Blog (Design) Love E-Course

The Blog (Design) Love E-Course is designed to help bloggers design and format their own blogs! Elsie shares design and Photoshop lessons, and Elise shares step-by-step tutorials for how to implement your designs on Typepad, Blogger and Wordpress.com (NOT Wordpress.org). These lessons are taught through the creation of a new blog design (on each platform) that you will have access to. Are you ready to learn basic html skills and take your blog design to the next level? Here’s what you can expect to learn:

1. Branding Basics: How to build a design aesthetic you love with fonts, colors, textures, photography and other design elements.

2. Making Mood Boards: Time to gather inspiration! Elsie shares tips for creating mood boards along with examples from the course sample blog

3. Customizing for Content: Learn tips from Elsie for designing great content.

4. Developing a Sitemap: Think like a web designer and consider how set up a sitemap specific to your blog.

5. Design Perspectives: Learn to design with readers, editors and publishing houses in mind. Elsie shares her story of how she got a book deal from her blog.

6. Introduction to the Internet: Elise shares the ins and outs of web pages and how they work.

7. Creating Great Banners and Bio Pictures: Three ideas for creating your own banner along with how to create one in Photoshop and how to implement it into your blog platform.

8. Create the Best Navigation Bar for You: Why navigation bars are important and tips for creating your own custom bar in Photoshop. Plus how to implement it into your blog platform.*

9. Customize Your Content Column: Learn to adjust the size of your content column and tips for showcasing your content photos.*

10. Installing Web Fonts and Creating a Custom Signature: Add personality to your blog by learning to add your favorite fonts and a custom signature.

11. Creating Shareable Widgets: Market your blog by creating your own custom widgets to share with readers (tips for designing and creating the code!).

12. Create Links in Your Footer: Tips for getting the most out of your footer and how adding clickable photo links.*

13. Five Ways to Showcase Your Archives: Elsie shares 5 ideas for showcasing your work for readers.

14. How to Add Handwriting to Your Design: Adding hand written elements are super easy and fun! Plus ideas for ways to use hand written elements in your content and blog design.

15. How to Make a Colored or Textured Background: Make your blog design stand out with your own customized background. Tips for creating different backgrounds, including a Photoshop tutorial on tiling illustrations. And how to implement your background on your blog platform.

16. How to Customize Side Bars: Don’t leave your sidebars bare! Add text links or clickable photo links for readers to enjoy.

17. How to Code Archive Pages: Elsie shares how her archive pages have helped her blog grow! Elise teaches you how to create a custom photo link archive (just like the A Beautiful Mess archives!).

18. Ten Tips for Designing Content: Elsie shares 10 design tips for blog content with examples from her own blog.

19. Tips for Ads and Affiliate Links: Want to monetize your blog? In this session you can learn lots of information about creating and coding your own personalized ad program.

20. How to Make a Favicon: Designing and adding a favicon is easier than you think, let Elsie and Elise show you how!

Bonus: Tips for Using a Custom Domain: Elsie shares the story of how they purchased abeautifulmess.com and tips for getting your own custom domain.

Bonus: Branding Tips for Social Media: Carry your brand design through all your social media outlets.

-All Photoshop tutorials where taught using CS5.

*This course is about working with existing Wordpress.com templates and will not cover custom coding for these lessons.

-At the beginning of session 1 there is a link to download the entire course as a condensed PDF in order to print!