I've been spending the last couple of days tweaking different settings on my site.  I figured I could put these in some posts and share my blog customization and blog tweaks with you.

I use Blogger (aka BlogSpot) for my website.  I am fairly new to it, but it has a somewhat straightforward interface.  At first there were a couple of things that were annoying me.  The first was the width of the page.  I like having a wide area to display information.  Luckily Blogger makes it fairly easy to tweak a good portion of their site.

The first thing you want to make sure you do is log in.  I know it sounds stupid to even have to say that, but there are some people that may miss that step (I'm not talking about you of course) :-).

Once logged in, go to your blog settings by clicking on "Customize" if you're looking at your blog:


or if you are in your dashboard click on "layout" for your blog:


You will then be presented with the all powerful Layout tab!  From the Layout section, you will want to click on the "Edit HTML" link:


I know this is a little daunting, but trust me, you'll be a pro before you know it!
From the first look of HTML template section, there is a lot of code which will probably make no sense to you.  Ignore that for now.  We are going to backup your template just in case anything goes wrong.

To backup your template click on the "Download Full Template" link and save the file to a location on your computer:


Once the file is saved, (it will have a weird name like 'template-5071698506020515690.xml') you are ready to start tweaking!

Scroll down about 1/3 of the way in the html box until you find a line that contains '/* Outer-Wrapper'.  Below that you will find a line that has 'width: 660px;. If the number next to width is a little different, its ok. All it means is that someone has already changed the width of your page. The value we are concerned about is the number (660 or whichever it is). The larger the number, the wider your blog will be. I played with mine and determined that 800 was a good number.

When you have changed the number, click on and reload your blog. If you aren't happy with the size, play with the width until you are!

As always, comments, questions, and concerns can and should be made through the "Comments" link below.

Next up: getting rid of the annoying "screwdriver/wrench" picture under every BlogSpot widget!