apply these themes to your blog, do the following:

  1. Click the Main Menu link.
  2. Click the Templates link for your blog, listed in the My Weblogs box. This displays the templates screen for your blog. Templates Link
  3. Click Select a Design using StyleCatcher. Plugin List
  4. Click Saved Themes. A gallery of available themes will load. Theme Library
  5. Select a theme and click Apply Selected Design.
  6. Refresh your blog.

Roll Your Own

If you feel comfortable using HTML and CSS, you can change the look of your blog by modifying your blog’s default templates.

For example, if you want to modify the content that appears on your main blog page (e.g. links in the side bar), you should modify the template called Main Index.

  1. Click the Main Menu link.
  2. Choose the Templates option for your blog.

  3. By default, you’ll be placed into the Index Templates window. Before you do any work on the main index, it is recommended that you make a back-up copy of the existing file. To do this,

    • Find the template called Main Index.
    • Put a check mark in the box in front of it and from the drop-down menu that, by default says, “More actions…”, choose the option for Refresh Template(s).
    • Click the Go button.
    • On the following page, click the Return button to return to the previous page. You should now see a back-up copy of your Main Index listed in the window.

  4. Click on the link for the Main Index file.

  5. You’ll now be in the Edit Template screen. Find the Template Body section and copy and paste the contents into a text editor (e.g. TextEdit, NotePad).
  6. Find the <div id=”beta”> section in the template content you just copied. This section represents the container for the sidebar content. You will see the various sidebar sections, e.g. Search, Recent Posts, Categories, and Monthly.
  7. Make your changes.
  8. When finished, copy and paste your updated text document back into the Template Body area in the Edit Template screen.
  9. Click the Save and Rebuild button to put your changes into effect.

Remember that you made a back-up copy of your page just in case you want to revert back to the previous version.

More Style Tutorials:

  • The tutorial Changing the Default Sidebar Position at Learning Movable Type discusses how to change the position of the side bar from the (default) right-hand side to the left-hand side.

  • The tutorial Creating a 3-Column Layout at Learning Movable Type shows how to modify the default template from 2-columns to 3-columns.

Posted by Amit Snyderman on July 9, 2009 11:46 AM |