I created many Blogger template for our community. To day, I just want to share my steps to create a nice Blogger template for sell or for free.
STEPS
1. Get inspirations
I usually visit ThemeForest to find inspiration. Of course, you can go around the web world and feeling with some beautiful websites you visited. You can try to search on Google with your target keywords like: beautiful website, modern web layout, creative web color scheme, .etc.. Just think by yourself.
This can take you 0.5 day
2. Design graphic
I am using Fireworks CS5 to create template files as layout PNG graphic files.
In this step, you also image all features and functions for the template. And your files must contain: Home, Index, Page, Posts, 404, Features List, Mobile.
Please list all your template features in text file, so you can easy test them again in testing step.
This can take you more than 1 day.
3. Prepare Data
Mean you must prepare images for backgroud, icons, buttons, sliders, .etc.. (these images can upload to Picasa).
You also must write post for your testing blog. If the template is free, you can use “Lorem ipsum” text, but if it is premium for selling, please pay attention for your content with beautiful images, videos and funny text.
You can lost more than 0.5 day for this.
4. Make xHTML
I will go from header to footer of Blogger template xml file.
At header, you must take care about title and description tags. Also create some css variable you will use in skin tags with some basic framework (.clear, image, a…) and reset CSS. You must also prepare place to easy insert CSS for IE and jquery library here.
On body, imagine base on your design layout, and create wrapper, inner and sections elements with full properties (showaddelements, maxwidgets) and basic widgets (must have blog, navbar widget) with certain properties (lock=’true’ or ‘false’).
And footer, prepare place to easy add javascript.
I usually use self-hosted CSS and javascript files to design a template, then when finish, i copy their content to embed direct into the template xml code.
This step can take your about 1 day.
5. Create CSS
Now, it’s time to make your template fixed about 80% with your graphic design. Use Chrome with Inspect element function (F12) will help you very much.
You can spend about 1 day here.
6. Create Javascript
This step is for you creating built-in jquery and javascript application of the template likes: json apps, shortcodes, comments, drop-down, pagination, .etc..
This step can take more than 1 day.
7. Stress Test
You must test you you template base on your feature list. Please don’t afraid any errors, just try to test with strongest cases. Less errors, less time to spend for supporting.
You can list your common bugs that you got before on old templates, so you can save the time to think.
This can take your 1 day.
8. Create folders and files to release
You can follow my folder structure or create better one for you.
- main_files: you will compress as: template_name_versionxx.zip and upload
- xml_files: release_template_versionxx.xml, testing_blog_data.xml
- help: help.html, help.pdf
Please mind, you must separate the template_working.xml with release_template_versionxx.xml. A working file is for you easy developing, a release file must be the shortest file with compressed CSS, HTML and Javascript.
This can take just some minutes.
9. Create guide document
Yes, this is very important step if you want to sell your template as premium. Please write very clearly and easy navigate sections in your document. It’s better and easy to sell if you record videos for your guides.
You must prepare all images (and videos) before start writing text for your help files. If your template is free, you can combine this step to release step.
This step can take you more than 1 day.
10. Release
Prepare banner (usually 590×300 or 600×300), thumbnail icons (required if premium), screenshots (require if premium). Images for your item description.
If you template is free, the description may be written as help and guides. If premium one, the description is introduction about features, credits, support information and release notes.
You can lost about 0.5 day for this
Conclusion
The time you spend for a nice Blogger template can be at least 7.5 days.
Mean you lost about 60 hours of working. If an hour of your is $5, so the revenue must be $300+.
A nice template of Blogger can sell about 30+ sales, so if you want to earn $300+, the price for each sale must be $10.
But don’t be rushed, must go step by step, if you skip any thing, may be you destroyed your product and sometime must start again.
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