June 21st, 2005
just a little thing that gets under my skin
Gosh, this is a silly thing to be annoyed by, but here goes:
I am a completely visual person. In browsing (anything: wine, books, blogs) I will often ignore text and note only the color/design of something.
Now, with wine, I let the visual lead me to a bottle, and THEN I check out the varietal. Books—I let the cover art lead me to a given shelf, and then I read the blurb.
With blogs, it’s different. Each bottle of wine (or at least, each vinyard label) and book cover has been specially designed to be distinctive. But there are a lot of blogs out there that use the SAME TEMPLATES.
So I’ll click through from Bloglines, say on a link in someone’s entry, and get to a blog I don’t usually read or am not subscribed to, and get very confused because that blog uses the same template as a blog I AM subscribed to and read regularly.
I wish Blogger made it easier for folks to modify their templates without having to know CSS or HTML. Why can’t they provide a simple, “build your template” wizard, allowing people to choose two- or three-panel designs, and then pick their colors? A lot of people use the same color scheme on Typepad also, but because Typepad allows for more customization in an easy way, I don’t usually see the EXACT SAME template on more than one Typepad blog.
I know, this is a little annoyance on my part, and always very quickly rectified when I start reading the post I jumped to and note that it doesn’t sound like the author I associate with that template. And then I check out the title and realize that, of course, this isn’t THAT blog, and all is well.
But boy, it would be nice if everyone’s blogs could be a little more unique.
comments
Actually, I have that problem on Bloglines — I usually click through to people’s blogs, but when I just scroll down and read everyone’s new posts, sometimes it’s hard to keep track of who wrote what.
There are tons of template sites out there, but mostly, people are too lazy to install them. I’m not sure about Blogger, but most of the other blog hosts make it pretty easy to modify templates.
I spent a lot of time on my site design, but honestly, since so many people only read me in RSS, sometimes I wonder if it is worth the bother.
I totally understand. It doesn’t seem like offering you some minimal customization options when starting blogger would be that difficult. I found some free templates especially for blogger, so that’s what I use now. But it’s still a free template, so I’m sure that my blog isn’t “unique”.
We sure are picky these days!
I agree that more pre-fab templates would be nice. Along the same thought, I do not think everyone has the time, like you, to “build your own template”. Blogging is certainly a product of your time and your priorities. For me, a pretty and unique template is very low on the priority list. I am happy if I just have time to post on my blog. I think if blogger simply put more pre-fab options out there for busy folks, and a template wizard out there for folk wanting customization, everyone would be happy.
Oh, and congrats on your apartment. We did a house hunting trip this past weekend and found a home. Looks like we both had successful home hunting trips.
I guess my problem is that Blogger offers about 12 templates of their own, and most of the busy people out there just pick one and go with it. If they offered a LITTLE customization, those 12 could morph into 24 (left- or right-side menu); or 48 (fixed- or variable-width).
So yeah, I just wish Blogger would offer some customization in a wizard, instead of the basic templates.
As for the free templates out there—they’re great, but that also takes some time. For a non-techy person, just signing up on Blogger is probably enough work without having to research and go out and find new templates on another site and figure out how to use them.
for me, part of the fun of having a blog is messing around with it… after all, i’m sure Emerson recorded his thoughts in a differently bound journal than, say, Robert Frost did. Individuality and “speech” extend beyond words to include templates, too… (or so I like to think).
I liked the customization that TypePad offered, but I could never have customized my blog as effectively as someone who knew what they were doing with HTML code. BlogTogs did a great job (for almost no money), I think, on giving my blog a fairly distinctive look!
I tried..I really did!
But my skill only goes to ye high. I have no idea how to change the background picture on top (the bg which my title is displayed), therefore I could come up with a better matching color.
The best I could do is change the color of the fonts on my links list. I hope the font color & content helps the blog to stand out? Just a little?
You know, that’s a really good thing to know about yourself for studying for LS exams.
Yeah, I’d figured that. I think I’ll be spending a lot of time with colored paper and highlighters come outline time.
A tad late in joining the fray, but since I’m totally computer-illiterate, I’d like to give props to the ready-made templates. That said, I do have to agree that giving users options to create their templates would be very very cool.
As an aside, I moved my blog to livejournal… could you note the shift in your links? Thanks!