These days the internet is filled with thousands of new blogs popping up each day.  It seems like everyone and there siblings has a blog setup on WordPress or Blogger.  There is no question blogging has become the more popular choice in expressing individual content on the web.  With so many people entering this large niche, it makes it hard  to standout from the pack.  One thing you can do to save yourself from the rest is have a great design to work with.  Over the past several years developers have improved the look and functionality of one of the first blogging platforms to gain popularity, Google’s Blogger.  I’m highly recommending NOT to use one of their free themes due to many of them with broken template images and some which are not updated to the latest XML blogger.  You can still choose from a wide variety of free quality XML blogger themes.    Now, what makes a quality template?

———————————

EYE CATCHING HEADER

First impressions are everything, if a reader isn’t initially stuck on your site…you probably lost the reader for life!  Isn’t it scary how the world of blogging works?  I suggest finding a header that has some sort of graphic element to it.  You’ll find out how one simple graphic can change your loyalty rate.

———————————

SEARCH FOR BROKEN LINKS

Be sure that you view a demo version and test the links.  A site’s look is worthless if it doesn’t work properly!  In order for your blog to have credibility it should have a perfect flow from page to page, post to post.

———————————

LOOK AT REVIEWS

If you can, look at what other Bloggers rank the theme.  You should have own opinion ultimately but it doesn’t hurt to be influenced if one Blogger template has 5 stars and the other has 1.5 stars.  Sites that rank their themes like BloggerTemplatesFree can be very beneficial to the final decision.

———————————

MATCH YOUR NICHE

This is a simple concept, if you have a car blog then don’t download a template that has flowers in the header.  Find a theme that matches and flows with your topic of interest.  Find the best color scheme, layout, columns and functions that fits your blog topic.

All in all, many blogger sites have the same boring templates.  Don’t go this route, trust me!  Instead, look through the many sites offering free Blogger themes and find one that best fits your needs.  Choose wisely and know that you can always change your theme if you feel you will outgrow the new one.

Polaroid is a free Blogger template great for photographers looking for a pink theme.  This theme was created by Adii,  the man behind Woothemes. Polaroid is perfect for those of you who want to promote yourself through your amazing work.

Demo // Download

Features include;

• 3 columns w/ right sidebar
• 2 description text areas
• flexible layout
• Flickr integration
• Google Adsense ready
• Beautiful pink icons

Today’s Blogger theme is called BCute.  The theme fits its name, its got a great looking twitter graphic right below the header.  Another nice element is the RSS icon coming down from the top right corner of the header.  This template was originally made for WordPress but later converted to Blogger by Deluxe Templates

Demo // Download

Assassins is a free template for the Blogger platform.  I’m not familiar with the game but the template is suppose to resemble it.  Just viewing it from a Webmaster’s stand point, the large header is very attractive along with the simple 2 column layout.

Demo // Download

It’s winter here in America where things can get chilly, today it was below 10 degrees.  For my own sanity and optimism here is a tropical theme for Blogger, its called Emerald Waters. This is a very goodlooking 2 column theme that can make the right blog look great.

Emerald Waters Template

Download // Demo

We started this site in February of 2009 and almost a year later it has grown steadily over the months. In that time we have had over 250,000 visitors across the globe viewing our site. We have created over 200 quality posts in from the birth of Theme Today. In a celebration of a great 2009, I’ve compiled a “best of…” list from the past year on Theme Today.

WordPress Themes:

15 Free Stunning and Unique WordPress Themes

10 Perfect Free WordPress Magazine Themes

Blogger Themes:

10 Free Blog Templates for blogger

Blogger Templates Collection 2009

Photoshop:

10 Terrible Photoshop Mistakes

Photoshop Hair Brush Collection

Free Heart Brushes Collection

Miscellaneous:

Best Free Twitter Icons For Your Blog

Social Bookmarking and RSS Buttons

11 Free Facebook Icons

50 High Quality Free Vector Graphics for Download

12 New Social Blog Icons Set

10 Amazing Websites For Adding Special Effects to Photos

Vector Tribute to the King of Pop – Micheal Jackson

Best Transportation Vector Icons

From the Theme Today family, we wanted to thank you for a great 2009 and here’s to an even better 2010!

Bloggers and Webmasters always face the decision of what theme or template to use for their site.  There are thousands of free and paid themes out there.  Just search this blog, I’ve posted hundreds of them (and I’m a little fish in a big sea).  Nowadays there are so many styles and colors to choose from, it could get overwhelming.  Do I use 2 or 3 columns?  Do I use a dark or light background?  Do I pay some money for it or do I go the free route?  The questions could go on and on.  To make it easier I’m giving my suggestions as to how to choose the right theme for you.

Outline: You should write down the  pages (about, contact us, etc.) that you want and in what order.  Then, write down the categories that are going to be needed for you blog.  I would also write a summary of what your blog is and its purpose.   All of this will help you stay on track and have something to look back on.

Figure out what you want: Knowing what you want before browsing for themes is a good idea.  If you don’t, after a couple hours your head will be scrambled because you just viewed many different types of themes.  When you know what you want before you can narrow your search down a lot.  The below bullets are some things to keep in mind.

• Columns- For the most part, there are 1, 2 or 3 columns themes available.  Without knowing what kind of niche your in, my general suggestion is sticking with a 2 column theme.  One is too simple and 3 could get too complex.  Two columns allows you to post your articles and have numerous widgets and elements in your sidebar.  As you can see Theme Today is a two column theme.
• Background Color- This is a personal choice but you have to take into account the font color.  For example, if your going with a black background then your font has to be white (not gray).  If your background is white then you need a dark gray or black font.  Also, you should look around the internet for color schemes you like.  Another aspect to keep in mind is the psychology of colors, to learn more click here.
• Monetizing?- If you plan on or already are monetizing your blog then you should stick with a premium theme.  It is important that your theme look as professional as possible.  Some premium themes come ad placement ready.  It’s important that you look at the future and realize the money that you will pay for a premium theme will be a good investment.

Look around: Now that you have a general idea of what you want your theme to be then it’s time to look for the perfect theme.  You can search this site for a bunch of free and premium themes.  If you can’t find anything on here then just simply Google it and you’ll find tons of themes available for download.  Most of the themes available will allow you to demo it.  I highly suggest you do this and here are some things to keep in mind.

• Usability- Make sure you can navigate to each page, post and links correctly.  Also, make sure its not too busy, you want a site that is simple for your readers.  Sure, there are flashy themes out there but they will not benefit you, trust me.
• Test- Test the theme in different browsers; Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari at the least.  Some themes are coded to work in a specific browser (stay away from these), you’ll lose potential readers.
• Support- If you pay for a theme, most likely you will get the support from the developer or a forum.  This is crucial because if problems arise then you need an expert suggestion.  Some of the free themes don’t have any support.  The creators code the theme, then leave it up to the person who downloads the theme to handle the problems…this option is not fun and extremely frustrating.
• SEO Optimized- Most Bloggers don’t know diddly about Search Engine Optimization, and that’s ok.  Its a very complex subject and that’s why you should get a theme that encompasses search friendly structure.  Its hard to tell which one’s are and aren’t.  Alot of times the author will mention it under the features section (if they are honest).  As a side not
• the best SEO friendly theme is Thesis.

Click here for my recommended premium themes

Upload: step-by-step instructions to upload your theme to WordPress.

You have just uploaded the perfect theme that will suite your blog!  If you have a existing reader base I think its a great idea to ask for feedback.  Make sure your audience likes it, sometimes it will take  some getting used to.  If you just launched for the first time then please delete the “Hello World” post.  Goodluck with your new theme and hopefully it will bring you better exposure!

I noticed I’ve been doing all WordPress themes for the FFT series.  I want to introduce the first Blogger theme, Revoultion Church.  This theme is unique because it was first made for WordPress by Brian Gardner and now it has been converted for the Blogger platform.  This is a free, magazine-styled theme available for download here.  Some of the features include:

• Hosted images on Photobucket. Free use forever!
• Favicon support so you can add your own url icon
• Compressed CSS to speed up your page load times
• SEO-friendly page titles to help you rank higher in Google
• Multiple AdSense gadgets already included in prime locations
• Automatically highlight author comments
• Embedded JavaScript date code showing current day
• Fonts and colors support so you can change on the fly
• YouTube video gadget to show off your favorite video
• Link list gadget to easily setup your header tabs
• Recent comments and posts gadgets
• Integrated Blogger reactions support (new!)
• Built-in Feedburner RSS feed and email gadget

Click here to download the theme.

If your looking to make minor fixes to your WordPress or Blogger templates or posts you’ll find that you may need to know basic HTML.  HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Landguage.  It is a computer language that enables people to create websites.  HTML is a series of short codes used to make up an object people see in their internet browser.  Although you don’t need to know HTML to use WordPress or Blogger, it will help if you need to make changes that already made templates can’t do.

Basic HTML document structure:

<html>
<head>
<title>Your Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>

This is where you put the HTML codes of everything you want to be seen (text and graphics) through a browser.

</body>
</html>

<html>: where the document begins
<head>: contains information (title, meta and style tags)  pertaining to the page.
<title>Your Page Title</title>: Title of your page, just replace “Your Page Title” with whatever your title is.
</head>: closes the <head> tag
<body>: begins where the text and other html codes you want to see visually go.
</body>: ends the text and html codes
</html>: closes the html document

Above is the basic format in order to structure an entire page.  We move onto the HTML codes to put in the body of your page.

Largest Heading: <h1>heading</h1>
Smallest Heading: <h6>heading</h6> (if you want a size in between just replace the #’s)

Paragraph: <p>paragraph</p>
Align Paragraph: <p align=”left”>

line break: <br>

Insert link: <a href=”http://www.themetoday.com”>Theme Today</a>

Insert Image: <img src=”theme.jpg” width=”150″ height=”150″ border=”0″ alt=text of image insert here”/>

font size: <font size=”12″></font>
font color: <font color=”blue”></font>
bold text: <b>text</b>
italic text: <i>text</i>

background color: <body bgcolor=”blue”>

I suggest you go to W3Schools if you want to practice HTML.  This site will show you visually how your HTML codes come out like.

The choice between Blogger and WordPress is a personal preference. Both have 3rd party widgets that let you customize your blog in an easy fashion. I composed a list of the very best widgets and plugins for better blogging if your using the Blogger platform.  Explained in one sentence, its time to unveil the list (no particular order).

1. Google Talk – On the side bar, readers can talk to you directly.

2. Friend Feed – Your friendfeeds can be viewed by the readers of your site.

3. Top Commentors – Widget displays the top commentors on your blog, in turn will encourage them to speak up.

4. Facebook Widget – Allows you to share your blog posts with your Facebook friends.

5. Recent Comment Widget In addition to the above “top commentors” you can also set your recent comments on the side bar.

6. Picasa Slideshow – Readers can view a slideshow coming from your Picasa albums.

7. Twitter Profile Widget – This widget allows you to add your profile and updates to your blog.

8.  Share This – Allow people to share your blog posts with eachother through email.

9. Buy Me a Beer Plugin – As a donation, allow readers to buy you a beer via Paypal.

10. Rating Widget – Let readers rate your content, this encourages interaction.

11.  MP3 player – Add your favorite song w/ this customizable plugin.

12. Widget Box – Make your blog into a widget.

13. YouTube Widget- Post your favorite videos on your blog

14. Social Blog Badge - Visitors can track all of your social networks.

15. Feed Wind – Embed any RSS feed on your blog

16. Price of Gas - Display the current price of gas, for some blogs this widget may be a necessity.

17. Alexa Widget – If your site has good traffic, show your rankings…some  web master’s say installing the plugin will boast your rankings.

18. Timeline – Create a timeline on your blog.

19. Flickr – Add a Flickr photostream on your Blogger blog.

20. Digital Clock – add a light or dark digital clock for your viewers who lose track of time.

21. Skype – Allows readers to view your status or call you.

22. Top Authors – If you have guest posts, then this widget will display who wrote the most posts.

23. Random Posts -Displays random posts on your sidebar

24. Delicious plugin - Have your latest Delicious bookmarks displayed on your blog.

25.  Tag Cloud – Displays tags you set from your posts on the sidebar.