I spend more than 20 hours on this, I have zero knowledge on this sort of thing. I haven't sleep since yesterday and I only had a piece of bread the whole day. I was so immersed in the work, I didn't want to move away from my laptop, till it broke down on me. I guess my laptop is exhausted from all the heavy duty work.
Before
I forgotten to take a snapshot of my previous theme so I had to set it up on my testing blog.
After
I am seriously impressed with myself, I'm not a professional but I've achieved something.
Theme:
It was time to change to a sophisticated and sleek look, but I didn't want to go just Black and White. So I incorporated Gold and Marble Pattern into my theme. I can't take full credit because I admit some parts are inspired by a designer in Etsy, but I did design and coded them myself. Not copy paste.
Base Codes:
You can always use the existing blogger templates and customize them. Since they did 50% of the work for you, you just need some basic knowledge and Google.com to figure out the rest.
To make it easy for you guys, I'm going to state where I got my codes for the widgets. This is like the ultimate guide for people who have zero/minimal knowledge or those who don't have budget to hire a designer. Most of the codes here are just copy and paste, no major tweaking.
Do note that hiring a designer is 10x better than doing it yourself. This isn't easy at all, those designers spent a lot of time obtaining a certification, thus they are more experience and chances to screw up is almost zero. P:s// Before you start anything, download your full template as a safeguard.
Most of my fonts in the designs are from dafont.com, they have an amazing collection of fonts and they are free! For the fonts on my blog theme, I got them from http://www.google.com/fonts, there are ready made codes for you on the bottom, you just need to copy and paste into your template.
How to copy and paste codes? Check this website for an example..
Drop Down Menu:
Dropdownmenugenerator.com is the best among all the other websites. You can customize with their online tool and just copy the link in your HTML/Javascript. Easy peasy and tidy!
If you google, there are tons of free Instagram widgets, I got mine from http://websta.me/tools.
Instead of using the ugly blogger search bar, you can customize your own search bar to suite your blog theme. I got my codes from dapinder.com.
Subscribe Box:
You can sign up for FeedBurner then use the existing one they provide. I took the codes from dapinder.com and fix it myself.
Social Media Icons/Blog Banner:
If you know basic Photoshop skills, it is very easy to DIY these yourself. Or else, just watch tutorials on YouTube.
Return To Top Bottom:
I took the coding from carrieloves.com, she have a lot of amazing tutorials! This tutorial only takes 2 steps to accomplish!
Other useful websites for reference:
(I personally find them easier to understand among the others)
http://xomisse.com/
http://www.theblogdecorator.com/
http://icanbuildablog.com/
Good luck! ♥
