How to Customize Blogger Template Designer?

Blogger Template Designer

Blogger Template Designer is a way to customize the look of your blog. You can select a variety of templates, images, colors, and column layouts to make your blog an appearance of you. To get to the Template Designer, click on Template in Blogger Dashboard. From there, you'll be able to choose and customize your template.

You’ll see a preview of how the blog will appear based on the choices you've made. When you’re satisfied with the look of your blog, you can make them go live by pressing Apply to Blog in the top right hand corner of the Template Designer.

To get started with Blogger Template Designer, select a template for your blog from one of the professionally designed templates that are available. Each template appears as a large thumbnail, when clicked will show different distinctions on the template below that you can select.

Once you've chosen a template, you can continue customizing the look of your blog.

You can always see what is currently live on your blog by looking at the Live on Blog thumbnail in the Template Designer control panel. You can also click on it to reset the template in the Template Designer to the live version of your blog.

Background

Using Blogger Template Designer, you can choose the background color or image, color scheme. To start customizing your background, click on the thumbnail under Background Image.

One of the best new features of Template Designer is the ability to change the color of your background image. This is possible when a background image has transparency.

Once you've selected your image, you can change the color of the background by clicking on Main Color Theme and then selecting the color of your choice.

You can also choose a color theme to apply to your blog, including text and links. You can do this by clicking on the Main Color Theme or by choosing one of Suggested Themes. Changing the color theme of your blog will change the colors for all aspects of the blog template that can be changed.

Layout

You can choose a range of layout options for your blog, from one to three columns. These layouts feature drag and drop functionality for gadgets. You will also have a variety of layout options for the blog footer as well.

If you want to add or remove gadgets or edit gadget settings, you cannot do this through Blogger Template Designer. Rather, you have to do this on the general Layout tab.

Adjust Widths

You can change the width of the blog, and the right and left columns by dragging the slider for the different parts of blog layout. Note that the options you see here correspond to the type of layout that you chose. If, for example, you chose a blog with left and right columns, you will see both left and right column sliders. If, however, you chose a blog with only a left column, you will only see that option here.

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How to Change Blog Feed Settings?

What is a site feed?

A site feed is a machine-readable demonstration of your blog that can be chosen and shown on other web sites. Special pieces of software called feed readers, news readers, or exaggerators can scan your site feed, and automatically let your readers know when your blog has been updated.

Change your site's feed settings

To enable or disable the site feed(s) for your blog, first go to the Settings | Other tab.

Here, you can select how much of your content you want to syndicate. "Full" will put the entire content of each post in your site feed; "Short" only includes an selection from the beginning of each post. Select "Until Jump Break" to show all post content before your jump break. The "None" option turns your site feed off completely. For more advanced options, select "Custom."

When you select "Custom," you'll see options for three different types of feeds. Each option has the same "Full," "Short," and "None" setting choices.

· Blog posts: This is the same as the original, "Allow Blog Feed" option.

· Comment feed: This will contain all comments made on all posts on your blog.

· Per-post comment feed: With this option, each post will have its own site feed..

If you've burned your post feed with FeedBurner, or used another service to process your feed, you will need to go to your blog's settings and complete the setup by redirecting your feed. To redirect your feed, just copy and paste the feed URL you received from the service into the "Post Feed Redirect URL" section.

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How to Create a Team Blog?

Create a Team Blog

Team blogs are quite useful when small groups of people wish to contribute to a single blog. Basically, one person initially creates the blog, and then adds other people to it as members.

Team members can either be administrators or not. Administrators can edit all posts, add and remove team members and grant admin access, and modify the blog's settings and template. Other members can only create and edit their own posts.

Here's how:

Click "Permissions" under Settings | Basic.

Click Add Authors:

Type the email addresses of the people you're inviting to the blog, separating each address with a comma. They'll receive an email with a confirmation link. They must have Google Accounts, and if they don't already, they'll be prompted to create one.

Click OK.

Control Permissions

By default, your blog is completely public, and can be read by anyone on the internet. However, if you want to keep it private, just click on "Edit" under the Blog Readers section in the Settings tab. 

Under the Blog Readers heading, you'll probably see "Anybody" selected as the default. When you change this to "Only these readers," you'll get an option to add readers.

Click the Add Readers link and then enter the email address of a person to whom you want to grant access to your blog. To add multiple people, separate their addresses with commas.

For each address entered, the Google Account associated with that address will be given access to view your blog. The reader will be given permission to view your blog whenever they are signed in to their Google Account. 

Blog Administrators

When you invite a member to join a blog and they accept your invitation, they are listed as an "Author" by default. Authors can only create and edit their own posts. You can see a member's status in the "Permissions" section of the Settings | Basic tab, and it looks like this:

To change an author into an admin, you can use the drop-down menu next to that author's name. If there's only one admin member of a blog, it's not possible to cancel that person's admin rights.

Remove a Team Member

To remove a team member, go to the Settings | Basic tab and click the X next to the name of person you want to remove:

While this will prevent the removed team member from creating additional posts, it will not remove items previously posted by them.

Remove Yourself from a Team Blog

To remove yourself from a team blog, navigate to the Settings | Basic tab for the appropriate blog. If you're an admin member, you'll see a full listing of team members there. Just find your name and click the X next to it.

If you don't have admin rights on the blog, you will see a simpler page, with a Remove yourself from this blog link. Clicking this link will remove you from the blog.

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How to Enable Comments in Blogger?

Comments in Blogger

If you choose to enable comments, visitors to your blog will have the option to respond to your published posts. Blogger supports threaded commenting which means comments are displayed such that a reader can easily differentiate between whether someone is making a general comment on the thread, or responding to another comment on the thread.

Enabling Comments

To enable comments, click on Settings from the drop-down menu on your Dashboard, then go to the area for posts and comments.

You'll see all the settings to manage your comments.
1. Comment location: Select "Embedded" if you'd like to enable threaded commenting.

2. Who can comment? Here you can specify who can comment on your posts. The options range from anyone (which means that unknown users can comment without having to sign in) to only members of the blog (if it's a team blog).

3. Comment moderation: Decide if you'd like to always, sometimes, or never moderate comments. If you select "Always," you'll have the option to enter in an email address where you can receive notifications that there are comments pending moderation. If you select "Sometimes," you'll be prompted to specify how many days old the post should be before it requires moderation. "Sometimes" is a good option for bloggers who want to make sure that comments on all posts are kept fresh and recent, and that conversation or debates on old posts aren't suddenly renewed.

4. Show backlinks: Turning on this option will show all the URLs around the web that link to your blog post. The URLs will be visible to both you and to the readers of your blog.
5. Comment form message: Add a message to your readers who click to comment on your blog. Some bloggers like to include a little thank-you note, or details about how they tend to follow-up with comments.

Enabling Comments on Post by Post

If you don't want your comment settings to be blog wide, you can click on the menu on the right side of the Post Editor to set post specific comment settings. Here you can choose among three options: Allow; Don't allow, hide existing; Don't allow, show existing.

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How to Import and Export Your Blogs?

Import and export blogs

The import and export features on Blogger give your content a complete new sort of portability and freedom, allowing you to save a copy of your blog on your hard drive, or import your blogs into other existing blogs.

Export your blog

To export your blog, simply click "Export Blog" from the Settings | Other tab.

Then, click the Export Blog button. Your blog will be stored as a Blogger export file (.xml) file which can be kept as a backup on your hard drive or imported into another blog. Exported blogs are not deleted from your dashboard or from Blogger.com.

Import into an Existing Blog

To import posts and comments into an already existing blog, go to Settings | Other and click on "Import blog" from the "Blog tools" section. Choose a Blogger export file (.xml) from your hard drive and fill out the word verification under. By default, all of your imported posts will remain unpublished until you publish them from your dashboard later. However, if you would rather have all posts published immediately; make sure to check the box next to Automatically publish all imported posts before you click Import Blog.

If you didn't choose to have your posts publish automatically, you'll need to manually publish them from the Posts | Imported tab before they will appear on the web.

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How to Delete and Restore Your Blog?

Delete Your Blog

If you delete your blog, it will no longer be available online and will be permanently removed from your list of blogs on your Blogger Dashboard.

Here's how:

1. Sign in to your blog and access your Blogger Dashboard.

2. Beside the blog you want to delete, click the drop-down menu to the right of the gray Post List icon.

3. Select Settings.

4. Click Other on the left side of the page.

5. At the top of the page under "Blog tools" click Delete blog.

6. Click Delete this blog.

The title of the deleted blog will appear in the "Deleted blogs" section for a short time after you delete your blog. During this time period, you can click Deleted blogs on the left side of your Blogger Dashboard to see the titles of your recently deleted blogs.

Save a copy before deleting

If you'd like to save a copy of your blog before deleting, export your blog before clicking the Delete this blog button. Your blog will be stored as a Blogger export file which can be kept as a backup on your hard drive or imported into another blog.

Restore a deleted blog

If you've accidentally deleted your blog and want it back, you can do so during a short period of time after deletion.

1. Sign in to your blog and access your Blogger Dashboard.

2. Click Deleted blogs on the left.

3. Your deleted blogs will re-appear on your Dashboard. Click Undelete this blog.

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How to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines?

Blogger and SEO

Blogger provides web users with the option to manage search engine preferences. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which helps increase traffic to your blog and connect your content with the proposed audience. Most of SEO options can be found under the Settings tab, under the Search Preferences section.

On this tab, you should see the following settings:

Description
Custom Page Not Found
Custom Redirects

Custom robots.txt
Custom robots header tags

Search Description

When using a search engine (such as Google), you probably see a praise of text under your search results that helps you decide whether or not that’s the site you want. For example: This is what appears when you search for “Blogger.”

If you don't specify a search description for your blog, search engines will set up one for you based on your blog’s content.

To create your own search description, just go to Settings | Search Preferences and click Edit next to "Description" to reveal a text field. Select Yes, write in your text, and click Save changes.

Enabling this feature will display a “Search Description” option in the Post Settings panel that allows you to enter a search description for individual posts. 

Custom robots.txt

Warning! Use with caution. Incorrect use of this feature can result in your blog being ignored by search engines.

Custom robots.txt is a way for you to instruct the search engine that you don’t want it to crawl certain pages of your blog. “Crawl” means that crawlers, like Googlebot, go through your content, and index it so that other people can find it when they search for it. For example, let’s say there are parts of your blog that have information you would rather not promote, either for personal reasons or because it doesn't represent the general idea of your blog.

To exclude certain content from being searched, go to Settings | Search Preferences and click Edit next to "Custom robots.txt."

Custom Redirects

Blogs change over time, posts and pages are added and deleted. However, it can be hard to keep track of all the links that point to URLs that no longer exist, especially if there are a lot of links to your blog from other blogs and websites. The Custom Redirects feature allows you to take an old URL, and point it to a new one.

With Custom Redirects, you can enter the old URL that used to lead to the post, and redirect it to another URL perhaps the address of a recent post.

To enter a Custom Redirect, go to Settings | Search Preferences and click Edit next to "Custom Redirects." Enter the old URL in the "Source" field, and the new URL in the "Destination" field. Click Save changes. To add more redirects, select New redirect.

Custom Page Not Found

Bloggers often create customized 404 pages to provide a bit of comic relief to their readers, and prevent them from experiencing generic, unfriendly error messages.

If you have a broken link on your blog, or, a reader navigates to a page that’s temporarily down, having a customized 404 page provides your readers with a better user experience. Customized 404 pages are also a great opportunity to provide some help to your users by linking them back to your blog, or give a few pointers on navigation.

You can find the option to create a customized 404 page by going to Settings | Search Preferences. To enter your custom message, click Edit to open the text box. Type the copy you’d like to appear on the page, and then click Save changes. 

Header tags

Good headings express the general idea of the content below them, and search engines use headings to get an idea of what your post is about. In Blogger, you can now designate text as "header" text..

There are a few header tags you can add to your text, and all they do is define the hierarchy of the headers and accordingly change the font size. For example, here is a list of headers (in order of largest to smallest).

To designate text as a header, just highlight the text in the Post Editor, and click on either “Heading” (<h2>), “Subheading” (<h3>), or “Minor heading” (<h4>) in the toolbar.

Custom robots header tags

Warning! Use with caution. Incorrect use of this feature can result in your blog being ignored by search engines.

Custom robots header tags allow you to tell web crawlers not to index certain sections of your site. It’s similar to customrobots.txt, but not as rough. 

To enable these tags, go to Settings | Search Preferences, click Edit next to "Custom robots header tags," and select Yes.

The three sections you’ll see below correspond to:

· Your blog’s home page

· Your archive and search pages

· Your posts and pages

Check the boxes to set the flags according to your preferences, and then view the sections of your blog that you customized.

Custom permalinks

When you write a post, Blogger automatically generates a permalink (a URL that links to a blog post) for your post from its title. If you prefer to use a custom permalink, you can do so via the “Permalink” option in the Post Settings box.

Although you’ll still have the option to generate the URLs for posts automatically, the customized option gives you the flexibility to choose a URL that is different from your title. For example, you may want to choose an SEO-friendly URL if you have a more obscure title.

Once you click Permalink, you’ll see that the option for automatic posting is selected as default. To create your own URL for this specific post, simply select Custom, and type in your new URL.

If you choose Automatic Blogger will generate the URL from the title of your post.

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