I spent all day today changing the template of by old food blog on Blogger. After I moved to my self hosted blog, Cooked From the Heart, I kind of let the old blog go but it was still getting a lot of traffic from google search and blogger; No sense letting good traffic go to waste, so I decided to keep it open for two things: (1) to draw people to the new food blog and (2) to make money from sponsored reviews.

This is the old shabby look:

You gotta admit, it was unappetizing, right?

I hadn’t really planned on updating the template today, but while doing some Stumbling this morning, I ran across this cool template that looked very different from other blogger templates I’ve seen. It has the clean lines of a Wordpress template, because it was, that was converted to Blogger by eBlogsTemplate. The template is called Ads Theme Template for Blogger and after some slight modifications, this is the new look of my blog:

What a difference, yes? The Ads Theme Template is configured to work with the new Blogger so it is widgetized and comes pre-loaded with ads. The instructions on how to install is pretty straightforward, just take the time to read through it carefully. For instance, I had a number of widgets installed on the old template but if I had done a straight install of the new template, it would have wiped out all the old widgets and the codes that were in them for ads, blogrolls, blog rings and the like. There is a separate set of instructions on how to save your widgets so they are still accessible on the new template. Make sure you read through that part if you don’t want to lose your widgets.

Customize the Ads. I mentioned that elements for the Ads are pre-installed and they are hard coded (not in the widgets) in the HTML template so don’t forget to replace the ad codes to yours so that you get the revenue not someone else. The 125×125 ad blocks are affiliate links to revenue generating sites but you don’t have to leave them there if you are not affiliated with those sites. If you are though, again, make sure you change the referral code to yours.

Format the Post Date. I was so busy looking at the aesthetics that I didn’t even notice the little details like post date until I started reading through the comments section. You have to manually change the setting to the date format you prefer as the default seems to publish only the time.

Customize the Look. This template, along with Blogger has made it really easy to get the look you want. You can change the background color, font and font color, including a custom header image from the Blogger Layout settings. Of course, if you know your way around a Blogger template and CSS, you can do a whole lot more. I don’t really know a lot about CSS, and I still managed to change the look and feel of the template. One tip I saw on the comments is that the gray sidebar background is an image and so cannot be changed easily. You’d have to change the color of the image and resave it in order to change it. For the header, just make sure your photo is 920 pixels x 100 pixels and it should fit in the header section perfectly. Just upload it using the blog header widget to upload your image.

So far, those are the only modifications I’ve made. I’ll be tinkering with it a few more times, I think. One problem that I’m having now is that when I view the blog on Firefox, there is about a 100 pixel space between the header image and title and the rest of the blog. This white space isn’t there when viewed on IE though so it’s a puzzle I’m still trying to figure out. I think it has something to do with the header image I added because the problem wasn’t there before that.

Overall though, I’m very happy with the template. eBlogTemplates.com also has Wordpress themes and they are all quite nice so don’t be surprised if you see this template change too. I’m kind of getting bored of this plain one. Aren’t you?

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