Skip to main content

Third Party Templates, Again

This week, a few bloggers are complaining about their blogs having lost formatting.
For some reason my blog is only showing up as text and pictures I posted- the whole template is gone and it's just black text on a white background.

This blog, like the others, is using a GoogleLite template.

When you use a standard Blogger template, you include it statically in your blog, and you use the Template wizards to select your template. Many people, who use GoogleLite templates, include theirs dynamically.
<style type="text/css">
@import url('http://googlelite.free.fr/stevenson.css');


This is a kewl idea. Why have a plain old static template, which never changes? Why not use something fresh, that changes periodically, without me having to do anything?

Well, this week is one example why this isn't a good idea. Apparently, GoogleLite has stopped serving some templates from their servers. Bloggers who have their blogs using their templates, dynamically, are finding their blogs becoming flat and plain, and ugly.

So if your blog has suddenly become flat, plain, and ugly, and you're using a GoogleLite template, that is why you're here.

In other cases, people who provide free templates become their own worst enemy - so many people loading the templates - the hosts that serve the templates run out of bandwidth.
There's a frog on my blog.
We've heard that complaint a few times, and it generally refers to the PhotoBucket icon that is captioned
Bandwidth Exceeded.
When you provide free templates to the public, you serve components in the templates using free image servers like PhotoBucket, and you get lots of "customers", eventually your customers will make PhotoBucket say
Enough!
and display a frog where your template should be.

Free templates are great - but they have their limits.

>> Top

Comments

Karthik said…
Yea,a free template provider known to me once got this problem and since then asks the users to upload the images themselves in photobucket or imageshack :)
In this way,the users will also have control over the images and no bandwidth problems for the free template provider :)
Jeanne said…
This is sort of like the problem I'm encountering.
Up until recently, when I click on a friend's blog, there's been no problem.
Now, when I click to the site, I only see her background and NOTHING ELSE!
Help! Her blog is:
http://kzsnow.blogspot.com/
Please help

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?".