Display post thumbnails for post summaries in Blogger

I've seen blogs which display post thumbnails with its post summary in their homepage, search results, label results -- well as long as it isn't a static page or the post page itself. You can do this in a number of ways. You can settle for thumbnail images at the beginning of your posts, or create two versions of your post image (a thumbnail size and its original size) or perhaps use a script to do the resizing.

Using custom fonts in your Blogger template

This post will be about applying custom fonts in your Blogger template using Google web fonts. I'll be assuming you are already familiar with HTML and CSS so I won't get into much of its details -- but feel free to ask if you need any help.

How to crop and resize videos in VirtualDub

This post will be about cropping and resizing your videos in VirtualDub. The steps involved are pretty easy so hopefully, I won't end up confusing you or myself.

My CamStudio and VirtualDub settings for time-lapse videos

Today I will share about my CamStudio and VirtualDub settings for recording time-lapse videos (meant for Youtube). I always forget about the setup I use so I thought of posting it here to keep it handy. If you are interested, feel free to read on!

Using if/else to customize elements in specific pages in Blogger

Controlling certain elements visibility, usually widgets, in your blogger pages can a bit confusing if you are not familiar with coding or with the blogger template. In this post, I will note down the things I learned in using the if/else tag for hiding or showing elements in specific pages in blogger.

I'll be focusing in using the if/else tags in your template - how to use it and where you can use it. Anyway, just let me know in the comments section if something isn't clear.

Setting up a Test blog in Blogger

I thought I'll just share with you guys how I setup my test blog here in Blogger. Well it's a reminder to myself too cause there's a couple of things I sometimes forget when putting up my test blog.

In case you are wondering what a test blog is, it's basically a site where you do all your testing especially if you are unsure of the outcome. It could really be risky to apply updates directly to your live blog especially if it's a major change, unstable or experimental.

This post is meant for existing blogs in which you want to put up a test site for. You can still follow this if you haven't got a blog yet but some of the steps used here won't apply.

So let's begin!

Use next and previous post titles as navigation in Blogger

UPDATE [2013.05.01]: Simplified steps and updated code and sample. As a dear reader pointed out, the old post wasn't beginner friendly (and yes I confused myself as well).

By default, at the end of each Blogger post, we get the "Newer Post" and "Older Post" navigation links. As I have seen in other sites, it looks better if it showed the next and previous post titles instead. So in this tutorial, I will show you how to customize your post navigation links so that it will display the titles of your next and previous posts.

Replace "Newer Posts" and "Older Posts" with post titles.

How to use Blogger labels as navigation in your blog

Labels in Blogger, if used correctly, are a great way of categorizing your posts. So now I will show you how to use them as navigation in your blog.

How to customize AddThis on Blogger

If you plan to use or are using the AddThis widget on Blogger, you may find that you cannot easily control where to make your AddThis share buttons appear.

When installing AddThis for Blogger, normally you would use its Blogger widget. I find this too bulky as it uses javascript to parse your template to render the buttons. Sure you can modify the script so that you can position your buttons elsewhere but I don't find that solution flexible enough.

Instead of using the Blogger widget, I will show you how to use the AddThis website code on your Blogger template.

Creating your own Blogger template from scratch, sort of

UPDATE [2013-03-14]: It looks like Blogger has updated a lot of things on its Template Editor since the time of this writing so, I've added some updates on the notes that needed updating (??). I've marked them with "UPDATE" or a strikethrough and I hope this won't confuse you (or myself).

I've always wanted to create my own Blogger template and tried so many times before but couldn't really get it right. I think I finally understood a somehow large chunk of it. I think.

Anyway, here in this post, I will note about the things I have learned/will learn in creating your own template. I won't be getting into much detailed stuff on HTML and CSS how to's. I'm assuming that you already have basic knowledge on these subjects and that you know your way around Blogger. Still, if you have any questions or there is something I didn't explain well, just feel free to leave a comment, and hopefully I can answer it.