Messing With My Blog Template

Disclaimer! This is not meant to be a Blogspot modification technical guide. Mess with your blog template at your own risk and don't complain to me if you screw up your template! As I will repeatedly say, BEFORE YOU MESS UP, BACK UP!

This post is for the benefit of Monty and Annie who asked me how what I did with my template. Firstly, I've categorized Blogger or Blogspot to three versions:

1. Blogger Classic: I think most of us use this. There were many hangups with the blog the past few weeks. This was the driving catalyst that made me change to Blogger Beta. For me, Blogger Classic was actually the most flexible template to mess with and screw up
2. Blogger Beta: With my blog, most of the changes such as links will transferred over quite smoothly. What I lost were the fancy third party stuff such as cboxes. You will have to reinstate them once you upgrade. Therefore, ALWAYS BACKUP your previous template of if you want to mess with it. I've realized that Blogger Beta resides on a different server because when most of the blogs were down, only Ian's was still up. And he confirmed he was using Beta Blogger.
3. Blogger Beta(upgraded): The greatest appeal to me in crossing over was the facility to add Labels to your blog entries. However, I realize you still need to upgrade you Blogger Beta one more time. This is the cool part. Your entire setting interface changes. Now you can move and manipulate all your blog elements visually in a Layout mode, and in your Posts screen, you can add labels. The new template is in XML and this is probably Greek to most of you but there are plenty of good bloghack guides out there.

Generally, when you are looking for Blog hacks, make sure you find the blog hack for the correct version of your blogger. A blog hack for Blogger Classic WILL NOT work for Blogger Beta with the Layout mode. Here's some additional info for you about the new template:

• My blog uses the Minima Black template.
  
• I have made some changes under 'Edit HTML' in the Template mode to add the left sidebar. In here, I've also changed the width of the three columns to make the spacing look more balanced. Your Layout will be a bit funny after you do this because the right sidebar MAY be pushed out of the screen so you can't click the Edit on the Page Elements but HAVE NO FEAR. You can drag the Page Elements to another viewable section of the Layout where you can click the Edit. After you edit, just drag it back.

The funny layout (note the right sidebar)
Click picture to enlarge it

• In the new Layout mode, I rearranged the various Page Elements in my blog so that the cbox and links are on the right, and the profile, categories and archives are on the right.
  
• The Recent Comments and Latest Posts were added using Feeds in the Layout mode and you need to know the URL(web address) to add this. The limitations to this feature is that it is not updated real time and there is only a maximum of 5 entries.

So there you have it, a very brief and "layman's" overview on how I messed with the template. If you decide to do it, I repeat, find out all the necessary details and BEFORE YOU MESS UP, BACK UP.