Announcing Dynamic Templates, part II
In March 2011, Blogger announced Dynamic Views, and I posted describing them, and telling you how to give your readers the ability to see your blog in dynamic views.
Today, they've announced them again (without acknowledging the previous announcement!). This time with a few differences:
- There are seven templates (instead of five)
- Some templates allow for blogs that don't have great photos in every post
- You can set your blog up so that visitors automatically see it using one of the dynamic-view templates: it's just another option in the template designer (see Setting up your Blog to use a Dynamic Template, below).
- Most (all?) templates include some gadgets: search, RSS feed link, link to Blogger, and regular sized +1, Tweet and Like buttons (instead of the anorexic ones in regular designer templates at the moment)
There are still restrictions: blogs must be public, with RSS site feeds enabled.
And there are still lots of things missing: for example, blog-owners have no control over gadgets or layout, fonts or color scheme (even though the announcement says this is coming, I cannot find where to access it).
You cannot add gadgets to a blog with a dynamic template. So you cannot install Google Analytics, or AdSense or any other sort of advertising. That said, this help article does say that Blogger will continue to support AdSense for blogs that already have it, so the work around may be to use a regular designer template, put in some ads, and then switch to a dynamic template.
Setting up your Blog to use a Dynamic Template
To make a dynamic view the default option for your blog:
1) Check that it is public,
2) Check that the RSS site feeds is switched to full or jump-break
2) Choose Design > Template Designer (pre-Sept-11 interface), or Template from the dashboard drop-down (post-Sept-11 Blogger)
3) Choose Dynamic from the list of options (if it's not in the list, then post probably your blog doesn't meet one of the conditions above.
4) From the row underneath, choose which of the options (ie dynamic template types) you would like as a default.
Next:
Removing a dynamic template from your blog - be careful, don't lose your gadgets!
Related Articles:
Dynamic templates, version I
Letting your readers the ability to see your blog in dynamic views.
Changing the colours in your blog
Why RSS matters, and how to enable it
Installing Google Analytics into Blogger
Setting up AdSense for your blog
