Installing & Customizing the Blogger Template | Blogger Basics

Hoping that you played well with your layout of the blog, I’d like to move on to an interesting part of blogger basics in this tutorial i.e., the installing and customizing template. By default, while creating a blog in blogger, you will be asked to choose a template for it.

What is a template actually?

A template is nothing but a layout and design of your blog. For example, you can see the design of amfastech.com with a layout(refer working with layout of your blog, if you are still in confusion) and some colors as per our requirement.

A template of a blog is not just a design and layout of your blog but is an impression maker for the visitor of your website. A template is advised to be as visitor friendly as possible.

Installing a template to your blog

Your blog that is created earlier will be having a template that was chosen at that time. You can change edit or tweak your template(as far as the template designer permits to do so, in case of external templates) anytime.

Blogger will avail some default simple templates for bloggers in the sack. You may choose to install one of them or an external one. Let’s get started with the installation of default templates.

Installing default template:
To install a default template on your blog,

Step 1: Sign into your blogger dashboard and click on Template.

Step 2: Scroll down to see the default templates that are available. Choose one from the list and click on Apply to blog link you can see under each template when mouse hovered.

Just a minute! – When we are talking about default templates in blogger, we should also talk about dynamic templates which is one of the blogger’s X-factors.

Dynamic templates are not like static default templates. They can be changed at the user end, that means your visitor can change the template according to the style and design that he finds comfortable with. The general dynamic template styles that are available at the visitor end are Classic, Flipcard, Mosaic, Sidebar, Snapshot, and Timeslide. However, you can set the default view of the template when first loaded on the browser. The installation process of dynamic templates is no change compared to the process said above.

Customizing default template:

Customizing a default template needs no programmer or web designer skills. To customize a template, go to blogger dashboard >> template and click on Customize button.

It will take you to the template customization control panel where you can change the look and feel of the template including the widths and layout.

Each change you apply to the template will be reflected in the preview panel at the bottom.

When you are done customizing as per your needs, click on Apply to Blog button and Back to Blogger.

Isn’t simple?

Let’s see installing and customizing the external template.

Installing an external template:
The reason why most bloggers go for external templates is that the default templates are the same that are being shown since ages. So as to make the blog look trendy and to give it an eye catching look, we use external templates.

Find a template in Google and download it to your computer. A blogger template would generally be in the format of XML and the template file will come with the .xml extension.

After downloading a template, you should backup the existing template of your blog for security reasons and install this new one.

Backing up your template:

To back your template go to dashboard >> template >> click on Backup/Restore button.

It will then popup a new screen showing a Download full template button on it. Click on the button to download the backup of your template and save it somewhere safe on your computer.

Installing a new external template:
After done with backing up, we need to upload the downloaded template’s .xml file to your blog. To do so, click on the Choose File button and select the .xml template file.

Now you can see the Upload button being highlighted after the .xml file is selected. Click on the upload button to start uploading the template. You can see a ‘processing’ animation while the template is being uploaded.

Now click on View blog button to see your blog with a new template. You can adjust the layout and play with the gadgets as you want.

You can also customize the template from the blogger’s template customizing control panel. But you can’t get full control of your template if it is an external one. You have to have an idea of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to edit the template with Edit HTML option. As we are discussing basics here, I’d recommend you to go with the customize option or else you may scrap your site that may need an experts assistance then again.

So, this is how to install and customize the template for a blog in blogger. We’ll get to know about customizing the template in code view in advanced tutorials.

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