First let me explain why would you want to have an "ugly" looking template like this one :)? First of all, I don't really think this temaplte is fugly. It's simple, clean, without all the stupid bells and whistles that contribute NOTHING to the blog itself. All they do is distract. Booohooo, look at my shiny blog, at least it's beautiful if the content is not woth reading....
Minimal. Simple. Think Google. Why is Google so successful with their simple (ugly?) interface? Because it works!
Besides that - if you want your website to bring you some money using Adsense or whatever, there are two benefits of having an ugly clean template:
- people that are used to all the shiny blogs will come to your website and think that your content can not be very good and worth anything if the template is so spartan. So they will probably leave a bit faster that they otherwise would and they would preferably leave by clicking on one of your ads. And second...
- is distraciton. Every element of the screen is a possible distraction for the visitors eye. If you want your ads to stand out you want as little distractions as possible. No badges, no widgets, no link, no colors, no pictures, no twitter crap, no blog catalog, no who is online, no who is following who and who is whos friend and how am I feeling at the moment, no favourite songs, bands, movies and other lists, no favorite books, celebrities...none of that crap. You want good content, simple navigation through your site and that's it.
So how to get an ugly simple minimalistic template on Blogger?
The minimal template is a good start. Select minimal template. Then enter your dashboard -> layout and fonts and colors and play with your colors. All you want are the following colors: black for the text, blue for the links and white for everything else. Then enter page elements and throw away all the unnecessary Gadgets/Widgets/page elements...whatever.
And you are done. Or you can just have the same template as me nad just copy this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html expr:dir='data:blog.languageDirection' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml' xmlns:b='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/b' xmlns:data='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/data' xmlns:expr='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/expr'>
<head>
<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> - <data:blog.title/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
</b:if>
<b:skin><![CDATA[/*
-----------------------------------------------
Blogger Template Style
Name: Minima
Designer: Douglas Bowman
URL: www.stopdesign.com
Date: 26 Feb 2004
Updated by: Blogger Team
----------------------------------------------- */
/* Variable definitions
====================
<Variable name="bgcolor" description="Page Background Color"
type="color" default="#fff" value="#ffffff">
<Variable name="textcolor" description="Text Color"
type="color" default="#333" value="#333333">
<Variable name="linkcolor" description="Link Color"
type="color" default="#58a" value="#0066CC">
<Variable name="pagetitlecolor" description="Blog Title Color"
type="color" default="#666" value="#0066CC">
<Variable name="descriptioncolor" description="Blog Description Color"
type="color" default="#999" value="#333333">
<Variable name="titlecolor" description="Post Title Color"
type="color" default="#c60" value="#0066CC">
<Variable name="bordercolor" description="Border Color"
type="color" default="#ccc" value="#ffffff">
<Variable name="sidebarcolor" description="Sidebar Title Color"
type="color" default="#999" value="#0066CC">
<Variable name="sidebartextcolor" description="Sidebar Text Color"
type="color" default="#666" value="#333333">
<Variable name="visitedlinkcolor" description="Visited Link Color"
type="color" default="#999" value="#0066CC">
<Variable name="bodyfont" description="Text Font"
type="font" default="normal normal 100% Georgia, Serif" value="normal normal 120% Verdana, sans-serif">
<Variable name="headerfont" description="Sidebar Title Font"
type="font"
default="normal normal 78% 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Arial,Verdana,Sans-serif" value="normal normal 70% Verdana, sans-serif">
<Variable name="pagetitlefont" description="Blog Title Font"
type="font"
default="normal normal 200% Georgia, Serif" value="normal bold 266% Verdana, sans-serif">
<Variable name="descriptionfont" description="Blog Description Font"
type="font"
default="normal normal 78% 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, Sans-serif" value="normal bold 78% Georgia, Times, serif">
<Variable name="postfooterfont" description="Post Footer Font"
type="font"
default="normal normal 78% 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, Sans-serif" value="normal normal 69% 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, Sans-serif">
<Variable name="startSide" description="Side where text starts in blog language"
type="automatic" default="left" value="left">
<Variable name="endSide" description="Side where text ends in blog language"
type="automatic" default="right" value="right">
*/
/* Use this with templates/template-twocol.html */
body {
background:$bgcolor;
margin:0;
color:$textcolor;
font:x-small Georgia Serif;
font-size/* */:/**/small;
font-size: /**/small;
text-align: center;
}
a:link {
color:$linkcolor;
text-decoration:none;
}
a:visited {
color:$visitedlinkcolor;
text-decoration:none;
}
a:hover {
color:$titlecolor;
text-decoration:underline;
}
a img {
border-width:0;
}
/* Header
-----------------------------------------------
*/
#header-wrapper {
width:800px;
margin:0 auto 10px;
border:1px solid $bordercolor;
}
#header-inner {
background-position: center;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
}
#header {
margin: 5px;
border: 1px solid $bordercolor;
text-align: center;
color:$pagetitlecolor;
}
#header h1 {
margin:5px 5px 0;
padding:15px 20px .25em;
line-height:1.2em;
text-transform:uppercase;
letter-spacing:.2em;
font: $pagetitlefont;
}
#header a {
color:$pagetitlecolor;
text-decoration:none;
}
#header a:hover {
color:$pagetitlecolor;
}
#header .description {
margin:0 5px 5px;
padding:0 20px 15px;
max-width:700px;
text-transform:uppercase;
letter-spacing:.2em;
line-height: 1.4em;
font: $descriptionfont;
color: $descriptioncolor;
}
#header img {
margin-$startSide: auto;
margin-$endSide: auto;
}
/* Outer-Wrapper
----------------------------------------------- */
#outer-wrapper {
width: 800px;
margin:0 auto;
padding:10px;
text-align:$startSide;
font: $bodyfont;
}
#main-wrapper {
width: 550px;
float: $startSide;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}
#sidebar-wrapper {
width: 220px;
float: $endSide;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}
/* Headings
----------------------------------------------- */
h2 {
margin:1.5em 0 .75em;
font:$headerfont;
line-height: 1.4em;
text-transform:uppercase;
letter-spacing:.2em;
color:$sidebarcolor;
}
/* Posts
-----------------------------------------------
*/
h2.date-header {
margin:1.5em 0 .5em;
}
.post {
margin:.5em 0 1.5em;
border-bottom:1px dotted $bordercolor;
padding-bottom:1.5em;
}
.post h3 {
margin:.25em 0 0;
padding:0 0 4px;
font-size:160%;
font-weight:normal;
line-height:1.4em;
color:$titlecolor;
}
.post h3 a, .post h3 a:visited, .post h3 strong {
display:block;
text-decoration:none;
color:$titlecolor;
font-weight:normal;
}
.post h3 strong, .post h3 a:hover {
color:$textcolor;
}
.post p {
margin:0 0 .75em;
line-height:1.6em;
}
.post-footer {
margin: .75em 0;
color:$sidebarcolor;
text-transform:uppercase;
letter-spacing:.1em;
font: $postfooterfont;
line-height: 1.4em;
}
.comment-link {
margin-$startSide:.6em;
}
.post img {
padding:4px;
border:1px solid $bordercolor;
}
.post blockquote {
margin:1em 20px;
}
.post blockquote p {
margin:.75em 0;
}
/* Comments
----------------------------------------------- */
#comments h4 {
margin:1em 0;
font-weight: bold;
line-height: 1.4em;
text-transform:uppercase;
letter-spacing:.2em;
color: $sidebarcolor;
}
#comments-block {
margin:1em 0 1.5em;
line-height:1.6em;
}
#comments-block .comment-author {
margin:.5em 0;
}
#comments-block .comment-body {
margin:.25em 0 0;
}
#comments-block .comment-footer {
margin:-.25em 0 2em;
line-height: 1.4em;
text-transform:uppercase;
letter-spacing:.1em;
}
#comments-block .comment-body p {
margin:0 0 .75em;
}
.deleted-comment {
font-style:italic;
color:gray;
}
#blog-pager-newer-link {
float: $startSide;
}
#blog-pager-older-link {
float: $endSide;
}
#blog-pager {
text-align: center;
}
.feed-links {
clear: both;
line-height: 2.5em;
}
/* Sidebar Content
----------------------------------------------- */
.sidebar {
color: $sidebartextcolor;
line-height: 1.5em;
}
.sidebar ul {
list-style:none;
margin:0 0 0;
padding:0 0 0;
}
.sidebar li {
margin:0;
padding-top:0;
padding-$endSide:0;
padding-bottom:.25em;
padding-$startSide:15px;
text-indent:-15px;
line-height:1.5em;
}
.sidebar .widget, .main .widget {
border-bottom:1px dotted $bordercolor;
margin:0 0 1.5em;
padding:0 0 1.5em;
}
.main .Blog {
border-bottom-width: 0;
}
/* Profile
----------------------------------------------- */
.profile-img {
float: $startSide;
margin-top: 0;
margin-$endSide: 5px;
margin-bottom: 5px;
margin-$startSide: 0;
padding: 4px;
border: 1px solid $bordercolor;
}
.profile-data {
margin:0;
text-transform:uppercase;
letter-spacing:.1em;
font: $postfooterfont;
color: $sidebarcolor;
font-weight: bold;
line-height: 1.6em;
}
.profile-datablock {
margin:.5em 0 .5em;
}
.profile-textblock {
margin: 0.5em 0;
line-height: 1.6em;
}
.profile-link {
font: $postfooterfont;
text-transform: uppercase;
letter-spacing: .1em;
}
/* Footer
----------------------------------------------- */
#footer {
width:800px;
clear:both;
margin:0 auto;
padding-top:15px;
line-height: 1.6em;
text-transform:uppercase;
letter-spacing:.1em;
text-align: center;
}
]]></b:skin>
</head>
You see that this ends with /head tag? Enter your Blogger Dashboard / Layout / Edit HTML and delete everything from the top to the /head tag and replace it with the code above.
Voila! You have something that some people might describe as an ugly Blogger blog.
But I call is simple is beautifull.
Till next time...
2011 Update: I got tired of the old and ugly template because I serve no adds on this blog and there is no reason to force visitors to run away just because my blog looks ugly, they won't click the ads because there are none :)! So this is a little bit improved template that comes with Blogger...
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