TypePad® for Dummies®

Chapter 14. Tweaking Your TypePad Theme with Custom CSS or Advanced Templates

In This Chapter

• Discovering the difference between custom CSS and Advanced Templates

• Using simple CSS to customize your blog template

• Changing the fundamental design of your blog with Advanced Templates

If you have a TypePad Pro Unlimited account, TypePad offers you two ways to customize the look and feel of your blog beyond what is offered in regular templates: custom CSS and Advanced Templates. Both options allow you to change aspects of your blog (often referred to as page elements or modules) with CSS. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and is similar to HTML in that it defines how a browser reads your Web pages (or, in this case, your blog's pages). You can use the custom CSS or Advanced Templates option to change everything from the color scheme of your template (including your background and link colors) to the font of your entire blog to using a custom banner. You can even build a new template on your personal tastes.

Tip

Any time you'd like to change the look of your blog, we strongly suggest that you make a test blog first so you can tweak everything and get it just right before you show it to your readers. After you have everything just the way you like it, you can apply the new template to your main blog.

To use custom CSS or Advanced Templates, you need a basic understanding of CSS and how to use it. Although we point you to a few CSS resources later in the chapter, we assume that you already ...