Saturday, June 28, 2008

Free 2/3-column XML Skins/Templates for Blogger


Free 2-column/3-column XML Skins/Templates for Blogger

Download & Apply the theme used by this blog

After emailing the XML skin of my blog quite a few times, I thought it would be better to share it on the blog itself so that people interested in it can download it directly from here instead of requesting that via email.

Credits for the XML theme that this blog uses

As you can see from the 'Credits' section of the blog that the main credit of this template goes to Charm Skins and Blogger. I thank all those who're directly or indirectly involved in the design and development of the base template. I just modified it a bit to suit my needs. Similarly, you may also change it as per your requirements. Let me know in case you get any errors while modifying the skin. I will try to rectify them. You probably won't need any help as modifying an XML skin is quite easy in most of the cases.

Structure of this XML Skin

This XML Blogger template can be categorized into four main areas, which are:-

  • Header - It consists of a header strip, Name and Short Description of the Blog, and Buttons. These buttons can be effectively used to point to various categories of your blog.
  • Post Body - the area which displays the body of the posted articles.
  • Footer - it may display Copyright, Privacy Policy, Disclaimer, etc. New elements can be added to show Ads, Feed Reader Icons, or anything else which you may like to put there.
  • Sidebar - the sidebar-region has two sections - the top one is a 1-column section and another 2-column section may follow it. So, you can use this XML SKin both as a 2-column XML Template OR as a 3-column XML Template OR may be a hybrid of 2-column and 3-column (what I have for my blog).
Charm Skins has made this skin especially for using Google AdSense advertising on it. Simple HTML/JavaScript elements can be added to put Google AdSense Ad codes in the side-bar region. The side bar section can be further divided into two sections (as you can see on my blog where the top portion is a single wide column whereas the bottom is composed of two columns). Based on whether you want to put the Google AdSense Ad code in the one-column section section of the sidebar-region OR in the tw-column section of the sidebar-region, you may choose AdSense Ads of sizes 336X280 (large rectangle) and 160x600 (skyscraper) respectively. Of course, you may put Ads of other sizes as well, but this template looks to be optimized for these two sizes.

In addition, you may put a large rectangle Ad in the beginning of the post (what I've on my blog) and also horizontal Ad Links can follow that Ad rectangle. Don't know how to insert Ad in the post body? Read this article - Inserting AdSense Ads in post body >>

How can use this XML Blogger Template for your site/blog?

  • Download the customised 3-column XML Blogger Template
  • Save a copy of your existing blogger template - plz don't forget
  • Apply the XML file extracted from the downloaded ZIP file
  • Save the changes (Ignore the notification of the missing elements)
  • View your blog and hopefully you'll see it in this new blogger theme
Caution: applying a new template will not cause any loss to your posted articles, but if your blog has some other custom Javascript elements added then you will lose them. If you've a long running blog/site then please don't rush into applying a new template. It's always better to choose the right templete in the beginning itself and afterwards modifying the existing one is probably a better approach unless you're too adventurous.

Not comfortable with applying a new XML theme? It's a very easy process involving three simple steps. Find below the steps (click the image to open it in a new tab):-




Find below links to download more blogger themes from CharmSkins. You can modify them as per your needs.



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Posted by Geek at 12:59 PM

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