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Template Designer: How to increase entire blog width beyond maximum

The new Blogger Template Designer has made it very easy to change overall blog width as well as the width of the main column and the sidebars. All you need to do is to sign into Dashboard, click DESIGN > TEMPLATE DESIGNER > ADJUST WIDTH and you will be provided with sliders to drag and drop to whatever values your heart desires, then click APPLY TO BLOG to save the new settings (see screenshot below):



Not only that, you can view the result of your selected changes below and if horrified by your changes, just click RESET WIDTHS TO TEMPLATE DEFAULT. (Note that while there is no slider to adjust the width of the main column, it would be indirectly set by the overall width - whatever width you have set for the sidebar)
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How to Add Borders to a Blogger Footer Blogspot

In this Blogger tutorial I expand on my previous article about how to add a 3-4 column footer to Blogger by showing you how add border styling to the new footer. You will learn how to add a border around all of your footer columns or around only part of the footer columns. You will also learn how to add different border styles and border colors to customize your 3-4 column footer.

If you have just landed here and need instructions on how to add a 3 or 4 column footer to your Blogger blog then please refer to how to add a 3 or 4 column footer to a Blogger template (Blogspot template)

This is a walkthrough designed to assist bloggers with no experience of CSS styling who want to enhance their Blogger template with borders and other CSS styling. By following these examples you will gain the knowledge you need to make many types of custom changes to the borders of your new Blogger footer. For help with changing the background of your blogger footer please see my article How to Change the Background a Blogger Footer.

How to Add Borders to the Footer of a Blogger Template
To add lines (commonly known as borders) to a Blogger template footer we need to add some CSS styling.

Before beginning to add borders there are 3 values to consider:

• width of the border (line thickness eg 1px, 2px, 3px and so on)
  
• line style of the border (solid, dotted, dashed, double)
  
• color of the border (hex color)

1. How to Add a Border Around the Outside of a Blogger Footer
   First we add the border property and then add the border style, border width and the border color values. In these following examples just by changing these values we can achieve lots of different results.
   
   
   • To Add a Dashed Border Around the Outside of a Blogger Footer
     With the following code a dashed black line 1px thick will be added around the outside of the footer.
     
     

     #footer-columns {
     
     margin:0 auto;
     clear:both;
     }
     
     Change to:
     
     #footer-columns {
     border: 1px dashed #000000;
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }

     
     
     
   • To Add a Dotted Border Around the Outside of a Blogger Footer
     By changing the dashed black line to a dotted border it is simple to get a different line style.
     
     

     #footer-columns {
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }
     
     Change to:
     
     #footer-columns {
     border: 1px dotted #000000;
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }

     
     
     
   • To Add a Solid Border (Blue 3px thick) Around the Outside of a Blogger Footer
     To add extra emphasis we can change the line color and its thickness. Here I have made the line blue rather than black and thickened it from 1px to 3px.
     
     

     #footer-columns {
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }
     
     Change to:
     
     #footer-columns {
     border: 3px solid #336699;
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }

     
     
   
   
2. To Add a Partial Border to a Blogger Footer
   Sometimes we might want to add a border to only one part of the footer area rather than the whole thing. Again we add the border property but we append it with the following values: (top, bottom, left, right) depending on where we want to place the border.
   
   
   • To Add a Solid Border to the Top of a Blogger Footer
     

     #footer-columns {
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }
     
     Change to:
     
     #footer-columns {
     border-top: 1px solid #000000;
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }

     
     
     
   • To Add a Solid Border to the Bottom of a Blogger Footer
     

     #footer-columns {
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }
     
     Change to:
     
     #footer-columns {
     border-bottom: 1px solid #000000;
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }

     
     
   • To Add a Dashed Border to the Top of a Blogger Footer
     

     #footer-columns {
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }
     
     Change to:
     
     #footer-columns {
     border-top: 1px dashed #000000;
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }

     
     
   • To Add a Dotted Border to Both Top and Bottom of a Blogger Footer
     

     #footer-columns {
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }
     
     Change to:
     
     #footer-columns {
     border-top: 1px dotted #000000;
     border-bottom: 1px dotted #000000;
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }

     
     
   • To Add a Dotted Border 4px thick to Both Top and Bottom of a Blogger Footer
     

     #footer-columns {
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }
     
     Change to:
     
     #footer-columns {
     border-top: 4px dotted #000000;
     border-bottom: 4px dotted #000000;
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }

     
     
     
   • To Add a Blue Solid Border 5px thick to Both Top and Bottom of a Blogger Footer
     

     #footer-columns {
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }
     
     Change to:
     
     #footer-columns {
     border-top: 5px solid #336699;
     border-bottom: 5px solid #336699;
     clear:both;
     margin:0 auto;
     }

     
     

In this Blogger tutorial (Blogspot tutorial) I have shown you how to make some simple customizations to the borders of a Blogger footer. This tutorial is intended as an extension of my earlier tutorial on adding a three or four column footer to Blogger. However it is also suitable if you are using a custom template and want to enhance the footer styling further. You have learned how to add borders to a Blogger footer and change the position, color, width and styling.

If you want to know more about CSS styling I will be publishing further articles in the future. Look out for my next article in this series How to Add Backgrounds to a Blogger Footer.

Related Articles
List of Blog Know How Tutorials for Blogger Blogs
How to Add a 3 or 4 Column Footer to a Blogger Template

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How to Add a Table to Blogger Blogspot Post

This Blogger tutorial (Blogspot tutorial) explains how to put a table into a Blogger post. You will learn how to create tables in Blogger ranging from a simple table to a more complex table with alternating colors.

We will start with a basic table and gradually add CSS styling to the table to improve the look and functionality until we have built the table pictured directly below. No knowledge of CSS and HTML is assumed so this Blogger tutorial is suitable for absolute blogging beginners.

A Blogger Table Caption

Table Header	Table Header	Table Header
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell

Tables are a useful way to display information particularly tabulated information. Tables are good whenever you want to align information so that it is easy to read and understand. You can add text, hyperlinks and even images to a table which makes them very useful for presenting information.

There is no easy way to add tables in Blogger yet. Even if you are using the new editor you will note that no table button is provided. Fortunately it is easy enough to use a bit of CSS styling to spruce up a table and enter this manually into a Blogger post.

How to Add a Table to Blogger Posts
First you will learn how to add a simple table to Blogger. We are going to start with a table with 3 columns and 4 rows including a header row. Then I will show you step by step how to add different features to the table including how to add extra rows, a background color to the header, a border, a caption, change the size of the table, center align the table and more.

Table Header	Table Header	Table Header
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell

1. In Blogger open either a new post or an existing post that you wish to add a table to
   
   
2. Click on the Edit HTML tab on your Blogger editor
   
   
3. Copy the following code into your Blogger post which will produce the basic table as shown above:
   
   

   <table border="2" bordercolor="#0033FF" style="background-color:#99FFFF" width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
   <tr>
   <th>Table Header</th>
   <th>Table Header</th>
   <th>Table Header</th>
   </tr>
   <tr>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   </tr>
   <tr">
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   </tr>
   </table>
   

   
   
   
4. Make changes to the table to suit your own Blogger template if necessary by changing the following:
   
   

   <table border="2" bordercolor="#0033FF" style="background-color:#99FFFF" width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">

   
   
   • Border width (blue)
     
   • Border color (black)
     
   • Background color (red)
     
   • Table width (orange) Can be a percentage or actual width eg 500px
     
   
   
5. Now we are going to fix an annoying problem in Blogger which renders too much white space above the table. We do this by adding the following styling denoted in red directly above the table tag and adding a closing </div> at the end of the table code
   
   

   <style type="text/css">.nobrtable br { display: none }</style>
   <div class="nobrtable">
   <table border="2" bordercolor="#0033FF" style="background-color:#99FFFF" width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
   <tr>
   <th>Table Header</th>
   <th>Table Header</th>
   <th>Table Header</th>
   </tr>
   <tr>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   </tr>
   <tr">
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   </tr>
   </table></div>
   

   
   
6. Let's add some further styling to our table header to improve the look of our table as denoted in red. Change the background color and color attributes to suit your own color scheme if you wish
   
   
   
   
   

   Table Header	Table Header	Table Header
   Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
   Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
   Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell

   
   
   

   <style type="text/css">.nobrtable br { display: none }</style>
   <div class="nobrtable">
   <table border="2" bordercolor="#0033FF" style="background-color:#99FFFF" width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
   <tr style="background-color:#0033FF; color:#ffffff; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:4px;">
   <th>Table Header</th>
   <th>Table Header</th>
   <th>Table Header</th>
   </tr>
   <tr>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   </tr>
   </table>
   

   
   
   
7. Now let's add another row to our table for Blogger so you can see how this is done
   
   
   
   
   

   Table Header	Table Header	Table Header
   Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
   Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
   Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
   Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell

   
   
   

   <style type="text/css">.nobrtable br { display: none }</style>
   <div class="nobrtable">
   <table border="2" bordercolor="#0033FF" style="background-color:#99FFFF" width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
   <tr style="background-color:#0033FF; color:#ffffff; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:4px;">
   <th>Table Header</th>
   <th>Table Header</th>
   <th>Table Header</th>
   </tr>
   <tr>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   </tr>
   </table>
   

   
   
   
8. In this step we are going to center the contents of our Blogger table. This can be done in several ways but we are going to take a short cut here by assigning a style to every table row
   
   
   
   
   

   Table Header	Table Header	Table Header
   Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
   Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
   Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
   Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell

   
   
   

   <style type="text/css">.nobrtable br { display: none } tr {text-align: center;} </style>
   <div class="nobrtable">
   <table border="2" bordercolor="#0033FF" style="background-color:#99FFFF" width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
   <tr style="background-color:#0033FF; color:#ffffff; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:4px;">

   
   
9. Now we are going to jazz up our Blogger table by adding alternating colored rows to improve readibility and appearance. By far the easiest way to do this is to assign a class.
   
   
   
   
   

   Table Header	Table Header	Table Header
   Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
   Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
   Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
   Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell

   
   
   

   <style type="text/css">.nobrtable br { display: none } tr {text-align: center;} tr.alt td {background-color: #eeeecc; color: black;}</style>
   <div class="nobrtable">
   <table border="2" bordercolor="#0033FF" style="background-color:#99FFFF" width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
   <tr style="background-color:#0033FF; color:#ffffff; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:4px;">
   <th>Table Header</th>
   <th>Table Header</th>
   <th>Table Header</th>
   </tr>
   <tr class="alt">
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   </tr>
   <tr class="alt">
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   <td>Table Cell</td>
   </tr>
   </table>
   

   
   
   
10. It is also easy to add a caption to your Blogger table. For a caption above the table simply add the caption line as shown in red. For a caption below the table add the caption line in red and a style as shown in blue
    
    
    
    
    

    A Blogger Table Caption

    Table Header	Table Header	Table Header
    Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
    Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
    Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
    Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell

    
    
    

    <style type="text/css">.nobrtable br { display: none } tr {text-align: center;} tr.alt td {background-color: #eeeecc; color: black;} tr {text-align: center;} caption {caption-side:bottom;} </style>
    <div class="nobrtable">
    <table border="2" bordercolor="#0033FF" style="background-color:#99FFFF" width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
    <caption>A Blogger Table Caption</caption>
    <tr style="background-color:#0033FF; color:#ffffff; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:4px;">
    <th>Table Header</th>
    <th>Table Header</th>
    <th>Table Header</th>
    </tr>
    <tr class="alt">
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    </tr>
    <tr class="alt">
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    </tr>
    </table>
    

    
    
    
11. One more important property needs to be addressed in our new Blogger table to improve the look. We can reduce the double border into a single one. The easiest way to do this is to change the cellspacing to zero as denoted in red. Or, alternatively we can apply the border collapse property to our table as shown in blue. Note: Border collapse may not be supported by all browsers particularly if the cellspacing attribute is defined also)
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

    A Blogger Table Caption

    Table Header	Table Header	Table Header
    Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
    Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
    Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell
    Table Cell	Table Cell	Table Cell

    
    
    

    <style type="text/css">.nobrtable br { display: none } tr {text-align: center;} tr.alt td {background-color: #eeeecc; color: black;} tr {text-align: center;} caption {caption-side:bottom;}</style>
    <div class="nobrtable">
    <table border="2" bordercolor="#0033FF" style="background-color:#99FFFF; border-collapse:collapse;" width="100%" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0">
    <caption>A Blogger Table Caption</caption>
    <tr style="background-color:#0033FF; color:#ffffff; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:4px;">
    <th>Table Header</th>
    <th>Table Header</th>
    <th>Table Header</th>
    </tr>
    <tr class="alt">
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    </tr>
    <tr class="alt">
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    <td>Table Cell</td>
    </tr>
    </table>
    

    
    
    
12. Now go ahead and add your data to your new Blogger table. Filling in each instance of "Table Header" and "Table Cell" with your own data. The information you add to the Blogger table can be text, hyperlinks or even an image
    
    
13. Save your changes to the Blogger table by saving and publishing your post
    

Please feel free to use this Blogger table as a template whenever you need to add a table to your Blogspot post. If you want to regularly add a table to your Blogger posts that consistently looks the same you could consider adding the table CSS styling to your Blogger template.

In this Blogger tutorial (Blogspot tutorial) I have demonstrated how to build a complex table in HTML and CSS to insert into a Blogger post. You have learned how to manipulate a variety of table properties and attributes to create a table for Blogger that matches the color scheme of your blog and is functional and appealing.

Related Articles
List of Blog Know How Tutorials for Blogger Blogs
How to Change the Bullet Point Style in Blogger (Blogspot)
How to Remove Image Border in Blogger Template Simple
How to Change or Delete Image Borders in Blogger Posts
How to Add CSS Styling to Blockquotes in Blogger
How to Add, Delete or Remove Blogger Image Borders
How to Align and Justify Posts in Blogger
How to Add a Divider Between Blogger Posts
How to Add or Change a Background Image in a Blogger Template

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Windows Live Writer table plugin

For many bloggers creating HTML tables are a nightmare, right? Well, I'm here to tell you that all changes with ComputerJy's free Windows Live Writer (WLW) table plug-in.

I've been using this table plug-in for sometime now and I can guarantee it does an excellent job. The options far exceed what

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Reminder: Backup your blog with Blogger's Export function

Because Blogger.com is free, spammers have abused it thus forcing Blogger to use robotic programs to detect and delete splogs (spam blogs) as well as violation of Blogger's Terms of Service (TOS), but unfortunately the possibility of false positive (legitimate blogs wrongly identified as splog) is ever present. Every now and then we get plea for help and this recent one is typical:

"I had put a lot of time and effort into this blog over the years to have it just taken away. If I cannot get it restored, is there a way to at least get my content? I am just heartbroken over this."

Now Blogger has set up some procedure for such unfortunate occurrence as described in How to recover blog deleted as splog or TOS violation, it is best to take a bit of time to backup your blog using Blogger's export function. By doing so, you would not only be saving the blog posts for any eventuality, but also the comments.

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How to delete label enmass

Deleting labels en mass was found to be not as straight forward as I had expected when I had to occasion to do it when I labeled by mistake all posts at this Damansara Uptown Directory that I administer with a label I didn't want so thought it is a good idea to lay out the steps here for the record and for those who may need them when the occasion arises.

To delete a label en mass, sign into Dashboard, click EDIT POSTS. Read rest of post >>>

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Easily create tables with Windows Live Writer

Hard coding the HTML for a table is very tedious, but here is an easy way to do it. Go download Windows Live Writer and install it into your computer as I have found with this test post Blogger versus Wordpress Comparison that Windows Live Writer is a good tool to simplify publishing tables.

(Writer is part of Windows Live Essentials. You can download just Writer or all of Windows Live Essentials. Windows Live Essentials 2011 includes Messenger, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Mail, Writer, Family Safety, and Windows Live Mesh, plus Bing Bar, Messenger Companion, Microsoft Silverlight, and Outlook Connector Pack (Microsoft OutlookHotmail Connector and Microsoft Outlook Social Connector Provider for Windows Live Messenger).

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How to resize embedded video using GIMP

Update: For embedding Youtube video, you can do the resizing at Youtube.com itself by either ticking one of the 4 size option (560x340 640x835 835x505 1280x745) or by clicking CUSTOM and typing in your choice of width while letting Youtube automatically fill in the value for the height to keep the aspect ration constant (see screenshot below). However the method described in this post will still be useful if you want to resize other video embed codes or similar:

Method of resizing video embed codes while keeping aspect ration constant

Irfanview which I used as a convenient tool to help resize Youtube video wouldn't work with MAC. The alternative using calculation to resize Youtube video is also a problem for some, so this post will explain how to use GIMP to help with resizing Youtube video to fit your blog sidebar or main column or whatever. (Note: Youtube video can also be resized/customized direct in Youtube website too to be covered with another post)
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How to link to a location in different page

The previous post explain how to link to a location in the same page. In summary, it would be as follows:

The hyperlink HTML is written as

<a href="#key">some text</a>

where key is any text you would like to use as the key, and the location to which you want to link to is preceded by

<a id="key" name="key">>/a>

To link to a location in a different page, it will be almost exactly the same except the #key will now be preceded by the URL of the page to which you want to link to so it now become

<a href="URL#key">some text</a>


For example, the URL of the previous post is http://goo.gl/bB0Iu (permalink shortened using Google URL shortener)

Thus, I write the hyperlink HTML as

<a href="http://goo.gl/bB0Iu#linksamepage">some text</a>

As I have used as the key "#linksamepage".

Try clicking http://goo.gl/bB0Iu#linksamepage and see where it takes you.

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