Blogger Themes: the Good, the Bad, and the Baffling

In Blogging on Blogger, we said that we created a test blog, The Bog Witch, to try out all the Blogger Themes. Since The Bog Witch is a personal blog dedicated to obscure folklore and the occult, we wanted it to be a bit dark and mysterious. We made 2 Title Headers on Canva, a couple of background images, wrote 1 short intro that doubled as the About page, one half post, and at one point copied a much longer post that had already been published on another blog. We decided to leave out the Soho and the Emporio Themes because they’re clearly geared for images rather than plain text, or a combination of both like most of the other Themes.

 

THE GOOD

The default Theme is the Contempo Light, which we had no problem customizing. You can see how it turned out below.

This is a very simple design and we weren’t going for anything too complicated. The Essential ended up looking a lot like the Contempo, though you can still feel how basic it is.

THE SO-SO

Like we wrote in Blogging on Blogger when discussing our current blogs, the Notable Themes were just too white and you can’t change all that below the Navigation Menu whiteness without changing the background colour of the posts. There is a dark Notable Theme, but we wanted a light background for the individual posts. The Soho has the same problem in terms of how changing the background colour for the homepage affects the posts’ background, but the fact that it doesn’t show excerpts and the text-only posts show up as the title inside a dark (or light if it’s a darker Theme) rectangle helps hiding it. You can see the Notable Dracula and the Pink after being customized the same way as we did the Contempo.

We didn’t replace the title + description with an image in the Dracula and used the alternate Header in the Pink because we felt the colours might work better. It still doesn’t look good. Basically, we see the same issues that made us switch Themes so quickly with our real blogs - it’s a little too orderly, which wasn’t what we wanted for The Bog Witch either. Now, despite some frustrating limitations, these Themes are perfectly functional and look fine on all screens. However, when we moved on to the others, things got trickier.

THE BAD

Awesome Inc, Simple, Ethereal, Picture Window, Watermark, and Travel may look different, but share some of the same little quirks, like showing the full post on the homepage. Why that is? We didn’t know, but while writing this post we decided to google it again and we finally found something from Goggle Support - you have to insert a page break. We did it and guess what? It WORKED! Why the hell do these Themes require that extra bit of work when the others don’t? Probably for the same reason they don’t change seamlessly between different screen sizes. Instead you have to opt for a Simplified View, which makes it harder for visitors to truly appreciate all the work you had customizing your blog.

Let’s start with the Simple and the Ethereal which ended up looking pretty much the same. We used the Simple Literate and the Ethereal Humming Bird Two Tone.

Despite its elaborate name, the Ethereal isn’t anything special and like the Simple presents the Posts Page and the sidebar in the same block, which means that the only thing you can do is change the colour of the vertical bar separating the 2. We tried to use the background image with the graphics, but because it was too narrow, it was tiled, which made it look confusing, and so we opted for a simple starry sky. It was also tiled, but it’s less noticeable. We suppose we could’ve tried to make a wider background image, but honestly, it seemed like too much work for a blog post. Things would’ve been different if we were serious about using this Theme on a real blog. Looking at their respective homepages, it’s probably a good thing we didn’t replace the title + description with an image in the Literate or we wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart.

The way the posts are presented is pretty unappealing and we couldn’t find a way to change it for these or any of the other Themes in this group. This is particularly egregious when it comes to the Simple Literate, as its bookish title would suggest something more reader-friendly. By the way, this is how they look on a tablet, no zoom adjustments necessary to see the whole blog. And of course, there’s the full post because we hadn’t figured out how to prevent that, yet. The Featured Post Gadget causes a weird duplication effect, and for some reason, the items from the Navigation Menu that usually show up in a bar below the title, turn up in the sidebar near the bottom. It took us a while to realize how to fix it - you have to go to the Layout section and add the Page List Gadget to the grey bar that appears above the 2 main Gadgets columns (yes, it has a name, but we didn’t write it down and aren’t going to ruin one of the blogs just so we can see what it’s called). This has to be another Theme default for all these Themes because this is the kind of thing we’ve never had to correct before. The only thing we’ve ever had to do to the Navigation Menu was add the About and Our Books pages.

Now, the Travel and the Picture Window. We used the Travel Beach and the Picture Window Screen.

At first, we thought the Travel was like the Simple and the Ethereal and had the sidebar and the Posts Page together, but you can customize the sidebar. You can also change the colour of the Gadgets’ text, which is very useful and not something all Themes allow. Since the Picture Window Screen has that dark background with the raindrops, we really expected the sidebar to be more legible with a dark background.

Like the Travel, the Watermark doesn’t have the sidebar in the same block as the Posts Page; instead, it’s part of the background, so changing it will change the sidebar, too. We opted for the Bubblegum, which is a light Theme, and couldn’t find a way to change it. At one point, we made the background black and it ended up darkish grey. Definitely, not ideal for The Bog Witch.

The Awesome Inc was the Theme we spent more time with along with the Dynamic Views.

We used the Light, Icy, and the Arty (and later the Dark). Like the other Themes in The Bad section, it doesn’t automatically adapt to different screens, and suffers from the full post on the homepage issue. You can see the customized versions of the Icy and the Light below, and yes, we changed a lot.

The Title Header didn’t fill the whole Header space and ended up with 2 black squares on each side. If there’d been a black space between the Header and the posts, it might’ve worked, but this just looks bad. And of course, the wider images spill over the sidebar, though you can’t see that here. Really, these Themes are just terrible for posts with images. We applied the 2 columns to the Arty, but we don’t see their usefulness. They’re probably good if you have AdSense and don’t want the ads all together on one side, but even with all the stuff we currently have on our other blogs’ sidebars, 2 seems too much for normal blog stuff.

The Arty is a lighter Theme, so the dark colours aren’t very dark, which became a problem when we tried changing the background of the Gadgets. When we set it to transparent, the Featured Post became illegible, and of course, changing the Gadget text colour would change all the Gadgets’ text colour. First, we opted to get rid of the Featured Post, which was making the homepage confusing as it made the chosen post turn up twice, and then ended up making the sidebar transparent and leave only the Gadgets.

At one point, we took out the Popular Posts Gadget, which turns up in the Homepage, but we still weren’t happy with how it looked. And finally, here’s the Awesome Inc Dark with page breaks. By the time we did this, we had already changed The Bog Witch, hence the cauldron on the sidebar, but we put the old posts back to make it more similar to the other experiments.

While it looks better than before, the Featured Post problem remains, and this time, we didn’t set any specific Featured Post; it was just the most recent one.

THE BAFFLING

We already said that we didn't include the Soho and the Emporio in our little experiment, but anyone familiar with Blogger’s Themes will surely notice that there’s still one left - Dynamic Views.

Much like the others, Dynamic Views offers more than one look to choose from; unlike the others, however, it allows visitors to switch between designs. This means it doesn’t really matter which look you pick and spend time customizing because it will all be gone with a simple click. Apparently, there’s a way to prevent this using code, but anyone (like us) who can’t code and isn’t willing to risk that more in-depth editing, is stuck with this bizarre feature that we’re not sure anyone actually wants. This is made weirder by the fact that one of the versions, Snapshot, doesn’t even pick up text, only images. What happens if someone accidentally clicks on that before taking a closer look at the original Homepage and then no posts turn up? Below, you can see the Sidebar view with no customization. The way the actual sidebar turns up is just so weird!

And here is the Homepage after some simple customization.

Dynamic Views is the only Theme that doesn’t allow you to replace the title with an image. The Classic view is pretty much the Essential with date flags. Very dull. The others give you more options (which will of course, go away if someone switches view). We didn’t immediately realize that the grey background was actually a lack of background image. Below, you can see the Mosaic, Magazine, Timeslide, and Snapshot with and without background image.

Dynamic Views Magazine

Dynamic Views Mosaic

Dynamic Views Snapshot

Dynamic Views Timeslide

We totally forgot to customize the Flipcard, but you can see the non customized view below.

Dynamic Views Flipcard

The worst view has to be the Timeslide, even after we flipped the tablet for a wider view. The Snapshot not only ignores posts with no images, but also shows images from the same post separately. The first image (Krampus) gets the title, and the next ones (starry sky) get nothing, but we still don’t like it. On top of this, this batch of views does a weird thing with the posts that presents them as a pop-up when you click on them instead of simply sending you to a normal page. You can see the rest of the Homepage in the background around the post.

After we decided to not delete The Bog Witch and keep it as a repository of not ready for public consumption WIP snippets and all the pet peeves + snarky replies that aren’t wise to post on social media because we don’t want to spend a whole day arguing with some idiot, we ended up finding out more about Dynamic Views, and none of it good, like the fact that to even preview this Theme, the blog must be public. This is pretty weird because this messy design feels like something that would work better for specific groups - friends sharing stuff on a private site; subscribers who already know what to expect - not random visitors. Then, there’s the way the Gadgets refuse to disappear even after you hide them, which ends up interfering with the overall look, as, for instance, the blog’s tagline bumps into the Search Gadget. Last, but not the least, you can’t put images on that skinny sidebar. The new The Bog Witch wasn’t meant as some neatly sorted blog, with a profusion of labels telling readers all they’re getting, but we still felt it needed a little order. So, we assigned each type of post a label consisting of a single letter corresponding to one of the simple banners we made on Canva. These banners were then put on the sidebar and we added one label link to each of them. Since we were going to put a banner at the top of the posts, we started with the Soho, until we thought it might be fun to try the Snapshot. We’d never use it for a proper blog, but The Bog Witch wasn’t intended as a proper blog. So, in addition to the 2 other issues already mentioned, when we switched Themes, all the images disappeared from the sidebar. We checked the Gadgets on the Layout section, saw that the Image Gadgets were hidden, and switched to ‘show’. What changed? Well, now we had a bunch of empty little squares on the tiny sidebar… The other Themes allow you to choose to hide some things on the posts feed, like the publication date or the name of the author, but Dynamic Views just ignores your choices.

VERDICT

We will definitely be sticking with the responsive Themes and think anyone trying to start a blog with no large following should too. Even with the Homepage’s main problem fixed, the ‘bad’ Themes still look too clunky and dated. We see them working for bigger, established blogs that have been using one of them for a long time. In this case, changing the Theme would be jarring for old visitors, and new visitors would accept the look because it’s an important blog. Small blogs like ours that primarily promote themselves on social media, on the other hand, don’t have that brand recognition, and the first time people will see it will likely be on a smaller screen. We really don’t want someone’s first impression of one of our blogs to be a hard-to-read, old-fashioned design. We might use them on an experimental blog, but not on ones we actually want people to read. Unless ‘retro’ is part of your brand, these non responsive Themes are definitely not a good choice for bloggers trying to attract new visitors. Also, if your blog is dark, it will just look like a black blob on smaller screens. The Dynamic Views Theme still confounds us. We tried googling how many blogs are using it, but couldn’t find any stats. Seriously, who the hell thought this Theme was a good idea and why is it still there? Bloggers should at the very least be able to pick 1 view and stick with it without needing to add any new code.