Saturday 13 February 2010

Keep your widgets when changing your Blogger template! Woo Hoo!

I don't know if you have noticed but Blogger has introduced functionality to allow you to keep your widgets when you change your template!

WOW!

That was the biggest complaint that I heard from people who wanted to use my templates!
"Oh, I like the template but I don't want to lose my widgets / links etc".


SO WHAT'S THE DEAL?

When you upload a template to your blog now, it comes up with a prompt as below:



If you click on 'Delete Widgets' then all your widgets (links, search bar etc) will be gone and you will have a fresh new blog with no dramas and a shiny new template. Except your widgets have gone.

If you click on 'Keep Widgets' then this is great because your current widgets will stay and the template will change! Just what everyone always wanted!


BUT....

(c'mon, you knew there had to be a but)

... sometimes, due to how things may be labelled in the code of the blog, you may get some hiccups occurring. I don't expect this to make perfect sense to you (and that's fine) but if you often change your template then remember this post and come back and visit it again if you have troubles.

You may find something odd happens to your blog if you click on "Keep Widgets" like I did:



Yeah, a double up of posts!

How annoying!

This is how it looks in the Page Layout area:




For some reason, the new template had a "Blog Posts" area, and you also kept the "Blog Posts" area from your old blog (each labelled with a different name).... so now you have two! Exactly the same! Arrr!


If you experience a problem like this, here is what to do:

1) Go to the Layout Edit HTML tab within Blogger

2) Make sure the "Expand Widget Template" button is NOT ticked (it will be easier on your eyes this way):


3) Scroll down through the code until you find the following (hint: it will be towards the bottom of the code):

</b:widget id='Blog2' locked='true' title='Blog Posts' type='Blog' />
(highlighted below)


THE IMPORTANT THING TO REMEMBER IS: that there are TWO 'Blog Posts' areas (see how one is labelled 'Blog1' and one is labelled 'Blog2' above?

I can identify which one I want to remove because of the first warning that came up when I changed my template (see below).



I can see that Blog1 was part of my blog before I changed the template (as indicated above) so therefore I need to erase 'Blog2' within the code.

This may be reverse for you, so please keep this in mind.

(In reality it may not matter which one you remove, I'm not sure at this time. But that's how you tell which one was part of your blog originally)

4) Go ahead and delete that line of code (in my case it was the pink highlighted line above)

5) Save.

6) On the next screen it will say something like this:



Click "Delete Widgets" because, no, we don't want our blog posts doubled up!

DONE!

I know this is going to be kind of confusing unless you actually have this problem, so please don't think too hard about it at this time. The information is just here in case you need it!

I am honestly not sure if any other things can be doubled up on like this can, but leave me a comment if you notice and I shall investigate.

I hope this makes some sense!

41 comments :

  1. As a woman who used to do tutorials for part of her living... I think I love you. ;-) Heh... In a platonic way!

    Thanks!

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  2. Hahah, thanks Carrie!

    I just have a feeling that this crazy new thing is going to cause some major weirdness when uploading a new template.

    I am a little scared!

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  3. Wooohoo, that's wonderful! I hated losing my widgets before.

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  4. This is a brilliant tutorial, and I'll be posting a link on my Computery blog. Everyone needs to know this! I'm spreading the word.

    I do blog design and saving all those widgets to Notepad was such a pain. Thank you so much for investingating, finding the "But..." and then finding the solution.

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  5. Isn't this awesome for Blogger??!! I saw this the other day and IMMEDIATELY decided to switch from offering layouts to templates at my place (Almost Ready Blogs).

    I need to write up my own tutorial, too. I hadn't come across the double blog post issue, though.

    Have a nice weekend!

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  6. Sharnee,

    Thank you sooo much for this great tutorial. I got so jazzed when I read this (or maybe I need a more intensive social life???).

    BTW I had to get another computer. This one runs Win7 and that goofy problem I wrote to you about was completely PC / Win 7 specific. I ended up downgrading back to Vista and the problem is gone, go figure.

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  7. Thank you so much for your tut. I'm really appreciated it

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  8. thank you so much for this tutorial sharnee!!
    just started using blogger again after some time and was totally annoyed when i found duplicate posts! didn't know how to remove it til i saw this! it's fab! thanks again! :)

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  9. i've faced this problem before, thanks a lot for sharing! ^________^

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  10. thank you!!!!!!!! ="

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  11. hoho.

    well.your situation is better.Mine is worst.

    All the widget seem to dooubled up.And scattered all round my page.huhu.

    ReplyDelete
  12. the sastraboy: you can delete the double ups (like two profiles, two archives etc) by clicking on "delete" in the pop up window when you click on the widget in the page elements page. it's just the "blog posts" that you have to alter the code of if they are doubled up.

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  13. Hello, when I first set up my blog the other night I used this tip to get rid of double posts and it worked great, but now when I have added a second page to my blog the page title (US Store) appears twice. How can I get rid of duplicate page titles? Also, do you know how I can make my Amazone store fill up the rest of the white in the template? Right now it's chopped in half.

    Thanks

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  14. OH MY GOSH THANK YOU SO MUCH.
    MY PROFILE HAS BEEN DOING THE DOUBLE POSTS!!
    YOU ARE A GENIUS.

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  15. horaayyyy it really helps..thank u so much.. luckily i read your FAQ. thanks again
    www.miniloveshoppe.blogspot.com

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  16. Thanks so much! The double post thing was really boggling my mind, but this cleared it up nicely =)

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  17. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Problem fixed!

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  18. oohhhh thanx you...thannx you!!! its really work.. ;) luv ya....

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  19. Yay!! Thanks. Your designs are super cute by the way. If I could make things and be creative I would make stuff like this..but I'm umm...creativley challenged. Lol. Thanks!

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  20. Thanks for the article :)

    Now, I wonder how to keep things like script, favicon, etc which is actually not a widget.
    Because, it is kinda irritating if I have to write it again on the new template ==;

    Any solution?

    thanks for the feedback :)

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  21. Thank you very much. you saved my blogs life while doubling...

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  22. thanks! it helps me a lot ;)

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  23. Thank you very much. Your help is greatly appreciated

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  24. It worked! Thanks sooo much!

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  25. My blog, http://amalnyaimar.blogspot.com/ have double post buat there are no blog2 at the html just blog1..huhuhh..help me..

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  26. please help me , i dont know . http://yuyushafee.blogspot.com/

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  27. Thanks Sharnee...
    It's really help me...
    I've successfully deleted the double post entry...
    Love it!! :)

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  28. thank for sharing..follow here^^

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  29. I just loved this tip! Oh my god, I was at my tird template and I couldn't resolve this problem! Now everything is fine! Thanks a lot!

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  30. tq so much...it help me a lot..now im hapy with my blog :)

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  31. i looked for the HTML code you said to delete, but i don't have that HTML code. what do i do in that case?

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  32. I deleted the line "" but when i clicked "Save," it said:

    "We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request."

    So what do I do to still delete the double posts?

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  33. Sorry Anon, maybe you missed something. I'm
    Not sure why it wouldnt let you save it. Sorry.
    Take care to delete only what I mentioned.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Hola , yo solo tengo blog 1 en la plantilla

    ReplyDelete

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Sharnee