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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Related Articles

How to edit your Theme in Blogger

What types of theme / templates does Blogger have

Editing your blog's template:  advantages and disadvantages

How to turn on a mobile theme for your blog

Blogs, Blogger, bloggers, posts pages and screens - understanding Blogger-basics

How to make a real website, using Blogger

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One of the age old questions asked by users who are interested in building websites is, "What type of hosting do I need?" Because web hosting comes in many flavors, it can be hard for less experienced users to determine which one they need. There are various costs, features, and levels of performance associated with each type, so it's generally good to get a breakdown on each one before making a definite decision.

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Aubrey Moulton is a writer for Nethosting.com. She has over eight years of SEO experience and loves hiking in her spare time. 

How to turn on a mobile theme / template for blogs in Blogger

This article explains why mobile mattes for some blogs (but not all), what tools Blogger has provided to help with this, and how to set up a mobile theme (aka template) for your blog.  It also links to Google's mobile testing tool, which shows you how your blog looks on a mobile device.

By default, when someone uses a smartphone, tablet or other mobile device to look at your blog, they see the "full site" just like they would if they were using a PC.   The pages aren't set up to work well on their small screen, but they have access to all the features and gadgets you've installed.

In some cases, this is fine.  For example, when I first wrote this article, I looked at the statistics for this site and hardly any of the visitors were mobile.   However now, a couple of years later things have changed and I've implemented a mobile theme for this blog.

But for other blogs, especially ones that have maps and other location-information or which people read on the go, having a mobile-friendly theme is very important:   for example, on my public-transport blog, over 25% of visitors are using mobile, and that figure is growing.  Making my site work well for these visitors is definitely important for its long-term future (and my short term advertising revenue!)

What's available

Blogger have made a set of mobile themes, to match the standard Designer Themes, and so far only one to match the Dynamic theme(s).

We cannot control the layout of gadgets on these - when the screen is only 300-ish pixels wide, there's not much room to move.

But we can add and remove gadgets, and also by choosing a custom template get colour settings that match our main blog.

How to enable a mobile theme / template for your blog

Log in to Blogger using an account with administrator rights to the blog.

Go to the Themes tab.

If your blog has a Designer or Dynamic theme, then there will be a Mobile option to the right of the "Live on Blog" area.

If the blog is not set up to use a mobile theme ,then the word Disabled will be in the middle of the picture area - although it may be hard to read if your base template (chosen in the Live on Blog area) has a picture behind it.

Click on the gear-wheel underneath the picture to see the mobile options.

Select "Yes.  Show mobile template on mobile devices."

Either leave the mobile template on Default, or select one of the other options.

• If you choose Default, your mobile template will use the standard template matching your desktop template.
• If you choose Custom, your mobile template will use the colour-scheme and various features from your desktop template, and you will be able to makes changes to these settings.

Use the Preview button if you want to see what your blog will look like with the selected template on a mobile device.

When you are happy with your selection, press Save.

What your readers see

Visitors to your blog who are using a desktop PC (or laptop or netbook or any other machine with a full-size screen) won't see anything different.

Readers who are using an internet-enabled cellphone (ie smartphone), tablet, iPad, etc will see a different view:

• They won't have a sidebar
• The gadgets will be limited (unless you add some extra ones) and in the header and footer only
• On the home-page there will just be the title, thumbnail and snippet for each post, and a button for read-more (this is irrespective of where you've put the jump-break) - notice that the usual methods of giving your blog a home-page don't always work.
• Custom styles that you have added to the template may not be applied (this has happened on one blog where I use styles, I'm still investigating whether it's a feature of all mobile templates, or just due to the way I added these particular styles).
• There will be buttons at the bottom of the page for Home, <   and > .    I think that the latter two refer to older and newer posts (though possible they are the opposite way around from what I expect).
• There will be a link to "view web version", which lets your visitor switch to to see the blog using the desktop template.

I have a  feeling that there may be some other differences too - very keen to hear about any others you've spotted.

Seeing what your mobile readers see

The absolute best way that I've found to accurately experience my blogs as mobile visitors see them is to use a mobile device myself:

• Just like preview mode in the Post-editor, the mobile preview mode shows a "look and feel" view, which is not entirely accurate.   For example in the picture above, it shows part of the most-recent article insteaod of just the post title and mini-snippet that I see when I look at the site on my phone.
• The screen-size testers that I've tried out (ie software tools that mimic showing your website in various different screen sizes) don't actually use the mobile template - I suspect that this is due to the way that Blogger detects mobile devices.

However you can see any blog as it would be on a mobile device by appending /?m=1 to the end of the URL.    For example, to see this blog in mobile, I would look at http://areyoublogger.blogspot.com/?m=1      If you're going to use this approach, it's best to re-size your browser window so that it's about 300px wide - from my netbook, that's about 1/3 of the screen size, but it would be less from machiens with bigger screens.


Another approach is to use Google's Mobile Friendly Testing tool, which will

... analyze a URL and report if the page has a mobile-friendly design.

As well as showing you how your blog looks, it also reports on any issues that have been found.

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Related Articles

Adding gadgets to your mobile template.

Removing the attribution from moblile blogs

Showing a Google custom map on your blog

Advertising programmes for websites

Types of Blogger template

Administrator rights to your blog