Blogger Hacks

Starting on this post I am going to do a series of articles called Blogger Reborn. It is a step by step demonstration of how i modified the Rounders 4 template. The concept should be useful for Rounders 1, 2, and 3 as well since they have basically the same layout and code.

The purpose here is 3 fold. one it is to keep a record of the changes i have made to my blog site. two it will hopefully help other people using rounders template on modifying their blog. three i firmly believe you don't own a thing until you can give it away, in this case - you haven't learned a subject until you can teach it to others; this is a test of how well i have retained the hacking information accumulated in the past week. The post would not be technical. It will be more of a documentation and reflection. I will jot down the interesting things I found along the way.

Like every good story, this one starts at the beginning:



In the beginning was Blogger, and Blogger was with Pyra Labs, and Pyra Labs was Blogger...and the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehend it not.

As you can see, the starting templateless blog page is so white, it glows. It is truely full of light. Let us modify that. Blogger has a very simple guide on how to switch template. The template I decided to use is one of the Rounder Series. Specifically Rounders 4 like the picture below. You can also check out Rounders, Rounders 2, or Rounders 3. Once you are done your blog should look like the test blog below.



That is a small step for Blogger and an even smaller step for mankind. Truely, the work hasn't begun yet. Below is the tentative article lists with a difficulty rating at the end. You can attempt each ones depending on how much know-how you think you possess. On the other hand, Blogger also has another easy guide if you are looking for some other templates.

01) Blogger Hacks, easy
02) Modify Link List, easy
03) Archive and Title, easy
04) Reverse Archive Order, medium
05) Expandable Summary, hard
06) Add Comment Ability, easy
07) Profile Pictures, easy
08) Chatterbox, medium
09) Statcounter, easy
10) Random Quotations, medium
11) Posted by Author Names, medium
12) Turn Color Pictures into Black and White, easy
13) Pictures on Sidebar, easy
14) Webcomic Script's Reference, easy
15) Blogging Advice, easy
16) Random Header Pictures, medium
17) Technorati Tags and LiveJournal Tags, easy
18) Voluptpat Rounder Hybrid, hard

Go ahead and jump in, unless you want to learn a bit more about blog history, because two raods are going to diverge in this yellow wood and I am about to take the less traveled path.

Pyra Labs started Blogger at 1999 about two years after the birth of general blogging. The earliest blog case can be traced back to Justin Hall of Swarthmore College starting 1994. He now owns the oldest blog in the world dated at a rightful age of 11 years old.

1999 was towards the end of dot-com boom. A beautiful soap buble that will burst and collapse around 2001. Companies and Business were dropping like bugs on summer nights. It was a dark time for high tech information service. Yet somehow, Pyra manages to keep Blogger alive and the server running. Its popularity even grew to hundreds of thousands during 2002, it would prove to be a fateful year.

2002 was 'annus mirabilis' for Pyra Labs. Generally annus refers to 1665 when Sir Issac Newtown made discoveries in calculus, motion, optics, and gravitation. It is also used to describe 1905 when Albert Einstein made equally revolutionary discoveries of photelectric effect, brownian motion, and the special theory of relativity. The term 'annus mirabilis' means 'The Miracle Year'. While Blogger falls short of revolutionary, the year was still miraculous, because Google announces the purchase of Blogger.

The rest, as they say, is history.

[Blogger Hacks]