Re-designing/Designing Blogsome Themes
by Shana
Basic Sandbox Method
This is the method I use to work on Blogsome Themes offline, making sure a design works before installing it online.
Instructions:
You'll need a text editor, which can either be notepad or EditPad Lite which I use. The easiest way of editing CSS is with TopStyle Lite , though a text editor can be used.
Create a folder on your PC called Blogsome Designs.
Sign in to your blog, and from the Dashboard, go to Manage, Files and save a copy of the following files as text files:
Main Page
Site Style Sheet
Posts
Comments
Also save a copy of the Site Style Sheet as wp-layout.css into your Blogsome Designs folder on your PC.
Go to the frontend (public view) of your blog and save the page as frontpage.html to the Blogsome Designs folder on your PC. You will also need to save a page with comments on, if you don't have any available, make a test comment, then save that page as comments.html into your Blogsome Designs folder on your PC.
Open both the saved files frontpage.htm and comments.html. At the top of the page you'll see this link;
<style type=text/css media=screen>@import url( http://yourblog.blogsome.com/templates/wp-layout.css );</style>
Change it to:
<style type=text/css media=screen>@import url( wp-layout.css );</style>
This means you can now work on your stylesheet and changes will be shown in the saved files.
Open frontpage.html in your browser and open the stylesheet in either TopStyle Lite or a text editor. As you change the stylesheet, you refresh frontpage.html in your browser. Continue to work away until you have your finished design.
Then you'll need to copy the entire stylesheet and replace the existing stylesheet for your blog. If you've included any images, remember to change the reference in the stylesheet to;
background: url(/images/pic.jpg);
If you upload your images to Blogsome, or the URL of your image hosting site.
Some useful links:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page
http://css.maxdesign.com.au/index.htm
And of course:
http://blogsome-forum.blogsome.com/
Note:
Display of layouts can vary from browser to browser, so where possible, try and view your design in, at least, FireFox and IE.