Blogger How 3 - Change, Backup and Customize Template

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Blogger How is Blogger Tutorial Series from How We Blog. In this series, I will guide you step by step building your first blog with Blogger, spread it to the world, and then you can earn money from it.
Part 3 of this series:

Blogger How 3 - Change, Backup and Customize Template

If you want your blogger have a better look, this is an essential article for you. You will learn how to back up a template before change it, customize it in your way and much more. Of course everything will be very basic to understand and follow.

Find Free Blogger Templates:

Some places that you can find and download good blogger templates for free:

• Btemplates: the oldest and biggest directory of free blogger templates.
• PremiumBloggerTemplates
• NewBloggerthemes
• Sora Templates
• Ivy Themes

Templates are downloaded under .xml or .zip format. With archive format, you need to extract it and get .xml file (some templates are included images, instruction and script that you can hosted your self).

Which Template is Good for Me?

You can choose whatever template which one you like most and suit your business, just remember simple is the best. But if you're asking me what kind of template is the best then I will answer this is 2 columns template with content on the left and right sidebar.
Why? Because they are simple, users and SEO-friendly, easy for Search Engine Spider to crawl your main content first and sidebar content later. You can see, most of popular bloggers choose that kind of templates for their blog

2 Ways to Change Blogger Template

Change and Backup / Restore Blogger Template

Change from HTML editor

- After downloaded a template, open .xml file with Notepad then copy all content in it, this is the whole template code.
- At Blogger Dashboard, click your blog name, then click Template (1) > Edit HTML (3). This is also the way how you customize blogger template.
- Check Expand widget Templates, select all old template code and replace with new code that you've already copied. NOTE: This is not necessary at New Blogger HTML Editor.

Replace old template code with the new one

- Click Save Template, you will be asked Keep or Delete Widgets, click Keep if you wanna keep old template widget, if not, click Remove Widget, and Done!

You will be asked Keep or Delete Widgets

Use Backup / Restore

Go to Template (1) then click Back up / Restore button at top right corner.
In the pop-up screen, click Browse and select the *.xml file that you've downloaded before. Click Upload and done.

Click Browse, select template, click Upload and done

Back Up Blogger Template

Just like the previous step above, instead of clicking Upload to change template, you just click Download full template to back up current template. You will get a .xml file which can use to restore your blog template or apply to another blog.

Restore Blogger Template

Similar with change template, use your backed up.

Customize Your Blogger Template

You've already had the idea what structure of a template is and ready to customize and tweak it. Blogger has a function called Template Customize (you can find in Template > Customize) which allow you change background, border and color of every section in a very easy way. But most of third-party templates do not support this, so you must edit direct in html code.
How to customize HTML blogger template, I've already written about it in HTML editor above.
That's all basic thing you need to know about Blogger Template, you can find out how to tweak your template in Blogger Tips and Widgets of Howeblog.

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