Category Archives: Blog Makeovers

New blog designs by The Media Maid

We’ve been very busy in The Media Maid office (aka my house!).

These 5 blogs were finished last week. Click on the pictures to be taken to the blogs to see more. Or there is more in my portfolio on my Facebook page.

I am taking on new clients! I endeavour to answer all your emails within 48 hours. Sorry I can’t be quicker on this, but time gets away these days! I have lots of projects in the wings. So if you’d like a design, book now and I’ll let you know where we sit in terms of finishing the project.

If you’d like to read some of my blog tips about design in the meantime click here or this is my favourite – have you got a site design only a mother could love?

Some of my clients just need a quick freshen up that doesn’t take long, and others like the works. You do get what you pay for. I’m happy to chat to you and negotiate a price for your needs. BUT, everything takes time. To build a great blog it takes a lot of work and a lot of time. I work with more than one person at a time. I also have a friend who freelances for me to get the design ideas just right. So it’s a busy little place!

If you’re not sure what you need I have a few packages here. Plus read my terms and conditions before anything else just to make sure I can do what you’re asking.

Have a great weekend! X

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Written on March 24, 2012 5 comments

I give you a tutorial on how to edit your Navbar and Pages tabs on blogspot

Howdy!

Today I will give you a quick run down on how to change the Navbar (Fat Mum Slim showed a similar idea here) and centre your Pages tabs on your blogspot blog.

The code you need (which I talk about in the video) is below. Just copy and paste it.

Navbar

#navbar-iframe{opacity:0.0;filter:alpha(Opacity=0)}
#navbar-iframe:hover{opacity:1.0;filter:alpha(Opacity=100, FinishedOpacity=100)}

Pages Tabs

.PageList li a {
margin-right: 10px;
}
.PageList {text-align:center !important;}
.PageList li {display:inline !important; float:none !important;}

Hope this helps! Happy blogging.

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Written on March 15, 2012 18 comments

Video Tutorial: How to choose your COMMENT settings in blogspot

I have a new computer program, so I’d thought I’d try it out with a simple tutorial for the Comment Settings on a blogspot blog.

Note: If you use the new interface in your Dashboard – switch back to the old one. Go to the right-top, click the cog and select Old blogger interface.

In the video I tell you how to get the new threaded commenting system and how/why to turn the word verification off.

I can see this new little tool of mine is going to come in handy! I can do all my tutorials this way. So much easier showing you.

Yesterday I mentioned that I’d be happy for you to ask me a question about how to do something on a wordpress or blogspot blog . I could then show you how to do it. I could gather a few questions and make them in to a blog post. Anyway, fire away if you have some! Maybe there has been something bugging you and you just don’t know how to do it. Maybe you’ve seen a blog with something fancy and you’d like to know what that element is called? Some questions I will answer in the comments below.

If you are new to my blog and wonder why I add random blog posts about blogging then maybe I should explain why…

I’ve been blogging since 2006. If you google me, some of my old blogs may come up.

I taught myself lots about blogs in 2010. I am creative and also mad about interior design. I think blog design and interior design go well together!

I then landed on the tv show The Block.

Since then, I am still doing stuff with The Block, guest speaking, charity work, interior design, but the most fun at the moment is blog design (both blogspot and wordpress). I love the creativity. I love the fact that I can work my own hours. And I love that it pays well.

This year, I’m focusing on lots more blog design, teaching people about blogging and I’m building my new house (yes, I’ll spill more on that soon). So there you go – mashing blogs and interiors together.

Plus for good measure, I’ll give you a running commentry of my day-to-day activities and I don’t mind the odd fashion blog post.

That’s what I’m up to!

Have a great week.

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Written on February 27, 2012 30 comments

New designs & blogs completed at The Media Maid + some cool links

1/2/3/4/5/6/ 7+8 Logos

Oh boy it’s been busy at The Media Maid. This is only half of what I have been up to! Loving it. There are some great blogs out there and some really creative people. I just help them set everything out better. I get a lot of people who also ask me to just pop in to their blog and fix the layout, add some buttons or menus. There has been a lot of that going on. Happy to help.

With over 200 million blogs worldwide it’s a tough market out there. If you’re serious about blogging a good design can make you. A bad design can break you. I wrote about my blog design tips here last week. Everyone is leaning towards crisp and clean designs with great colour combinations and small repeatable patterns (if any). Small narrow headers are all the go without a lot of scrapbook style graphics. Backgrounds are really simple to save on load time.

Last week I also wrote about how to back up your blog. Then I received an email yesterday asking me to see if I could help Lisa King (Lisa has lost her son and husband all within the last 4 months. You can read Lisa’s story here) as she has been having trouble logging in to her blog and was worried about hackers. Blogger had also noticed unusually high activity on her blog. We know because it’s a Blogspot blog, Lisa doesn’t technically own it, so yes, Blogspot can pull it down if they so wish. So whilst she had backed it up, there were still concerns about it all going missing. This is a stress! So last night I talked her through using this free service Blog Booker. It takes only a few minutes (depending on your blog size), but will convert your blog to a PDF. Lisa had 6500 pages! But it worked and she was so happy.

Ok, I’m off to do some more blog designing…

Have a great day! X

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Written on February 8, 2012 9 comments

How to back-up your WordPress and Blogspot Blog

Ever fleetingly thought what would happen if you woke up one day and couldn’t see your blog?

What if you couldn’t access the dashboard?

What if you frantically grabbed your phone, ipad, laptop… and still couldn’t see it?

I’m paranoid this will happen to me. I am no expert in the technical side of hosting, viruses etc (I just make the page look pretty!), so I would be just like you if this happened…

How would you get your blog back?

Nikki from Styling You and Maria from Crashing Red have both been faced with this. No blog. Just gone! (Both got them back, but we have learnt some stuff along the way). Maria writes and great article about it here.

Both believe a nasty virus got in somehow via a plugin and started destroying files.

There are some steps we can take to help prevent this, or at least back-up our blog so you don’t lose everything.

How to back-up your WordPress Blog

1. Always use the latest version of WordPress. Make sure your blog is backed up (instructions on how to do that below), deactivate plugins and install the latest version. Re-activate plugins.

2. Always use the latest versions of your plugins. Update them when you see them available in your dashboard.

3. If you’re really paranoid and you have money to invest in your blog (depending on how/what you use your blog for), I recommend you also buy a subscription to Sucuri Security. This is a site that will scan your blog every few hours for any little bugs that may attach themselves (and looks out for hackers!). They can find problems if they arise and delete them. Well worth it! I bought this subscription. It means that if I have a problem, they can detect it (plus I’ve backed up my blog content and layout), so I can put it all back together.

4. Back-up your blog.

This is the easiest part. It will take 10 minutes to initially set this up.

Download this plugin: WordPress Database Plugin.

Install it and edit the settings (TOOLS > BACK UP).

I have set mine to back-up daily and have the file emailed to me (now it backs up to the server because of it’s size). Send it to an email address that you know you can access through a different computer should your computer ever die one day! I know so many people that have email addresses they’ve set up on their computer years ago and don’t know how to access it elsewhere!

So if my site dies, I still have to find the right person to put it back together because I am not that clever, but I have all the precautions in place.

That’s it. So easy.

How to back-up your Blogspot Blog

If you have a Blogspot blog, the thing to remember is that you technically don’t own it. It’s not a self-hosted site. When signing up for a Blogger account you have agreed that Blogger has the rights to remove your site any time. So, we need to think of saving our time, energy, and money put on Blogger blogs by some means. It is much easier for a Blogspot blog to go ‘missing’. I wrote a short article about why I switched to WordPress after using blogspot for 5 years. There came a time when I realised my blog was a culmination of too much hard work just to lose it.

However, there are steps that you can take to back it up. If your site does go AWOL, remember, you have the back-up files, but you may not get your domain or all of your google indexing and page ranks back.

1. Go to SETTINGS > BASIC > EXPORT BLOG.

2. Take a complete back-up of your site (via Export Blog).

3. This will download to your computer. I always save it and then email it to myself. There are no features for periodic saving, so you need to remind yourself to do this often.

4. Now you need to download your layout. Go to DESIGN > EDIT HTML. Open a new file from your computer in Notepad (or the like). Copy ALL of the code from inside the Edit HTML box in to your blank Notepad file. Save it and email it to yourself.

*If you’re using the new blogger interface, go to Template (in your Dashboard) > Backup/Restore (top right).

Now we have most of the big stuff covered. It’s peace of mind.

Hope this helps you in some way. There are plenty of other blogs who have written about this, so take the time to do some googling and you’ll feel secure knowing you’ve taken some steps to make your blog safe.