Almost all blog templates be it blogger or wordpress utilize CSS which stands for cascading style sheet and this what what determines how the blog will look like when loaded in a browser.If you have the basic knowledge of CSS you can modify basic templates so that they do not look so default and you will thus be able to stand out from the crowd.Today I am going to show you what the basic codes you might find in your template stand for so that you can have an idea of what you are changing while you are modifying your template.
These are the most common codes that you will find in a template;
Border
This is used as a setting for the style(e.g dashed,solid),weight(the thickness which is measured in pixels),and the color of the line that will border a certain element(elements are things like the header section,the posts section and the sidebar section.If you do not want the element to be covered by borders on all its sides(left,right,top and bottom) you can declare the side that you want covered by adding -left(change the 'left' to the side you want) after border.Here are some examples of how the code would look like.
1.border:1px solid #CCCCCC or
2.border-left:1px solid #CCCCCC
Now code 1 will add a border to all 4 sides of the element and the line will be 1px thick,it will be straight and it will be gray in color while code 2 will add all the above to only the left side.
Padding
This is used as a setting for the distance between the content and the wall of a an element.This is less complicated than the border code as all you have to adjust is the width which is most commonly in pixels but is also sometimes in percentages which can be very unpredictable.It can also be applied to all 4 sides of an element or just one side.Here are some examples of how the code would look like.
1.padding:1px or
2.padding-left:1px
Margin
This is a setting used mostly to determine the distance between elements such as space between the header and the posts section for example.Basically it is just like padding but while padding works inside the element margin works outside the element(I hope you understand the difference).The coding is also the same so there is no need for me to write it again.
These three are the most common and you can never miss them in a template.There is also another one called background but it is a bit more complicated so I will talk about that one tomorrow.If you have any suggestions or there is a certain CSS code you do not understand just drop a comment and I will see what I can do.
