For instance, where’s my header?! It’s getting late and I haven’t figured out why it’s not showing up in my header area, so uh…how ’bout if I just drop it into my post. Heh heh heh. Ah well, hopefully tomorrow.

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I haven’t had the need to play with Firebug until this week though, since I spent most of late 2008 getting intimate with my sewing room. But this week I enabled the Firefox add-on to help me customize a new WordPress theme I’m working with and WHA-HEEEEEE!!! The thing is awesome. I so wish I’d had it before because it saves a CSS rookie like me loads of time identifying which CSS style controls what element on the page.

Here’s what it looks like (at least the way I use it):

I click the little Firebug in the lower right corner of my browser, and Firebug sort of superimposes this control window over my web page. So then, say I want to change the color of my post titles. I click on “Inspect” in the Firebug window, then I hover over the “Happy 2009!” post title. When the little blue box is over the element that I’m interested in, I click on it. Firebug shows me the HTML source for that header on the left, and the CSS style for it on the right! In that same area, if I were to hover over “color: #000000;” I would see a rectangle showing the actual color that this value is (in this case, black). Ooooh.

But that’s not all. If I were to say, hm I wonder what the post title would look like if I changed the color to #FFFFFF, I could just edit the color in the style window, and the text would turn white! Considering how slow my connection is sometimes, this feature alone makes it worth having the tool. No more navigating to the stylesheet, making the change, saving, waiting for the save to finish, waiting some more for the save to finish, then refreshing the page to look at my change…only to find that dangit, it looks better in black! And going through the process all over again.

I know I’m barely scratching the surface with what Firebug can do, but the few things I do use it for so far are indispensible. Just wait til I learn the keyboard shortcuts.

For a more thorough description and screenshots of the CSS and HTML development benefits that Firebug provides, see Firebug’s pages on:

• CSS development
• HTML development

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Amazon.com aStore widget
First is the Amazon.com aStore widget, which allows members of the Amazon.com Associates affiliate program, which I’ve been an inactive member of since 2006, to create a mini store with book selections of their choosing. My aStore contains craft and small business-related books that I actually have — and use! — in my own library. So not only do I get to share some of my faves with you, but if you decide to order any of them through a link that you’ve clicked on my site, well then I get a little 4% referral fee from Amazon at no cost (but a lot of thanks =P) to you!

Add to Any Subscribe Button
Then there’s the WordPress plugin I added to replace some of the outdated feed links I had in my left column. This one’s called the Add to Any Subscribe Button plugin, and it gives readers an easy way to quickly subscribe to the blog with whatever feed reader(s) they use like Google Reader, which I’ve grown to love.

Google AdSense for Search
Finally, I decided to make use of the Google AdSense account I’ve again had but not used since 2005 and set up Google AdSense for Search. The new Google Custom Search tool will search this site and my Etsy shop and spit out a page with a few targeted ads atop and below the list of search results.

Eventually I’d like to do more with both the Amazon.com Associates and Google AdSense programs to try earning a few extra cents here and there, but for now…this is what I’ve got!Similar Posts:

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Adding the new column — a second sidebar, to be specific — wasn’t actually that difficult. Especially since I followed these easy peasy instructions on…Adding an Extra Sidebar to Your WordPress Theme. Ha ha ha.

I modified the header a bit to throw a few product images on up in there, but I dunno…is it too busy? Maybe I should extend the blue background all the way right so it still feels like part of the header? Hmm…will sleep on it since I’m getting that woozy lack-of-sleep feeling. But if anything’s amiss, it’s because I messed with the layout and didn’t realize it! Oooh that reminds me, the interior pages are probably screwy. Yup they sure are. Guess I’ll be doing that tomorrow then…woohoo!Similar Posts:

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