Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Wait! Don't click that back button yet. It's not some blog about office furnitures or anything. It is my blog you've come too. I've given my blog a little makeover, if you can call it that. I've been meaning to change my blog template for ages but never got around to doing it cos I was too afraid to screw up my blog too much.

Would you believe I've been using the previous blog template from the first day my blog was ever created? The template I had before this was from one of the original templates that you pick when you create a blog. If I'm not mistaken it's called the 'No. 565' template. It doesn't look anything like the original template anymore cos I've tweaked it so much since then.

One reason why I never touched my original template was cos I'm the kind who hates change and having to have to get used to something new. Not knowing much HTML is also another big factor. I can still remember when I first started this blog and the first time I tried changing my header by adding a tagline to it I was so proud and felt like some super programming genius ... LOL!

I really didn't dare messing around with my template much back then. The first time I looked at the HTML codes for my template I almost died of heart failure! You can't really blame me when I see things like these:

#main-wrapper {
  width:660px;
  float:left;
  color:$mainTextColor;
  font-size: 81%;
  word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
  overflow: hidden;     /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
  }

They looked like something that came off a page from Dan Brown's Digital Fortress novel! I mean come on, don't tell me it doesn't look daunting to you, especially if you were a total ignoramus like me. 'Word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */', just what the heck does that even mean? It took me ages to even begin to understand a teeny weeny bit of coding language to tweak my blog a little more to my specifications.

I remember the first time I managed to remove a background, change the width of my post area, add in icons and images in the side bar widgets, change a font colour, and upload my own masthead, I was practically ecstatic! I was walking around the whole day telling wifey what a genius I was ... hahaha ...

And because of my rather bad handicap of not knowing HTML or CSS or whatever that coding thingy is called, I've kept my old blogger template until today. All that has really changed over the years is only my blog header. I've had quite a few but I can't really remember all of them and the current one was the longest I've had.

Back then, I had this preference for full sized headers with illustrations on it. The bigger and more filled out it was, the better. It's one of the first things someone sees when they visit your blog, so the more colourful and big it was, the better it was or so my mindset was back then. These days though, I prefer to keep thing much more simplified and straight to the point, hence the really simplified blog template you see.

It's a template I picked up off the internet and tweaked it to my specifications to suit me, colour and font wise. What? You thought I designed it all on my own? I may know a little coding these days but nothing to the extent of designing a blog from scratch! I wish I did though but unfortunately I don't have the time or inclination to learn something so technical.

Like I said, I like the simple approach these days, so no fancy looking colourful blog header, no icons on the side bar titles, no fancy animated, blinking or flashing stuff or anything along those line. Just a plain simple header (not that it's any good mind you) and a really plain simple white background. It does help to load my blog all that much faster. One thing I really can't stand is a blog that loads oh so slowly because of all the extensive animations and whatnot's.

Back when I first started blogging I used to install every single add-on that I thought was 'cool' and at one time my blog pages started loading so slow that I didn't even want to visit my own blog! LOL! I had tons of ads and games (yes, games) on my sidebar and god alone knows the reasons why I installed them. I guess being a newbie to blogging kinda got me all excited with wanting to have everything on my blog.

Well, I've gone way pass that phase and now, I just practice what I normally do in the office here on my blog, which is keep it simple, stupid. It works so much better. With that said and done, I'd like to thank all my blog visitors, some old, some new and also some missing ones for taking the time and trouble to visit this humble (and at times nasty) blog and hopefully you'll all keep on reading my gibberish nonsense for a long time to come :D
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