How to install this template

1. First you need to download the BT Dark Green template. This is an XML file contained in a Zip folder (which also includes instructions for use).
2. Once downloaded, unzip the contents of the folder and save to a location on your hard drive.
3. Log in to your Blogger dashboard and select the blog where you want to install this template.
4. Go to Layout>Edit HTML and look for "Upload a new template from a file on your hard drive". Click on the "Browse" button, and locate the bt-dark-green.xml file on your hard drive. Then select "Upload".
5. This will upload the complete template file to your blog.

Demo/Download BT Dark Green Blogger XML Template

• Demo
• Download
  

Features of this template

A New Day is a wide two column template, providing ample room for posts and also provision for wider sidebar widgets.

The header section features an integrated "navigation" links list widget, so you can easily add and edit links to the main pages of your blog.

Other useful features include:

• Rounded corners for the sidebar widget headings
• Fonts and colors can be changed within the "Fonts and Colors" section in your Blogger dashboard.
• Author comment highlighting (with a different color heading for author's comments)
• Automatic "copyright" (according to blog title) in the lower footer section.
• Comment count below post titles
• Unique header image which spans the entire width of the page.

Using This Template

I have tried to ensure this template is as user-friendly as possible! A New Day should work "right out of the box" once this is uploaded to your blog.

The only thing you may need to configure is the "Link List" widget in the header section, which you can access in the Layout>Page Elements section of your dashboard. In this widget, you can add links to the important pages of your blog (such as your "About" and "Contact" pages. Or if you prefer not to feature such links, you can simply delete this altogether!

Fixed elements of this template

The main background, and the background images for the main area of the blog are embedded in the template code. As such, the colors of these areas cannot be changed, unless you are willing to alter these images and upload these to your own image host.

However, I do plan to bring out a darker version of this template in the near future for those of you who would prefer a darker color scheme for your blogs ;)

Other than this, all other elements of this template may be changed, including all fonts, font colors and the border colors (which will also alter the color of the sidebar widget borders).

You can change these elements dynamically from within the Fonts and Colors section of your Blogger dashboard.

Download Options for this template

There are two options for downloading this template: the XML template (which should be uploaded to your Blogger dashboard) and the HTML Code (a text based file which you should copy and paste).

Here are links to each download version, along with full instructions for your to upload this to your blog.

XML Template Download

The following is the XML version of the "A New Day" Blogger template. To download this template, right click and choose "Save As".

Download XML File

Save this XML file to a convenient location on your computer.

Then go to Layout>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard. Near the top of this page, you will see a section which appears like this:

Use the "Browse" button to locate the XML template on your computer, then click on the "Upload" button to upload the "A New Day" template to your blog.

Once you have uploaded this template, you can then begin to add widgets, change the layout and tweak this template to your needs.

Read more about uploading Blogger XML templates.

HTML Code Template Download

For those who prefer to copy and paste template code for their Blogger blogs, I have also provided the full HTML code for this template as a text file.

You can view or download this file using the link below:

Download HTML Code

You may either view this code by following the link in your browser, or download this text file to your computer.

To upload this template using the HTML template code, simply highlight all of the text and copy this to your clipboard. Then go to Layout>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard. Highlight all of the code in the box, then paste the new code instead of the existing code.

Finally, preview your Blogger template to ensure everything looks well. If you have done this correctly, you should receive no errors and can proceed to save your new template.

Read more about uploading templates using the HTML template code.

Usage and Copyright Notice

All images featured in this template are hosted by Blogger Buster; you do not need to host these yourself (unless you would prefer to do so!).

This template is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

This means that you may use, redistribute and modify this template in any way you like, so long as you provide correct attribution to the original author of this template in the form of a link back to Blogger Buster.

I hope that you enjoy this new template as much as I enjoyed creating it! Originally I had planned on using this for a new blog I've been working on, though as I was rather happy with the end result I didn't want to keep this to myself :)

Please do let me know your opinions or any questions about this template by leaving your comments below.

There are many optional elements to this template. You may either use this as a magazine style theme (featuring more widgets than usual on the home page), or as a regular theme which contains only the main blog posts and two sidebars to the right.

Features of this template include:

• An optional magazine style layout for the home page
• Optional customized recent posts widget for the sidebar
• Themed icons for sidebar widgets, post features and post options
• Custom made favicon to match the blog theme
• Integrated search function
• Tabbed navigation with easy customization of links
• Related articles beneath each post on post pages
• Integrated (optional) post summary hack

Download the Blue Steel Blogger XML Template

You can download this template for free using the link below. This is a Zip file which includes the XML template and instructions to upload this template to your blog.

Download Blue Steel Blogger XML Template (Zip File)

Option 1: use Blue Steel as a Magazine Style Theme

If you would like to utilize the full potential of this theme, you will need to change a few settings and make some small changes to the way you usually post.

Display only one post on the home page

The ideal number of posts to display when using a magazine style theme is only one. Additional post excerpts will be visible from the "recent posts" widget which I will explain about soon.

To ensure only one post displays on the front page, go to Settings>Formatting in your Blogger dashboard, and choose "Show 1 Posts" on the front page.

Utilize the Post Excerpts Hack

This template includes code for you to show optional excerpts of posts on your front page. This customization was originally written by Ramani of Hackosphere, and is called "Selective Expandable Posts".

If you would like to utilize this facility, you will need to add a post template to your blog. To do this, go to Settings>Formatting in your Blogger dashboard. Near the bottom of the page you will see a box for you to add a "Post Template". In this box you will need to paste the following section of code:

Type your summary here

<span id="fullpost">

Type the rest of your post here

</span>

For more detailed instructions about using this hack, please refer to this article.

Add the "Recent Posts" widget code to your sidebar

If you choose to use the magazine-style facilities for this template, you may also like to add the widget to display excerpts of your most recently written posts in the sidebar.

This widget was originally written by Hans of Beautiful Beta, though I have modified this slightly to make this more suitable for the Blue Steel Blogger template.

To add this widget to your sidebar, copy all of the code on this page and paste this into an HTML/JavaScript widget in the Page Elements section of your Blogger dashboard. Be sure to replace the section in red with the URL of your own blog!

Important Notes

The widgets which appear under the post on the main page will only be visible on the main page. On post pages, these widgets will not appear, so be sure to include important widgets in your sidebar instead.

Option 2: Using Blue Steel as a regular blog template

If you would prefer to use Blue Steel as a simple template (IE: not utilize the magazine style elements), all you need to do is delete any widgets beneath the Blog Posts section. The template does not require any additional settings or adjustments to work as a regular template (although you may like to add your links to the navigation bar in the header section. See below for details about this).

Other settings/widgets

Certain features of the Blue Steel Blogger template are applicable to both "magazine" and "regular" options.

Configure links in your navigation bar

This template comes with a pre-installed link list widget in the top right section of the header. When you upload this template to your blog, this link list will not contain any links at all.

To add links to the navigation bar, go to Layout>Page Elements in your Blogger dashboard and click on the "edit" link for this link list. You can then add links to the main pages of your blog and these will appear in the navigation section.

Links in the footer section

Right at the bottom of your blog template are some links which you can change to reflect the URLs of the main pages in your blog.

To change these links, find the following section of code in the Edit HTML section of your template:

<
<a href='http://yourblog.blogspot.com' title='Home Page'>Home</a>

 | <a href='http://yourblog.blogspot.com' title='About the site'>About</a>

 | <a href='http://yourblog.blogspot.com' title='Contact the author'>Contact</a></span>

License and Credits

As mentioned earlier in this post, two of the scripts used in this template were written by different authors:

• The Selective Expandable Posts hack was written by Ramani of Hackosphere
• The Recent Posts widget was originally created by Hans of Beautiful Beta

You may download, customize and use this template however you choose. However, I do ask that the credits within the template code remain in place and that you do not redistribute this template without my consent.

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Download (there is no demonstration page for this template)

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Download includes: a zip file containing only the XML template. To upload this to your blog, you will first need to save this file to your computer. Then go to Template>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard, and choose to upload this file by clicking on the "Browse" button near the top of the page.

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Demo | Download