Eye Candy: The Visual Side of Blogging

Templates:

• After you set up a blog on Blogger, here's how to change your design template.

• If you're using a free Wordpress blog, your template is called a "theme." Here's how to change your theme.

Building a Blog Header:

• Photoshop is probably the most commonly-used software for building web images like blog headers. It's expensive, but powerful.

• GIMP is a free image-making program that will get the job done, but be warned - it can be very complicated to use, and not very user-friendly.

• Here's a roundup of other free alternatives to Photoshop, from Lifeclever.

• Here's a very user-friendly beginning how-to for building a blog header, from Musings of a Housewife.

• If you're using Blogger, you can easily customize the header in your template. This video explains how.

• If you're using Photoshop, and aren't familiar with how it works, you might find this detailed header-building tutorial helpful. (A note, though, Photoshop Express, which we mentioned earlier, won't work for this project.)