Blogger Online Community offers focused help for your Blog

When I started my blog back in May 2006, I decided to use Blogger because of their Google affiliation, and the opportunity to exert maximum control over my blog via the html code template. In terms of control, this has been a great choice. I have been able to do exactly what I want. Once I figured out how to do it! My first challenge was to add a third (left) column to my standard Minima Blogger template. After consulting Blogger online help and Google, I stumbled upon the perfect blog with help: http://gevkaffeegal.typepad.com/the_alliance/2006/01/adding_a_third_.html. This blog exposed more issues than I had considered and helped me successfully add my desired third column.

After this experience, I have found the various affiliate programs such as Google AdSense, Amazon, sitemeter, feedburner, and technorati offered wizard generated html code to drop into my Blogger template, supporting a variety of display link options.

Just this week, I noticed a strange problem that caused my right column to be pushed down the page in Internet Explorer 6 (Firefox was just fine). After pulling out my hair (it is sparse) late one night and half the next day, a Blogger help forum directed me to http://blogger-tricks.blogspot.com/. While the tips of experience here did not offer a magic bullet, I did embrace the advice to downgrade to an old saved template after backing up my current erratic template. This fixed my right column problem. As I added back the upgrades I had made over the past two weeks to my template, I made sure to check my blog in both Firefox and IE6 for any compatibility problems. None occurred. Problem solved. Thanks Blogger Community!