Guest Post - Our host is Mara Fuchs, here Mara makes a case on just how important your blog design can be.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Picture the following: you have two plates of food in front of you, both containing cheeseburgers. One plate contains a large but rather greasy fast-food chain burger and a side of stale fries. The second contains a micro-burger: a small, pesto and truffle oil infused patty in a small brioche bun with a side of four thick cut appetizing Belgian fries and a small decorative carrot carving. Which one would you choose?

Odds are you said the latter (unless you were really, really hungry…). That’s because while content is one of the most important things to take into account when trying to attract traffic to your site and rank better it is not the most important thing. The design, layout and ease of use are far more important.

Think of it this way: you might have Pulitzer-worthy content on your page but if the layout is awkward or simply unappealing, very few people will actually make it to your content. Good can help you get potential customers or readers to your page but their efforts will be squandered if the customers just click back after taking a look at your site design.
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Guest Post - Our host is Abel Velazquez, here Abel has some blog design tips for your blogs.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

With most blogging platforms being geared for beginners, blog design can be as simple as choosing from a selection of pre-made templates and uploading a logo for some users. This might work for you, but if you want to take your efforts to the next level, then be prepared to take it up a notch.

Following are six high-level blog design tips that will help you see noticeably better results.
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Guest Post - Our host is Sara Carter, In this post Sara has some great blog design tips.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

When it comes to building a dynamic blog online, it is essential to keep several key factors in mind. Many beginners feel overwhelmed by the assortment of information available, finding it difficult to understand what makes a blog stand out as professional and effective. Fortunately, understanding the essentials of dynamic blog design doesn’t have to feel like an impossible mission. The following 8 tips will start any beginning blogger off on the right foot, equipping a newbie webmaster to build an online destination that will rival the competition.
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Guest Post - Our host is Ben Rogan, In this post Ben has listed 25 amazing About Pages sure to Inspire you.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Whether you own a personal blog or manage an ecommerce platform; the ‘about’ section of your site should be the place where your personality really shines. However, so many sites succumb to the typically dry bios, which ultimately lack originality and a unique ‘voice’. Here’s a variety of sites in a variety of niches, which do a great job of breaking the mould; whether it be a witty write up, clever design, or a mix of the two.

Collection Of About Us Pages

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Guest Post - Our host is Goranka Radojcic, in this post Goranka goes through the best online image tools.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

The Web has definitely gone visual. Pinterest is the latest craze and trend. Various surveys and reports show that the site is a great source of traffic and incoming links to content creators. And the popularity of visual content is still growing. Savvy bloggers turn this visual trend to their advantage.

Here is the list of twenty free and nifty web tools that can help us to create more appealing imagery for spicing up our blogs and sites.
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Guest Post - Our host is Patrick Del Rosario, In this post Patrick has some great blog tips to keep in mind so you work with your blog not against it.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

The benefits of blogging in today’s digital age almost go without saying. From better rankings on search engines, more value to website visitors and a forum to speak you and your brands voice, blogs have taken the online world by storm and lent a way for businesses and people to engage better and more with others. Still, in spite of the increasing popularity, many bloggers still make crucial mistakes that hurt the quality of their blog and may end up harming their own image unintentionally.

Here are 15 ways you may be harming your blog without realizing it.

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Demikianlah harga koleksi souvenir pernikahan murah unik, moga bermanfaat.

• Membersihkan kamar tidur dan seisi rumah
• Menanam dan merapikan pohon dan tanaman serta bunga di sekitar tempat tinggal
• Melakukan aktfitas kerja bakti bersama tetangga di lingkungan perumahan
• Hindari penggunaan kendaraan bermotor atau mobil pribadi selama satu hari penuh

A very popular effect used in magazines and newspapers is a drop cap first letter to paragraphs.This effect can also be found on many blogs and websites.The effect is a large first letter stretching down three or four lines with the text wrapped around.The drop cap letter can also use a different font and can be a different color to the rest of the text.Almost two years ago i published a post showing how to add a Drop Cap to your blog, in this post i have an even easier more effective method.This method needs just a few lines of Css to be added to your template then the first letter of every post on your blog will automatically be a drop cap.You can then choose the color and font of the drop cap.Check out the Blogger screenshot, demo and tutorial below.Wordpress users can use the Wordpress Drop Cap Plugin.

Add The Drop Cap Large First Letter To Your Blogger

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There are hundreds of image editing and resizing services available online so finding a quick and easy option can be hard.One service i use regularly is Dr Pic as it has just a few quick editing options and a re size option with an instant preview.The stacked Polaroid effect is probably the one i use most and i have received a few Emails asking how it's done.So i have created a short video to show you how to use Dr Pic to edit and re size your images.
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In the last post we had a tutorial for a very unique style of drop down navigation menu for Blogger.That menu used a horizontal bar as the drop down to display links on hover.This menu uses the more conventional style of a vertical drop down to display links.It has a large bold red on grey color scheme that stands out and looks great.As with the last menu it's built purely from Css using just two images.Below you can see the screenshot and a live demo to see it in action.





This menu is also courtesy of the awesome Free Css Menu, let's add it to your blog.

Add The Bold Red Drop Down Menu To Blogger

Remember Always Back Up Your Template Before You Make Changes - How To Back Up A Blogger Template

Step 1. In Your Blogger Dashboard Click Design > Edit Html



Step 2. Find the following piece of code in your blogs Html : (Click Ctrl and F for a search bar to help find the code - How To Find Code In Blogger Template Template)

]]></b:skin>

Step 3. Copy and paste the following code Directly Above / before ]]></b:skin>

Note - This is a scroll box make sure to get all the code.

Step 4. Save your template.

That's the Css added next is to add the html for your menu.

Now go to your blogs Design Page, we will be adding the menu across your blog below the header.This area is called Cross Column and can be seen in the image below.If your blog does not have this section available you can see how to enable it here - Add Full Width Cross Column Gadgets To Blogger.

Add The Menu Html

In your blogs Design Page click Add A Gadget > Choose Html/Javascript > Copy and paste the following code into the Html/Javascript gadget :

<div class="menu">

<ul>
<li><a href="#" id="current">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="#" >Products</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#">Drop Down CSS Menus</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Horizontal CSS Menus</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Vertical CSS Menus</a></li>

<li><a href="#">Dreamweaver Menus</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="/faq.php">FAQ</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#">Drop Down CSS Menus</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Horizontal CSS Menus</a></li>

<li><a href="#">Vertical CSS Menus</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Dreamweaver Menus</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="/contact/contact.php">Contact</a></li>
</ul>
</div>

This is the code that makes up the menu in the demo above.Replace the hash tags (#) with your links and the text with your text.If you take a few minutes to reference the demo and the code you should see how it works.If you want to add more links you can do so in the same way, once again take a few minutes to look at the layout of the code and you will see how its done.

Template Designer Tabs Fix

If you use a template from the Blogger Template Designer there is a section of Css that will effect this or any menu you place in the cross column section.This is called tabs and you will need to remove or over ride the tabs css.I have made a short video to show you how to remove it.You can see the video here - Remove Tabs Css.

That's it simple ! Make sure to check out more of our Css tutorials and Blogger gadgets.

Drop Your Comments And Questions Below.

In this post i have a really cool Blog Design Tip to spice up the lists on your blog.When you create an ordered list, items in the list are numbered, and in an unordered list items have what is called a bullet point.What we will do in this post is replace the default bullet point with an image.We do this with just a small snippet of Css including the image URL.To make it as easy as possible i have 10 ready to use images for your bullet points but you can of course use your own image.I also have this set so you can just use the image bullet point on selected lists.If we set it to work on all lists on your blog it could mess up your sidebar and other sections.
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One of the things that can give a blog more of an identity and a brand is a logo that people will come to associate with the blog.In the same way we become used to seeing the logo of a blog also used as the favicon.Favicons are an important part of how we see a blog and how we remember a blog.In a previous Blogger Tip i showed you how to add a favicon to blogs on Blogger but today Blogger have taken action and made it part of the options on your blogs design page.So from now on with just two clicks you can add a custom favicon to your blog.



What is a favicon ? A Favicon is the small image you see beside the address bar in your browser and depending on the browser you use it is also visible in the tab menu.If you look beside the address for this page at the top of your page you should see the same brush logo that is in the header.For more information here is a link to the wikipedia page on Favicons.

To see how to have a custom favicon on your blog check out the blogger in draft post here - Customize Your Favicon.

Drop Your Comments And Questions Below.

I recently realised i had not covered navigation menus too much in our Blogger Tips on Spice Up Your Blog.I Guess most custom templates already have a menu and templates from the template designer have tabs enabled which will turn a link list or page list into a menu.However i knew i wanted to cover the jQuery lava lamp or floating bubble menu as it is seriously cool, interactive and i have not seen it on any Blogger blog.The lava lamp menu has an effect you may have seen on other websites, a bubble is visible behind the first link title (Usually Home) on the menu and when you place your cursor over another link title the bubble slides up to that link.It looks awesome and as ever the use of jQuery makes it possible and smooth.As an extra bonus we have this effect added to 6 different color styles of menu you can quickly add to your blog !
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On the recent post showing how to Display A Default Avatar For Anonymous Comments a comment by RedCherii asked "How do you put those little icons beside your post details (author, date, label) and make them appear below your post title?".The icons and details RedCherii asked about can be seen below the title of this and every post on Spice Up Your Blog.So for Redcherri and anyone else who likes them, in this post i will show you how to add them to your blog.What we are adding is the default Author Name, Post Date And Labels from the post with 16x16 icons to the left of each.I also have a pipe character splitting each, the code will be placed in your template to display this directly below the post titles.
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Many of the latest posts have been looking at Css effects and Image effects so in this post we will continue with the images but bring some jQuery into the mix.If your a beginner thinking whats he talking about don't worry we will have all the steps set up for simple copy and paste.The effect we will achieve in this post is very cool.When you add an image to your blog you can allow users to hover over that image and a larger version appears.Users can then move the cursor around the small image and see it zoomed.The demo below will show you exactly how it works.



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We all like images effects and adding some style to the pictures we use in our blogs posts.Some effects can be quiet elaborate (I have the very cool light box effect just about ready to publish) but sometimes a simple hover effect looks great.In a recent post i showed a rollover effect with some social icons changing one image to another on hover (we may look at using Css Sprites in future), in this post we will make your images simply Bump !
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