HTML Digesting

by Eko Prasetyo @ 6:28 PM As you've seen, my blog is so full of advertisement. Some of its entries have advertisments supplied by amazon.com. I also have a google adsense placed on the sidebar. And the sidebar itself acts like some kind of virtual catalogue, a reference for things sold. I have decided to make good use of internet, and this ad-filled blog is one of them. I also display pictures on some of the entries, whether posted through hello bloggerbot or supplied from villagephotos. To be honest, I first planned this blog to be some kind of diary, as a log of my life, as a place to share my thoughts, and as a display of what I am. I think I'm special (all people on this world must think themselves as special) and the world needs to know about my specialties. It's up to them to judge if I'm special enough or just some ordinary guy from across the net. And then I hit "AdSense"..and the rest is life changing. I hit amazon.com, and then mediaplazza.com, advertising for them freely, hoping that every revenues gain by them through me will make me a little bit richer. And so the advertisements come, attached on my blog site, adding colors to otherwise dull-looking site. And to incorporate them, I need to understand HTML. HTML, Hypertext Markup Language, the basic language of the internet. Like english to the real world, HTML is the language of the cyberworld. You see, this blogsite has a very open, highly editable template. When blogger post a blog entry, he/she merely add an entry to a blogger database. How to display the blog is entirely dependant on how the template is engineered. The template itself consists of many XML and HTML syntaxes. All you need to manipulate them is basic understanding of some HTML tags. And since all of the codes for the ads come in HTML form, all you need to do is put them into your template. At first, I was satisfied by adding the ad codes into my template so they can be shown on the sidebar. Learning how to put the codes on the right place was a very tiring process for someone who was a person who understood a HTML code as "that labyrinthine mix of letters that makes a web page appears." And then I felt that things were not right. The things on my blog looks uncoordinated. My blog was not beautiful. So I do some trial-and-error processes to set my blog right. First I removed the background images that was on the chosen templates. Then I adjust the colorings. Green hues are natural, pleasant. And I choose softer shades of green to make it more pleasantly. Then I relocated the sidebar, from the right-hand side to the left-hand side. Then I align the paragraph on the blog entries to the left. Then I align everything on the sidebar to the center. Then I realized many things need to be fixed. The ads on the bottom of the blog entries are also aligned to the left, where it will be more pleasant looking if it is aligned to the center. The pictures loaded through hello bloggerbot is also aligned to the left, and they were much more elegant if they were put on the middle. And the "click to see larger image" is put after the captions, I desired it to be put below the pictures. And using the bloggerbot allows me to post only one picture at a time, and thus limiting my creativity. Finally, I decided to understand "that labyrinthine mix of letters that makes a web page appears." to make blog looks better and more arranged. I haven't got a large blog, and it's still very repairable because of it. I read the html source of webpages, try to understand their meaning and the intended results of each tags. And when things got too heavy, I bought a cheap book, about US$1, about basic things of HTML. I read it, I implemented the materials to mend my blogs, and I draw inspiration from the book. My blog is now much desirable, much pleasant looking. I am now able to crawl through the jungle of letters that is my blog template without much problems like I used to, and I'm now inspired to do many, many plans to make my blog more pleasant looking. so keep coming to my site to see the changes. Hopefully your next visit here will make you bookmark this blog. And hopefully you'll click that bookmark everyday | My Alter Ego | Blogroll Me! | |