How to Customize Your Blog

We want your blog to be a space that represents who you are—you are welcome to change the backgrounds and colors. Please follow the following guidelines:

a.     Please type in readable colors (no pink or yellow)

b.     Please type in readable fonts (avoid ones that are cursive or all caps, especially.)

c.      Avoid backgrounds that make the content of your blog hard to read

d.     Do not add any kind of sound gadgets to your blog.

1. When you are signed in and looking at your blog, click on “design” at the top right corner.

·      You can change the overview view to anything EXCEPT dynamic views

·      Once you click on the view you want to try out, if you like how it looks click on “Apply to Blog” to save the changes. You can also click on “customize” to make additional changes.

·      After clicking “customize”, the designer will pop up at the top and you can click on “background” on the left to experiment with background images and color themes. Do not adjust the other options. Click on “Apply to blog” to save the changes.

2. To make other changes, click again on “design” at the upper right corner. This will take you to what is called the “Dashboard” of your blog. There is a list on the left side of the dashboard.

·      Overview: will show you basic stats

·      Posts: will show you all drafts and published posts—you can access unfinished work here!

·      Stats: will show you statistics

·      Layout: you can update gadgets like your finished book list, blog roll, link list, etc. (These are also accessible from your blog’s homepage. If you are signed in, a tool icon will appear beneath each gadget, which you can click on to make changes.) Find your classmates’ blogs from our class blog, then copy and paste their URL to add them to your blog roll.

·      Template: this is where you can change the background—just remember, no dynamic views. (This is the same as #1 above)