Christine's Blog Templates

Let me begin by saying...

I am a firm believer in remembering that many people are still using dial-up internet access and old monitors which won't even go higher than an 800x600 screen resolution. Yes, it's true that many people have the newest screen resolutions and broadband connection speeds, it's equally true that many people do not. In my opinion, it would be a mistake to forget the millions who don't have the newest, fastest technology. It is very much possible to have a page that looks good on 800px wide resolutions and higher, is cross browser compatible, is fast loading, and which is friendly to everyone- it just takes some fore-thought and making viewer friendliness a priority. Your content is what will ultimately bring viewers back, but you must first keep them around long enough to read what you've written. This is where good page design is important. These templates are designed to help you achieve viewer friendliness and for giving you power to personalize.

These templates have been designed to work with Blogger's new user controls, and with the idea of giving you maximum control over the look of your page, without editing the html/css. That's why I write in many more variables than you can find in the default template selection at Blogger, giving you a lot of color and font options. I also give you a lot of sections, of varying widths, into which you can place your widgets. This is designed for maximum choices over your content placement while maintaining proper page display. Many different looks are possible with any one of my templates.

Thanks for taking the time to look at my templates and read what features I think are important and have tried to incorporate.

To read more about good page design, I recommend these pages at W3 Schools: Web Site Design and Web Site Users.

They are all designed to have no side scroll and to display nicely at 800 x 600 and larger resolutions.

Side scrolls aren't just ugly, they make it easy for people to miss a significant portion of your content, and they force people to scroll side to side to be able to read each sentence you write. Needless to say, unless you're unlocking the secrets of the universe, they will tire of this very rapidly and move on to another page that's more viewer friendly. These templates are designed to display properly on 800 x 600 resolutions and higher- no side scrolls.

It is important to note that any layout can be broken by adding content that is too wide for the area in which you put it (this is true of all templates, made by anyone, for any system). I have created unequal width side columns, and double width side columns as ways to add wider side content without breaking proper page display. As I update templates, I am adding charts with specific width information to help you keep your content at appropriate widths for each space.

They've all been tested on browsers Netscape, Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer- and will display well on all.

Different browsers display web pages differently, even when the code is valid. It's my goal to make pages which display well, load quickly, look nice, and are user friendly for everyone. To that end, one thing I do is test on the major browsers in use today before finalizing a design.

They're designed with no, or a few small images, for fast loading.

Large and/or multiple images is one of the most common reasons for slow loading web pages. By keeping the number and size of images down, we can significantly speed page loading time. This is important because people will quickly tire of waiting for your page to load, and will move on before ever seeing it. I do it all the time.

Font sizes are adjustable by your visitor.

Browsers allow viewers to change the size of the text displayed, if the code is written to allow it. You can see this in IE by clicking "View" in the menu at the top of your browser window, then hover over "Text Size," and select a different size from the options available. Other browsers have similar options. Check other web pages to see if they allow you to change the text size: many don't. This is important because (shockingly!) some people have a hard time reading small screen fonts. They will need to be able to enlarge the font to read comfortably, otherwise they're probably going to leave your blog, never to return.

Most of these templates are written without tables, for faster loading.

Layouts without tables, sometimes called css layouts, load faster than table based layouts when you have slow loading content on the page. If you don't have slow loading content, the tables will load just as quickly. Currently, only Section Mania is still a table based layout.

They've been written for Blogger, and work well on the new system. They take advantage of Blogger's new features to give you lots of control over the look of your page.

August 2006, Blogger has come out with a new system, allowing a lot of user control over their template, without having to edit html/css. Mine are not generic layouts, they are created for use on Blogger. They are written to take advantage of Blogger's new features and give you a lot of power to personalize the look of your blog page.

They all allow you to change the colors and fonts through your Blogger "Fonts and Colors" page.

One of Blogger's new layout features is that you can easily change the colors and fonts of your layout through their new interface. All my templates allow you to change the colors and fonts, even the templates with images. This gives you the freedom to replace a provided image with one of your own and change the color scheme to coordinate, or to delete the images entirely and create your own color scheme. More about colors.

Multiple default color schemes to choose from.

All of my templates have several color schemes to choose from. The default color scheme is what will show when you first apply the template, and you always have the option of returning to it. But I also write in many font and color options so that you can create your own color schemes through Blogger's Font's and Colors page, if you choose to. More about color.

They all allow you to create, delete, and move widgets through Blogger's "Page Elements" page.

Another of Blogger's new layout features is that you can create, move, and delete blocks of content, called "widgets." All my templates work with this feature, and they have more sections into which you can place widgets than Blogger's templates do, giving you more layout options to create your own look.

In most templates, all sections can hold limitless widgets, and all widgets can be moved anywhere.

All sections of the layout can hold as many widgets as you want to put in them. All widgets can be moved to any section of the layout. Only the PhotoBlogger templates are designed so that the Label and the Blog widgets can't be moved.

Because all widgets can go in any section, and because I write in so many different sections, it provides a lot of power to change the look of your page.

Guaranteed To Work As Described

These templates have been tested. If they don't work as described I will fix the problem or your money back.

I am available via email to assist you with questions and problems.

I've written a page with Instructions for use on Blogger. If you're still having problems, or find a problem with one of the templates themselves, I'm glad to hear from you via email. Positive feedback is also welcome ;)

Cost is $15 each.

There are many free Blogger templates out there. Some don't work at all. Most are poorly designed. None offer the power to change your look through fonts/colors and sections for widgets that mine do.

I'm trying to make an honest buck, doing something I'm pretty good at. I offer a quality product. It takes hours and hours to write html/css, create color schemes, test, finalize, and present these templates. Even longer with Blogger's new system, the modifying it requires, and the fact you have to do all the work while running the template through their system. I couldn't possibly charge by the hour because nobody would dream of paying for it.

These are good quality templates, very customizable, viewer friendly, not in widespread use. Fifteen dollars isn't a whole lot of money. I think the templates are well worth it.