Friday, July 9, 2010

How To A Choose Blogger Template

Your world maybe turning upside-down for having hundreds of Blogger Templates to choose from. You know you need to choose the right template that will reflect your theme, your attitude and personality.

To make it easier for you to choose, you need to ask the right questions to yourself to arrive in a smaller number of options for a template.  But before that, let us review first what a template is and what a theme is.

Template vs. Theme

Template is the frame of your blog. It is what is seen literally on the screen of your visitors. It can be two-column, single-column, three-column, and even four-column template. The template may also posses two-footer column, three-footer column, or just a single footer column.
 

On the other hand, theme is the main topic of your blog. It can be about blogging, copywriting, making aquariums, book reviews, movie reviews, etc. There are literally hundreds perhaps thousands of themes that you can choose.

One of the best ways to choose a good template is to accompany it with your theme.

Right Questions for Choosing The Right Template

1.    What do you prefer, minimalist template or theme-based template? There are people who love minimalist templates. “Simplicity is beauty” as what they say. Even Seth Godin, the famous author of “What Would Seth Godin Do” plugin for Wordpress and other books about blogging, have a minimalist template. So as Ken Evoy of Site Build It.

Some people prefer to work on them-based templates. There are many beautiful-theme based templates out there. Some are overly fancy, but some have a natural look but still containing the theme. If you choose this, be sure that you will also try your best to customize it or else you will false to the generic themes.

The downside of ready to install theme-based templates is that it is more difficult to customize than the minimalist templates.

2.    How many columns do you want? As we have mentioned earlier, you can literally choose from single column template up to four-column template. It all depends to your preferences.

Just note that the more columns you want, the more difficult it is to customize. But of course, there is nothing wrong with patience.

3.    What font sizes and font types do you prefer? For Blogger, the most common are Verdana, Times New Roman, Segoe UI, Courier New, and Arial. Pick your choice.

One of the things that I highlighted as characteristics of a good blogger template is a good font size. It has to be readable. It has to be recognizable where your readers can see what the headline is and what the body is.

One of the most beautiful blogs that I have seen who has exemplified a good combination of fonts with matching right sizes is Bloggussion. I myself was captivated by the beauty of its blog.

4.    What color scheme would match your theme?
This one will have to come with your theme. A good color combination will highlight your theme. If your blog is all about fishing, then aqua blue, or blue, or light blue will be the best set of colors. If your blog is about flowers, then a good set of colors is a colorful flower colors.

If your blog is all about green environment, then the best choice will be set of green colors. 

Colors will make your blog attractive. So try to have a little research for a good choice.

My Own Opinions


For the question number one, I would prefer to have a minimalist template and then try to modify it. I will have more opportunity to modify it the way I want it than having a ready to install theme-based template.

For the number of columns, I prefer to have three columns. For me, 4 columns is just too much and too complicated to modify. Most nice blogs that I’ve seen only have 3 columns. I seldom see 4. However, most blogs owned by probloggers only have 2 columns. Choose this if Adsense is not a big part of your monetization.

I prefer to go for Verdana or Sergoe UI having 13 as font size. For me, 12 font-size for a blog is too small. But it is still up to you. Sometimes it is just fine for most readers.

Finally, color doesn’t really matter that much as long as you keep it uniform with the theme.  My favorite colors were red and blue. So I used blue color scheme on one of my blog while I choose the red-color scheme for this blog.

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