Blogger Templates

I'm very excited to announce that Blogcrowds.com has a brand new template system, see it here. Now its easy than ever for bloggers to download Blogger XML Templates. Here are a couple of our templates, Rounders in full 3 Blogger XML. Click the images to download the template. There will be many more to come in Feburary.


Rounders - 3 Columns




Rounders 2 - 3 Columns




Rounders 3 - 3 Columns




Rounders 4 - 3 Columns

For better formatting see article mirrored.

As previously posted and mirrored here, the only way to insert adsense into the body of the post is to escape the Adsense code; meaning replace all the special characters with HTML entities, for example '<' with < '>' with > So, your Adsense code may look like this in the beginning:

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
google_ad_width = 728;
google_ad_height = 90;
google_ad_format = "728x90_as";
google_ad_type = "text_image";
google_ad_channel ="";
google_color_border = "F15005";
google_color_bg = "F15005";
google_color_link = "FFFFFF";
google_color_text = "FFFFFF";
google_color_url = "FFFFFF";
//--></script>

<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

And end up look like to be accepted by Blogger XML Template:

&lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;<!--
google_ad_client = "pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
google_ad_width = 728;
google_ad_height = 90;
google_ad_format = "728x90_as";
google_ad_type = "text_image";
google_ad_channel ="";
google_color_border = "F15005";
google_color_bg = "F15005";
google_color_link = "FFFFFF";
google_color_text = "FFFFFF";
google_color_url = "FFFFFF";
//--&gt;</script&gt;

<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"&gt;
</script&gt;

I have a special web application specifically designed to do this, see my HTML Parser here.

There are some concerns though both from other bloggers as well as myself as to if the above would be violation of tempering Adsense code as state in the TOS. So, I contacted Google Adsense Team through several emails and here they are in chronological order:

Hello Adsense Team:

This question is regarding putting Google Adsense code in new Blogger(owned by Google) into new XML templates. In order for Blogger to parse the Adsense Code in XML template, the Javascript has to be escaped, meaning replacing all the '<' with '<', '>' with '>' etc. After you publish you blog, and view the HTML code produced by the blogger, it would be the exactly the same as given from the Adsense generator. Would this be tampering of code even if the final displayed Adsense code is the same?

Thank you,
Regards

Initial email, stating the issue

Hi,

You are permitted to make minor edits in Blogger Beta. However, please keep in mind that in general publishers are not allowed to alter the AdSense ad code for any reason. Once you've generated the ad code in your AdSense account pages, you may not alter any portion of the code or manually change the layout of the ads.

Thanks for your understanding.
Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

mmm, kind of ambiguous, what exactly are the minor edits? So here is the follow up email

Hello:

Thank you for your reply, however I find your answer ambiguous. First you
mentioned minor edits for BLOGGER BETA is allowed and then GENERAL PUBLISHERS are not allowed to alter the generated Adsense code.

Is the 'minor' edits of escaping HTML entities for XML parsing allowed as long as when displayed in HTML the adsense code is exactly the same as given from the Adsense generator?

Sorry for asking again, I just don't want to violate the Google Adsense TOS. Thanks for you consideration and all your help.

Thank you
Regards

And this is the answer

Hi,

To clarify, while you are permitted to make minor edits in Blogger Beta, to allow the ad implementations to function properly, you are not permitted to alter the code for the purposes of changing size, font or hiding the Ads by Google logo.

Thanks for your understanding.
Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team


There you go, AdSense does not clearly state anything however from these email I conclude that replacing special characters with HTML entity are allowed. Since Adsense won't give a clear rule, here is my own:

Minor edits on Google Adsense Code for Blogger Beta/XML are allowed as long as the resulting Adsense Code generated by Blogger is exactly the same as given from Google Adsense Code Generator.

This means if you goto your blog, eg. http://customtemplates.blogspot.com/
and click View --> Page Source (Firefox) or View --> Source (IE), the Adsense Code there should be exactly the same as given from Google Adsense Code regardless of what you put in your Edit HTML section in Blogger.

To parse your Adsense click here and for information on adsense placement see this article. More information & placement positions are coming.

Have you ever tried to insert the Google Adsense code directly into your Blogger XML Template and get this error?

Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly. XML error message: The processing instruction target matching "[xX][mM][lL]" is not allowed.

So, you resolve to insert the Adsense code using blogger widgets. However that means your widgets can not appear within each post, the best spots to place your ads. Don't worry, there is a way of inserting Adsense code straight into your XML templates.

Since Blogger started using XML everything is more strict and standardized. The above error simply mean the Adsense code is not standized XML and solve it we need to replace all the html character such as '<' with '>' '"' with '"' please read this article.