Blogger Template Designer Tips and Tricks

Gone are the days when a Blogger or Blogspot blog has to look dry and boring.

A few years ago, Blogger allowed users to upload third party templates to accounts -- giving birth to Blogspot blogs that approximate the svelte looks of their Wordpress-powered counterparts. Just last March 11, Blogger introduced yet another innovation in blog customization:

Blogger Template Designer:



Blogger Template Designer is basically a tool that gives users greater control over how they want their blogs to look and operate. Template Designer achieves this by employing new professional designs, full color control, stock photo backgrounds and HTML/CSS implementation. The goal is to help you give your blog the best look it can possibly have.

Here are the key features:

15 new, highly-customizable templates from our design team, split into four families: Simple, Picture Window, Awesome Inc, and Watermark

One-, two-, and three-column layouts for each template, with complete control over the size and arrangement of the columns

Hundreds of background images and patterns from iStockphoto, the leading microstock image marketplace

How to access Blogger Template Designer:



1. Click on Layout tab
2. Click on Template Designer link (in red circle)

How to work with Blogger Template Designer? Watch this quick introduction and overview video:



Tips and Tricks:

1. Get your links to match a background image quickly by using the Background panel’s “Main color theme” to adjust all of your blog’s colors at once. This works particularly well with Simple’s second design.

2. With a three-column footer, you can fit in several gadgets to interest your readers after they’re done reading your post.

3. If you’re using our new Pages feature, put the Page List gadget in the wide section at the top of your blog. We’ve added unique tab designs to all of the new templates.

4. Many of the patterns in the background image picker are semi-transparent, to let your blog’s background color show through. Look for the “transparency page curl” to see which patterns these are.

5. The Attribution gadget (added to the footer by all new templates) is there to give credit not just to the designer and artist of the background image, but to you as well. Edit its settings by clicking “Edit” on Layout > Page Elements to add your own authorship or copyright information. [via Blogger in Draft]

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