The best and most exciting news about using different fonts in your Blogger template! {aka: I am breaking up with Verdana!}

A while ago I posted instructions on how to use the Google Fonts in your blog.
It worked perfectly and wasn't that hard to do (and looked sweet!).

In case you did not know, these Google Fonts are now appearing in the "Template Designer" area of your Blogger Dashboard.


What does this mean?
Now you can use some awesome fonts in your blog (bye byeeeee arial!) and you don't need to know or modify any code, it can all be done with the click of a mouse.


Who can use it?
Well, everyone with a Blogger blog I assume. What you DO need to know is that if you have a blog template with the font types already hardwired into the blog html/css code, then you probably won't be able to use this feature until you have modified the code.
That really isn't that difficult to do and I will write a tutorial soon.

Some of my templates She May Adore Me, BYO Background, Rain Rain Go Away - some of my most recent templates - have the font type of the blog header (and possibly the sidebar headers) pre-determined in the code. So trying to change them in the method I have outlined below, will not work.

Never fear - I can re-write these templates to include this new functionality which will mean you will be able to select different fonts easier.

What this DOES mean though - that most of you can start changing fonts now!


Can I use any font I want?
No. You can only access the fonts in the Google Font Directory (of which there are now quite a few)!


OK OK, so how do we do it?
Log into your blogger dashboard. For this example I am going to use the Holiday on Me template:

Yes, lovely, but what happens when you don't love Georgia anymore?

Click on DESIGN and then the TEMPLATE DESIGNER tab:

(you may not have known about this part of Blogger before!)

If you are using a generic template from Blogger, you can probably control most of these tabs - background, widths etc, but if you are using one of mine, the one you want to click on is "ADVANCED" (see below) which is where the fonts, the colours and the font sizes can be controlled.

Again, please remember if any font or colour or font size is written into the code of the blog template, you won't be able to change it here.

So since I am changing the "Holiday on Me" template, I DO have control over which font I want throughout the blog.

Now you will see that there are a lot more fonts to chose from. You can even make them bold, italic and change the size.

Select which fonts you want, pick the size and you are sorted!

Some fonts are linked - ie: the same font may be used in the sidebar header and the header of the blog. The reason for this is that they have the same code in the blog. If you want them to be different you will have to change the code.

I did notice that some fonts did not show up in the live preview (but they do show up when you click save and view the blog).

This is what I came up with (ok, maybe a little boring)!

If you have any questions, please let me know.

In a nutshell: THIS IS VERY VERY EXCITING! Previously it was only open to those in Blogger Draft but now it's open for everyone! Read more on Blogger Buzz.

Ch-ch-ch-changes! (how to change your text colour)

Yes, so Blogger has a template designer now (*sob*, does that mean that no-one will use my templates? I hope not! Generic is still generic, no matter what kind of fancy-pants background you have from istockphoto). Am I bitter? Possibly.

Anyway, in case you were wondering how to now change the colours & fonts of your yummylolly.com template (as there is now NO "Fonts & Colours" tab, BOO HOO)....

You just have to click on the "Template Designer" tab - which is under the 'Design' tab and go to the 'Advanced' area:

Ta-Da!

Hope that helps anyone who's lost!

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!