Carl discovers the world

This is one of those things that really annoys me about some blogspot users, (and for that matter, people who use Typepad), please, please, for heaven's sake allow people who aren't blogspot users to make a comment on your blog.

This is particularly annoying when these people have signed up for Entrecard, they obviously want traffic, I assume they want people to revisit, perhaps even become fans who subscribe to their feed, and they do allow comments, but they're idiots! They only allow fellow blogspot users to make comments. Why? This makes no sense.

Now listen, I have a blogspot account, in fact several to showcase the themes I've done, but this is my main blog, this is where I want you to visit, and if I leave a comment on your blog I don't want you or any other potential visitors going to my blogspot profile page first. I have this blog for a reason, so people can read what I have to say and so I can build my own group of online friends.

Not allowing me to comment on your blogspot blog unless I login into blogger just annoys me and probably thousands of other people who might like to comment on your posts. Remember, if you've written something good enough or interesting enough that I want to comment, this is a good thing. It means more readers for you, and if you monetise your blog as so many of you do, then you should want people like me to comment.

So, please do me and everyone else a favor, enable comments. It's really easy to do, here's how;

With the recent update of the original free HTML template that Hawaii is based on I thought I'd add the extra colorsets to my Blogger Template list.

Two versions of this template have been produced, the original content-sidebar-sidebar layout, and the sidebar-content-sidebar layout that a few Bloggers seem to prefer. The images have been uploaded to ImageShack so most Bloggers will only need to download the template files, but if you do need to host the images yourself, the zipfile for Hawaii has been updated to include all four versions of this great template and all the images.

As an interesting aside, the Elvis Presley film Blue Hawaii from 1961 which also stars Joan Blackman is one of my all time favorite films. I know it's a bit old now but it's good fun with a great soundtrack.

I've made a substantial update to the Hawaii template, and it now includes two variants, the original content-sidebar-sidebar layout, and an additional sidebar-content-sidebar layout. View the demo

The Hawaii template is also being ported to Serendipity, and may get ported to Wordpress, unless someone else beats me to it - anyone up for the challenge?

So getting back to Blogger, the Hawaii template updates include better support for ordered and unordered lists, more accessible font sizes, all links now showing in blue with an orange hover, and built-in resizing to fit within Blogger's edit widgets screen instead of breaking outside the iframe (mostly a problem in Firefox). Read More

Introducing my latest Blogger XML template, Hawaii, so named because of the bright colors and flower print in the header. The design was produced using Inkscape by Pixabella. You can see my demo blog with the Hawaii blogger template.

I plan to produce other versions of this template, with the columns changed, and maybe a different color header image, so let me know in the comments what you're looking for. The sidebars in Hawaii are 180px wide so should be able to handle most sidebar widgets or advertising. Read More