Template Building Block
There was a nothingness
That shroud over blogs, there
Were no decent templates, just rigid
border to wrap around you posts, sidebars,
widgets and whatever else. Needless to say it was
A time of great blandness and spartan designs. Until
three came and changed things, taking a giant leap for blogs
changing the look of blogs forever ----- K2, Kubrick, Hemingway
[ok, I will end my peculiar star war intro before I creep you out more]
Like all websites almost a decade ago, blog designs were extremely bland and boring compared to blogs today. The first template that was exceptionally new and fresh design-wise was Wordpress based because of its easy HTML, coding integration; Which still remain one of the reason why there are tons of Wordpress theme and only a dozen Blogger templates.
That very first template was Kubrick which remained the default template that comes pre-installed with Wordpress till this day. Then K2 became more popular followed by Hemingway. These three templates are not special just because they are the 'first' templates but also all three templates are very customizable and many other templates are based on them. Some templtes just swapped the graphics used while leaving the coding framework, yet the customized template look different enough to go under another name.
Kubrick
Kubrick is designed by the good people at Binary Bonsai, you can get a little history of Kubrick from the site. You can see that Kubrick uses rounder corners that are popular in the new web2.0 age of the internet and web design. The general color and clean feel also fits the web2.0 style.In terms of coding, Kubrick started the cornerstone of blog template coding with organized CSS, clean divs, and excellent element tagging with class and id to identify each distinct element of a blog and their purpose. ie. a header post title would be clearly classed "post-title". This way designer who aren't as strong in coding could simple replace old graphics to have everything fit in place.
Kubrick is very widely customized with widgets, coloumns [2,3,4 columns], and ported into other blog publishing system.
K2
K2 is a second theme designed again by the good people at Binary Bonsai, it has its own site at http://getk2.com/. K2 is somewhat a heir of Kubrick, continue the web2.0 theme. K2 did away with the round corners and added the tab navigation. The meta information for each is moved up under the blog title with some nifty FAMFAMFAM icons added. Again K2 retains Kubrick's clean layout that's easy on the eye. K2 and Kubrick share very similar sidebars. In fact, one of the tricks to identifying a modified K2 or Kubrick theme is by the sidebar, a streamline blue list with a gray title at top.
Similar to Kubrick, K2 is very well coded and heavily modified into many different versions.
Overall I think K2 provides a great alternative for those who aren't into round corners but more so for angular designs.
Hemingway
Hemingway is designed by Kyle Neath at Warpspire. Although it is not as popular as Kubrick and K2 it is very widely used by thousands of blogger and one of the first choices as the skeleton for customization. Hemingway features a minimalistic desgin white on black that leaves a lot of rooms for extra graphics and tweaks. Designs with Hemingway as the skeleton usually have excellent readability featureing clear text, large line spacing, and distinct level identification in content and lists.
Hemingway is also one of the first blog that has the option to have the links at the foot and post occupy the entire top section of the design. Another bit of trivia is that the name of the template came from the designer's favorite author.
Of these three template, you can find K2 at Blogcrowds in new Blogger XML Template supporting labels and widgets. I'm pretty sure Kubrick is converted to Blogger XML as well somewhere on the web. Hemingway is yet to be moved to new Blogger.
Frustration
Baaaahhh, almost another week with no new template entries, I'm really kicking myself in the umm behind.
Lately I have been bogged down with the number of new posts we have at blogcrowds forums since we imposed the three post till you get your template rule. Well, of course, as a result we got a boatload more posts and I personally would like to respond to every single one. There goes an hour more of my spare time. Should have saw that one coming, I actually did but just as well prepared as I thought. I know all of the above sound like a lot of excuses when there should be none... Oh well, guess I have to be more efficient in the future.
In any case I do have one new template to showcase:
Here it is for all the die hard baseball fans, The Road To October is designed especially for you!
And if anyone's kind enough, feel free to post a reply with something like
Get to work, lazy umm behind, there better be a design magnified for this template!
Thanks a million times.
Green Marinee Released!
Alright, I finally went through the entire Green Marinee Template and everything seem to be fine. So here it is, in response to popular demand (well at least from the request I have gotten), Green Marinee - converted to blogger xml template is released for public download:
Demo | Download
Above is a screenshot, a demo (not that I need another one) and a link to the download page. Hope you enjoy this one.
To see other full Blogger XML Template with labels and all other new blogger features visit Blogcrowds.com and there are many more to come! Now its easy than ever for bloggers to download Blogger XML Templates at Blogger Templates. Good luck blogging everyone.
Green Marinee
Great, our first serious template review / template magnified. We'll start off with the latest template I have been working on that's used on this very blog, Green Marinee.
Green Marinee is a WordPress based theme designed by Australian web designer Ian Main. Visit his website/portofolio at http://e-lusion.com/ for other excellent examples of web design.
DESIGN
From top down, Green Marinee has the site name offset with the solid black. Although a logo is not present, the blackground should very well with your own custom logo.
Next, like one of Ian's nonpublic WordPress theme, BrettPro, Green Marinee uses the single strip trend with the lime green strip going across the background. The strip certainly make the background more interesting and further enhancing the drop shadow from the main body. Coninuing with the strip pattern you can see many broad green line going across the template, below the site name, for each sidebar module, even in the links.
The content area of the template is given a large area with good size font and improtant information emphasized with font weight and coloring. Overall very clean and comfortable on the eye. One thing about the main content is that it might get a bit boring as you scroll down leaving with plain white and some drop shadows as the case on this blog. This could might be remedied with fixing the background black and green to the background so when you scroll they don't move.
Unlike some designers who embellish the content the area but neglect the sidebars, it looks like Ian spent some extra time on the sidebars. The sidebar has excellent list icons and lime green module seperators that perfect blend with the template. Green Marinee even has second level list icons.
Finally the footer, which is text transformed into all uppercase with a list for special styling aligned horizontally.
CODING
Overall, I won't say Green Marinee is very difficult to code, the hardest part is probably the background and drop shadows. Ian could have done two things to achieve the sidebar shadow at the sides.
Have the background as a single thin horizontal slice and repeat it vertically using one div container
or
Append the left and right drop shadow to each side using two div container
Of the two, it looks like Ian used both, he appended the drop shadows to the left and right as well as included a background image for the center. This explains the number of div wrappers around the container. One thing I'm puzzled about is why use an image for the center, why not just set the background color to white?The advantages of the technique is that he made things a lot easier for me to resize to change the dimension of the template and add a third sidebar. Which also make Green Marinee ideal for a fluid design.
One thing I don't get in Green Marinee's coding is that while the design is excellent, the coding is terrible in terms of SEO. Search engines read the HTML code top down and identify the top content as more important than the lower ones. However, in Green Marinee the main column is place at the very end of the HTML code while the sidebar is above it meaning search engine will see sidebar linking more important than the actual content. Most people read from left to right so the main content comes first so why not code it above first?
In conclusion, Green Marinee is an excellent template, very clean with extra touches that really stands out. Overall 8.5/10. You can find Green Marinee with the extra sidebar shown here soon, sometimes in the next few days at Blogcrowds Blogger Template page.
...and that it people, our first design review or as the label says design magnified.
Thisaway, Thisaway Blue, Thisaway Green, Thisaway Rose
Now its easy than ever for bloggers to download Blogger XML Templates at Blogcrowds Resource section. Here are a couple of our templates, Thisaway, Thisaway Blue, Thisaway Green, Thisaway Rose in full Blogger XML with labels and all other new blogger features! Click the images to download the template. There are more template on Blogcrowds.com and many more to come!
Thisaway
Thisaway Blue
Thisaway Green
Thisaway Rose
Snapshot Tequila, Snapshot Madder, Snapshot Sable 3 Columns!
Now its easy than ever for bloggers to download Blogger XML Templates at Blogcrowds Resource section. Here are a couple of our templates, Snapshot Tequila, Snapshot Madder, Snapshot Sable in full Blogger XML with labels and all other new blogger features! Click the images to download the template. There are more template on Blogcrowds.com and many more to come!
Snapshot Madder
Snapshot Tequila
Snapshot Sable
Mr. Moto, Ms. Moto, Son of Moto 3 Column XML Templates
Now its easy than ever for bloggers to download Blogger XML Templates at Blogcrowds Resource section. Here are a couple of our templates, Mr. Moto, Ms. Moto, Son of Moto in full Blogger XML with labels and all other new blogger features! Click the images to download the template. There are more template on Blogcrowds.com and many more to come!
Mr. Moto
Ms. Moto
Ms. Moto
Minima, Minima Black, Minima Blue, Minima Ochre
Now its easy than ever for bloggers to download Blogger XML Templates at Blogcrowds Resource section. Here are a couple of our templates, Minima, Minima Black, Minima Blue, Minima Ochre in full Blogger XML with labels and all other new blogger features! Click the images to download the template. There are more template on Blogcrowds.com and many more to come!
Minima
Minima Black
Minima Blue
Minima Ochre
Tic Tac, Tic Tac Blue Column Blogger XML Templates
Now its easy than ever for bloggers to download Blogger XML Templates at Blogcrowds Resource section. Here are a couple of our templates, Tic Tac, Tic Tac Blue in full Blogger XML with labels and all other new blogger features! Click the images to download the template. There are more template on Blogcrowds.com and many more to come!
Tic Tac
Tic Tac Blue
Dots, Dots Dark 3 Column Blogger XML Templates
Now its easy than ever for bloggers to download Blogger XML Templates at Blogcrowds Resource section. Here are a couple of our templates, Dots, Dots Dark in full Blogger XML with labels and all other new blogger features! Click the images to download the template. There are more template on Blogcrowds.com and many more to come!
Dots
Dots Dark
Denim, Denim Light, Denim Washed
Now its easy than ever for bloggers to download Blogger XML Templates at Blogcrowds Resource section. Here are a couple of our templates, Denim, Denim Light, Denim Washed in full Blogger XML with labels and all other new blogger features! Click the images to download the template. There are more template on Blogcrowds.com and many more to come!
Denim
Denim Light
Denim Washed
Harbor, Scribe, 565, 897 3 Column Blogger XML
Now its easy than ever for bloggers to download Blogger XML Templates at Blogcrowds Resource section. Here are a couple of our templates, Harbor, Scribe, 565, 897 in full Blogger XML with labels and all other new blogger features! Click the images to download the template. There are more template on Blogcrowds.com and many more to come!
Harbor
Scribe
565
897
Andreas02, Andreas04, Andreas08
Now its easy than ever for bloggers to download Blogger XML Templates at Blogcrowds Resource section. Here are a couple of our templates, Andreas02, Andreas04, Andreas08 in full Blogger XML with labels and all other new blogger features! Click the images to download the template. There are more template on Blogcrowds.com and many more to come!
Andreas02
Andreas04
Andreas08
Herbert, Jellyfish, Tekka, Sand Dollar 3 Column Blogger XML Templates
Now its easy than ever for bloggers to download Blogger XML Templates at Blogcrowds Resource section. Here are a couple of our templates, Herbert, Jellyfish, Tekka, Sand Dollar in full 3 Column Blogger XML. Click the images to download the template. There are more template on Blogcrowds.com and many more to come!
Herbert
Jellyfish
Sand Dollar
Tekka
New Blogcrowds Template System
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
Templates Complete
Today, 4 more templates are converted to 3 column Beta xml templates:
TicTac
TicTac Blueberry
Tekka
Sand Dollar
To temporarily view TicTac visit my test blog. As always you can download all the code for these template at Blogcrowds.com registeration required.
This is it people, now Blogcrowds has all Blogger Templates variation and all in 3 column, get them today.
Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!
Moto & Snapshot
Blogger Beta XML templates Moto & Snapshot series converted to 3 Column!.
They include:
Moto-
Son Of Moto
Mr. Moto
Ms. Moto
Snapshot-
Snapshot: Madder
Snapshot: Sable
Snapshot: Tequila
To temporarily view Snapshot: Tequila visit my test blog. As always you can download all the code for these template at Blogcrowds.com registeration required.
I'm on my last stretch, just 4-5 template before I complete the entire blogger series! Hopefully done before Christmas :D.
Happy Holidays Everyone!
Rawk! & Thisaway
Rawk! and three column Thisaway added to our collection of of Blogger Beta Templates!
K2 Beta-fied
I took sometimes and betafied another template!
This is the K2 template, as most people probably know, distributed by Geck & Fly; now it supports blogger widgets & labels as well! This template is quite beautiful, so hopefully as soon as I hear back from the Geckofly people, everyone will be able to get the code from Blogcrowds :D
Scribe Font
In beta, blogger replaced the once elegant Scribe font used for labels with a more generic font. However, not to worry, find out more about the font used in original blogger here at Blogcrowds
