Anyone good with blogger templates/html?

[Dogg Thang]

I'm just wondering if there is anyone who would be able and willing to help me with editing a blogger template?

I don't know html but I took one of the default blogger templates (Rounders) and, by trial and error while playing around with values in the html code, have managed to get very close to what I'm looking for. But there are just a few things I haven't been able to figure out - I can change or remove things pretty successfully but adding things is a little different.

I'm hoping that what I'm trying to do is pretty easy for a blogger template but I'm not sure. Anyone willing to help a dawg out? If so, please drop me a PM. Much appreciated!

[Dogg Thang]

I just thought I'd give some specifics in case anyone might even just be able to point me in the right direction.

The main thing I'm trying, and failing, to achieve is to create a flat coloured border either side of a blog. So, if you look at the forum here, imagine two big think vertical stripes of colour at the left and right edges of the screen, framing the middle. I've actually found a way of doing this by creating a long jpeg image that just repeats down the page in the background. The problem is that, because it's a fixed size, I can never be sure if it's in the right place if screen resolutions or window sizes are changed. Is there another way of doing this?

The other big thing, which strikes me that it should be really easy but I can't figure it out for the life of me, is that my main header image is justified to the left and I want it centred. Nowhere can I find the setting that is fixing it to a specific left point. Anyone know what I should be looking for in the code for that?

Again, any help would be really appreciated if anyone even has a pointer or a place I could go looking.

[abigsmurf]

<table><tr><td style = 'background-color:#FFFFF; width: 5&#37;'>&nbsp;</td><td> *content* </td> <td style = 'background-color:#FFFFF; width: 5%'>&nbsp;</td></tr></table>

Replace FFFFFF with a colour (in hex).

For the logo, find the containing element (will likely be a div or td for it and add 'align = center' to it.

[Dogg Thang]

Fantastic. I'll give that a go. I massively appreciate the help, thanks!

Edit: Gah, I can't seem to get that to work within blogger. I can get the colour margins above the nav bar thingy but, once I try to get them to work in the body of the blog, something seems to override it or they're not in the right place or something. Similarly with the header image, I think I've found where that should go but, bizarrely, every time I save the template, it deletes my alignment bit and adds locked='true'.

Not to worry - you've given me a really good place to start and I'm sure I'll solve it. Thanks again for the help. Really appreciate it.

[Fei Fong Wong]

It would help if you'd paste snippets of your code tbh.

For the background you'll need to edit the body CSS in your blogger template:

body {
  background-color:#FFFFFFF;
  background-image:url(http://link/to/image.jpg);
  background-repeat:repeat-x; 
  }

You can use the colour or a repeating background image. The repeat-x shown above means that it repeats vertically only. Similarly you can have repeat-y (horizontally), no-repeat or just repeat (tiles the image in both directions).

If you want something like this, then the light coloured outer background is this image repeated vertically and then the main body background is controlled within another wrapper:

#outer-wrapper {
  background-image:url(http://link/to/image.jpg)
  background-repeat:repeat-y;	
  width: 1000px;
  }

The CSS control #header h1 or #header img should control your header image.

[Dogg Thang]

Thanks Fei. Yes, it's more like the second one with the main body background image you posted that I'm trying to get to work and was able to do it using a jpeg image. I think my problem there is getting the wrapper thing to work so that it stays where it is supposed to regardless of window size. I'll play with that outer wrapper code - thanks for that.

I'd post code but, not being up on html and the template seemingly going back and forth to different bits, I wouldn't be sure just what code to post. If it helps at all, it's basically the Rounders blogger template that is one of the default options. I just went through it and removed the bits that made the round edges (I wanted straight edges), and also removed things like a boarder around the header and a coloured box for the footer.

Thanks for the help.

[abigsmurf]

If you've access to the body tag (may not for a template), you can set the background on that

[Dogg Thang]

Yes, I have the body tag in the second half of the template. I'll play around with it in there today. It was bringing up errors when I modified background things in there but I think that's just a question of getting tags closing in the right place. Thanks.