Blogging is hard

I haven't even had a good start at blogging, and I've already encountered some difficulties.

I am writing this with all honesty and I have no intention to keep it pretty. You have been warned.

Evolving the blog

The day before yesterday I worked almost the whole day to make every bit and piece to work. 

My background on coding isn't as strong as some of you out there, but usually I do have a clue on what I'm doing. 

When I was 9 I actually made a whole website from top to bottom all by myself with some help from internet guides on coding. We're talking about a good looking website here, not a freewebs base layout or a background with only text on it. I remember it took me over a week to get it done and all. 

However nowadays I'm no longer that patient nor I have the time to study code languages in whole, so I just mainly fix the little things.

Social media buttons on blog

I edited some social media buttons and tweaked the main page a bit. Several times some itty bitty witty thing went wrong and things I did or coded turned out to either not work or go all over the place. 

I had bits and pieces of code hanging everywhere, and when the buttons finally worked, I decided to change their color after few hours of wondering. Then they ended up on top of the page, but after bouncing them around I decided to leave them at the bottom of my blog posts. 

I guess they're fine for now.

How did I do it?

1. I uploaded the icons I wanted online on an image hosting site. I used imageshack.
2. I opened the blog post writer thingy on blogger, clicked the "add picture" icon, put on the picture url and added the picture. I did this for all my icons.
3. After having my icons on the blog post writer I removed the links attached to them by simply clicking them and the link tool button one by one. 
4. Then I clicked on the icons again, one by one, and added the links I wanted on them. (pick the icon, click the link tool, write the url, click ok)
5. change into HTML mode (top-left at the blogger writer)
6. copy all the code, don't publish the text but you can save it as a draft
7. go to blogger layout settings and add HTML/Java widget
8. paste your code to the widget and save. 

I originally found these instructions in Finnish here .

Link colors & color changing links

The next trouble I had was with my background color, which I wanted to change in to grey, but ended up not doing so since I couldn't find a way to how. 

However soon I became irritated by the blog headings. 

Mainly the H1, blog post header. It has a nice color changing effect on it, but for some reason I had picked a super bright blue as it's link color. So every time someone moved their cursor on it, it would move wider nicely and slowly change it's color to.... super stingy blue. That had to change. 

Me being a tech wizard and all (read: not) it took me a good half-an-hour or so to actually find the right code line. 

My favorite color at the moment is lilac, so that's sort of the theme I have been going for here.

This is what I ended up with.

The slow color change & widening link code

The code I have for example is 

a:link {

  font-family: 'Verdana';

font-size: 12px;

text-decoration:none;

color: #eb99ff;

transition: 0.6s;

-moz-transition: 0.6s;

-webkit-transition: 0.6s;

-o-transition: 0.6s;

What makes it what it is is bolded. I'm not an expert enough to explain more about it, 

so I would advice you to google it for more information.

Promoting the blog

Last but not least; what would a blog be without readers? A private journal, probably. Since that's not what I'm trying to write here, I had to tell people about my blog. What is it, where can you find it and so on.

That's the hardest step to me, since I am a Finn trying to write in English, and have yet to make any post showing myself or doing DIY stuff, which seems to be a popular thing online. 

The reader base I have easiest access to happens to be Finnish, but due to the amount of blogs here in Finland a blog written in another language probably isn't the most popular option among Finnish readers who already have a wide variety of blogs to choose from, written in their native language.

(Still, if you are a Finnish reader reading this, I salute you! It's wonderful that you are interested in what I have to say and I'm very thankful and honored to have you as a guest.)

All that aside, I found a nice blog link party to join in, and I did. 

Patient, but excited I waited for the results. And waited. And waited.

Then, I realized my blog settings had been switched private by mistake. Nobody has been able to enter my blog. 

Just my luck, haha.