Skip to main content

The New Blogger Template Designer Is Here

After months of waiting, Blogger today released their new template library.

Instead of a static library, though, they chose to provide an array of combinable choices.
  • Multiple, exciting styles.
  • A huge library of theme organised backgrounds, each with an associated colour palette.
  • A selection of layouts, with symmetrical combinations of
    • 2, 3, and 4 columns
    • with and without split sidebars
    • in both left and right variations
  • Adjustable column widths.
  • An updated Fonts and Colors GUI interface, with selections for new template objects like Pages Index gadgets.

From the dashboard or navbar, select "Design". From "Page Elements", then select "Template Designer" - and check out the possibilities.

What we have, now, is an almost infinite variety of possibilities, which should keep many bloggers happily occupied for days. If the Template Designer for your blog lacks options, you can even add some wizards to the Designer menu.

As with every new feature Blogger presents to us, always remain aware of security restrictions on your computer and network, and consider how the Designer content is hosted. If you can't get the Designer to work on your browser, try another browser or another computer.

Those deficiencies aside, I now have a new look for my Buzz blog, and another for my Recipes blog.

Comments

For the creation of a new post, I find the new editor rather clunky. I felt lost. So, I switched back to the old blog editor.
Nitecruzr said…
William,

Fortunately, the old vs new post editor is a Settings selection, that's present on the Draft (Blue) as well as the Production (Orange) dashboard. So, you can use either post editor, with or without the Template Designer.

One selection controls how you edit posts, the other controls the templates. They appear to work independently.
We always get back to wise words that Jean-Louis Gassée told me ages ago: "The best word processor in the world is the one you're most familiar with." I've used the old blog editor so often that I no longer have to think about how to handle it. I would imagine that this kind of conservative attitude exists from one end of the computing arena to the other.
Kitty said…
Thank you for this, and the link to the draft.blogger
I've now done a new template for one of my Blogs and am quite happy with it!

Cheers for the 'plain English' view of the additions!
Kind regards, Kitty
Linda said…
I tried one of the new templates, but found it so buggy (kept reloading the page, extreme difficulty in uploading photos, AND lost my analytics tracking code), I switched back to my old, predictable template. I'll wait until the templates go into orange mode...
The Other WomaN said…
Can someone please help me. My Design Tab... disappeared after I had uploaded so much data to start a new blog. Can anyone help me get it back. I'm not technical so that doesn't help. I also lost data that I had saved as a draft.
Please.
Char
Nitecruzr said…
Char,

This question you really should ask in BHF: Something Is Broken.

Popular posts from this blog

Adding A Link To Your Blog Post

Occasionally, you see a very odd, cryptic complaint I just added a link in my blog, but the link vanished! No, it wasn't your imagination.

Embedded Comments And Main Page View

The option to display comments, embedded below the post, was made a blog option relatively recently. This was a long requested feature - and many bloggers added it to their blogs, as soon as the option was presented to us. Some blog owners like this feature so much, that they request it to be visible when the blog is opened, in main page view. I would like all comments, and the comment form, to be shown underneath the relevant post, automatically, for everyone to read without clicking on the number of comments link. And this is not how embedded comments work.

What's The URL Of My Blog?

We see the plea for help, periodically I need the URL of my blog, so I can give it to my friends. Help! Who's buried in Grant's Tomb, after all? No Chuck, be polite. OK, OK. The title of this blog is "The Real Blogger Status", and the title of this post is "What's The URL Of My Blog?".