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Some Blog Owners Reporting The Template Designer Changes Do Not Update On Their Blogs

For several weeks, we're been seeing various reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, mentioning problems with template updates, being made using the Template Designer wizard.

The reports are not so widespread to indicate a complete malfunction - but neither can we dismiss the problem, as being unique to one browser, one template type, or one particular update pattern.

It's likely that we are looking at a number of problems, aggregated and compounded, into one common symptom.
I cannot Save changes in Template Designer.
With a problem report like this, some examining of the details may be appropriate.

The Template Designer wizard, which is a component in the Blogger Dashboard, is a complex and sophisticated collection of menus and utilities, which runs on the blog owners computers.

Like most Blogger code, the Template Designer is subject to the effects of other programs, and various security settings - which may be installed or set on each individual computer, with or without the understanding of the blog owner and / or computer owner. In some cases, the blog owner and computer owner may be different people.

If you are seeing a problem with the Template Designer, when trying to update the layout on your blog, there are several tests which you can make, which may help to isolate the problem.
  • Try making the same updates, using another computer.
  • Try making the same updates, using another browser on your current computer.
  • Try setting up a new blog, with the same template, and make the same updates to the new blog.
If you're able to make one or more of the above alternate updates, that will help to eliminate some, or many, alternate suspects, as the cause of your problem. If other people are reporting this problem, their results from the above tests may or may not correspond with yours - because their base problem may differ from yours.

Right now, we're seeing seven different causes of these problems.
  1. Changes made by Blogger Engineering, to support new browser versions and browser updates, and to provide new template features.
  2. Changes inherent in new browser versions, made by the browser vendors.
  3. Third party browser add-ons, installed by the owners of the various computers.
  4. Security settings, inherent in new browser versions and third party add-ons.
  5. The cumulative effects of various template tweaks, both made using "Edit HTML" and the Template Designer itself.
  6. Unrealistic expectations of blog owners, about effects of Template Designer settings, against all templates provided by Blogger.
  7. Unrealistic expectations of blog owners, about effects of Template Designer settings, against templates not provided by Blogger.
Of these possible causes, only #1 (and possibly #2 and #6) are the sole responsibility of Blogger Engineering. The blog owners (and computer owners) must assume some partial responsibility for #2 - and sole responsibility for #3, #4, and #5. The blog owner, and the developer of any custom, third party template, must jointly assume responsibility for #7.

Recently, Blogger Support acknowledged the problem, in part.
Some users have reported that the Apply to Blog button in the Template Designer is non-functional for some Dynamic View templates.
We also have a Rollup Discussion, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, where individual details are being provided by various blog owners.

Right now, we're starting to suspect that some "problems" are actually caused by the blog owners, who are simply not aware that not all changes made, using the Template Designer (or the Layout or Template "Edit HTML" wizards), are designed to update all templates used in viewing our blogs.

Comments

Cheryl said…
Grrrrr.... I set up a brand new blog and it's my first time using the dynamic templates and this is SO frustrating.
Unknown said…
Even that doesnt work.Its all wasted.Internet explorer had shown the webfont but now it doesnt.
This is ridiculous.

When on earth shall blogger be fixed???

This is a crisis situation when I am blogging about Delhi Gang Rape.So many people all over the world are visiting my blog and changes as these are so embarassing!!!
Nitecruzr said…
D,

I'm sure that this is a frustrating scenario - but I'm not seeing this to be a crisis situation. How does inability to tweak the template prevent you from blogging about Delhi Gang Rape?

The Post Editor and the Template Designer / Template Editor are separate wizards in Blogger. We don't have any reports of similar problems with post editor, that I know of.
Unknown said…
@Chuck Croll,

No, the issue is that my earlier template had a handwriting font which is difficult to read when there are so many comments flowing in(and huge ones.....people are using maximum word limit for comments and continuing in other comments)
It's a burning issue.People like me are concerned.We want to vent.

As suddenly the changes have been lost and the latest wouldnt upload, I had to upload the older version.

Thinking that making smaller changes as the font could fix the interim version to the latest. But as blogger has been stuck, I am unable to make the changes!

Hence, the crisis!!
randomnoob said…
@D

If you click the 'Edit HTML' button instead of 'Customize', you can access and edit manually the actual code that stores the configuration of your template (fonts, colors). It is basically an XML with some Variable elements, for which you want to change the value="..." part. You should look for where the fonts are stored and change the name to what you need.

Just be careful, if you do not use the proper syntax you can break your blog!
Kelsey said…
Thank you for making the blog more informative than the help forum. I was so frustrated with the help forum because they only said that they were working on the problem but didn't go into detail about what could be wrong. I'm also one of the many frustrated bloggers who cannot make any changes with template designer. I've tried clearing my cookies and cache and I tried making a new blog to see if that would accept changes and it won't. I can't make changes on any computer. I was just wondering if there was any idea as to when the problem would be fixed?

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