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Free Blogger Templates a word of caution.

Posted by yourhypnotist • 8/10/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: blogger, free blogger templates, hosting, image, java, templates

As a Blogger myself I am always looking for the latest templates to tantalize my readers. There are plenty of Free templates out there for bloggers and with some great looks and features.

You may already beaware of this, when you download a template you may not receive all relevant files. These tend to be image and java scripts which are hosted on the template provider's server. That's great in principle, however some things to think about.

This server may have limited bandwith and useage amounts. I have seen templates which have had one or two thousand downloaded, take into account the numberof hits on each Blog then very quickly these amounts can be exceeded. This means your template will not be able to run those files.

What does that mean to you? Readers of your blog could experience problems viewing images on your Blogger site. Not a major hassel, but think about how important first impressions are. The other problem here is that some templates run Java Scripts. If you are unable to run them due to exceeding bandwith and useage, then your Blogger site is going to look a mess. This is especially true for so called 'magazine style' templates where Java Scripts are used to create thumbnails for your posts.

The best way to get around this is to host them on a server that you provide. I actually pay a small amount each month and do this. This means with confidence I know that my Blog is fully operational.

My suggestion is when you download a free template, make sure the provider also gives you the image files and Java Scripts. You can then upload them on your own server. Most template providers who supply the files will give you instructions to do this.

thanks

Andy

User Comments

8/10/09

techhgyan

I don't see any point in your discussion.

[reply]
1. 8/10/09
  
  yourhypnotist
  
  Kind of thanks for your feedback, I think. The point was some advice based on my experience of using free templates and why some of the features work only some of the time. The point being if you want the features to work most of the time, best get template, image and java script files and host these files on your own paid for server.
8/10/09

legbamel

You do make a good point, except that I can never get the images to work properly when I self-host. I had a terrible time with the headers for both of my blogs for a while, and with the background on my music blog, but finally things seem to have worked themseles out. When I self-hosted and changed the URL in the template, the image never came out the right size or repeated itself correctly. Aaargh!

Serving the images from someone else's site does leave you at the mercy of their server, though. If you can get the dumb things to work from your own hosting, that is.

[reply]
1. 8/10/09
  
  yourhypnotist
  
  Know what you mean. The frustration sometimes!
8/10/09

iratedog

how do you go about checking if you're getting the files/java scripts?

[reply]
1. 8/10/09
  
  yourhypnotist
  
  Whenever ever I have downloaded the files I always get the HTML code which needs to be uploaded to blogger. Normally in another folder if you have them you will find the images (gif, jpg etc),in another folder are the Java Scripts, these are normal .txt files. I then FTP them to my server.
  
  The next part is pretty boring. After uploading the HTML file to blogger using ctrl and f I find each file name (images and scripts) and change the url to point to these files on your server.