Learning to Make My Blog Mine

I've been hunting the perfect blog background for months, playing with colors, stalking background sites, and finally throwing my hands up in frustration when I realized what I really wanted was my own background. Something special, unique, and individual.

To get that I realized I needed to take a moment away from editing books to edit HTML, a language I am not fluent in.



To Change The Background Image: Much easier than I thought. I took the basic template from pyzam.com and changed the imagery. Scroll down to the bit of html that resembles this:

body {
background:$bgcolor;
margin:0;
color:$textcolor;
font:x-small Georgia Serif;
font-size/* */:/**/small;
font-size: /**/small;
text-align: center;
background-color:#000000;
background-image: url(http://stuff.pyzam.com/layouts/img/c/e/ahcelestia.jpg);
background-attachment: fixed;
background-position: top left;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
border-color:#ffffff;
border-width:0px ;
border-style: solid;

See the bit in red? That's what you change. Find a picture you like, a stock photo, something you've loaded on to flickr or the kodak gallery, and right click.

Scroll down until you see the option for "Save Image Location" - pick that and then paste the image location over the web address. Easy!

To Change Background Colors: Thanks to the wonderful Blogger Tips and Tricks I figured this one out. Look for this html:

#header-wrapper {
width:660px;
margin:0 auto 10px;
border:1px solid $bordercolor;
background-color:#000000;

The bit in red is what you're targeting. The #123456 is the hexadecimal code. Want to change the black blob behind your text to a readable white? Color blender has all the colors and let's you pick the ones you'd like to blend to get a gradient.
White- #FFFFFF
Black- #000000
Bright Yellow- #FFFF00
Navy Blue- #000099

Have fun!