Finding and Installing Unofficial Blogger Templates

In addition to the numerous templates provided by Blogger, you can find hundreds (if not thousands!) of Blogger templates created by independent designers. From simple, customisable designs through to industry-specific layouts and obscure themes, there is something to suit every taste and circumstance.

This post outlines the basics of finding and installing unofficial Blogger templates, both free and premium designs, so that you may enjoy changing the appearance of your Blogger site as often as you like!

The Blogspot 100 - Top Blogger Sites of 2012

As a dedicated Blogger enthusiast, I'm very interested to learn more about the sites hosted on Google's free blogging platform.

So I decided to find out which popular sites are powered by Blogger to build upon the list curated in 2008 in order to find the most popular Blogspot sites (including those which use custom domains).

After gathering a huge amount of links to sites hosted on Blogger (whittled down to 350 for the final analysis) I set about scoring and ranking each site according to the following criteria:

• Pagerank
• Inbound links
• Alexa Rank
• Facebook shares
• Twitter Mentions
• Google+1s
• Google Reader feed subscribers

With the exception of Pagerank, these sites were scored in relation to each other, with each element scored on a scale of 1-350. Data for these rankings were gathered between July and August 2012.

Alexa ranking was scored first as this value is unique to each website. In instances where sites had an equal value to another, scoring would secondly depend on this Alexa score in order to give each site a unique score.

Pagerank for each site was allocated as Pagerank*10, where 0 is the lowest score and 100 (PR10) was potentially the highest.

The total possible score for each website is therefore on a scale of 6-2200.

In order of total score, here are the most popular Blogger powered sites for 2012:

1. Postsecret 

Score: 2131
PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. It began as an experiment on January 1st 2005, and has gained a worldwide following through the weekly updated website, book releases and exhibition tour.

All About Blogger - Infographic!

After curating DailyGraphics.info for quite some time, I was disappointed at being unable to find an infographic celebrating my favourite blogging platform. So I decided to create my own!

For your enjoyment, here is my "All About Blogger" infographic. It is a rather large image which is best viewed at full resolution, so you ma want to click the graphic and view in the lightbox mode or right-click to save to your computer.

Feel free to share this infographic if you like it! Since this is the first information visualisation I've designed, I appreciate your comments or suggestions for future (Blogger-related) designs.

Alternative Lorem Ipsum Generator - It's Adventure Time!

If you've been reading Blogger Buster for a while, you may have noticed my affection for quirky filler text generators which I use to quickly add content to Blogger template demo sites.

As a side project, I decided to code my own filler text generator, based on dialogue from my favourite animated series, Adventure Time. Check it out at http://filler-text.blogspot.com - you can generate a full page of content (including headings and lists); a number of paragraphs, and even placeholder images based on various Adventure Time episodes. 

It makes a great alternative to Lorem Ipsum text and best of all, it's powered by Blogger!

Visit the Adventure Time Filler Text and Random Image Generator

Incipient - A Free Responsive Blogger Template

Incipient is a free responsive template for Blogger, which offers a simple layout which adjusts according to the size of the screen it is viewed upon.

Fully customizable through the Blogger Template Designer, this simple design is suitable for a wide variety of blogs and is fully gadgetized.

On wider screens, the template expands to the width of the screen, including a right-aligned sidebar and two widget sections in the footer. For smaller resolutions, the template adjusts and sidebar gadgets appear beneath the main posts section, while the footer gadgets widen to the width of the screen.

View the live demo or read on for screenshots and installation details.

How to add Google+ Updates Gadget to Blogger

As yet, there is no official "widget" or RSS feed which we can embed in Blogger to display a stream of our recent posts on Google Plus.

Luckily, Google+ to RSS offers a free service enabling us to generate an RSS feed for our personal profiles and pages which we can add to a simple Feed gadget in Blogger.

Take a look at the sidebar to see this technique in action and read on to find out how to add a Google+ updates gadget in your own Blogger site.

Lucius - A Premium Blogger Template

Lucius Template is a premium design for Blogger which offers a simple layout and powerful customisation features.

It is incredibly easy to set up, requiring no special configurations or third-party scripts, and is ideal for freelance promotion or to serve as a business website.

Take a look at the demo site for Lucius Template, or read on for screenshots and more details.

For a limited time, Lucius Template is available for the reduced introductory price of $2.95!

Connect Your Blog to a Google+ Page

If you log into your Blogger dashboard today, you'll notice a new Google+ tab which can be used to integrate our blogs with Google+.

For some time, we have been able to link our blogs with a personal Google+ profile. Now we are also able to connect to a Google+ page for business, organisation or brand!

If you haven't already connected your Blogger site to a Google+ profile, go to the Google+ tab in your dashboard and click the button to upgrade: