Setting up a blog can be fun and scary at the same time. It
can show you how indecisive you are and sometimes how little you know about a
subject (i.e. coding). This is something
that I ran into when I first had the idea to create my first blog. I had no idea
what I was doing, everyone out there was recommending a self-hosted WordPress
site, but I just didn’t want to spend the cash just yet.
Honestly, I was also a little intimidated by the way people
talked about self-hosted WordPress sites. It made them seem like so much work
and usually having to pay someone. But this was also years ago. Since then
templates have changed drastically and things have gotten easier.
But we’re not here to talk about WordPress, we’re here to
get you started and on your way to having a blog on Blogger.
So the first thing that you need to do is figure out what
you want to blog about. This is important because it can help determine how you
set up your blog and what it will look like.
You can use my blog post HERE to help you find your niche and figure out
what in the world to blog about.
Once you know what you want to blog about, you need a template.
Unless you are super good at coding and can write your own… For the rest of us,
I have listed off a few websites below that have Blogger themes for free.
Where to Find Templates
www.soratemplates.com
has many free templates, but they do offer paid plans on some of the templates
if you want support in setting it up.
www.mybloggerthemes.com
has all of the same templates as Sora Templates
and more. This is so far the most comprehensive database for templates that I have
found.
www.btempaltes.com this
is great if you want a more simple blog theme, similar to the ones that you
find on Blogger itself. They have a lot of different backgrounds and graphics
to spruce up your blog.
Once you have found the template that you love, or that you
can deal with, download the zip file and extract the files to a folder on your
computer. I like to create a separate folder for each theme I download so
everything stays together.
Uploading your New Template to Blogger
Now it’s time to log into Blogger. Log in and follow the
prompts to create you website. This will be the starting place for everything.
Don’t worry about which template to choose, we will be changing that in a
minute. Just make sure that you get the name that you want. You can change the
domain later too, but I find it easiest to start with the one that you want.
When you are in the main page, click on Theme on the left
hand side. Then you will want to click on Edit HTML.
Then go back into Blogger and you will see this page if you
clicked on Edit HTML. If not, Click on it now and see this page. I know it looks
scary, but we won’t be here long. Highlight all of the text in the box and then
paste what you copied from your Word file in this box. (CTRL+A to highlight all and then CRTL+V to
paste).
Click on Save Theme, the orange button up top. And now you
may leave the scary page. You have successfully changed your template.
To edit this template, go to Layout and make sure you
refresh the page to load your new template parts into this area. This is where
all you editing will happen, You can add parts and pieces from here without
having to go into the code, unless you want to of course.
Once you are done editing in this area, your blog will just need posts to be ready to go.
**Please be aware that some parts of the blog template may not work properly until a certain number of posts have been published.**
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