Converting To New Blogger Page Element Templates

I plan to convert My Wealth Builder to the New Blogger Page Element Templates in April. I want the transition to be error free. Here are some items I will need to do:

• Reinstall meta tags for Google and Yahoo!
• Reinstall meta tags for Google Analytics.
• Reinstall ads for Google Adsense.
• Reinstall Feedburner HTML.
• Use new method to put Adsense ads within posts.
• Recreate blogroll.
• Recreate text link ads.

To note, I am, at best, a novice programmer. To ensure the I do all the changes correctly, I plan to create a mirror blog with all these elements before doing the conversion.

Sources of Information of Advanced Bloggers

Here are some sites for advanced users:

Beta Blogger for Dummies - Tips and techniques for modifiying New Blogger templates. I currently use the three column template provided by this site.

Blogcrowds Custom Templates - This sites provides three column modifications to the Blogger Templates for New Blogger.

iMESSENGER.com - Here's how to put the adsense code inside your post in New Blogger.

I plan to convert My Wealth Builder to the Blogcrowds three column template in the next couple months.

Conversion to New Blogger

My January,2007 conversion to New Blogger went very well. Much better than I had expected based on issues others had shared.

In December, 2006, I was extremely worried. Right after I received the notice to change, I tested the My Wealth Builder template on New Blogger and it crashed, due to an XML error. Panic. I believed that my hacks, while acceptable on Blogger, were not sufficiently error free for New Blogger. I spent the next two evenings searching for solutions, ideas, and help. And I found them. First, after more experimentation, I found out that New Blogger allowed reverting to the "classic template," which would accept My Wealth Builder's current format. Now I was feeling better. Second, I found a blog, Beta Blogger for Dummies, that has excellent tips, techniques and hacks for New Blogger. These guys are good! Using their template, I was able to recreate my current three column template in New Blogger.

Success is where preparation meets opportunity. For the past month, I had been preparing for today. Based on migration recommendations by Beta Blogger for Dummies, I backed up the blog template, the blog posts, and created a test template in New Blogger. I even had plans to create a replica of My Wealth Builder if the migration crashed. As it turned out, I didn't need to do use any of the backup plans. So readers got uninterrupted service and will get a better My Wealth Builder in the future :-)

New Blogger - A Good Hosted Service

If you want to get started quickly, I recommend using New Blogger. It's free, easy to use and hosted by Google.

Being new to blogging and not being very techie, I didn't want to spend time learning how to program. Luckily, I quickly found Blogger, now New Blogger, which had predesigned templates to use. After signing up for Blogger, I was able to quickly choose a design and start blogging on My Wealth Builder.

Since then I have learned, Blogger is called a hosted service. A hosted service or developer service provides the server, software and blog templates, requiring no software installation by the blogger. Wikipedia has a nice article with a list of developer services.

I did not do an evaluation of the different hosting services before choosing Blogger. I experimented first with Blogger and found it sufficient for my needs of no investment, simplicity and quick start. The additional benefits of Blogger are that it is associated with Google (which may make one's blog more easily searched), and there are a wide range of templates to use. The downside is that one has to learn some programming to customize the templates to get, for example, a three column blog format.

I think the other hosted services are also very good. I just haven't tried them and can't comment on them from personal experience.