When I logged into Blogger recently I noticed a link which took me on a tour of new Blogger (known as Blogger beta). Although I had migrated my Blogger account to new one (with Google account), I didnt check out all the features. It opened a page like this,

It showed me the new features of Blogger template customization, with new page elements and font and color options. Dragging and dropping page elements is also possible with new layout. It also had an updated dashboard, more feeds option and also a customized permissions option. All features were available to me as I moved to new Blogger except the template customization. I was just wondering why those links (”Add page elements” and “Font and Colors” in the template menu) were not available for me. Then I happened to read this blog where its mentioned that the template customization features will be available only if the template is upgraded to new one from the classic one. So I decided to upgrade my template and it showed me a warning that all changes to template will be lost. I made a backup of my existing template and moved to the new template. The major change in the new template was all the controls are added as widgets which is done through the “Add Page Elements” link. Unlike the classic template, where all the data are shown in HTML, the new template will show it as a widget. We can add different types of elements like pictures, third party controls, text, link list, logos, feeds, labels, Adsense etc. Since my blog had lot of alteration to the template, so currently I modified only the style. Since its time consuming for me to make all the controls as widgets, I decided to keep my existing classic template for a while and hence switched back to it. But still thinking whether Blogger will make upgrading of templates mandatory once we have switched to new Blogger….

Technorati tags: Blogger, Blogger Templates

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