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Saturday, January 8, 2011

Adding a Third Party Blogger Template

I'm literally running out of things to write tutorials on. If you have something unique to ask and you think it will be a great tutorial material, please feed me your ideas by posting your questions here. Now back to this post. This time it's for beginners.


Third party templates are templates that don't come 'built-in' in Blogger's layout. It's created by some third party. And most of the time, it'll be hard to tweak/modify these templates. BUT, most third party templates clearly beat Blogger's 'built-in' templates when it comes to cosmetics. And it's not all difficult to add one to your site.

Step 1:

Find a third party template. This might be the most 'difficult' step as there are hundreds (if not thousands) of templates to choose from. Just Google 'Free Blogger Template' or something to that effect and Google will throw hundreds of relevant results to your face. Here are some sites that I normally use to grab a third party template:


I'm going to use a random template from 'Blogger Templates' for the sake of this tutorial.

Step 2:

Click on your selected template, and usually you'll have the options to Download your template and to view a live Demo of your template. Go ahead and download the template to your computer.


This downloaded file can be of two types: a ZIP file (something.zip) or an XML file (something.xml). If you have an XML file, skip the next step. If you have a ZIP file, see the next step.

Step 3:

If you have downloaded a ZIP file, you have to extract the right file out of it first. Open the zip file by double clicking on it, then find for a file that ends with .xml - See the picture below.


Place this file on your desktop or something, it doesn't really matter.

Step 4:

Now that you have your XML file, it's time to upload it to your Blog.

If you're using the new Blogger interface: Go to Dashboard - Design - Edit HTML - Browse (or Choose File) - Select the XML file from your computer - Open - Upload.

If you're using the new Blogger interface: Go to Dashboard - Template - Backup/Restore - Browse (or Choose File) - Select the XML file from your computer - Open - Upload.


And that will be all. You have a brand new template for your Blog. Enjoy.

8 comments:

  1. The sad fact you cant change backgrounds of such third party themes
    http://muscleoptimum.blogspot.in

    ReplyDelete
  2. The tutorial is well explained and would help any newbie. I am no newbie but I enjoyed reading the tutor.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad you find it that way Emmanuel, appreciate it :)

      Delete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello Folu,

      What is your blog's URL, and the URL of the image that you'd like to use as your background?

      Delete
  4. IN THIS BLOG , THERE IS A POTENTIAL FOR NEW BYES THEY CAN LEARN LOT FROM THIS BLOG...
    THANKS FR SHARING YOUR KNOWLEDGE WITH US

    ReplyDelete

Please use the 'Ask a Question' page to shoot questions that are not related to the tutorial in the post above.