Better themes for your blogger page! Really!!

              If you have been on blogger for more than a while, you would have noticed that blogger doesn't actually have the best themes as compared to other blogs, wordpress, for instance. Still, you've been loyal to blogger but always had this feel that "what If my blog page looked cooler"...

Fret not, for there are a huge number of third party designers who have been making really nice themes for your blogger page. Most of the themes resemble or have been ported from Wordpress themes, so guaranteed these themes will re-kindle that fresh feel you had on day 1 of your blog.

Follow the step by step instructions below for totally revamping your blog page

#1 Browse for themes
      Here's a list of websites that I recommend personally. Good collections of XML based themes (instructions below) , neatly organized into categories.
                                  http://www.bloggerthemes.net/
                                  http://templates.bloggertricks.com/
Just download their Zip/Rar theme files and continue reading.

#2 Backup
     Now that you have downloaded a theme of your choice to your desktop, lets backup the current blog. Head over to your dashboard, choose Layout -> Edit Html
Its very important that you backup everything by clicking on Download Full Template. See screenshot below

And if you have been using widgets, make sure to make a note of them, as sometimes changing theme messes up the widget layout.

#3 Upload New theme
      Select Browse from the same page, navigate to the folder where you have saved your new unzipped XML theme. Choose the xml doc and click upload. Thats it!You should have the new theme codes in the edit Html canvas box.

#4 Edit the theme
     The theme usually comes with general setup. The following instruction is applicable for 99% of the blogger themes, so follow along.
In the html code, you should see something like

li class='navlinks' a href='YOUR LINK HERE'>Home
li class='navlinks' a href='YOUR LINK HERE'>page 2
li class='navlinks' a href='YOUR LINK HERE'>Contact me

Just replace the "Link here" with your blogger pages links and feel free to rename the tabs to whatever you wish. Just make sure the code is intact, i.e the XML patterns are left untouched.

#5 Add Widgets
     Now that your basic setup is ready, lets add some widgets. We are going to use native blogger widgets, which you can find in the "Page Elements" tab under the Layout menu (see screenshot on step#2) 
Add, config and arrange using drag drop methods and click save.

#6 Save and Preview
    All done!! Now hit that save button and view your revamped blog! Nice right? Leave comments below and a few screenshots of your new themed blog for all to see :)