The different between themes and templates in Blogger

This article explains the difference between themes and templates in Blogger, Google's blogging tool.

What is (was) a Blogger template

How a blog that is made with Blogger is shown to a visitor is controlled by four sets of information:

• The posts which the blogger writes (ie the content)
• A user-editable "configuration file" which records the overall formatting options which the file designer and then the blogger have chosen
• Another configuration file, called the post-template, which records choices that the blogger has made under Layout > Blog posts (edit), but cannot be edited elsewhere.   
• Blogger's own software, which puts the other things together with some internal rules to make "web pages".   Bloggers cannot control the rules in this at all.

Originally, the first "configuration file" was called a template.   In fact, officially it was called a design-template, to distinguish it from the post-template.   However because most people aren't aware of the post template, usually just the word "template" is used to mean design-template.

What is a theme

Other blogging tools (eg Wordpress, Tumblr) called their equivalent file a theme.    Most (or even all) of those tools provide less access to change things in the Theme file, for example if you use a Wordpress free-hosted blog, then you cannot change any of the code in your theme, you can only make formatting changes which are allowed for in the Wordpress front-end.

Many of the Wordpress themes have had a lot of  graphic design work done on them - using them gives a blog-site which looks very attractive (or otherwise suited for their purpose) on a wide range of screens.    Many large websites have been made using Wordpress, and so very many professional designers have created Wordpress themes.    Because of this, many people believe that it's easier to get an excellent-looking website from a theme than from a Blogger template.

Blogger templates have now become themes

Recently - I noticed it in March 2017 - Blogger started calling their templates "themes".  

• They've changed the menu option on their dashboard from "Template" to "Theme".
• They've changed the action button names in the template/theme editor to say things like "Save theme".
• They've written various help articles which refer to themes.

What hasn't changed

• We can still edit our templates themes extensively.
• The Blogger tools that make the changes in our themes haven't changed:  All the items under the Themes tab on the dashboard are the same as the ones on the Templates tab.
• The contents of our existing themes are still much the same  (I cannot guarantees they haven't made any changes, but I haven't seen any)
• The themes that we can choose from when making a new blog, or changing the format of an existing one, are the same.
• There are hundreds of help and how-to articles written by blogger-helpers like myself, which all refer to templates.   (I've started changing mine - but it's going to take a while!)

What else is going to change?   

This is the big question:   Is the rename a precursor to some other changes, eg restricting how much control we have over our themes? - or is it just a cosmetic change to make Blogger seem more modern?

Will there be some new themes released - ones that look better across a range of devices, maybe even some that are optimized for mobile instead of desktop use?

Will there be new theme-editing features introduced into Blogger's interface, to let us control things we cannot control now?

Conclusion / TL-DR

Only Google's Blogger product managers know exactly what the future plans for Blogger are - and they're not known for talking about the future direction  until they're just about to introduce new features.   

But until they do, my conclusion is that there is no difference between templates and themes in Blogger.  They are simply two different words for exactly the same thing.

NB:   Blogger product a announcements are usually made in the Blogger Buzz blog - and I see that template were still called templates in their most recent post in November 2016:

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How to edit your Theme in Blogger

This article is about how to edit your theme in Blogger.

It supports many other articles on this site, which suggest specific theme changes needed to solve particular problems.    Note that until early 2017, themes were called templates.   In practise, "edit your template" and "edit your theme" mean the same thing.

In Blogger, a theme is a file which controls how your blog are displayed on the screen when someone reads it using a browser or a mobile device.   Themes used to be called templates, but were renamed "themes" in early 2017.

Previously, I've looked at whether it's a good idea to edit your Blogger theme / template or not.   Because themes are the same thing as templates, the same principles apply to editing your theme.

For many people, editing the theme is simply something which they need to do, because it's the only way to do what they want (remove the attribution, show a gadget on the homeppage only, add a Facebook like button to posts, etc).   And Blogger is often preferred because it allows users to edit aspects of their theme which other blogging tools done allow changes to.

Overview - how to edit your blog-theme

In general, the process to edit your theme is:

• Make a back-up copy of the theme, as it is now
• Open the theme-editor
• Make the change
• Check that it works, and if not, go back to the previous theme.

The following sections have more details about each of these steps.

How to make a backup copy of your current theme

I know:   It's tempting to skip this if you're only making a small change. I even skip it myself sometimes. And it's not needed if this is the first time you've ever customised your theme - because you can recover from problems by just reinstalling the standard theme.

But if you would be upset to lose any theme changes you made earlier, or if the change you are making now is not minor, then I strongly recommend making a copy before you start, just in case.  To do this

• From the Blogger dashboard, go to the Themes tab
• Click the Backup / Restore button near the top right of the dashboard
• Click the Download Theme button, and then wait while the file downloads.
• After the download has finished, find the place where your computer puts downloaded files.
• Find the file that was just created,
• Rename it to something sensible
   (eg MyBlog theme backup before change 31 Jan 2012.xml)
• Move the file to somewhere safe: usually somewhere on your computer is fine - or you make like to upload it to somewhere like Google Docs, to be absolutely certain that it won't get lost.

How to open Blogger's theme editor

• From the Blogger Dashboard, to to the Themes tab
• Click Edit HTML

Now you have your theme open in the theme editor, the next challenge is making changes successfully - or backing them out if your changes were not successful.

How to make the change to your theme

• Find the code you need to change:
  See Searching for text in Blogger's theme editor if you need help with this.
  
  Note:   some of the older "how to" articles say to make sure that the Expand Widgets checkbox off or on.   This checkbox has now been removed from Blogger's theme editor.    If the instructions you are following says to leave it "off", then you should just be able to follow them as is.    However if you are told to turn Expand Widgets off,  then you need to find the correct part of the code by searching for the widget-id or section name, and then "unfold" that to see the complete code.   

• Make the change (This article doesn't go into the principles of theme design, there are plenty of other articles and websites about that: I'm assuming that you know what you need to do).

• Click the Preview theme button
  If Blogger can make sense of the change you made, then view of your blog is shown in the theme-editing area, with what looks like your blog's homepage. It's not a real copy of your blog (the links won't work, the spacing might not be quite the same), but it shows you how the home-page will look with your theme edits.
  
• Do a quick check that the screen looks right - for some changes you even be able to tell if the change has been successful just from this preview screen.
  
  However:  If the new window/tab shows an error message like

Your theme could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure that all XML elements are closed properly. <br/> XML error message: The element type "div" must be terminated by the matching end-tag "</div>".Error 500 

or

Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure that all XML elements are closed properly. <br/> XML error message: Element type "b:widget" must be followed by either attribute specifications, ">" or "/>".

 then Blogger has not been able to understand the change you made. Sometimes the error message gives a clue about what's wrong, although it can be misleading.   Check that you made the change correctly - fix any errors and click Preview again.  If it still doesn't work, ask for help from the place that suggested the change you are making 

.

•  Once you are happy that the preview screen looks OK, click the Save theme button.

How to test your theme change

Some changes can be checked very easily, sometimes from the preview screen.

But if your change isn't visible on the front screen, you must check it after you have applied it. What to verify depends on your them type, what the change was, and what other features (eg the page-gadget as a menu, the archive widget, ) your blog uses. You need to decide what to test, based on all of these.

At least, I always click on and check on these things when I've made a major theme change:

1. the home page
2. the items in the menu bar
3. a label value
4. an archive widget entry
5. custom-search-engine results
6. comments

And if I'm being particularly reader-focussed, I'll also check these things in more than one browser:   usually in the current version of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome.

What to do if your theme change wasn't successful

If you find that the theme change has caused problems, then ou have have a choice to make:

Can you and your readers live with the problems on your blog for "a while", while you look for other solutions? 

Or 

Do you need to remove the change right now, so visitors can use your blog as it was while you solve the issues.

There is no right answer to this question:   It's a personal decision, based on the blog, and your readers.   But if you do need to remove the theme change, here's how to do it:

• Open the Themes tab
• Click the Backup / Restore button near the top right of the dashboard
• Click Choose File and find the file that you downloaded earlier
• Click Upload.

It is best to restore your theme before you have changed any gadgets.  If you get a message about widgets being missing, then it means that the gadgets associated with your blog are not the ones referred to in the theme.   If this happens, you need to decide whether to deep or delete any "orphaned" ones, and may need to check their settings again.

Making complicated changes

If your theme may need a lot of "surgery" while you figure out how to make a change, then it may be a good idea to build a private test-blog to do the work in, and only copy the contents into your "real" blog theme when you are certain that you've got it correct (or correct-enough).

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How to find things in Blogger's Theme editor

This article explains how to find things (gadgets or text) in the Theme editor in Blogger.

Very often when you are editing your Theme in Blogger, you need to find particular text.

For example, you might need to find all places where  "</head" appears, so you can add something to the very next line.   Or you might want to find the code for a particular gadget (aka widget), so that you can put a conditional-formatting statement around it.

There are now two tools you can use to find items in the Theme editor:

• The Jump to Widget tool if you are looking for a Widget
• The Find bar if you are looking for a text string.

More information about using each of these is given below.

How to use the Jump to Widget tool

First, you need to find out the exact name for the widget / gadget that you need to find the code for.    (See Finding a gadget's name for a tip on how to do this).

Then, inside the Theme editor (see Editing your Blogger Theme for how to get there), just choose the name you are looking for from the drop down list .   (Click the arrow beside Jump to Widget to see the items in the list):

Once you have chosen an item from the list, the template editing window moves to the place where this gadget is listed in the theme code.   It usually places it in the 2nd line of the editing window.  For example, in the picture below, I chose to jump to the Followers1 gadget.

How to find any text in the Theme editor

Click anywhere inside the Theme-editor window:   this is the rectangle which shows the code in your Theme.    (It's important to click inside here first, or the next command will work differently)

On your keyboard, press Ctrl/f:   to do this, hold down the control (ctrl) key, and press the  f    key.

A search bar will now show in the top right corner of the theme editing window - like this:

Type the text you want to find into the Search bar and press Enter.   

The cursor will move to the first time that the text appears.   

To find the next place where the text appears, click into the Search-bar and press Enter again 

Repeat as often as you need to find the correct place.  

When you are finished with searching, click the X button at the right hand side of the Search-bar to close it.

How to see the details inside a gadget or other piece of code

You can now find any text that you need to find in Blogger's theme editor (previously called the Template editor).   

But if you look carefully at the Theme-editing window you will see that there is sometimes a horizontal arrow in the left-hand side of the code, and that the line numbers jump - like this:

This happens because some of the detail is hidden, to make the theme-code easier to work with.

But you can use the arrow (called an expand-arrow) to see it all:  Click on it and you will see that it changed to a down arrow, and that the code window now shows some extra lines which were previously hidden.

You won't always need to do this:   some template edits just say to find the code for a gadget and to put extra instructions before and after it.   But others need you to open up the gadget code and make changes inside.

Job done!  You can now find gadget and text items inside your Blogger Theme - so you can continue editing it.

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