Creating Blogger Templates

After opening Freeway 5 and creating a new document, we'll need to make sure of two things. First is that our document has a Default HTML set to either of the XHTML options in your Document Setup. You can find your document setup options by choosing File from the menu and selecting Document Setup.

NOTE: If you are using Express you can skip this step.

Secondly, we'll need to click on the Upload tab and will then need to make a choice. First, if you plan on using any kind of custom graphics or external CSS in your template you'll have to enter an external domain address to where your Resources and CSS folders are going to be located, because you don't receive any upload space to store your files.

For example, if an external address was your method, you'd enter "http://www.mydomainname.com/" and if you were using any subfolders you'd add those to the end of the URL and make sure you finish your URL entry with a /.

If you plan on not having any custom graphics or external css then you can enter your blogspot address into the Web Address field at the bottom. This will set what Blogger codes as your BASE HREF.

The Blogger Action's come in the form of a Profile, Header, Archive, and Posts action. They can be found by going to the Insert menu (1) and highlighting Action Item (2) and at the top of the list you'll see the chosen four.

Once you have chosen which action you'd like to utilize remember that for the Blogger template to work you're only required to use one action. You can add additional markup and custom design elements to the template without causing a problem with Blogger. The other Blogger Action's remain optional. With that said I'm going to choose to insert just the Blogger Posts action. You'll want to utilize the Actions palette to change the appearance of any of the selections from the drop-down used in the action.

NOTE: You will want to utilize Freeway's Preview window to see how things will look using the dummy text created by the action.

Once you have the template design finished you'll want to choose one of the non-master pages in your Site Panel in Freeway. You'll then select only one of the Blogger Action's and in the Actions palette you'll want to choose Copy to Clipboard.

NOTE: If this option says Publish to Enable instead of Copy to Clipboard then make sure you have published your template into a site folder on your hard-drive.

If you don't have a Blogger account already then you will need to create one at Blogger.com. Simply click on the Create A Blog button on the home page and follow the instructions. If you do have a Blogger account then you will need to login.

Depending on how your Blogger is setup you may get to a page that lists the blog(s) that you manage. What's important to look for is the Layout link (or tab) and you'll want to click on that.

The next step is simply choosing Edit HTML from the menu selection.

The next step is pasting in the code that we copied from the Actions palette in Freeway. Under the Edit Template title is an HTML entry area (1) that you'll want to single click in and then hold down the Command key and press V (or hold down Control and click on the text area and choose Paste) to paste in your HTML code.

Once you have pasted your HTML code into the entry area you can go ahead and choose Preview (1) to view your template. Once you have finished previewing and if everything looks as it should then choose Save Template (2). You'll want to post an entry to your site so you can see how it all looks. That should be it, now blog away and enjoy!

If your page does use any external graphics or external CSS and they are not showing up then make sure that your BASE HREF address matches the address you used in the Upload tab in Document Setup. More importantly if the CSS isn't working you will have to manually copy the BASE HREF address and paste it as a prefix to your CSS address. This is called an absolute address and is necessary to get external stylesheets working.

NOTE: If your site isn't showing up properly make sure that Classic Template is not selected. This has been known to make sites not work properly with the outputted Freeway code.