Time for a Facelift

This old blog was looking a bit tired.

I had to play with the layout to update to my Rootstech Ambassador Badge and my Gold Rockstar 2016 badge so the blog's appearance has been on my mind. My 7th Blogiversary is just around the corner so it's time for change.

When writing a post earlier today I used the image below and thought that it would make a nice header so I went over to Canva, imported the image and played around. See the result of my playing above.

I've had a few green leafy headers, some white and blue ones and some featuring my tribe of grandchildren but I've never featured myself. I loved the colours of the ocean in this photo from Waimea Bay so I thought I'd give it a go. The image tones in nicely with the Rootstech Ambassador Badge too. Of course I included my avatar drawn by my now 15 year old granddaughter when she was just six, I have to include that as it is my brand.

To maintain consistency I may have to change my Facebook and other Social Media headers too.

I'm pleased with my facelift.

Tweaking the Template

I am working on my Powerpoint presentation for my Blogging for Genealogy Webinar for The Society of Australian Genealogists next week.

The Header that was

I've been running a critical eye over my blog and decided that the font I used on my header was a bit daggy. I wanted to present a more contemporary image to the world so I've just done a little tweak to my header in Canva by adding a different font and then in the template I've removed the blue colour from the page links at the top of the header.  I'm no design guru but I think I've made it look a bit more clean. If I can get all the grandchildren together at Easter this year I'll try for another group shot for the header - wish me luck.

Now I feel better about sharing this blog with webinar participants. 

Pimping my Blog

A couple of weeks ago Alex Daw challenged geneabloggers to Pimp their Blogs. I praised the idea, committed to some pimping and then got caught up in other geneamatters.

Yesterday I received an award that came with a sparkly new image I wanted to add to my blogs, so instead of dealing with the mess around me this morning, in a fit of vanity I added the image to three of my blogs. While I was over at Wordpress I added and removed some widgets to The GeneaDictionary and CurryAus, the changes aren't great but they are an improvement.

When I got here to Blogger I looked at my header and decided it was time for a change. That old header contained an image of leaves (related to trees) and the title and subtitle of the blog but it didn't say much about me and I was getting sick of green anyway.

Out with the old

I spent way too long over at Canva creating a new header using a favourite photo of mine from this year. It's not a fancy photo (try lining up 11 kids who are desperate to eat the treasure they found in the family Easter Egg hunt) but it means a lot to me. The subjects are my 11 grandchildren who are very precious to me; having a photo of youngsters reminds us that I not only look to the past but I look towards the future; it says something about who I am and  about the people around me. I'm not 100% happy with the new header but I couldn't spend all day on it.; I need to chase up more ancestors and their stories to share with my little people.

While I was pimping I got rid of a bit of green and substitued it with blue, a colour I prefer. I moved my widgets around but couldn't bear to part with any of them. I also spent some time updating my Pages which were crying out for attention.

So my blogs have had a Spring Clean - thank you Alex.

Does your blog need a facelift?

Makeover Madness

Last week I wrote that I was Tarting up the Template for this blog. Following on from that Alex Daw in her post, Pimp your blog this weekend, suggested that geneabloggers as a #NFHM2104 activity seek feedback from other geneabloggers on how they could improve their blogs.

She suggested "we could say one thing (or more of course) we really like about each other's blog and then maybe one thing that we think the blogger could lose or improve."  About half a dozen brave bloggers signed up, I think we and our blogs all benefitted from others' suggestions. I fiddled and faddled over a few days and think that the GeniAus blog has a cleaner, less cluttered appearance.

Thanks Alex for setting the challenge and to those brave souls who offered their blogs up for evaluation and politely made suggestons for improvement.

Co-incidentally today I was updating a presentation I had given around 18 months ago in which I showed screenshots of several blogs. I had to do new screenshots of most of the blogs as they had nearly all undergone some sort of facelift. In all cases the newer designs were an improvement on the old.

Do you continually update your blog/s layout and design? Do you set aside a few hours every so often for this task?  Have you made no changes and kept the original layout and design?

Tarting up the Template

Having recently looked at lots of blogs and noted some of their design features I am attempting to tart up my blog template.

I like my header image but am not fond of the header font I have been using so I will experiment with a more contemporary looking font. The font in the blog description is hard to read and needs to be heavier but I can't seem to do this in Blogger unless I get into the html and I'm not going there right now. I really need to devote some time to creating a custom header in a a graphics program but this will have to suffice for the time being. \I think that the pale blue border background I have is a bit daggy so will go back to the white background I had before the blue and green before that.

I may move some of the older badges from the sidebar to a separate page in an attempt to declutter that area. I realise that I need to add some social media sharing buttons to this area so will explore some widgets for that purpose.

I am off to check my static pages and make sure that the information there is correct. Watch out for some changes.

How often do you give your blog layout and design a health check?

Makeover Magic

I have fiddled and diddled for most of the afternoon on this blog and will probably continue to tweak for a few more days. So far:

• I have a added a new style blogger template, this allows me to add static tabbed pages to the blog.

• I have created four additional pages: a contact page, a disclosure, a page about my presentations and an empty topics page on which I intend publishing the labels from my blog posts. I have struggled with the html for this, I have copied it religiously in the correct place (so I think) but it isn't behaving.

• I have sent a number of my widgets to the trash and have moved a number to the bottom of the pages underneath my posts.

• I have widened the posts section of my page so that I can fit more text in a screen view. This may have an adverse affect on the formatting of old posts but that can't be helped.

• I have reverted to a two column template to give me this extra width.

• I have added the Print Friendly button to my posts area.

• I added some html to move the text in the header that was covering my eyes in the family photo.

I am still trying to find the a blue for the Geniaus header and am having trouble finding the right blue to complement the ocean background.

I was in a bit of a rut with the template and am rather pleased that I finally got around to making some necessary changes.