Free Blog Templates for Blogger.com Blogs

When I assign blogging projects to my students I have them construct blogs on Blogger since it is free and owned by Google (and therefore not likely to go out of business). Blogger offers a number of basic templates from which you can choose, but seeing them on every third blog you look at on the Web can get a bit boring. There are plenty of sites on the Web like pYzam.com where you can download free templates. MySpace templates are especially popular with students as they seem to love to change the look of their MySpace pages on a frequent basis.

The problem with free Blogger templates that you find on most sites is that the XML code may not be well constructed. MySpace seems a bit more forgiving on template code than Blogger. Blogger will refuse to load templates that contain XML coding errors, which either forces you to find and fix the XML errors (beyond the capabilities of most of my students) or to give up and search for another template.



eBlog Templates is a site that offers well-constructed templates for Blogger and Wordpress blogs. Many of the templates are optimized for revenue generation as they contain design elements that feature positioning advertising at the top of blog pages. Accompanying the templates are detailed instructions regarding setting up the various features contained in the template so that they will work with your blog. And best of all, the templates are FREE! You can find the Blogger templates here. They even have a blog for Blogger users that contains links to new templates as well as articles about generating blogs on Blogger.

The template that I use for this blog is from eBlog Templates and is called Daya Earth. I have modified it slightly for my purposes, but it is pretty close to the template that eBlog Templates offers.

How does someone make money giving away free blog templates? When you look at the eBlog site, you will notice plenty of advertising links which probably generates a fair bit of revenue. Also, on each download page, there is a link to the site owner’s Paypal account so you can make a donation. The links implore you: “Isn’t this free template worth at least $1.” Certainly a well-designed blog template with no XML coding errors is worth a great deal more than $1!

So have your students explore the eBlog Templates site and it should help them avoid having to use the same old Blogger templates that you see everywhere on the Web.