New Blogger Template Releases For May 29th 2011

I monitor some of the best template designers around to keep on eye on the latest creations being released.

There are hundreds of new themes being pumped out every month, this will showcase only some of the best.

If you're on the market for a new Blogger template that's completely free and looks amazing check back for these posts or subscribe to our feed.

Posts labeled 'Blogger Templates'

Top 25 Most Stunning Blogger Templates of 2010

New Releases May 29 2011

Liven

Web Portal

Project Mania

Tech Net Blog

If you like these type of posts and want more themes check out our sister site at TemplateStalker.com There you can find the latest and greatest FREE WordPress & Blogger themes as they become available.

Get Full Updates Subscribe to our RSS Feed with full posts via Feedburner

How To Edit Your Blogger Link Structure For New Posts Easily

A very good way to increase the SEO of your blog is to ensure your links contain the necessary keywords for your particular post.

Using Blogger that's not always easy, considering they like to cut off your title and make only the first couple words included in your link structure.

In this short video I explain how to do so. It's actually an extremely easy concept. All you do to publish your post with a short title because that will be your link, then quickly edit your post and add your normal title.

Free Blogger Theme: Puzzled (simple, clean, 2 column)

Puzzled Blogger Template - By Blogger Template Place.
Just released 10/18/2010. This 2 column template looks very clean and simple and features some nice vertical nav up top. Check it out if you're in the market for a simple blogger theme.

Blogger Template Place

More Free Blogger Templates

If you like these type of posts and want more themes check out our sister site at TemplateStalker.com There you can find the latest and greatest FREE WordPress & Blogger themes as they become available.

Get Full Updates Subscribe to our RSS Feed with full posts via Feedburner

How to Make Your Jump Link Stand Out in Blogger

Here's another quick little tweak to help make your Jump-link stand out a bit more while adding a bit of style. I recently decided mine needed to be more visable so I sat down to figure out how to do so. This is what I came up with and I wanted to share it with you because that's what this site is about!

What is a Jump-Link?
A jump-link is where you can break off your posts on your main page and continue reading it on the actual post's page. It's crucial to use them in order to keep the main blog page clean and fast loading.

Top 25 Most Stunning Blogger Templates of 2010

If you're like 90% of Bloggers out there you are most likely looking for some incredible free templates. I have made a list of some of the most visually striking templates for Blogger that I could find. Some are minimal templates as well, in fact I consider those to be just as excellent as the ones with the flashy graphics. There are many templates out there that are well designed but look just like the rest. Therefore a lot of these I have added because they are a bit unique and standout. Best of all, these templates are 100% free. So if you don't have the cash to spend on premium blogger templates this is a great chance to get a professional looking theme for you blog. Many our Adsense ready and riddled with many features such as built in blog search and mutliple columns.

How to Add Custom Social Media Buttons to Blogger Posts Easily

Social media is a wonderful way to promote your blog, and adding the option to share your blog posts is important.

If a visitor thinks your post is interesting they will want to share it fast and easily.

You don't want to miss the opportunity of your post being spread throughout the internet on some of the world's most popular sites.

You may also want to get a bit stylish while doing so, this guide will show you how to add whatever share buttons you want to the bottom of your posts.

This tutorial works well so take your time and go through the steps one by one and I'm also here to help so comment below if you have any questions.

If you're leary about doing DIY template tweaks make a dummy blog to test it out first before you add them to your main blog. And always make a backup of your template's file before attempting any editing.

The Monday Blogger's Insight: Search Privacy Issues, Blogspot Banner Ads, Niche Nitwits, and Tumblr 9.20.2010

Link Medic's link roundup yehaawww! Each week I will be collecting all the posts I have found interesting and relevant to blogging improvement from the ever changing blogosphere. If you have some great content you think should be here send me an email. Here are this week's picks.

How To Disable Google’s Personalization Of Search Results

	makeuseof.com - Has a nice article on different ways to remove your personalised Google search results. If you're like you want to see what everyone else sees when they're searching for your site. This informative article will show you a myriad of ways to accomplish this.

Creating a Blog In a Niche You Know Nothing About

	problogger.com - The all familiar problogger.com delivers an article I found very interesting. It talks about a guy who started a financial blog who was in debt when he launched his blog. This oughta be a good inspiration for any blogger.

Should I Move my Blog to Tumblr? Apparently not.

	techcrunch.com - I couldn't imagine Tumblr being any better than WordPress, see why it's not.

How To Add 125×125 Ad Cluster To Your Blogger Blog In 30 Seconds.

	sourceblogger.com - I think a lot of people choose WP over Blogger because of the lack of advertising options. This post shows how to counteract that problem, Bloggers rejoice!

That's it for this week.
If you have a great article you think should go into the next roundup feel free to contact me.

How to change your font in Blogger without any CSS knowledge

If you have Blogger you may be wondering how can I change my font to something other then the few they offer me? I like Veranda just as much as the next guy but you might be looking for something a bit more spiffy. Luckily it's pretty simple to change your font, the hard part is more than likely finding what font you want to use.

How can I change my font for Blogger?
It's as easy as copy and pasting some CSS into the template designer. That way you can preview it and see if it works and if you like it and make any size changes if needed. Since it's a CSS override your exsisting CSS styling stays in place if you decide to remove this new code. So have no fear and do some experimenting.

Let's get started

Step #1 Goto your Blogger Dashboard (Link opens in new tab)

Step #2 Click on Design

Step #3 Click on Template Designer

Step #4 Click on Advanced > Add CSS

We're going to change your font to Lucida Console here as it's a rather browser friendly font.

Now once you're here add this code:

table, tr, td, li, div {font-family:"lucida console"; color:000000; font-size:15px;} .btext {font-family:"lucida console"; color:000000; font-size:15px;} .blacktext10 {font-family:"lucida console"; color:000000; font-size:15px;} .blacktext12 {font-family:"lucida console"; color:000000; font-size:15px;} .lightbluetext8 {font-family:"lucida console"; color:000000; font-size:15px;} .orangetext15 {font-family:"lucida console"; color:000000; font-size:15px;} .redtext {font-family:"lucida console"; color:000000; font-size:15px;} .redbtext {font-family:"lucida console"; color:000000; font-size:15px;} .text {font-family:"lucida console"; color:000000; font-size:15px;} .whitetext12 {font-family:"lucida console"; color:000000; font-size:15px;} a.navbar:active, a.navbar:visited, a.navbar:link {font-family:"lucida console"; color:000000; font-size:15px;} a.navbar:hover {font-family:"lucida console"; color:000000; font-size:15px;} a.redlink:active, a.redlink:visited, a.redlink:link {font-family:"lucida console"; color:000000; font-size:15px;} a.redlink:hover {font-family:"lucida console"; color:000000; font-size:15px;} .nametext {font-family:"lucida console"; color:000000; font-size:15px;} .title {font-family:"lucida console"; color:000000; font-size:15px;}

This code is to add Lucida Console as an example it looks like this.

How do I customise it?

To change it to whatever font you want simply replace all text that says Lucida Console with your font's name.
Since this is a CSS override your current template might make it look a bit screwy so to change the size just experiment until it looks right. It's defualt set to 15px you might have to make it larger or smaller to make it look right just add a higher or lower number than 15.

To do more CSS font size styling here are some more properties you can use.

Font Size

font-size: value;

• xx-large
• x-large
• larger
• large
• medium
• small
• smaller
• x-small
• xx-small
• length

What are some other cool "browser safe fonts" I can use?

Monospace
Century Gothic
Footlight mt light
Technic
Cursive

More Blogger Tricks and Tweaks

Top 15 Most Useful Tricks Everyone New to Blogger Should Know

If you're new to Blogger more than likely you're looking for those little tips and tricks that will help you get the most out of the platform. Here's a list of a few easy things that you can do that don't take much time but will help improve your Blogger blog.

1. Make a test blog on the same account. This is a good way to try new things out or completely build a new template on your test account before implementing it on your main. You can easily hide it so all you see is your main blog as well.


2. Add your own Favicon to replace Blogger's default one. This will help with recognition of your blog, a favicon (favorites icon) will show up in the visitors bookmark/history next to your site and help it stand out.


3. If you create a post that is very long and or has a large amount of images a good thing to do is add a jump break. The visitor can read the first part of your post then click on "Continue Reading" to see the rest. This will tidy things up a bit and improve loading times.


4. Use a free HTML editor like Coffee Cup instead of using the compose or trying to edit the HTML in the small window. 

5. Download your template every time you change something. That way if you make a boo-boo you can always revert back to the saved file.

6. Do the title trick to optimize your Blogger blog for search engines.

7. There are a few universal text shortcuts that will help you out blogging. If you have to edit your template and replace or add code hit CTRL+F to quickly search for it. Sometimes its hard to select all the text/code in the box. To select all hit CTRL+A. To quickly save a post hit CTRL+S


8. Improve your site's design and layout by adding a navigation menu. Some visitors prefer searching by labels, others through the archive but most visitors will appreciate having a easy to read and understand navigation menu somewhere near the top of your blog. Especially those not used to a blog format.

9. Spend time and think of what your blog is about then go into your template and adjust it's meta tags and add the proper keywords. Remember, when it comes to keywords don't over do it. Just a couple relevant keywords on what your blog is about will suffice. Don't go crazy, adding unrelated keywords to try and fish for some visitors will do more harm than good in the long run.

10. Get serious! By purchasing a domain for your blog. Adding a custom domain to Blogger is incredibly simple. You can even buy it through Google and they will set everything up for you. By having your own domain, visitors will be more likely to take your blog more seriously now that you are.

11. Have an idea for a post? Go into your posts and just start writing. Even if you just have an idea for the topic, put it in the title and let it sit there. It will save it as a draft for you automatically. Then when you're feeling inspired come back and knock it out. I've left some for weeks until I found the right spark of inspiration.

12. If you start out your posts the same way each time, like for instance, having a big bold italicized title then use Post Templates. By setting up a Post Template you can pre-format all of your posts with whatever you like to save time. This can be found in Settings > Formatting

13. Get familiar with your picture album. When you made your Blogger account you now have a Picasa Album linked to it. You can use this to upload and manage pictures for your blog instead of using other free image sites or uploading through the compose window.

14. Promote commenting by allowing people without memberships to comment anonymously. This option can be found in Settings > Commenting

15. Instead of using the Follow gadget setup Feedburner for your site so readers can subscribe that way.


More Blogger Tips and Tweaks

Optimize your Blogger post titles for better PR in minutes with one code

There is a ton of competition on Google for page rank and just as many ideas on how to increase it. When it comes to finding a website when searching what do you look at first? The page's title and so does Google's spiders. The title of your post is one of the key ingredients to any successful high traffic page. I'm going to show you how to fix your titles in Blogger permanently with one section of code.

The average Blogger post in Google will look like this. Beards and Burgers Blog | Top Ten Ways to Shave your Beard. As you can see the name of the blog shows up first. A better way of doing it is having the post show up first, people will be more keen to click it because it will catch their attention faster and at a glance know what it's about. So let's change it so it will read, Top Ten Ways to Shave your Beard | Beards and Burgers Blog

Step #1 Goto your Blogger Dashboard (Link opens in new tab)

Step #2 Click on Design

Step #3 Download your template so you can revert back to it if there is a problem.

Step #4 Check the Expand Widget Templates, this ensures all the code will be there, wait a few moments for it to load. If your computer is slow give it some time. Then proceed.

Step #5 Click anywhere inside the HTML box and hit CTRL+F to find:

<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

Step #6 Highlight that code and replace it with:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;index&quot;'> <title><data:blog.title/></title> <b:else/> <title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title> </b:if>

Step #5 Save your template and test it out.

More Blogger Tricks and Tweaks

How to add a simple HTML navigation sidebar gadget to Blogger

Adding a simple HTML Navigation menu to your sidebar is one of the best ways to improve your overall Blogger site design. When visitors come to your site they need an easy to find navigation menu of some kind. Blogger by default uses Tabs, but this is only for listing your pages. What about your posts and other link you wish to add?

Here's how it will it will look:

Heres how to do it:

1. Goto your Blogger Dashboard (Link opens in new tab)

2. Click on Design

3. Click on Add Gadget where you want to place your side navigation menu (vertically)

4. Click the + for a new HTML/Javascript element

5. Copy this code

 <! -- Simple HTML Navigation Code -- >
<b>List of Site Links</b><br>
<a href="http://mysite.com/sample.html">My Pages</a><br>
<a href="http://mysite.com/sample.html">My Pages</a><br>
<a href="http://mysite.com/sample.html">My Pages</a><br>
<a href="http://mysite.com/sample.html">My Pages</a><br>
<a href="http://mysite.com/sample.html">My Pages</a><br>
<a href="http://mysite.com/sample.html">My Pages</a><br>

<b>Some More Links</b><br>
<a href="http://mysite.com/sample.html">My Pages</a><br>
<a href="http://mysite.com/sample.html">My Pages</a><br>
<a href="http://mysite.com/sample.html">My Pages</a><br>
<a href="http://mysite.com/sample.html">My Pages</a><br>
<a href="http://mysite.com/sample.html">My Pages</a><br>
<a href="http://mysite.com/sample.html">My Pages</a><br>

6. Paste the code here

7. Customise the code to your links and you're done!

Tips:
To add a link to a category to one of your labels it's

http://www.myblogspotblog.blogspot.com/search/label/nameoflabel

More Blogger Tricks and Tweaks

Add a Favicon to Blogger

Adding a Favicon to Blogger is EASY


Assuming you already have your Favicon and it's uploaded. Proceed

For a complete guide on Favicons - How to create, design, and upload your Favicon click here.

1.  Head on over to your Blogger Dashboard.

2. Click on Design > Edit HTML

3.  Download your template so you can revert back to it in case there is a problem.

4. Check the Expand Widget Templates, this ensures all the code will be there, wait a few moments for it to load. If your computer is slow give it some time. Then proceed.

5. Click anywhere inside the HTML box and hit CTRL+F to find:

<title><data:blog.title/></title>

6. Immediately after that put this code:

<link href='http://yoursite.com/yourfavicon.png' rel='shortcut icon' type='image/x-icon'/>

7. Save and test it out. It may take some time to update. 

Blogger releases two new helpful basic gadgets

 Try out Blogger's new gadgets

 Blogger continues to add value to their already successful blog platform. Following the release of Blogger's stats integration comes two new gadgets that will help improve your blog. You may not know they're there because they're only available on Blogger Draft at the moment. It doesn't mean you can't give them a whirl. Go have a look!