I just realized it was back in place as I was catching up on my RSS feed reading. It was posted at HSB Tech. Though the RSS feed reader did fill the gap, how I do love seeing all my friend's entries one after another all on the same page. I used to read my friend's page listing every morning and it really helped me to keep up with everyone. It will be interesting to watch over the next few weeks when I have both the friends and the RSS method at my disposal as to which one I use.

If you have never tried the HSB Friend's feature, all you have to do to give it a try is add

/friends

at the end of your HSB blog address. It will list all the newest postings one after another of HSB that you have added to your friend's list.

I have been uncomplainingly waiting for the friends feature to return, but it looks like it may not, so I pushed into the world of RSS to keep up with new posts by my homeschool mom friends. It does have a few advantages such as being able to now see new posts by homeschool moms who are on other blog sites.

For others like me, I thought I would give a quick tutorial.

1. How to I select a friends blog for a feed?  Most of the blogs have an RSS Feed link in the sidebar under the category of links. Just take the link and click "subscribe to feed'. Some other blogging sites will make the feed icon in the toolbar of your browser 'light up'. If it is 'lit', then you can just click it to get to the subscribe page.

2. How do I know when a friend has a new post and where do I go to find it?  In my IE browser, I have a tab under "My Favorites" (where you bookmark webapges) that is designated for feeds. I click the tab and all my bookmarked feeds are listed. If the titles are in bold letters then that site has had a new entry. I haven't yet tried a feed service or aggregator, but if I understand correctly they can chime you the second an update is posted or be set to e-mail you updated as you chose to schedule them. Personally, I kind of like the manual method so I don't get distracted until I know I have time to enjoy reading.

A few Homeschool Bloggers do not have Rss Feeds turned on. If you want to add them, just comment their blog and ask if they would be willing to turn it on. Nine times out of ten they didn't know about the feature or thought they had it on already. If you are not sure, just click the "My RSS Feed" link under your sidebar's "Links" category. If the page is blank, your feed is turned off. To turn it on, just go to your control panel and look for the feeds control.

In my original template, the picture at the top was of crayons. It came with a premade homeschoolblogger template that I picked when I signed on to the blog site. I loved the crayons at first, but after a while (and seeing everyone else customizing their sites) I decided I wanted my own blog picture at the top.

You can use a jpeg that you find on the internet somewhere, use a photo (straight or maodified) from your hard drive, or make your own. I made this one from a picture of Timothy from National Chemistry Week a few years ago. I cropped away the original background and made the 'set the smoke alarm off' new background. I used PaintShop Pro, but you could also use the free software tool called GIMP and do just as well. When you make your banner design be sure to pay attention to the dimensions you will need. I matched the new design to the exact dimensions of the original template's banner by doing the right click on the mouse and using copy/paste to bring it into PaintShop Pro. In there I was able to tell what the pixel X pixel dimensions were. Once you are happy with your design, upload it to your favorite image host. I use http://www.imageshack.us/. It is free. Once you upload it, copy the url. It will be the link that starts with http.

Now it is time to replace your old picture with the new one. Go to Control Panel for your blog. Click on 'Edit Template'. You will see all the html code. Look down the list for '.head {'. It should be very near the beginning. Once you find that section, look for the line that says 'background-image:". It will be followed by a url. That url is where your old banner is located. You will want to use the backspace button to carefully erase the old url - make sure that you leave the parentheses and the semicolon. Now use paste to put the new url in between the parentheses.

Take a look at the result before you save it. Look below the edit window for the button called 'Preview'. Click it to see how the new template will look if you accept it. If you like it, go back to the control panel template edit window and hit save. If you don't like it, play around some more. If you have created a monster, don't worry. Merely hit the close button up in the top corner of the control panel to leave without any changes to the original.

In the past, I have dared to go in and play around with the sidebar (right side) contents. I have been getting tired of the crayon header and the solid light blue background color, so today I delved into learning how to make some changes. It will probably look a bit odd until I get all the changes finished. You too might like to do this, so I am going to explain how to change your background in this post.

How to change your main background:

The part that will be changed is the main background, not the text area background. I will give the text area background instructions in another entry. Go to your blog's control panel and select 'Edit Template' from the menu on the left. You will see a your blogs html code. Very near the begining of this code you will see a section that starts out with "body {". This is the section you will be working with to change your background.

Scan down the section starting with 'body' for the word 'background'. In my original template the word 'background' was followed by "-color:" and a code number for blue. You could change the color code to give your background a different color or you could use a jpeg of a texture that can be tiled.

To change to a new color:

You will need to know the hex number of the new color that you want to have. To find out you could go to http://www.december.com/html/spec/color.html. It gives samples of all the colors and the code numbers that correspond to them. Just jot down the code number you want and replace the original code with it. If you changed the color, skip the next paragraph.

To change to a tiled picture or texture:

You will need to select what jpeg you will want to tile in your background. To find some just do a websearch for 'textures' or pick out any jpeg from your hard drive or the net. Your page will load faster if you select a smaller picture. I looked for textures that were no larger than about 300X300 pixels. Upload your selected jpeg to your image host website. I like http://www.imageshack.us/ and http://www.flickr.com . Once you upload look for the url of the image. It will be the link starting with http. Copy that link using your mouse right click action. Now you will modify the html code in your template. remember that line I told you about that started with the word background. This is the line you will be changing. You will change it to:

background: url(paste the url you copied into these parentheses);

Now, select 'Preview' at the bottom of the window where your template editor is. It will open a new window where you can check to see that everything worked. Once you have examined it, you will go back to your template editor and either hit 'Save' to make your changes permanent or go back in and play around some more. If you feel that you have really messed up. Just close the Control Panel window without hitting save and your previous template will stay undisturbed.

Happy background changing. I will be playing around with mine as I design my new banner picture. The crayons have got to go. I will post how I made and changed my banner once I am done.

... that if you go to your blogger homepage and type friends/ after your address in the address bar and hit go you can see all your friends' entries for the day right in your own blog.

I accidentally discovered this and about had a heart attack at first. LOL. I had just added Spohies and Silly Guys to my friends list and thought that I was returning to my homepage when I didn't recognize a single entry as my own. Yet it was definitely my blog. It had my title, banner, and side bar, but not a single entry was mine.  I thought, "Oh no, I somehow destroyed my blog and  all my entries had been replaced by random entries from other people's blogs. Between seeing that the entries were my friends and seeing that the address bar was not my typical home page addy but had the friends/ after it, I realized that I had stumbled on a feature of HomeschoolBlogger that I didn't know existed. Whew! What a relief.

Now I am off to learn more about this unexpected discovery.

Here are some new helps for those who visit my blog. 

Categories Section Added to Side Bar:

I am trying to make my site more easily navigatable based on why you are here. I have added a 'Categories' section in right side bar. If you are interested in E-Notebooking you can look down the list to the side for the categories section and click on 'Electronic Notebooking' to find only the entries about electronic notebooking. By the same token, there is a category for 'Family News' for those here that just want to know what's up in the Moore household these days. Like the looks of my blog page? Select 'Blog Builder' and you will find the chronicles of how I have modified my blog's tamplate and how you can do it too. Last, but not least, is the 'Musings' category (though by the time you read this blog I may have added more).

Now that I have a distinct category for e-notebooking, I will work to get some blog entries going to help others who are doing (or wanting to do) electronic notebooking in their homeschool.

'In-Progress' and 'Completed Notebooks' Added to Side Bar

The two new additions show electronic notebook topics that the kids have 'in-progress' and a list that shows the notebooks that are done. I have figured out how to link them for you, so just click and go to see the electronic notebooks, are at least images of them, that the kids have made. The link will take you to the notebook examples section of the Electronic Notebooking 101 course at www.virtualhomeschoolgroup.com. You may tour as a guest or register. the course is free.

How You Can Do This To

I am going to make the assumption that you have a bit of experience with working with the html of your template.

If you have none, click on the 'Blog Building' link under Categories in the right side bar. read through the entries from bottom to top. I started this blog with almost no html experience. As I learned, I posted how I did things. You can read the blog entries and learn too.

For the somewhat experienced set, here is a how to for adding a new section to the side bar in your blog.

O     Open the control panel for your blog and click on the 'edit template' button.

O     Always, always take the precaution of backing up your latest working html for your template. If you mess up, you can delete the messed up one and copy/paste the working one back in. All you have to do is open a wordprocessor to copy/paste all of the html in the window to.

O     You will need to browse through your templates html to get familiar with its parts. In my template, the html for the side bar is pretty much the bottom half of the code. I could tell because I could see the titles/text of the side bar parts that I already had. This will help me figure out where to add new code to get the final new section in the place that I want it to go.

O     Once you have decided on the best spot to add your new section, you are ready to add in your new section's header in html. Here is something about like what you will add:        

The black parts are pure html and will not show in the finished section of your blog. What will show is in red. You just need to replace the red text with what you want to actually be visible in your sidebar. In my example there are three items in the list. You can have more or less.

OK, ready to bump up one notch? Let's say that you want to make an item in your list a hyperlinked text. Here is what you will need.

Just as in the previous example, the red text is where you will add your own information.

That is it. Good luck!

I dared to play around a bit with the html of my blog's template. I wanted to add a Flickr Badge of family photos to the right side of my blog. I managed to add it to the bottom - a step in the right direction at least. Can anyone help me figure out where I need to post the code in the template to make it show up on the side? Will I need to reset margins a bit to make it fit?

Tammy Moore who is learning by trial and error. :0)

-------- 6 HOURS LATER - Same day ------------------------

My 18 (oops, had 17 written here for a whole day before I realized I had the wrong age - LOL) year old helped me to move the family pictures Flikr Badge to the side. It looks sooo good. I love it. Yay!!!!   And I learned a bit more about HTML in the process.

You can do this too. First open your template in the blogger control panel and select 'edit template. Copy/paste everything you see in the window to a notepad or word document. This is your safety net if you really mess up. You can always delete the html in the template edit window and copy/paste the original working one back in.

Next, opening a free Flickr account (or use your existing one if you have one), uploading the photos you want, and select the link that takes you to making a Flikr Badge. You will have the option of having a Flash version or an html one. I chose the html one in a vertical orientaion. The site will generate some html code that you copy to the clipboard. Then go to your blog control panel, select edit template and paste it in where it seems best to go. My first try I pasted to almost the end of the template. That is why it originally put the badge at the bottom of the blog. I looked through the template code and soon was able to identify most of what the parts were there for. With Greg's help, we found the perfect spot.

------- by 9:30 pm  - Same day -----------------------------

Well, I am getting adventurous. I just added a site meter to the blog under the family photo badge. This is fun. LOL. 

If you want to try a meter too, I got mine free through http://sitemeter.com. Always begin by copy/pasting a working backup of your template before ever changing anything. Do that right away. Then, go to the sitecounter website. You just fill in the registration information, they mail you an e-mail with your username and password which will let you into the manager section of your account, you copy the html code from their site, and then paste it into your template (edit template at your controlpanel). It was easy and quick especially after gaining a bit of experience earlier in the day with the Flickr Badge. I just pasted the counter html right under the Flikr Badge html. The site counter took less that 10 minutes to do from beginning to end.