Removing the Nav Bar

Here are very simple instructions on the how to and it takes less than a minute:

Open the template editor in your Blogger settings area and scroll down till you find the tag.

You can find it just below the and tags.

Change it from this:

To This:

Then hit Save Changes and Republish your blog!

Creating Drop Down Lists – Classic Blogger

Setting up super cool drop down lists for your sidebar to save sidebar space is fairly straighforward using a bit of Javascript. I’m going to list the coding necessary to do both your Previous Posts and your Archives list. This tutorial is for Blogger only. In the future I will put up coding to do this in other blogging platforms.

A Drop Down List Example

Fave Links se7en Blog Flak

First up is Blogger’s Previous Posts coding. This is a bit different than the Archives List coding below because it will require a width to be set in the code. Long Post names won’t word wrap in the list and it could force your sidebar to the bottom of your blog. When you open the list in IE long posts names will be cut off but the links will work just fine. Firefox ignores the width limitation and displays the full name regardless.

Previous Posts List for Blogger – Copy/Paste below code into your sidebar

Previous Posts

“>

Archives List for Blogger – Copy/Paste below code into your sidebar

Archives List

“>

In both cases above you will want to disable the existing coding for Previous Posts and Archives, if you don’t know which sections to remove please refer to the image below. If you are doing drop down lists for both Previous Posts and Archives you will want to remove or cut all of the code that is displayed in the image window. Image taken from Blogger template editor.

Switch Blogger to “Classic” or “XML” Mode

Many people still seem to be confused about how to apply new templates to their Blogger blog. It’s not suprising though because Blogger didn’t seem to care about clearly marking the differences between the two when you are at the template editor page in your control panel. They should have used a much better naming convention and put some type of heading on the editor page that CLEARLY says which mode your blog is running in. The fact is that Blogger can run in two different modes, one is called “classic” and the other is often referred to as either “XML” or “beta”. The confusing interface is what causes most of the problems when people try to paste in a new template, with complaints like “I can’t get it to work, I keep getting errors!”.

This tutorial should help you to see the differences between the two modes and how to switch back and forth. First up is how to switch your blog to the new XML or “beta” mode. If your blog is running in “classic” mode already you will see a template editor like the one pictured below, and you will see the words “Customize Design” as pointed out by the red arrow. All you have to do is click it and choose a new template and you will automatically be switched to the “new” or “beta” mode. This will allow you to replace the code in the template editor with a custom template designed to be used in “beta” or “new” mode. “Classic” templates WILL NOT work in this mode!!!!

Now for switching your blog to “classic” mode if it’s already running in “beta” or XML mode. If you look at the image below you’ll see that the template editor page looks different than the one pictured above. The editor is much narrower and there’s a check box that says “Expand Widget Templates”. If you see that then your blog is running in XML or “beta” mode. Switching to “classic” is very easy, however Blogger did a very good job of hiding the link to do the switch over. You have to look underneath the template editor window for the words “Revert to Classic Template”. Once you click the link it will take you to a page where you can select a new template. Once you make the choice and save it you will now be running in “classic” mode. This will allow you to edit the template and install custom templates that are designed for the “classic” mode. Templates designed for XML or “beta” mode WILL NOT work in classic mode!!!!

There are a number of differences between the two modes in how they work, but the most important one when trying to edit your template is determining WHICH mode you are currently in. If you try to edit your template manually and you keep getting XML parse errors you are running in “XML” or “beta” mode. “Classic” mode is much simpler to work with for manually editing your template but the drag and drop widgets are unavailable and will not work and neither will templates designed for “classic” mode.

If you want to use templates designed for “classic” mode you MUST SWITCH your template FIRST or the template WILL NOT WORK.

Back Up Your XML Template Widgets

This quick guide will walk you through making a backup copy of your entire XML template. This will also allow you to save the data in your widgets for later re-installation. This guide is NOT for restoring your original template!

This is a very simple procedure and will take less than 2 minutes to do. First step is to navigate to your blogs front page so that you are looking at your actual blog, NOT the control panel pages. Next is to view the source code of the page itself, this can be done in two ways. You can either right click anywhere on the page and click on View Source in the pop up window or look on your browsers control bar and look for the word View. Clicking on that will show a drop down list and one of the selections is Source like in the image below.

Once you click on the word Source another window will open showing the entire contents of your template code like in the image below.

Click on the word File in the upper left hand corner and go down to the words Save As. Click on that and then another window will pop up. See the red arrow in the image below, that’s where you type in a name for your old template. Name it anything you want and click Save. Navigate to the folder of your choice on your computer so that you’ll know where it is for future reference.. And that’s it, you just saved a copy of your entire template contents to your computer!

To retrieve the contents of your widgets, you’ll need to open the file you just saved with Notepad, then look thru the file to pick out the sections you want to copy and paste back into your new template’s widgets. This part may take a bit of patience because there will be a lot of code in there. It may take a few minutes to find the parts you want.

Please note, this file can not be used to restore your original blog template, this is just intended to save the widget contents!