change background color or image of main blog column

With the new Blogger Template Designer, changing the background is now a breeze. Just sing into
DASHBOARD > DESIGN > TEMPLATE DESIGNER > BACKGROUND
and change the blog background according either color or image. If this option is not offered you will either have to stick the old method of changing background described below or change to a Template Designer template.

Blog reader asked this question and I figure I might as well answer in a post.

ADD/CHANGE BACKGROUND COLOR OF MAIN COLUMN (POSTS)

To change the background color of ONLY the main column (posts), sign into Dashboard, click LAYOUT (now called DESIGN) in the section for the relevant blog, click EDIT HTML sub-tab to open the template editor window. Look for this block of codes in the template:

#main-wrapper {
width: 410px;
float: left;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

(This is for the standard Blogger Minima template. Wordings may be slightly different for different template but will be mainly similar)

Add any of this to the block of codes:

background:pink;
background:blue;
background:#D4FFFF;
etc.

The last will give you a greater choice of color. For the last example which use HTML color code, you can get much help using the free ColorPic tool. I used it frequently. You can Google for it by typing the search term "colorpic" or "color picker" into the search bar above (tick "Web").

After addition, the block of code may now look something like this:

#main-wrapper {
background:#D4FFFF;
width: 410px;
float: left;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

ADD BACKGROUND IMAGE TO MAIN COLUMN (POSTS)

Do exactly as above, but this time, upload the image to the web either using the free Photobucket or use Blogger to host the image as described in this post Use New Blogger to host your pictures for the profile photo, sidebar, blog Header, etc.. Get the photo URL.

Then add this line of code into the blocks mentioned above:

background: url(photo URL);

So the block of codes become:

#main-wrapper {
background: url(photo URL);
width: 410px;
float: left;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */ }

If add a background image, you ask yourself if it will increase loading time too much, weather text and other images will be visible or look good with it, etc. Not everyone is on broadband. Some still use dialup