On Thursday this week (March 11), Google launched the new Blogger Template Designer, an easier way to customize the feel and look of your Blogger blog. This new feature of Blogger should be very welcome amongst all those who want to put some personality in their blog design - in a simple and non technically demanding way.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The application is easy to use once you get familiar with it and the results are surprisingly good. You have 15 new, customizable templates and each template has one, two and three column layouts - with control over the size and arrangement of the columns. And there is also hundreds of background images and patterns for you to choose from. The user interface of the Template Designer is clear and simple and if you already use Blogger, you shouldn’t have any problem whatsoever to handle the application.

It is easy to try this new feature if you are interested. First you log in to your Google account and then go to draft.blogger.com/. Then click on your blog’s “Layout” link to go to the Layout tab. The link to the Template Designer is at the very end of the row of sub-tabs (marked as “Template Designer”).

• The Blogger Template Designer - Blogpost
• Blogger Template Designer - Dashboard (Log in to Google first)

If you want a truly radical change of your blogs appearance, the absolute easiest way is to change your Blogger template. Here you can find some additional easy-to-follow info about that: How To Change Blogger Template.

Cashrevelations.com has selected out 5 simple Blogger tips we think you can use on your own blog even if you are an absolute beginner - Blogger tips that are easy to implement and make significant difference to your blogs functionality and appearance.

5 Easy Blogger Tips

1. LinkWithin - Related Posts With Thumbnails
LinkWithin is a blog widget that appears under each post, linking to related stories from your blog archive. The widget links to stories that are relevant and interesting to readers of a particular post, keeping them engaged with your blog, and increasing your traffic. The widget is free and ad-free - no signup required.
View Demo

2. Disqus Comments
Disqus Comments is a comment system and moderation tool for your site. This service lets you add next-gen community management and social web integrations to any site on any platform. Built-in compatibility with Disqus Profile means that you can encourage verified commenter profiles.

3. Feedburner
Cashrevelations.com uses Feedburner for feed statistics, adding feed flare enhancements to our feed and monitoring users subscriptions. It is an easy way to add a more “tasty” look for your feed and also more subscription alternatives to your readers. Blogger lets you specify your Feedburner info in the ‘Site Feed’ tab inside your dashboard.

4. Lijit Search Tool
Lijit provides a search tool that will not only search your blog, but also search the blogs of your choice, and related sites (like YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, del.icio.us, etc.) that you choose and you and your friends use regularly. You can see the tool in action HERE.

5. Social Bookmarking Widget
AddThis helps your users share your content everywhere. If you by some reason don’t like the design of the AddThis button, then Lavsak.com and Sociofluid.com offer copy and paste social bookmarking widgets of different styles. The Lavsak.com widget is not at all the same advanced as the AddThis widget but it is anyway an alternative.

If you search on Google you will find a lot of (more or less) simple and useful Blogger tips. But remember, too much widgets will dramatically slow down your blog and make it less attractive. Again, try out what’s working for your blog and think practically: do the last widget you added really fill any function? If not, remove it quickly. If you don’t see any reasons, no one else will either.

Choose out functions for your blog with moderation, and have the principles of simplicity and functionality in mind. And have a reason or goal with every single widget you add.

BloggerHelp: Need help getting started with Blogger? Check out this quick tutorial! Please help The Blogger Team improve their videos by filling out this short survey: Blogger Help Video Satisfaction Survey.

The BloggerHelp’s Channel on YouTube also has a couple of easy-to-follow tutorial videos covering the very basic on how to manage your Blogger account. The videos are made for absolute beginners of Blogger blogging platform, and they describe in a very easy and straight forward way different managing tasks in Blogger.

• BloggerHelp’s Channel

The script uses images uploaded for each individual post. If you don’t have an image in your blog post, a generic “No-Image” will be displayed instead. Note; the script only displays images embedded in the post.

The script is easy to install, if you follow the instructions and have some basic Blogger experience. You decide how many related posts should be displayed (up to 6) and the title above the related posts. The style can be customized by editing the CSS.

Demo & Download:

• Related Post Demo
• Related Post Script

People use Blogger in different ways and for various purposes. Many of the bloggers on Blogger don’t get the attention they deserve although they have very appealing blogs (see some examples below) with great and interesting content.

• Sarah’s Covenant Homes
• The Seeker
• Dolce far niente
• The V Factor
• 18thC Cuisine

Changing the look of your blog does not guarantee automatic success, but it does give you some advantage to build upon. And if changing the look of the blog is free and easy, why not giving it a try?

In this article we will change the appearance of your Blogger blog by using an extern template (not provided by Blogger). If you are a driven blogger, there’s no reason for you to continue to read - you could find something else to read on Cashrevelations.com. But if you just have begun to use Blogger, then this article could be for you.

Preparations

Remember to backup a copy of your current Blogger template. If something goes wrong or if the new template isn’t that great after all, it is possible you might like to change back to your current template.

How To Backup Your Template

1. Login to Blogger
2. After entering the Dashboard page - click Layout.
3. Then click edit HTML tab.
4. Click the Download Full Template link.
5. Choose where to save and name the file - click the Save button.
6. Finished - you have now a backup of your template

You could create a folder on your computer called “Blog Templates - Back-Up” and “Blog Widgets - Back-Up” or something similar. The important is to have some kind of system - templates and backups have a habit to be mysteriously absent when you really are in need of them. Do the same with all files which belong to your blog.

Bare in mind that once you upload a new template, all your widgets configurations can be lost. You can use Notepad and save your widgets configurations by the “copy and past” method. A tip is to take a screenshot of your widget configuration in the Layout section of your Dashboard - it will not save your configuration but at least it will help you to remember what widgets you use before you change the template.

Read More:
How to Back up Your Blogger Widgets
How To Download Or Backup Blogger Blogspot Posts And Comments

Find A New Blogger Template

If you search for “free blogger template” in Google you will get more results than you ever will have strength to go through. You have to ask yourself seriously what your practical and aesthetic needs are - and then choose from that.

A good idea is to keep it as clean as possible - cluttered templates with many widgets take time to load and can be extremely annoying and confusing.

Some Blogger Templates You Can Use For Free

1. Butterfly by Blogger Tricks
Butterfly is originally a Wordpress theme designed by Templates4all.com converted into Blogger format. The template comes with two sidebars in the left and the main column in the right side. The highlight of the template is the mind blowing vector header.

2. Pepper by Web2Feel
Pepper is a 3 column Blogger Template. The template was orginally a Wordpress theme designed by Jinsona of web2feel.com and then converted into Blogger format. The template has built-in spots for 125×125 ads. Suitable for personal and affiliate blogging.

3. Portfolio Press by Blog Oh! Blog
2 Columns and fixed width template. Designed for Wordpress by Blog Oh Blog and adapted for Blogger by Anshul Dudeja. A dark and clean Blogger template suitable for photography and personal pages. Could also be used for product portfolios.

4. Just News by Dhampire
2 Columns Blogger template with fixed width. Originally designed for Wordpress by New WordPress Themes and adapted for Blogger by Dhampire. The template has built-in spots for 125×125 and 468×60 ads and is suitable for affiliate marketers.

5. Whiteness by Quite Random
A minimalist and white 2 columns Blogger template with fixed width. The template is good looking and loads very fast - which is important if you want your visitors return on a regular basis. Developed by Fernando Coello on Quite Random.

Of course you can search for some other templates if you don’t like those above, there is a huge selection of both free and premium templates out on Internet. Just type in “free blogger template” in Google and you will have a lot to choose from.

Remember to extract (unzip) the archive with the Blogger template you just downloaded.

Read More:
Blogger Templates - Free Blogger Templates for your Blog
Free Blogger Templates - An extensive gallery of the best blog themes

Upload A New Template

Now when you have chosen a template you would like to use it’s time to upload the template to Blogger. It is not at all a complicated procedure and everybody with some basic Internet knowledge can do it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Watch the tutorial video above and follow the instructions or read below (or do both). You can also watch the video on the Original YouTube Video Page.

How To Upload A New Template

1. Download and unzip the template file.
2. Login to your Blogger Dashboard.
3. Go to Layout, click Edit HTML.
4. Browse for the XML template file that you have just downloaded.
5. Click on the Upload button.
6. Confirm and save template

If you now view your blog you should see that the appearance has changed. Now you can add some widgets - but remember, do not add too much of them. A cluttered and slow blog is a sure way to scare off visitors.

If you really want a unique look on your blog then customizing the template is the option for you - small changes can make a surprisingly big difference. Amanda Fazani at Blogger Buster has a serial of articles on how to customize your Blogger Template. The tutorials explain in a fairly simple way how to do the customizations - you find the link below.

Read More:
A cheats’ guide to customising Blogger templates
How to Upload a Blogger Template on your Blogger Blog?