Fixing One Thing and Breaking Five Others

Y'all probably have seen those people before. Knowing just enough to be dangerous. That's me when it comes to this CSS and HTML and stuff.

I learned how to use post summaries after searching high and low for it. You know, how you can just have a couple of paragraphs on the front or archive page and then you get the "Read More" prompt or "Continue reading... " prompt to go to the rest of the post?

That way you can have more posts on the main pages and if readers need to read more they can click through to the entire post.


Well, I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to activate the feature, and in the process learned a bit about using a post template as well. Also I learned about how to have a default font rather than using Blogspot font tool which automatically inserts font commands where they don't belong.

Anyhoo, now you see I have broken a few things. I need help. If you can offer some advice that will be great.

(1) I have somehow disabled the background color on the post pages. Sorry about that. I know the too-much-white background is just too glaring. Just bare with me, while I try to figure out where to re-activate the background color.

UPDATE 1: I am a silly dufus. So, I rebooted my computer and the background color came back on ok. It was my computer's memory playing tricks on me. But the other problems are still bugging me. So if you can provide tips that would be useful.

(2) Also I seem to have broken the borders around the posts where I have the "Continue..." command. I tried to fix that to no avail. I will have to troubleshoot that one. Please offer advice if you can.

UPDATE 2:
I forgot to mention that another problem I encountered with this conditional statement I added for the "Continue reading" part obviously isn't behaving conditionally. It is adding the "Continue reading" whether or not the post is complete. So on shorter posts, my readers click on the "Continue reading" only to find that they had already Completed reading! Help!!!!

UPDATE 3:
Well, I'll be! The borders fixed themselves. How did I do that?? How am I gonna learn this stuff if I don't even know what I did to fix it???? I guess I should just be happy that it got fixed! Now, if only I know how to switch it OFF when the post is short enough and not broken up.


(3) As some of you know when I activated haloscan I played around with the template and finally got both haloscan and the old blogger comments to show, but I disabled the ability to enter blogger comments. But now I seem to have messed up the background of the comments section. I will need to troubleshoot that too.

(4) A few weeks back, I worked on the template and added a left column so I can fit more stuff around the posts. I managed to do it, but in general I think the template is just too unstable and does not work very well. I don't know why for instance, the left colunmn would load and then wait a while before the center and right columns load. I would like all three columns to load together, but don't know how to achieve that.

(5) I also have a problem with the right column sometimes drifting to the bottom and not fitting on screen. It seems to have a mind of its own!

So bear with me while I fix this, although it may be awhile before I get it done. If you have suggestions or let me know what you like/don't like about the layout, please leave me a comment.