I am one of those guys who is not happy with anything being the way it is.I would always change my mind after listening to what people say.This was also the same thing in blogger.I could never decide which template was the best so I would always change.Previously I was not satisfied with the template of one of my previous sites.Till now I have passed through what I call my three stages of blogging.

  • The first stage:I always considered that blogger's default template was the best as I could request support from a lot of people like Peter.(about a year ago!)I thought like this as I was a beginner in HTML and knew almost nothing about it.
  • The second stage:I was starting to consider myself as a guy who had more than basic knowledge of HTML, Javascript, Java at this point of time.So I started using templates created by others(they were for free of course!).You could see about them here.
  • The third stage:My current stage.Now I consider myself a guy who may graduate out of a masters degree in HTML in a few months or so!.But I started using blogger templates again for a variety of reasons.You can see why here.
So in my time of passing through the second stage to the third stage,I was thinking that blogger templates were the best as I would have explained above through the link.I had to change my outboard template to a blogger one but while doing so it said the widgets have to be deleted(oh no!).But I knew how to change the template without the widgets getting deleted.
Here is a detail explanantion obtained only through common sense.
  • Save your main blog's tempalte before setting out on this venture(just in case!)
  • Arrange all of your widgets in the same area for example sidebar.
  • Copy your main blog's HTML code which can be done in the Layout section>Edit HTML to notepad
  • Now Hit Ctrl+f in notepad and type in b:widget.
  • You will find all your widgets there
  • Copy all the b:widget lines(each line stands for one widget) to notepad-->1
  • Create a new blog with any template.Name it as 'Test'
  • Go to the Layout section>Edit HTML
  • Upload or enter the code of the template here(continued below)
If you want to change to a blogger template follow the numbered steps
  1. Go to Layout>Pick new template
  2. Pick your new template(all this on test) which you want for your main blog
  3. Go to layout>Edit html
  4. Continue
  • Go to Layout section>Add page element
  • Add any gadget.For example a link list(I'll explain using the link list widget)..
  • If you followed all the instructions above you will have two widgets(title and link list)
  • Now go back to Layout >Edit HTML
  • Use Ctrl+f and find b:widget here also.
  • Find the one which will be Linklist1
  • Paste 1 between the
Plese replace the ( in the code to < and ) in the code to >

(b:section class='sidebar' id='sidebartop') 
(b:widget id='LinkList1' locked='false' title='xxx' type='LinkList'/)
!!!paste 1 here!!!!
(/b:section)
  • Save your template.
  • Now copy the template code and paste it in your main blog.
This method will work assuredly but to paste all other widgets embedded in your template use your common sense again!