Tweaking the Blogger Template and adding gadgets

Yesterday (Thursday) and today (Friday) have been spent on tweaking the template - sort of fine tuning.  This week I finally gave in and added the social bookmarking buttons from ShareThis.  While there, I also wanted to slip in a floating toolbar, but unfortunately ShareThis doesn’t have a floating toolbar which shows the count.  Instead I’ve used a mashed up code snippet.

In case you want it, here is the actual code - just copy and paste it into a html/JavaScript gadget in your Blogger

<!--SideBar Floating Share Buttons Code Start-->

<style> 
#pageshare {position:fixed; bottom:20%; left:100px; float:left; border: 1px solid black; border-radius:5px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px;background-color:#eff3fa;padding:0 0 2px 0;z-index:10;}
#pageshare .sbutton {float:left;clear:both;margin:5px 5px 0 5px;}
.fb_share_count_top {width:48px !important;}
.fb_share_count_top, .fb_share_count_inner {-moz-border-radius:3px;-webkit-border-radius:3px;}
.FBConnectButton_Small, .FBConnectButton_RTL_Small {width:49px !important; -moz-border-radius:3px;-webkit-border-radius:3px;} .FBConnectButton_Small .FBConnectButton_Text {padding:2px 2px 3px !important;-moz-border-radius:3px;-webkit-border-radius:3px;font-size:8px;}
</style>
<div id='pageshare' title="Share This With Your Friends">
<div class='sbutton' id='gb'><script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script><fb:like layout="box_count" show_faces="false" font=""></fb:like></div>
<div class='sbutton' id='rt'><a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="vertical" >Tweet</a><script src='http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js' type="text/javascript"></script></div>
<div class='sbutton' id='gplusone'><script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script><g:plusone size="tall"></g:plusone></div>
<!--SideBar Floating Share Buttons Code End-->

While tweaking around, I also added a PunchTab bottom-bar, an instant loyalty program.  After being alive for just over a day, the PunchTab bottom bar has disappeared.  No doubt while monkeying around, I managed to mess it up.  And anything messed up has to be left over for the weekends.
;-)

Another change is the addition of ‘Random Posts’ in the side-bar just below the ‘Popular Posts’ gadget.  In case you wonder, it seems adding such a gadget to recycle the old/forgotten posts is one way of improving traffic. (??!!??).  Whatever the reason, as you can see, the Random Posts gadget is a slick, modern and eye-catching design from Blogger Plugins.

My attempts to modify the ‘Popular Posts’ gadget - the official (standard /regular / default) one provided by Blogger hasn’t been so successful.  While I’ve been able to modify the font, haven’t had much success with the spacing or the (bottom) borders.  Perhaps it is time to mashup a customised script for that over the weekend.

In between I also put up a custom ‘404 Error’ (Page not found) Page.  Since it was me who was monkeying around with the html, as usual, there is an error.  Committing an ‘error’ on an ‘error’ page - it is a privilege enjoyed by a special type of genius (usually called an idiot).  The error is the search box doesn’t work.  A ‘search’ box which doesn’t search - I think I outdid myself this time around. /hee hee/
:-D

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