Note: Revamping

This blog will be revamped to a new template within a few days. So there might be some glitch, if any. Hopefully the transformation will go smoothly...

Want to exchange links?

I've come to the 2nd stage of building a high rank blog - exchanging links.

The 1st stage is building long-term sustainable quality contents, which are primarily the templates and tutorials (which is still an ongoing stage). There are millions of Blogger's bloggers out there; and judging from what I've seen statistically - most of their blogs are in dire need of getting pimp'd. What I'm offering here are templates that they can use for a long term - because they're massively customizable to individual styles and likings. Plus, I've build a complete and well structured template tutorials - because the best template that anybody can have is their own-designed templates! Nothing beats the satisfaction of using something that you build yourself.

So, in the long term, I'm predicting that the use of my templates and tutorials will grow in time. If you'd like a link to your blog in this site, here's how to do it.

How to have a link to your blog here?

I'll put a link to your blog on the sidebar column of my blog title "link'd" (non-offensive contents only please). There are 2 ways to do this:

1. Create a link in your blog to my Dzelque Blogger Templates blog and place a comment in this post with a link back to your blog or post that contains the link. I'll then put your blog link here (please suggest a good short name for your blog too).
2. Create a link to this post on your blog. I'll then put a link back to your blog.

Cheers!

Just Pimp'd My Blog ...

I just finished putting a new template (the 3rd version) for this blog - the basic color combination of black and white. I'm thinking of adding a bit more touching up on it, something subtle like some background images. Here's a look back on my old template:

and here's how it looks now:

It would've been much nicer if I had taken a snapshot of my 1st template version just to put them side by side and see the evolution of my blog's templates. Just didn't think back then it'll evolve into something else. A sample of what the 1st template looks like (which was based on my Emptinest template) was captured by Technorati. Which one looks better is sorta an open question, but I'm liking this new look - simple - just plain B&W.

Testing and Viewing in Other Browsers

(This is a sub-post for Step 6 from Tutorial 11: Starting Your Own Blogger Template)

(An updated content is added below.)

Personally, I don't like the stage of testing in other browsers. It's annoying that other browsers might show your blog differently than the blogs you're designing it in. But if you want all to have access to your blog and see it as nicely as you've designed it, then you have to go through this process. As for my blog and my demo blogs, I designed them in Firefox and tested in IE7. I've received comments that people using IE6 have some trouble with the templates, but I didn't test them in IE6, and not about to trouble myself downloading IE6 and debugging the codes. The way I see it, if Firefox and IE7 get it right, then it's IE6 that's got the problem (not my templates) and it's IE6 that has to debug itself. Anyway, isn't that why IE7 is made in the first place?

Personally, I think Firefox is by far above all. If you're not using Firefox, I suggest you download them right now - it's free, fast, not too crowded with useless buttons, lightweight, and just plain great. And if you're using IE6 and don't want to upgrade to IE7 because your computer is not fit enough to take the load, but you know that viewing blogs is prone to bugs - then Firefox should be the way to go. Plus, the download is quick, the upgrading is efficient and fast, and there's a lot more to this - but I'll just let you see them on your own. So, if you want to get rid of IE and use Firefox instead, the download button is on the sidebar...

I don't really have a tip for debugging. You just have to be patient and solve the problems one by one. The way I avoid problems is by writing a stricter code so they won't have a chance to flip flop or get 'loose'. If you want, you can start designing a template starting from any of my own templates. That way, you can maintain the part of the CSS code that's there to avoid any bugs in different browsers. But I can't guarantee they're 100% bug-free!

Update:
I have tested all the templates in all browsers using Browsershots.org and labeled the ones compatible with all browsers (including IE6). There are also some templates compatible with IE6, but have their sidebars pushed down the Blog Posts because their content-box width is wider than the sidebar. So, please check if this is the case if you see your sidebar misaligned.

Having problems with my templates?

I've noticed that some people who have been using my templates face some little bugs, mostly with alignment. When creating these templates, I have, at my best, tried to make sure that they're all bugs free and I have the tested version in the demo pages in IE and Firefox. So, carefully check the demo pages. But I surely can't control all the loose bugs flying off here and there in little places.

If I do find these bugs, I'll deal with them in two ways. First, I'll correct them by upgrading the template into a newer version and post it as a new template (with maybe some little changes on the template look that you can always change back easily later on). So, if you have these little problems, do check back in here to see the updated version or tell me about the problem in the comment section.

Second, I plan to make a short tutorial on how to go about designing and tweaking your Blogger template. I'll probably have them done in a couple of week or so, so do check on these to start fiddling with CSS your own way.

Some of the problems:

Most of them have their header section cut off that only a portion of the image shows up. If this is the case, most probably it's because you're using a template that has a Linkbar but you forgot to fill in the URLs. One other thing is probably you're using a template that requires you to put up your own header image, but you forgot to do so. In these cases, my advice is you have to read that template instructions carefully.

There are also some who have a problem with their footer background - it was cut short. Some of templates have the black-gray shade background in the footer. I was thinking that most footer is not very long vertically, so I made the background graphics to be relatively short. But I saw that some people using my templates have long footer that the background graphics is cut short and changes to the 'actual' background; mostly dark green. There are 2 solutions to these. If you know how to use the HTML code, point the background URL to a new background that lays out farther downward. The second solution is to make the 'actual' background blend with the black-gray shade; simply use the Fonts and Colors option in the Layout page to do this.

There are also some that have their sidebar text overlapping with the sidebar header. In my demo pages, I've made sure that this overlapping doesn't happen. But if they do happen in your case, I suggest you move the sidebar text further down from it's header (only it won't look the way it's suppose to look). I'll start putting up small tutorials on how to tweak your template, so check back in here to read these tutorials to tweak your template.

About

I made these free templates especially for bloggers who'd like to put Adsense or any ad banners on their blog. The template themes are quite general with simple color combinations to make the graphics pleasant and non-intrusive to the readers, which are very important features for a monetizing blog. The main and sidebar layouts are designed to fit Adsense units or other ad banners.

Plus, I added extra items in the code so that you can modify lots of fonts and colors easily from the Layout page without knowing anything about HTML programing. You can use these templates freely; but I wish that you leave my link at the bottom of the template, or link a credit to my blog.

I'm doing this template design because when I first started a blog to put ads, I couldn't really find templates that blend well when I put Adsense units in it (at least, it didn't feel that way for me). Mostly it was because they only have 2 columns. Some 3-column ones were modification from the basic Blogger templates; so these were common templates. Another thing was there weren't really much templates with general themes that could blend easily. I bet there were some good ones out there, but I just couldn't find them and Googling them really gets tiring most of the time. And these templates were not designed to be completely customizable from the Fonts and Colors page. The way to go for me is really to learn template coding and make my own.

Here I've got some templates with general themes and Ads-oriented layout and it's free for you use them. You can even modify them heavily simply from the Fonts and Colors section in the Layout page. I also provide useful details about the templates and some easy instructions on how to use them in your blog. I've installed them on different demo pages to check that the installation works smoothly.

You can view the demo pages of each one of the templates by clicking it's image or the demo page link. Most of the materials on the demo pages are background on some of the top paying keywords. These are keywords with high paying PPC (pay-per-click). You might want to read through to get some idea about them and see if you are interested to blog about them. You can then explore more to get a better picture on these topics because the potential for profitable income is large. The difference between blogging about low paying keywords and high paying ones are tremendous if you can do both of them equally well.

These are the people I credited that made things possible for me to start building templates.

Credits

I started designing Blogger templates around late April after about a week or two of crash course in HTML, XHTML, and CSS from W3Schools, just enough to understand how to write and tweak around with the codes but not enough for me to start writing template codes from scratch. So I surfed around looking for the right template that I'm comfortable with to start learning how Blogger template code works. I was looking for a 3-column template with very little codes in the Blogger Data section and lots of codes in the CSS section so I can understand more about styling it rather than bother too much about the data codes. Nonetheless, many thanks to Hege, Ståle, and Jan Egil Refsnes of W3Schools for creating an awesome and easy-to-learn resource center for web programming.

I found just the right one I was looking for in the 3-column Thisaway template by Charlemagne Stavanger (of Blowcrowds), a modified version from an original version of 2-column Thisaway designed by Dan Rubin. I'd like to thank both of them for making a really great template that gave me a speedy 'lesson' on how HTML and CSS works on Blogger template so that I could start designing my own. It wasn't easy to Google around looking for the right template that made it easy to learn template coding within a short time.