About two years ago, to host some academic content for my college, I signed up for a Godaddy Windows hosting plan with IIS 6 (the only option then). I had installed YetAnotherForum [YAF version 1.9.1.2]
Showing posts with label Tutorials. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tutorials. Show all posts
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Godaddy: IIS6 to IIS7 easy upgrade path for YetAnotherForum
About two years ago, to host some academic content for my college, I signed up for a Godaddy Windows hosting plan with IIS 6 (the only option then). I had installed YetAnotherForum [YAF version 1.9.1.2]
Monday, June 14, 2010
Photography Tutorials part 4 - Playing with Light
Understanding the light around us is a very crucial step in photography. For if there was no light, there would be no photography. Controlling the amount or color of light while shooting, requires special attention as light plays a major role contributing to the overall appeal of the image.Wednesday, June 2, 2010
try windows mobile 7 on your PC right now
To get started, you need a few pre-requisites:
1. The Visual studio express edition for Win mob 7 [here]
2. The Windows mobile 7 rom [here]
3. A Windows PC (XP's not supported)
After you have downloaded your developer studio, proceed to install it. It will give you options for XNA or Silverlight based developer environment, leave them at defaults or choose the one that suits you best. A system restart is recommended after the full installation is complete.
Now fire up your Microsoft Visual studio 2010 and you will be shown the workspace.
Choose "New Project" and it doesnt matter if you choose either XNA based or Silverlight based template. Once all your compiler libraries are loaded, hit F5 on your keyboard or the tiny green play button above to enter debug mode. In short, we are executing the ROM in windows phone emulator environment. You should see something similar to this.
This is the Windows Mobile 7 emulator which tries to simulate the look and feel of the actual Windows phone 7. But the catch is, Microsoft has totally ripped off nearly 80% of the applications from this ROM.,but we do have a workaround!
Now that we have confirmed that its loaded and running successfully, close down the emulator. Exit the Visual Studio 2010 and proceed to unzip the windows mobile 7 ROM that you have downloaded earlier. The extract process should give you a *.BIN file. This is our compile phone ROM. We need to replace this with the Visual Studio 2010's inbuilt Windows mobile ROM.
Navigate to the following Location. "Root" is your primary boot hard drive. Its usually C:\
Root:/program Files/Microsoft SDKs/WindowsPhone/v7.0/Emulation/ImagesThere should be a single BIN file inside, just rename the extension to something like .BAK. Now copy your downloaded custom ROM to this folder, rename it exactly as the old one, it should be WM70C1.bin
Now start Visual Studio 2010 again and start a new project. This time, the IDE should load the New ROM we provided instead of the old one. Hit F5 and enter the emulator mode. Within seconds, you should have the Windows phone 7's UI loaded and ready to play! Hope you had fun with the new windows phone :)
Here's a youtube video that I uploaded of Windows phone 7
Reference source Gizmondo
Friday, May 28, 2010
An evening with Microsoft Tag reader
7:00pm - in front of my PC
I navigated to Microsoft Tag homepage and I was required to login with my live account before i could play around with the tag creator. Upon logging in, i was taken to a really neat layout that had three simple functions, create, track or edit Tags. Nice!
7:10pm - setting up my windows mobile
You need a reader + internet connection to be able to read the tag informations as all data is relayed from their servers. After going through a few "about tag" pages on their website, i bumped on to the reader...Atlast! I got the *.cab file and proceeded to install it. It was around 300kb, so it was all done in a jiffy.
7:12pm - Creating the tag
Creation of tag was pretty straightforward and simple, so i created this test tag to see if it works the way it claims. I clicked on create, and the wizard asked me a couple of questions like a title to the tag, a link or text, and the type of layout i wanted. After keying out the info, it took a couple of seconds and suggested me to print it out. I opted to save my tag as a Jpeg, as this is a test tag, just for sake of convenience and green environment! ;)
7:15pm - Tag! You are mine!
I fired up Tag reader on my windows mobile 6.1 (yes its kinda outdated) and it asked me approve a set of EULA agreements. The appz initiated my camera mobile along with a onscreen cross mark that said requested me to point at any tag image. I pointed it at the jpeg that i created few minutes earlier. For a few seconds nothing seemed to happened as there was no status indicator. I thought it might have been buggy and as i was about to take away my phone from the tag image, suddenly a msg poped up quoting "Tag scanned successfully" and executed the function i embeded in it. I actually had it say "Success, your appz reads tag" ;)
I had my pocket pc connected to wifi network at my place so the whole process was lot faster than our Indian GPRS networks ;)
I am starting to like this tag application. I took a print out of couple of tag images and stuck them as notes all over my desk! lol it was fun.
Could have some true potential but I'm not sure how far would this go in terms of productivity. We gotta wait and see!
7:30pm - some wicked ideas creep into my mind
I googled for some tag images made by others and woah, loads showed up! I am gonna go on tag scanning spree to see what info they hold!!
Click here to see if you mobile reads microsoft Tag images. As a prerequisite, you should have the tag reader installed in your mobile. You can get it here. All major mobile OSes are supported.
And here's the tag to madzindia blog. If you feel generous, just take a print out of this one and stick it as a note in your desks ;)
Update: Consolidated tutorial on using Microsoft Tag
* Visit http://tag.microsoft.com and login to your live account.
* Click on create a tag on your dashboard
* Key in required details (sample below)
*create and render them in any format you see fit
*You are all set! Have fun and spread the word!
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Photography Tutorials part 3 - Wide angle shots
For the Beginner - How do i take Wide angle shots of landscapes?
Well, DSLR cameras have the advantage of using wide angle lenses, I mean really wide angle lenses (About 10mm) thats wider than human eye limit! But I have friends who have been asking me how do I take a wide angle shot with a point and shoot camera. The workaround is using a panorama mode.
A panorama is a technique where you click multiple images of a scene, say, it could be anywhere between 3 images to a 100 images or more! The catch is that they need to be clicked in sequence and requires good amount of post processing, which inturn requires you to have a PC with good amount of processing power. So then, lets start.
I have a sample of a wide angle shot taken using 5 pictures here. If you are using a point and shoot, there must be a preset setting called "Panorama mode" or "Stitch assist mode" which throws up a really neat preview of what you have clicked so far, enabling you to overlap images in succession,. If your cam doesn't have that function, no problem, all you gotta do is keep clicking images as normally you would in either left to right or vice versa (for sake of simplicity) direction and keep a note of img numbers.
And there's one really important factor you need to keep in mind while making a panorama shot. The exposure value of your scene might vary as you sweep across the landscape, so its advisable to lock your camera's exposure either by Exposure Lock function or manually keying in the exposure regardless of what your camera reads. This way, you can have an evenly exposed seamless image.
Well, DSLR cameras have the advantage of using wide angle lenses, I mean really wide angle lenses (About 10mm) thats wider than human eye limit! But I have friends who have been asking me how do I take a wide angle shot with a point and shoot camera. The workaround is using a panorama mode.
A panorama is a technique where you click multiple images of a scene, say, it could be anywhere between 3 images to a 100 images or more! The catch is that they need to be clicked in sequence and requires good amount of post processing, which inturn requires you to have a PC with good amount of processing power. So then, lets start.
I have a sample of a wide angle shot taken using 5 pictures here. If you are using a point and shoot, there must be a preset setting called "Panorama mode" or "Stitch assist mode" which throws up a really neat preview of what you have clicked so far, enabling you to overlap images in succession,. If your cam doesn't have that function, no problem, all you gotta do is keep clicking images as normally you would in either left to right or vice versa (for sake of simplicity) direction and keep a note of img numbers.
And there's one really important factor you need to keep in mind while making a panorama shot. The exposure value of your scene might vary as you sweep across the landscape, so its advisable to lock your camera's exposure either by Exposure Lock function or manually keying in the exposure regardless of what your camera reads. This way, you can have an evenly exposed seamless image.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Photography Tutorials Part 2: Basic training
In part 2 of our basic training tutorial, we will look into
1.Taking the Picture
2.composition
3.Paying attention to details.
Hope you all have got your cameras ready. The first thing you should do is get to know the camera you own. Go through its manuals (a few consider the manual to be untouchable). Going through your camera's manual is very important as it will let you explore the capabilities of the camera. In case you have lost your manual or damaged by wear and tear, fret not, as you can always find a pdf version of the camera's manual from the manufacturer's webpage.
Alright, now take that camera, set the image quality to the maximum limit your cam allows, i.e if its a 10mp camera, put it to 10mp and select fine picture quality. Put it in Full Auto mode(some cameras are in auto by default) and shoot a picture you like! Review the picture. Ask yourself these questions without worrying about the technical OSD(on screen displays) information.
(1). Does the picture look good? (2). what does the picture lack?
The picture should obviously look good to you atleast, its important that you dont delete this first picture as few years down the row, you can always look back to those old days and have a good laugh ;)
Ah IMG_0001.jpg, nostalgic! ^_^
Now if doesnt look good, let me tell you what went wrong. The problem is either with the composition, i.e the way the particular frame was composed, or maybe an uninteresting subject, i.e the elements in your picture or it could be with really low or harsh or bright lighting.
Let me start by explaining how to get the composition correct. Strictly speaking, composition is the way you frame or compose your picture, in simpler terms, its your personal choice on how or which angle/perspective you like to shoot. A single scene could be composed in a hundred different ways by hundred different photographers! So let me stress that its you who decide what subjects to include in the picture, what not to, which angle suits the scene and so forth.
But there's this one basic rule called the "rule of the thirds". Its just a fancy name that suggests you NOT to place a single subject in the dead centre of the frame. See the example below.
fig 2.
In fig 1, the subject has been placed in the dead center with no special attention on the scale of the subject. The 9 column overlay grid you see on the image is your guide that abides rule of the thirds. This is accesible in your cameras under the menu settings, for instance, in canon cameras, you can enable it by pressing the transfer/print button. Pressing twice will disable it.
In fig2, we have recomposed the frame, by moving the subject a little off centre paying attention to the overall scene. The image as compared to fig 1, looks much better right?
This composition is your vantage point where you live by, but sometimes, on the other hand, breaking the rules of the thirds actually does some good! With the digital technology, dont be afraid to take as many shots as you wish and review them as unlike our film cameras, we need not worry about shelling out cash on film rolls. you can always erase the picture from your camera's memory card when full or seems awkward.
Now to the final part, paying attention to details. This requires you to look, i mean, really look around and carefully observe the things up, below and around you! Most often, i hear my friends who are amateurs as well, complaining to me, "Hey! i've got nothing to shoot!". Its a lame excuse as far as i can say. Look around, it isn't like we live in a void! We live in a world where there is nature's play everywhere, from bugs to animals, plants and tress, millions of people, architecture, art is everywhere! You just need to learn where and how to look. This no one can teach you but you. Learn to observe the day night cycle, the colors of light during the different time of the day. A very same scene looks bright in mid day, but dull and romantic in twilight. I hope you get an idea what I am talking about. Remember, just look around.
Experimentation by trial and error is the key to learn and improve in photography. If you have been reading this far, wow, thank you! Go ahead, post the images you shot here or hotlink them, I will go through them and give you hands on tips on how you can improve them. Afterall, sharing knowledge improvises each other! ^_^
Some important thing to remember is NOT to point your camera directly at the sun, as it will badly damage your eyes and the camera's sensor chips. Its good to know that electric equipments and water do not get along well, so if your camera is not waterproof, drop the idea of trying some underwater photography!!
The next part of the tutorial will teach you about taking really wide angle shots. Stay tuned and keep visiting :)
1.Taking the Picture
2.composition
3.Paying attention to details.
Hope you all have got your cameras ready. The first thing you should do is get to know the camera you own. Go through its manuals (a few consider the manual to be untouchable). Going through your camera's manual is very important as it will let you explore the capabilities of the camera. In case you have lost your manual or damaged by wear and tear, fret not, as you can always find a pdf version of the camera's manual from the manufacturer's webpage.
Alright, now take that camera, set the image quality to the maximum limit your cam allows, i.e if its a 10mp camera, put it to 10mp and select fine picture quality. Put it in Full Auto mode(some cameras are in auto by default) and shoot a picture you like! Review the picture. Ask yourself these questions without worrying about the technical OSD(on screen displays) information.
(1). Does the picture look good? (2). what does the picture lack?
The picture should obviously look good to you atleast, its important that you dont delete this first picture as few years down the row, you can always look back to those old days and have a good laugh ;)
Ah IMG_0001.jpg, nostalgic! ^_^
Now if doesnt look good, let me tell you what went wrong. The problem is either with the composition, i.e the way the particular frame was composed, or maybe an uninteresting subject, i.e the elements in your picture or it could be with really low or harsh or bright lighting.
Let me start by explaining how to get the composition correct. Strictly speaking, composition is the way you frame or compose your picture, in simpler terms, its your personal choice on how or which angle/perspective you like to shoot. A single scene could be composed in a hundred different ways by hundred different photographers! So let me stress that its you who decide what subjects to include in the picture, what not to, which angle suits the scene and so forth.
But there's this one basic rule called the "rule of the thirds". Its just a fancy name that suggests you NOT to place a single subject in the dead centre of the frame. See the example below.
fig 1. 
fig 2.
In fig 1, the subject has been placed in the dead center with no special attention on the scale of the subject. The 9 column overlay grid you see on the image is your guide that abides rule of the thirds. This is accesible in your cameras under the menu settings, for instance, in canon cameras, you can enable it by pressing the transfer/print button. Pressing twice will disable it.
In fig2, we have recomposed the frame, by moving the subject a little off centre paying attention to the overall scene. The image as compared to fig 1, looks much better right?
This composition is your vantage point where you live by, but sometimes, on the other hand, breaking the rules of the thirds actually does some good! With the digital technology, dont be afraid to take as many shots as you wish and review them as unlike our film cameras, we need not worry about shelling out cash on film rolls. you can always erase the picture from your camera's memory card when full or seems awkward.
Now to the final part, paying attention to details. This requires you to look, i mean, really look around and carefully observe the things up, below and around you! Most often, i hear my friends who are amateurs as well, complaining to me, "Hey! i've got nothing to shoot!". Its a lame excuse as far as i can say. Look around, it isn't like we live in a void! We live in a world where there is nature's play everywhere, from bugs to animals, plants and tress, millions of people, architecture, art is everywhere! You just need to learn where and how to look. This no one can teach you but you. Learn to observe the day night cycle, the colors of light during the different time of the day. A very same scene looks bright in mid day, but dull and romantic in twilight. I hope you get an idea what I am talking about. Remember, just look around.
Experimentation by trial and error is the key to learn and improve in photography. If you have been reading this far, wow, thank you! Go ahead, post the images you shot here or hotlink them, I will go through them and give you hands on tips on how you can improve them. Afterall, sharing knowledge improvises each other! ^_^
Some important thing to remember is NOT to point your camera directly at the sun, as it will badly damage your eyes and the camera's sensor chips. Its good to know that electric equipments and water do not get along well, so if your camera is not waterproof, drop the idea of trying some underwater photography!!
The next part of the tutorial will teach you about taking really wide angle shots. Stay tuned and keep visiting :)
Thursday, May 6, 2010
photography tutorials part 1: Foreword
Good day!
If this is your first visit to my new blog, my hearty welcome to you and hope you found what you are looking for. This is Part One of the series of Photography Tutorials that would follow over the next few days. I am not a professional photographer or an arts major, infact I am an engineering student from India. But with a passion for photography and the urge to show,share,with the world what I see, I have involved myself in photography.
You can check out my photography hobby at Flickr via the flickr widget at the right or at www.myphotohobby.co.cc
Let me assure you, I am here to share with you my photography tips and techniques and hoping to get some ideas from you in return, but hey, dont worry, its ok even if you have no idea about photography, we'll all eventually learn. :)
So then, to the point, here's what I will be discussing with you in tutorials part one.
The First and the most important question, (no its not about the camera) Do you like taking pictures? Yes, just this simple question, if your answer is yes, try answering this one - Do you pay attention to details? If your answer to this is also an yes, then my friend you can read the rest of the entry.
Lets get started already!
Here's a list of stuff you will need to start your hobby:
1.A Camera:
A photographer is one who "paints" or sketches an image with light. Photos(light) and grapher(write). In order to do that, we would need a camera. The camera definitely need NOT be a expensive high end prosumers or DSLRs that cost you an arm and leg. Remember, the audience for this tutorial is hobbyist/amateur photography here, people like you and me, so lets just stick with affordable and decent ones. Hope that cheered you up a bit ;)
Now the big question, which camera should I buy??
This is a tricky question that plagues all amateur coming into photography. I would say, as a starting point, even your mobile phone camera is good enough, but if you want to print them out, and are really serious about pursuing this hobby, i suggest you look into 6megapixels cameras or more. Most importantly, invest carefully and make sure you steer clear of this "wooohoo a newer model! lemme buy it" upgrade bug! Dpreview has a comprehensive list of cameras and price list with reviews, maybe you wanna check them out. And here's a really nice secret that will make you feel loads better. 90% of the images in my flickr page like these, these and these were taken with a Canon IXUS compact point and shoot camera! No DSLRs here :p
But i would like to point out, that as our tutorials advance, we would be looking into manual mode of adjusting various parameters to create pictures,so make sure that the camera you own or will be buying will have a full manual mode i.e the camera lets you manually adjust the exposure, iso, shutter speed etc. Some canon point and shoots lets you install thirdparty firmware to enable manual mode, but then again, this is for the advanced users, maybe I'll write about how you can achieve this in the forthcoming tuts.
2.A photo processing software:
Wait! i know you read that as Photoshop CS 5!! I do know that photoshop is a great great software to post process images but let me tell you, for starters, its an overkill and has a steep learning curve. If you are an advanced user, then I suggest you go ahead with photoshop, but for the rest of the starters, all we will be doing in post processing is a bit of level adjustments, curves, highlights, contrast adjustments etc (dont worry, we'll get back to this later). For this sort of work, softwares like paint.net, gimp, picasa are more than enough! And the best part is, all are free!
Alright then, we have all the equipments we need to start our photography hobby. I can hear you say, "wait! thats it??" Dear friend, yes thats it! As tutorials proceed, I will introduce you to additional accessories.
The next tutorial will cover Basic Picture taking with focus on composition and paying attention to details. This is where our journey will begin!
If you like the way I write please bookmark me or follow me and keep coming back for more tutorials and videos. A comment or two would be a great encouragement and also let me understand what you readers want the most ^_^
If this is your first visit to my new blog, my hearty welcome to you and hope you found what you are looking for. This is Part One of the series of Photography Tutorials that would follow over the next few days. I am not a professional photographer or an arts major, infact I am an engineering student from India. But with a passion for photography and the urge to show,share,with the world what I see, I have involved myself in photography.
You can check out my photography hobby at Flickr via the flickr widget at the right or at www.myphotohobby.co.cc
Let me assure you, I am here to share with you my photography tips and techniques and hoping to get some ideas from you in return, but hey, dont worry, its ok even if you have no idea about photography, we'll all eventually learn. :)
So then, to the point, here's what I will be discussing with you in tutorials part one.
The First and the most important question, (no its not about the camera) Do you like taking pictures? Yes, just this simple question, if your answer is yes, try answering this one - Do you pay attention to details? If your answer to this is also an yes, then my friend you can read the rest of the entry.
Lets get started already!
Here's a list of stuff you will need to start your hobby:
1.A Camera:
A photographer is one who "paints" or sketches an image with light. Photos(light) and grapher(write). In order to do that, we would need a camera. The camera definitely need NOT be a expensive high end prosumers or DSLRs that cost you an arm and leg. Remember, the audience for this tutorial is hobbyist/amateur photography here, people like you and me, so lets just stick with affordable and decent ones. Hope that cheered you up a bit ;)
Now the big question, which camera should I buy??
This is a tricky question that plagues all amateur coming into photography. I would say, as a starting point, even your mobile phone camera is good enough, but if you want to print them out, and are really serious about pursuing this hobby, i suggest you look into 6megapixels cameras or more. Most importantly, invest carefully and make sure you steer clear of this "wooohoo a newer model! lemme buy it" upgrade bug! Dpreview has a comprehensive list of cameras and price list with reviews, maybe you wanna check them out. And here's a really nice secret that will make you feel loads better. 90% of the images in my flickr page like these, these and these were taken with a Canon IXUS compact point and shoot camera! No DSLRs here :p
But i would like to point out, that as our tutorials advance, we would be looking into manual mode of adjusting various parameters to create pictures,so make sure that the camera you own or will be buying will have a full manual mode i.e the camera lets you manually adjust the exposure, iso, shutter speed etc. Some canon point and shoots lets you install thirdparty firmware to enable manual mode, but then again, this is for the advanced users, maybe I'll write about how you can achieve this in the forthcoming tuts.
2.A photo processing software:
Wait! i know you read that as Photoshop CS 5!! I do know that photoshop is a great great software to post process images but let me tell you, for starters, its an overkill and has a steep learning curve. If you are an advanced user, then I suggest you go ahead with photoshop, but for the rest of the starters, all we will be doing in post processing is a bit of level adjustments, curves, highlights, contrast adjustments etc (dont worry, we'll get back to this later). For this sort of work, softwares like paint.net, gimp, picasa are more than enough! And the best part is, all are free!
Alright then, we have all the equipments we need to start our photography hobby. I can hear you say, "wait! thats it??" Dear friend, yes thats it! As tutorials proceed, I will introduce you to additional accessories.
The next tutorial will cover Basic Picture taking with focus on composition and paying attention to details. This is where our journey will begin!
If you like the way I write please bookmark me or follow me and keep coming back for more tutorials and videos. A comment or two would be a great encouragement and also let me understand what you readers want the most ^_^
Monday, May 3, 2010
Find out how much is your website worth
Have you been running a website of your own, maybe personal webpages, portfolio webpages, or maybe a large scale corporate website?? How long have you been owning it? By the way, do you know how much is your website worth now? Maybe depending on the popularity and stats, you could even sell it off to someone. Yes, In real money! Let me show you how to find that out.
There are whole load of scripted websites that show you how to find your website's value or worth. Just typing in "my site worth" in your favorite search engine (read Google) will bring up loads of pages claiming to calculate your site's estimated value. Here's a list of sites that are trustworthy to calculate your site's worth. I'm not saying that the others are bloated, just that, I've never tried it out on those. They are completely free! So without much further talk, here they are:
Website Outlook
This is a very good site that gives you a detailed cost analysis of your webpage in generously well laid out graphs and chart. All you have to do is visit the above link and type in your webpage URL. Under few seconds, their script crawls your page and you are presented with the results.
For example instructions, I keyed in wordpress's url and here's how the result page looks like.
How cool's that? Now, go ahead and check out your website's worth! Here's some more sites that are similar to website outlook.
Websitevaluecalculator, mywebsiteworth, URL appraisal
Who knows, few years down the line, your website may be worth millions ;)
Hope this cheers u up!
There are whole load of scripted websites that show you how to find your website's value or worth. Just typing in "my site worth" in your favorite search engine (read Google) will bring up loads of pages claiming to calculate your site's estimated value. Here's a list of sites that are trustworthy to calculate your site's worth. I'm not saying that the others are bloated, just that, I've never tried it out on those. They are completely free! So without much further talk, here they are:
Website Outlook
This is a very good site that gives you a detailed cost analysis of your webpage in generously well laid out graphs and chart. All you have to do is visit the above link and type in your webpage URL. Under few seconds, their script crawls your page and you are presented with the results.
For example instructions, I keyed in wordpress's url and here's how the result page looks like.
Title | WordPress.com — Get a Free Blog Here |
Daily Pageview | 68750000 |
Daily Ads Revenue | $206253 |
Wordpress.Com Estimated Worth $297 Million USD
How cool's that? Now, go ahead and check out your website's worth! Here's some more sites that are similar to website outlook.
Websitevaluecalculator, mywebsiteworth, URL appraisal
Who knows, few years down the line, your website may be worth millions ;)
Hope this cheers u up!
Friday, April 30, 2010
Better themes for your blogger page! Really!!
If you have been on blogger for more than a while, you would have noticed that blogger doesn't actually have the best themes as compared to other blogs, wordpress, for instance. Still, you've been loyal to blogger but always had this feel that "what If my blog page looked cooler"...
Fret not, for there are a huge number of third party designers who have been making really nice themes for your blogger page. Most of the themes resemble or have been ported from Wordpress themes, so guaranteed these themes will re-kindle that fresh feel you had on day 1 of your blog.
Follow the step by step instructions below for totally revamping your blog page
#1 Browse for themes
Here's a list of websites that I recommend personally. Good collections of XML based themes (instructions below) , neatly organized into categories.
http://www.bloggerthemes.net/
http://templates.bloggertricks.com/
Just download their Zip/Rar theme files and continue reading.
#2 Backup
Now that you have downloaded a theme of your choice to your desktop, lets backup the current blog. Head over to your dashboard, choose Layout -> Edit Html
Its very important that you backup everything by clicking on Download Full Template. See screenshot below
And if you have been using widgets, make sure to make a note of them, as sometimes changing theme messes up the widget layout.
#3 Upload New theme
Select Browse from the same page, navigate to the folder where you have saved your new unzipped XML theme. Choose the xml doc and click upload. Thats it!You should have the new theme codes in the edit Html canvas box.
#4 Edit the theme
The theme usually comes with general setup. The following instruction is applicable for 99% of the blogger themes, so follow along.
In the html code, you should see something like
#5 Add Widgets
Now that your basic setup is ready, lets add some widgets. We are going to use native blogger widgets, which you can find in the "Page Elements" tab under the Layout menu (see screenshot on step#2)
Add, config and arrange using drag drop methods and click save.
#6 Save and Preview
All done!! Now hit that save button and view your revamped blog! Nice right? Leave comments below and a few screenshots of your new themed blog for all to see :)
Fret not, for there are a huge number of third party designers who have been making really nice themes for your blogger page. Most of the themes resemble or have been ported from Wordpress themes, so guaranteed these themes will re-kindle that fresh feel you had on day 1 of your blog.
Follow the step by step instructions below for totally revamping your blog page
#1 Browse for themes
Here's a list of websites that I recommend personally. Good collections of XML based themes (instructions below) , neatly organized into categories.
http://www.bloggerthemes.net/
http://templates.bloggertricks.com/
Just download their Zip/Rar theme files and continue reading.
#2 Backup
Now that you have downloaded a theme of your choice to your desktop, lets backup the current blog. Head over to your dashboard, choose Layout -> Edit Html
Its very important that you backup everything by clicking on Download Full Template. See screenshot below
And if you have been using widgets, make sure to make a note of them, as sometimes changing theme messes up the widget layout.
#3 Upload New theme
Select Browse from the same page, navigate to the folder where you have saved your new unzipped XML theme. Choose the xml doc and click upload. Thats it!You should have the new theme codes in the edit Html canvas box.
#4 Edit the theme
The theme usually comes with general setup. The following instruction is applicable for 99% of the blogger themes, so follow along.
In the html code, you should see something like
Just replace the "Link here" with your blogger pages links and feel free to rename the tabs to whatever you wish. Just make sure the code is intact, i.e the XML patterns are left untouched.li class='navlinks' a href='YOUR LINK HERE'>Home
li class='navlinks' a href='YOUR LINK HERE'>page 2
li class='navlinks' a href='YOUR LINK HERE'>Contact me
#5 Add Widgets
Now that your basic setup is ready, lets add some widgets. We are going to use native blogger widgets, which you can find in the "Page Elements" tab under the Layout menu (see screenshot on step#2)
Add, config and arrange using drag drop methods and click save.
#6 Save and Preview
All done!! Now hit that save button and view your revamped blog! Nice right? Leave comments below and a few screenshots of your new themed blog for all to see :)
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