2 SIMPLE METHODS TO EDIT YOUR BLOGGER TEMPLATE'S MENU BAR

Changing the default menu title of a newly purchased or freely downloaded template is not that tough a job. You don’t need any coding knowledge rather all you need is the ability to follow instructions carefully. If you follow the steps I’m about to show you, you will be able to edit anything you like on your template without any guide from me or google itself. Editing the menu bars of your blogger templates can be achieved in two ways

• Online- through the “edit HTML” section of your blog 
• Offline- through the use of notepad. 

I will show you the two methods and from there, you can choose the one that is easier for you. To edit your blogger template online through the edit HTML section of your blog, do the following and follow this instructions carefully as to any mistake can ruin the template. Remember that just as I said earlier, editing your blogger templates menu does not require any coding knowledge but the ability to follow instructions carefully. Here we go!

1. Login to your blogger account>template>Edit HTML of your desired blog.

On the edit HTML box, press ctrl + F keys. A search box will appear, type in any of the titles from the menu bar you want to edit. Let’s use the blogger templates menu in the image below to illustrate this




2. You will see a code displayed with blogger templates highlighted.

3. Change the name “blogger templates” to the title of your desired menu bar.

4. Replace “#” with your title menu’s link which will lead to the desired page. Make sure you don’t use a broken link.

5. click to save your work. 

You have successfully configured your menu bar. You can follow the same steps to configure others.
To edit your menu bar offline through the use of notepad do the following with care too:

1. Open your notepad software 
2. Right click on the XML file of your template and open it with notepad through the “open with” option on the fly out menu. 
3. On your template which is now open in the notepad press ctrl + F (for windows os) to open the search the search box. Now, either you type in <!-- Navigation -->, <div class='menu-wrap'> and search for search for the menu section or you copy the title you want to edit from your blog and paste it the way it is on the search box. When you find the code, you can edit it and also enter your URL by replacing the “#” inside the <a href=”#”> code, sometimes the template designer may have used a typical URL instead of the “#” so you still need to clear it and place yours. 
4. save your template by using ctrl + s 
5. login to your blogger dashboard and upload your template to your test blog first to check if the changes are okay before uploading to your main blog. If you don’t have a test blog, it’s proper you get one

You see how simple it is to edit your blogger template’s menu bar- no stress, no googling over and over again to learn it.

FULL BLOGGER TEMPLATES LESSON YOU SHOULD NOT MISS

Blogger is an amazing platform with several free features. It provides a free web hosting for you with a very interactive and easy to use feature. Blogger provides limited amount of free templates with the liberty to customize or use a downloaded or custom made template without any penalty. The free templates provide by blogger may not really meet our taste and this leads to the urge to get a more professional looking templates for our blogs. You should upload and use a custom made template to stand out from the crowd of those using the free ones. With a custom template, your blog will speak professionalism and also attract and make your guest stay longer other than just reading your post without checking for others due to poor post linking. Most templates come with different but useful features. These features are listed below

• Navigation menu/bar for easy navigation through your blog 
• Social media icons for connectivity and post sharing 
• Featured contents slide which displays a moving image of your blog post 
• Breadcrumbs which is also similar to navigation menu 
• Responsive feature which makes your blog adjust to the device used in viewing your blog. Example: when a mobile phone is used, your blog adjust so as to fit into the screen of the mobile. 
• Outstanding comment avatars and lots more which you are going to find out when you download one. 
• Space dedicated to ads and dual sidebars are features which are not present in Blogger's default designs. 

Visitors experience is very essential for the success of your blog: A visitor who was able to go through your blog with ease and without many bottlenecks is likely to come back next time. Apart from the content of your blog, the template also plays a major role to your blogs success. If your template is easy to navigate; help readers find the content they like to read, and is aesthetically pleasing, you're one step closer to building a solid reader base so choose your template wisely in order to boost the traffic to your blog.
Ensure that your template matches your blogs personality and niche. Don’t choose a template meant for magazines and sports for those that don’t fit in properly.

INTRODUCTION TO BLOG LAYOUT

Layout points out the arrangement of your blog. It answers questions like: how many side bars, footers, how large is the width, height etc

BLOGGER’S LAYOUT STYLE

Below listed is the default blogger’s layout style which is a classic layout.

• An overall width of 800px or less, optimized for small screen sizes 
• A fixed width layout. 
• A simple two column layout with one sidebar 
• A wide header which spans the width of both columns 

SINGLE COLUMN LAYOUT

A single column layout consists of the main blog post column without side bars but has a column below it for navigation and other blog features. It is ideal for blog niches like photography, fashion and sports where you can showcase your images aesthetically.

TWO COLUMNS LAYOUT

This consists of the main blog post layout and one side bar but with spaces for other blog features below them. It is dynamic and can be applied to many blog niche.

THREE COLUMN LAYOUT

These consist of the main blog post and two side bars which can be on either side of the blog post or one one side.

CONSIDERATIONS FOR CHOOSING A BLOG LAYOUT

Choosing the wrong layout may also contribute to the hold backs experienced on your blog. Think about this before choosing a blog layout.

• Will I display an advert on my blog? 
• Will I display non post content on my blog 
• What are the forms of non blog post I will display on my blog? Will it be pictures, videos, audios or animations? 
• Will the space be enough for the miscellaneous I will add to my blog? 

Answer the above questions and choose your blog layout based on your answers.
Check out for related post on this topic in the blogger template section of this blog.

4 EASY STEPS ON HOW TO INSTALL A BLOGGER TEMPLATE

Changing the looks of your blogger blog and making it not to look too bloggerish is a nice thing to do. There is a great need and urge to change the looks of our blog and sometimes we just don’t know how to go about it. One pertinent means of changing the looks of your blog is by using a custom template other than the default ones provided by blogger.

Blogger allows the use of third party templates on our blogs and this is really good that they allowed it. You can get a template with full social buttons, navigation menus, breadcrumbs, responsive and SEO friendly templates which can optimize and boost the productivity of your blog. Your template can bring visitors to your site and can also scare visitors away from your site; this is because a template that is not able to adjust itself to the available device used by your reader or a template with much graphic that takes too long to load will also scare them away. This leads us to the “qualities of a good template”

1. Responsiveness: a good template must be able to adjust itself to fit the the current device through which your blog is accessed without disrupting the contents. Choosing a template that will display the desktop version on a mobile phone is not ideal and for this reason, avoid using a non responsive template, choose a template that will adjust to a mobile device without disrupting the layout of your contents.
2. Minimal graphics: displaying some graphics on your blog helps draw the attention of your visitors, it makes your blog more fun but when it gets excess, it becomes a huge problem. A blog with too much graphics will take much time to load and will also consume much data connection; a situation in which your blog requires 1mb of data just to load a single page will bring down your traffic. Choose a minimal graphics template.
3. Easy navigation: your template should be able to make your visitor get to the top of your page with just one click rather than having to scroll up or down by themselves. Choose a template with navigation buttons and breadcrumbs placed at strategic positions on your blog.
4. SEO-friendly: your template should be able to also contribute a quota to your search engine optimization; there are some templates that are designed to display your post title before your blog title and also provide spaces for the entry of blog descriptions and keywords which is a very vital SEO trick. When choosing, choose wisely.

Let’s see the simple steps on how to successfully upload your template to your blog.

STEP 1: download your new template to your computer hard drive, usually, it is often a zip file so you need to extract it using winRar or like. After extracting your template, look for the XML file and copy it to your desktop for ease of retrieval.

STEP 2: login to your blogger account and on the dashboard, select the blog you want to upload the template (that is if you have more than 1 blog).

STEP 3: click on template >>backup/restore and on the dialog box that appears, click on “download full template” to download your current template so that in case you encounter any problem while uploading the new one, you can revert to the old one by following the same step as to upload a new one.

STEP 4: browse your PC and locate your XML file which I supposed you placed on your desktop; after locating it on your desktop, click on upload and wait for it to upload. You should get a success message similar to that on this image, and then you can go ahead and customize your template by adding widgets and rearranging them to fit your taste. Enjoy!

REMOVE THE IRRITATING SLIDER FROM BLOGGER TEMPLATE- SEE HOW!

Configuring a slider can be very hectic especially when you downloaded a template without any installation guide and configuration support. I was once caught in this situation, I wasted my data searching Edit Html section of the sora press template which I downloaded but couldn’t understand any of those codes. I had to google about it too; friend! I googled and googled over and over again but couldn’t find anything. The annoying part is when the slide images are not related to your niche or topic in anyway and any visitor to your blog who sees the image of a young baby, a girl resting on a Ferrari, a musician singing with a guitar or a camping structure set up on a green field as is the case in the sora press template which I used will be left wondering what your blog is really all based on. Sometimes, the template which you liked so much for your blog may have menu bars configured in the language of the template designer which may not be English or any other language you understand; in such a situation, all hope is not lost because I finally figured out a way to play around and manipulate templates which I s what I’ll share with you today. For the purpose of this tutorial, I will choose a specific template for illustration which is the sora press blogger template but all what you learn here is not limited to sora press template alone but to other templates with a slider.

Sora press template is a very magnificent template; it is responsive, SEO friendly, ads optimized with a easy to navigate structure. If you are using sora press template and you want to remove the slider, then you will have to follow these steps carefully because the omission of any code will ruin the entire template. If you don’t have a sora press template, you can download one just for the purpose of this tutorial in order to get the general idea about what I’m trying to iron out.

REMOVING A SLIDER FROM SORA PRESS BLOGGER TEMPLATE

 I will not advise you to apply this changes to your blog online through the normal Edit HTML section but rather through the use of a third party software called NOTEPAD which is inbuilt in most if not all computers so if you haven’t opened it before, then this is the right time.

Step 1: download your sora press template, extract it from the zip file and copy out the XML file of your template. Duplicate the XML file and use one of it for this tutorial while you preserve the other one for reference purpose.

Step 2: open your notepad (you can use your computer’s search box to search for the app by typing in “notepad”. When you locate it, open your notepad.

Step 3: now, right click on your sora press template and open it with notepad through the “open with” option that will be displayed on the fly out menu.

Step 4: on your notepad, press ctrl + F to open the search box (for windows users); now copy this code and paste it on the search box (codeè <div id='slider-container'>. The code is highlighted on the screenshot below

Step 5: when you find the code, highlight the whole of the codes beginning from <b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'> to <div class='clear'/> and hit the backspace key to the codes. Delete the spaces between the codes at the top and the ones below the point in which you deleted the slider codes until you have a single empty line or row separating the codes above which is <!-- content wrapper start -->from that below which is <div id='content-wrapper'> (view image 4 to see this step).  Take a look at this screenshot and guide yourself

Step 6: click on file on the menu bar and select “save” to serve your template.

Step 7: login to your dashboard and upload your edited template first to your test blog in case you made a mistake somewhere. If you don’t have a test blog, then create one. It won’t take up to 5mins to have a up and running test blog. If your template was uploaded successfully and your slider is no more after viewing your blog, then upload it to your main blog.

I hope I made this tutorial as simple as possible and hopefully, you have also been able to remove the slider from blogger template. Enjoy!