There is absolutely no reason to use one of the ugly (and old) default Blogger templates when beautiful custom templates abound. Some are extremely stylish, and I’m seeing many with elaborate stylizing that mirrors the beauty of WordPress themes.
Most Blogger templates are free, and there is a wide variety of templates to choose from. There are some talented people who offer premium Blogger templates bundled with their customer support (which is helpful for newbies), but free is certainly nicer. I’m including a listing of free Blogger blogs and links to other helpful resources that you may find useful.
Free Blogger Templates
Blogger Themes
Blogger Buster
Dante Araujo
Ray’s Creations
Btemplates
Blogger Templates by Falcon Hive
Free Blogger Skins
Blogcrowds
Pyzam
Blogger Styles
WP Blogger Themes
Mashable’s 50 More Beautiful Blogger Templates
Instant Shift’s List of 120 of Best Blogger Templates Around
Vision Widget
Good Blogger Resources
BloggerTuts
Ultimate List of Blogger Tutorials and Hacks
Blogger Buster Tutorials
Blogging Basics 101
Note: When you switch to a custom template, be aware that Blogger deletes your sidebar and footer widgets. I recommend that you save all your widgets’ information before switching to a new template. Blogger does not give you any easy way to do this: you’ll have to copy and paste the widget html code into a Notepad document and save it your computer. After you activate the new custom template, you’ll need to rebuild your widgets by pasting the code into new ones.
January 25, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Wow, thank you! I love my black background, but not the template. It’s too boring. I’ll sure have fun looking through these! I feel like a kid in a candy shop looking at these! LOL I’ll have to change my template every week!
January 25, 2010 at 5:57 pm
Hi Renee! I am sure you will find loads of really nice blog themes. I’m very impressed with the talented designers out there. And I know what you mean about changing templates every day– I think I came pretty close, doing that! There are just so many to choose from!
January 27, 2010 at 11:07 pm
Oh boy… this is gonna be fun!
Thanks, Rebecca!
January 30, 2010 at 8:47 pm
Well, hi, Jay! I hope you enjoy the new Blogger “toys.”
March 24, 2010 at 10:49 am
I just stumbled across your site today. I am a new blogger. Thank you so much for all the info. I went to the Gravatar site and got a beautiful Gravatar for myself. However, I did not read far enough in the post to see that there may be problems using it with Blogger.
There is plenty of other stuff I am looking forward to readying.
I am in my 70′s so the fact that this blog is written by an “Older Geek” speaks to me
March 24, 2010 at 10:50 am
Great. I noticed I made a typo above — That always bothers me so!
March 24, 2010 at 11:06 am
Pat, I just LOVE your rose gravatar!! Classy! I’m glad you made one. I have heard that Blogger *may* implement gravatars for Blogger blogs. I don’t know when this may be; I’ll keep my eyes peeled for more information. Thanks for your comment!
March 24, 2010 at 11:23 am
Well, it dawned on me that I could just copy that rose and put it in my blogger profile. At least, it will show up in comments & such. Thanks again!