Customizing your blog

Customizing your blog is done through..............

the Fonts and Colors subtab under the Template tab. The code reponsible for customizing your blog resides in the third part of the template as shown in Parts of the Template. This is what the code looks like this :

/* Variable definitions
====================
<Variable name="bgcolor" description="Page Background Color"
type="color" default="#fff" value="#ffffff">
<Variable name="textcolor" description="Text Color"
type="color" default="#333" value="#333333">
<Variable name="linkcolor" description="Link Color"
type="color" default="#58a" value="#5588aa">
<Variable name="pagetitlecolor" description="Blog Title Color"
type="color" default="#666" value="#666666">
<Variable name="descriptioncolor" description="Blog Description Color"
type="color" default="#999" value="#999999">
<Variable name="titlecolor" description="Post Title Color"
type="color" default="#c60" value="#cc6600">
<Variable name="bordercolor" description="Border Color"
type="color" default="#ccc" value="#cccccc">
<Variable name="sidebarcolor" description="Sidebar Title Color"
type="color" default="#999" value="#999999">
<Variable name="sidebartextcolor" description="Sidebar Text Color"
type="color" default="#666" value="#666666">
<Variable name="visitedlinkcolor" description="Visited Link Color"
type="color" default="#999" value="#999999">
<Variable name="bodyfont" description="Text Font"
type="font" default="normal normal 100% Georgia, Serif" value="normal normal 100% Georgia, Serif">
<Variable name="headerfont" description="Sidebar Title Font"
type="font"
default="normal normal 78% 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Arial,Verdana,Sans-serif" value="normal normal 78% 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Arial,Verdana,Sans-serif">
<Variable name="pagetitlefont" description="Blog Title Font"
type="font"
default="normal normal 200% Georgia, Serif" value="normal normal 200% Georgia, Serif">
<Variable name="descriptionfont" description="Blog Description Font"
type="font"
default="normal normal 78% 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, Sans-serif" value="normal normal 78% 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, Sans-serif">
<Variable name="postfooterfont" description="Post Footer Font"
type="font"
default="normal normal 78% 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, Sans-serif" value="normal normal 78% 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, Sans-serif">
*/


This code is responsible for creating the Fonts and Colors customizing page of the blog under Template tab :




Examining the code carefully we see that each variable is named (Variable name="bgcolor") and its quality is described (description="Page Background Color") and given a default value (type="color" default="#fff" value="#ffffff").

This variable is passed here from the fourth or CSS part of the template. In this case it is here below in the second line prefaced by '$':

body {
background:$bgcolor;
margin:0;
color:$textcolor;
font:x-small Georgia Serif;
font-size/* */:/**/small;
font-size: /**/small;
text-align: center;
}

In order to create still more customizations in the template so as to give the user a WYSIWYG or graphical interface to customize his template we have to follow three simple steps :

1. Create a variable in that part of CSS describing your site ($bgcolor).
2. Describe its behaviour in the 'Variable definitions' part of the template.
3. Save Template.