As we all know there are numerous Second Life Residents who have a blog relating in some way to their SL experience, so if you are considering starting your own blog the first thing you'll need is a template that makes your blog stand out.
The kind of template or theme you choose for your blog will largely depend on the subject. For instance, if the blog is going to be mostly picture orientated then perhaps a theme aimed at photographers may be approproate. On the other hand, if your blog is going to have more of a magazine feel, then there are plenty of magazine or newspaper templates available.
You may already have noticed that Blogger has a series of themes for you to start off with, but in my opinion it is much better to upload one from a website that specialises in designing Blogger themes - a quick Google search will bring up many places you can download templates from. These templates tend to look a lot more professional than the generic Blogger themes, and they are often designed for use on mobile devices so your blog can also be viewed on the go.
Once you find a template you like you'll need to download it onto your hard drive and unzip it. If you don't have software that can compress/uncompress files try 7-Zip , its free.
Once you find a template you like you'll need to download it onto your hard drive and unzip it. If you don't have software that can compress/uncompress files try 7-Zip , its free.
Uploading A Template
Once you have decided on a title for your blog and have covered all the preliminary steps in Blogger it is time to upload your selected template.
1/ Sign into your Blogger Dashboard then to the right of the blog name click on the down arrow (see area highlighted in red above), then from the drop down menu select Template.
2/ In the top right of the new page that opened there is a Backup / Restore button. Click on this.
3/ A small window will now open. Click on the browse button and navigate to the Blogger template on your hardrive and open it.
4/ The Backup / Restore window will now look similar to the above with the name of the template to the right of the Browse button. Click on Upload.
Thats all there is to it - as soon as Blogger has finished uploading the template it will be live on your blog, and if you haven't done so already you'll be ready to start adding posts.
Quick Tip On Changing Templates
Once you see a template on your blog you may decide its not quite what you're looking for and you may decide to upload quite a few before you find the template thats right for your blog. If you do upload a number of templates it is much better to go back to a default blogger theme and delete as many widgets as possible inbetween uploads.
The reason for this is that you will accrue far too many widgets on your blog and you will lose track of which widget belongs to which template. Also, uploading one template after another can sometimes affect how they look on your blog.
