Sleepy Hollow - A Free Blogger Template for Halloween

It's been a long time since I designed a free Blogger template, so since Halloween is one of my favourite holidays I decided to design "Sleepy Hollow" - just in time for October 31st!

"Sleepy Hollow" is a simple, customizable template built to be used with the new Blogger Template Editor. It features:

• Halloween themed background images (designed by Iaroslav Lazunov)
• Customized fonts for titles, using the IM Fell font family (via Google Web Fonts)
• Elegant, customizable colour scheme
• As customizable as Blogger's new templates (width, height, colours, layout)

View Demo | Download Sleepy Hollow Template

How to Add a Featured Content Section on your Blog's Home Page

One of the customizations I use most when designing Blogger templates is creating a "featured content" section to be displayed only on the home page. I often use this technique to display a content slider, mini-portfolio or slideshow above the main posts section.

Take a look at the home page of my site, Just Great Film, to see an example of this in action (click on images for full screen previews):

Here's an easy way to restrict the display of a gadget to your blog's home page.

What Type of Blogger Template are you Using? (Poll)

I'm curious to learn which type of Blogger templates are most popular among Blogger Buster readers.

Do you prefer to customize the design of your blog using the new Template Designer? Perhaps you're happier to use a third-party (free or paid) template, or have edited the HTML to create a design which is unique to you?

If you have a moment spare, please let me know about your Blogger Template preferences by voting in this poll or leaving a comment below:

How to hide the Blogger Navbar - Updated for 2010 (Quick Tip)

With all the changes to Blogger's template system, it seems no wonder that my original tutorial for hiding the Blogger nav-bar no longer works effectively (particularly for newer template designs).

In case you were wondering, it is possible to hide the Blogger nav-bar (which displays a search box and useful links). The principle is the same as in my previous tutorial in that we simply need to add a few lines of CSS to our Blogger template code.

Here's how my updated technique to hide the Blogger nav-bar in a few simple steps: