What template does your Blog use: the quick way to find out

This article is about the fast way to find out what style of template (eg Minima, Tekka, Simple, etc) your blog uses. It's a support-article for a series about Preparing to Change Your Template.

Why you need to know what template you're using:

Previously I've described how to find out what type of template your blog has (ie is it Classic, Layout, Designer or Dynamic).

But sometimes (eg when you are preparing to change templates, or when you need prepare to ask a support question) you need to know which specific one of the Layout or Designer templates you're using.

How to find out:

The hard way:
These days, you need to work through the options to work out what type of template your blog has, and the name will be apparent from the screens you end up on.

The easy way:

1 View your blog.

2 Press the key or menu item that shows the source-code for the page you're looking at.
(In Firefox, it's Ctrl/U. In Chrome version 16 and above, choose Tools from the spanner-menu at the top-right, and then choose View source fromthe sub-menu.)

3 At the top of the source code that is displayed, there is some code like this (and a few more similar lines):

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html dir='ltr' 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>
<META content='e20505dd1f20eff9' name='y_key'>
</META>
<meta content='text/html; charset=UTF-8' http-equiv='Content-Type'/>
<script type="text/javascript">(function() { var a=window;function c(b){this.t={};this.tick=function(d,i,e){e=e?e:(new Date).getTime();this.t[d]=[e,i]};this.tick("start",null,b)}var f=new c;a.jstiming={Timer:c,load:f};try{var g=null;if(a.chrome&&a.chrome.csi)g=Math.floor(a.chrome.csi().pageT);if(g==null)if(a.gtbExternal)g=a.gtbExternal.pageT();if(g==null)if(a.external)g=a.external.pageT;if(g)a.jstiming.pt=g}catch(h){};a.tickAboveFold=function(b){b=b;var d=0;if(b.offsetParent){do d+=b.offsetTop;while(b=b.offsetParent)}b=d;b<=750&&a.jstiming.load.tick("aft")};var j=false;function k(){if(!j){j=true;a.jstiming.load.tick("firstScrollTime")}}a.addEventListener?a.addEventListener("scroll",k,false):a.attachEvent("onscroll",k);
 })();</script>
<meta content='true' name='MSSmartTagsPreventParsing'/>
<meta content='blogger' name='generator'/>

Underneath that, though, are some comments, usually followed by a Variable Declaration section. It's very likely that the template name and the name of the company that produced it, will be in these comments.

For example, Blogger-Hints-and-Tips used to use a template called Tekka - I know that, because the code used to say:

/*
* Tekka
* style modified from glish: http://www.glish.com/css/
*
* Updated by Blogger Team
*/
/* Variable definitions
<Variable name="mainBgColor" description="Page Background Color"
type="color" default="#f5f5f5">
<Variable name="mainTextColor"  description="Text Color"
type="color" default="#000000">

Now it says

-----------------------------------------------Blogger Template StyleName: SimpleDesigner: Josh PetersonURL: www.noaesthetic.com----------------------------------------------- *//* Variable definitions====================

so I know that the template name is Simple.

Note: it seems that this approach does not work for blogs with Dynamic-view templates - so you'll have to use the hard way for them.

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Sunday, May 9, 2010

What template does your Blog use: the quick way to find out

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