When you pick a new template, the old template—and any changes you might have made to it—are lost. If you’ve made changes to the old template, you may want to back it up first (page 82).

You don’t have to limit yourself to the templates that Blogger provides. Try googling Blogger templates and see what you find. If you decide on an external Blogger template, you’ll load it by following the instructions at the bottom of page 82.

When you go to the Layout | Page Elements page, you’ll find that the page elements will differ according to the layout you’ve chosen. For example, since the Rounders 3 template has two sidebars, you’ll see two sidebar page elements—and be able to add gadgets to both of them—on the Page Elements page.

Note that when you switch to any Rounders template, your existing sidebar page elements will be divided into two groups. The bottommost gadget will go into the top sidebar and all the other gadgets will go into the other sidebar. You may want to adjust this more to your liking. For more details on reorganizing gadgets, see page 54.

It’s pretty usual to have to adjust the colors, fonts, and header image after applying a new template. You may also wish to reorder your gadgets and other page elements. (See page 54 for details.)

Header images are shrunk to fit each given template. For example, headers for the Minima template are shrunk to 660 pixels wide while headers for the Rounders 3 template are shrunk to 730 pixels wide. The easiest solution is to remove the image and place it again to reshrink it to the proper width.

If you’re comfortable with HTML and CSS, you can go right in and edit the code in the template. If you need some help, try consulting my bestselling HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition: Visual Quick-Start Guide. It’s a perfect reference for deciphering a template.

Blogger templates also contain Blogger-specific variables and tags. The Blogger tags are not immediately obvious as they are hidden inside widgets. You can display them by clicking the Expand Widget Templates button just above the box that contains the template. You can find more info about variables at http://bit.ly/BloggerVariables and on page 80. You can find more details about template tags here: http://bit.ly/BloggerTemplate.

Remember there are two steps to adding a variable. First you define the variable, then you must apply it to some CSS rule in the template so that it affects some part of your blog.

How do you know what CSS rule applies to which part of the blog? While viewing your blog, choose View Source. This will display the HTML code for your blog page. Then search for some text in a given section of your blog. Look at the name of the HTML element that contains the text (or sometimes the class or id of that element). Then go back to the template and find the CSS rule for that element.

You don’t have to use variables to change the fonts or colors. If you feel more comfortable, you can skip the variables altogether and just add the desired font or color to the appropriate CSS rule. The disadvantage is that you won’t be able to use the Fonts and Colors box to preview the changes.

Conversely, if the template you’re using only uses CSS fonts and colors to define how each element should look, you can make it easier to edit your blog by adding and applying variables instead.

Once you create a variable, it should appear in the Fonts and Colors box. Then you can set a new font and color and preview the effect without saving or publishing the changes.