Step 2: Choosing a template

So you've chosen a theme, a name, and created your blog. Your blog is still a blank screen. Nothing's been set up yet. Time to get to work with the very very very basics. Very. There are so many things to do to set up a pretty, professional-looking or cutesy-looking blog. But today we'll only address the bare basics.

First, familiarize yourself with your dashboard. This is what you'll see when you go to blogger.com and are signed in.

Have you noticed? The BLANK PAGE got quite a few views yesterday. That was really you, the readers, clicking on the link I wrote in the previous entry. There's nothing on the site yet. This is what the blog looks like right now.

Frankly, I'm not even sure what this is supposed to be. I think it's probably in "Dynamic Views", which is one template I have not tinkered with yet so I have no idea what that is all about. But you'll notice it says "No Posts Found".

Time to go back to our dashboard and choose a template. It took me a while to figure out the differences between the templates; it took creating three blogs to decide on a favorite.

Let's do a test post first, so we can see what the different templates look like with actual posts.

On the left of the dashboard on top there is an orange button "NEW POST." Click on it and type up a dummy post.

Now hit Publish.

Click on the left of the dashboard, on 'templates'.

Apparently this template is in dynamic views. I dont know anything about dynamic views and like the regular blog look so I'll stick with that. Let's try a "Simple" template first. Choose whichever you like and hover over it and click on 'apply to blog'.

This is how your blog would look with a "Simple" template. You will have a Header, and the rest of the blog will be one large box.

Go back to your dashboard and now let's try a Picture Window Template.

You can click on the little magnifying glass icon when you hover over any template to see it as a sample before you commit to it.

This is the Picture Window template in the preview.

With the picture window, the center of the blog is transparent/opaque and you can see the background picture through the blog content. It can be pretty, but also distracting if it's a busy picture.

Let's try an 'awesome inc' sample.

Personally this is my favorite type of template. I like that there are neat, concise boxes, which is especially important if you have a crowded blog with lots of gadgets. My autism-parenting blog was first a 'simple' blog but I was going nuts from all the overcrowding. When I tried using the awesome template for the recipe blog I was astounded at how neat and polished this template looks. I like this best and am using it for this blog as well and will use it for the Sample Blog too.

Let's check out a 'Watermark' Template:

I don't really know what sets this apart from the other templates; maybe there are only boxes around the posts and not around the gadgets. Not sure.

The "Ethereal" template seems to be made of soft, soothing colors. I like it, but it's not the right fit for any of my blogs. It might be for you, though.

And lastly is the Travel Template. Again, not sure what its features are exactly but here is the screenshot for the blog's sake.

You can tinker around for as long as you'd like with the different templates until you decide what suits you best. Maybe at one point I'll explore 'dynamic views' as it's supposed to be different and cutting edge, but for now I'm satisfied with my 'awesome' templates.

You can, of course, also upload ready templates from sites like www.probtheme.com. You can spend as much time as you want browsing through templates both on blogger and off site until you decide what you'd like. Remember, you can always change your template at any time, so if you're unhappy with your initial decision you can still fix it. I also inititally downloaded something from probtheme but didn't like how it looked and that it wasn't as customizable as blogger's own templates.

If you've already established a blog and customized a blogger template, don't upload a custom template before backing up your current template!!! Learn from my near-mistake. I almost didnt back up my original template and ended up disliking the probtheme template. Boy was I glad I had backed it up after all.

Your homework assignment until my next post is to look through the templates and decide which one you'd like, then choose one.

Next entry we'll start customizing the template. This will take up the bulk of the articles on this blog. The possibilities are ENDLESS. Endless, I tell you.