The blog templates you get to choose from when first creating your blog are nice, but there aren't a lot of them. Fortunately, Blogger offers additional templates for your blogand lets you fully customize the look and feel of your blog page. Read on to learn more.
Choosing a Different Template
First things first: If you no longer like the template you originally chose for your blog, you can change it. Blogger offers more than 35 different blog templates, and there's no harm in switching from one to another to suit your mood. Here's how to do it:
1. From the Blogger Dashboard, click the Layout link next to your blog name.
2. When the next page appears, select the Template tab and click Pick New Template.
3. Doing so puts all of Blogger's templates on display. This is a larger selection of templates than was visible when you first created your blog; several template styles are available in different color variations. To preview how your blog will look with a given template, click the Preview Template link beneath that template.
4. To select a new template, check that template's name.
5. After you select a template, click the Save Template button.
Caution
When you choose a new template, any changes you've made to your previous template will be lost.
Personalizing Fonts and Colors
You don't have to settle for the stock templates that Blogger provides, however. Blogger lets you customize the fonts and colors used in any template, with a few clicks of your mouse.
Note
Blogger uses CSS (cascading style sheets) to control all the fonts and colors in a template. The style sheet code is at the beginning of the page's underlying HTML code, and it defines the look of each individual page element. Obviously, this all goes on behind the scenes; when you make a selection on the Fonts and Colors page, you're actually making changes to the CSS code.
From the Fonts and Colors page, you can change the following elements:
Main background color
Text color
Blog title color
Blog description color
Link color
Link hover color
Date header color
Sidebar title color
Sidebar text color
Text font
For colors, making a change is as simple as selecting the element in the list and then clicking the new color in the color picker. For changing the text font, select Text Font from the list and choose a font family (Arial, Georgia, Trebuchet, Courier, Times, or Verdana), font style (normal, bold, or italic), and a font size (smaller or larger). The preview of your blog, at the bottom of the page, reflects your changes.
Using Third-Party Templates
If you don't like the templates that Blogger provides, you can use a template created by someone else. To use a third-party template, you first have to save the HTML code for that template to your hard disk. You can then upload the code for that template via the Blogger Dashboard.
Tip
I recommend saving a copy of your existing template before you try uploading a new template. Go to the Template tab, click Edit HTML, and then click Download Full Template. This saves a copy of your template code to your hard drive.
To upload a new template, go to the Blogger Dashboard and click the Layout link next to your blog title. When the next page appears, select the Template tab and click Edit HTML. Now click the Browse button to find the template file on your hard disk, and then click the Upload button. This copies the new template code into the Edit Template box; you can then preview and, if you like, save this new template code.
Caution
Unfortunately, most existing third-party templates designed to work with the old Blogger will not work with the new Blogger. That's because the new Blogger uses a completely different set of built-in HTML tags; the old Blogger tags do not work with the new Blogger. For that reason, I recommend that you try third-party templates with caution, and only after saving your existing template code to your hard drive. If the new template doesn't work, you can re-upload the saved template.
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