1. MyProduct | $19.95

This theme is great for promoting your products and services online. The design is smooth and contains a corporate feel. A page-based structure makes the theme powerful and versatile at the same time. Five color schemes are included with the theme package.

2. Diarise | $70.00

Diarise is a new theme from WooThemes, offering you the ability to organize your company/organization’s events in an elegant and clean manner. Easily add events straight to your calendar application and link your events to booking forms. INcluded are eight alternative color styles, custom widgets, built-in SEO options, and a powerful theme framework.

3. L’Image | $47.00

This theme is great for professional photography sites or galleries. It is compatible with the latest version of WordPress, contains a four-level drop-down menu system, all the source files you need, and automatic thumbnail creation.

4. The Beeb 3 | $39.00

Six custom widgets, built-in thumbnail support, full source files, and all the other common WordPress features have been integrated into this theme. While the look is more cluttered than some other themes, news sites will enjoy the wide array of areas to place advertisements.

5. Vidley | $50.00

The Vidley Theme has been designed to be flexible and ready for all the videos you want to post on your website. A number of customizable options have been included in the back-end Options Panel, making it easy to manage your theme.

6. FolioFlip | $30.00

The FolioFlip Theme contains a lot of options, making it the ideal theme for a portfolio blog and those who want to showcase images on their blog. A number of pre-designed templates have been included, but you should check them out, along with all the other features.

7. Unique | $30.00

Unique is a powerful theme for creating a complete website. Two levels of color customization, plus a number of typography styles are included. You also have the option of setting an article as a homepage article, promo, or footer link.

8. Metric | $79.95

The Metric Theme has been designed for everyone from a novice WordPress user or business owner to the advanced developer who makes a living customizing WordPress sites. A number of features have been included to help you use and customize the theme.

9. Novocane | $30.00

Novocane is an advanced theme, with an eye-catching grid magazine layout, fifteen header background options, fourteen Cufon fonts, and nine footer background options included. Seven PSD files, Google Analytics support, and plenty of options make the theme easy to use and customize.

10. Meedo | $35.00

Meedo is a corporate/business theme designed with options to enhance the experience of your users who visit your site. Five smooth sliders, up to thirty sliders, and three color schemes have been included within the template.

Disclaimer: Please read our Disclosure Policy concerning the links in this post.

A year ago, I presented more than thirty great magazine templates, but this year, I’ll showcase another twenty, bringing a variety of fresh, new magazine templates for Blogger to the arena.

These templates are all free to use – there is no purchase required, although you’ll need to edit the code within Blogger.

I recommend you take the following step before installing any of these themes: back up your template! Follow any additional instructions the designer provides, like including your own Twitter account where appropriate.

1. Framed [Demo | Release Page] – A blue and gray template with multiple columns and areas for advertisements.

2. Mayumi [Demo | Release Page] – A light blue and white template, this theme is an adoption from a popular WordPress template, and is ideal for bloggers who want to focus on writing.

3. Magazine [Demo | Release Page] – This is a two-column template, adapted from a CSS/HTML skin, featuring a darker template and a tab content menu.

4. Silverline [Demo | Release Page] – A three-column template with a gray/white/black color scheme and a featured content slideshow feature.

5. WP Boxed Tech [Demo | Release Page] – This is a template converted from a WordPress template, featuring a magazine look, ideal for technology blogs.

6. Colorbold [Demo | Release Page] – A clean, two-column template with an elegant design and ideal for a designer’s blog.

7. Zexee [Demo | Release Page] – While this template may not have all the characteristics of a magazine template, it certainly has a unique look.

8. Community [Demo | Release Page] – This template features a “widescreen” layout, ideal for magazine sites.

9. Matino [Demo | Release Page] – This is a clean, simple template built wiht a modern look and a three-column footer.

10. Androida [Demo | Release Page] – This is a three-column template with a light and dark blue look, ideal for featuring your content.

11. Hybrid News [Demo | Release Page] – This is a free template designed with a blue and white color scheme.

12. The Latest [Demo | Release Page] – This template includes a right sidebar, advertisements area, three-column footer, and menu/sub-menu links.

13. Falkner Press [Demo | Release Page] – This template includes two columns, automatic thumbnails, a PSD logo, and social bookmarking icons built into the theme.

14. Irresistible [Demo | Release Page] – This is a full magazine template wiht three columns, nine color schemes, and a beautiful look.

15. Imprezz [Demo | Release Page] – This template is a clean, organized theme with a navigation menu and RSS subscription area in the header.

16. Photoplus [Demo | Release Page] - While not necessarily a template built for magazine sites, there are many photographers and designers who may want to use this template.

17. Chucky [Demo | Release Page] – This is a clean blue, gray, and white template that has been built for magazine-styled websites.

18. Clean White Magazine [Demo | Release Page] – This is a magazine template with a clean look, ideal for placing advertisements on your website.

19. Multichrome [Demo | Release Page] – This template is a multi-colored template designed with lots of gerat features built into the template.

20. Motion [Demo | Release Page] – This is a dark template with shades of green and blue, ideal for people who want to focus on their content.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this collection of fresh, free magazine-styled templates for Blogger. If you have any additional templates you’d like to share, please do so in the comments area. I appreciate all feedback.

The theme is not for everyone, as it contains a simplified look, akin to that of many Tumblr themes. What stands out the most in the theme is the unique look and the navigation bar that has been built into the theme, although there are a number of additional features worth checking out:

Works Like Tumblr

The theme packs an impressive set of features that will allow your blog to act as though it is powered by Tumblr, even though it is powered by WordPress.

Extensive Multimedia Support

A number of multimedia elements can be added to the theme with ease. These include, but are not limited to, images video, audio, quotes, notes, and links. Each can be added just as easily as copying and pasting the embed code for a YouTube video, for example.

Advanced QuickPress

Use the built-in Dashboard to quickly publish new content to your blog. You won’t have to click through multiple pages just to post a new quote – you’ll have the simplicity of Tumblr but without some of its limitations.

jQuery Navigation and Hotkeys

The theme includes some unique scrolling and navigation features to make it easy for your visitors to browse through and find your content.

Custom Widgets

A custom widget has been included within the sidebar, making it easy to add Flickr photos, a search box, latest Twitter messages, and more to your theme. This can be customized to suit your needs.

Seven Alternative Styles

If you aren’t a fan of the default color style, you can choose from the seven that are included, which can be customized further to suit your own needs.

Custom Navigation

Their Custom Navigation Panel has been built into this theme, giving you full control over how your navigation should be featured within the theme.

Powerful Theme Framework

The powerful theme framework included within the theme is one of the most powerful around. Just take a look at the video below.

Other Prominent Features

• Back-end Theme Options Panel – This panel gives you full control over the theme, so you never have to edit code directly.
• Cross-Browser Compatible – The theme conforms to all modern web standards, so your site will display properly for all your readers.
• Automatically Resizing Thumbnails – Any image that you upload will be automatically resized to fit in the appropriate location within the theme.
• Custom Page Templates – A number of custom page templates makes it easy to edit and setup your website. For example, a full-width and archives page have been included.
• Localized for Translations – The theme includes a .po file for easy WordPress translations into your desired language.

The theme can be purchased at WooThemes for just $70 or for a discounted rate if you purchase their Club Membership – $125+$15/month.

Disclaimer: I will receive commissions from each sale made through the links on this page. For more information, please read my Disclosure Policy.

There are the dos and don’ts of web design, then there are the annoying aspects of site designs that make you simply want to cringe. They are all around us, and even I have occasionally forgotten about my visitors, and have resorted to using any of these tactics of increasing conversion rates. No matter what type of site you run, even if it is a blog, you should try to avoid these practices, as they drive traffic away from your site, and will result in lower conversion rates in the long-term.

A Background: Why These Are Used

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with making a little money from the time you spend developing your site. However, what’s wrong is when you plaster large call-to-actions across your site, destroying the focus of your website. Instead of grabbing the attention of your visitors to purchase whatever you may be selling or promoting, these vibrant “graphics” do nothing more than entice visitors away from your site—many will never return.

Each visitor to your site matters. Even though many sites only see a 1% return rate on visitors who either leave comments or purchase/click through to multiple areas of your site, your visitors are the most important aspect of your site. Without any visitors, what will your site be? Just text and images on the web. We’ve seen how effective they can be—you need more that that to separate yourself from the millions of other pages on the web.

Subscription, Offer, and Promotional Forms

Those boxes appearing when you visit a website that invite you to take an action -signing up for a service, downloading an eBook, or subscribing to a blog are some of the most annoying types of call-to-actions. They may be effective, but generally only for first-time visitors or those who believe it must be filled out to gain access to the content.

If you happen to value the number of subscribers you have, compared to the opinion of your blog, then this technique will most certainly work for you. Using these forms is the same as telling someone watching television that they must click “next” between each commercial. It becomes even more annoying when multiple sites you enjoy visiting use the technique.

I wouldn’t mind seeing them once when visiting a site, but quite often, I can visit a site, reset the browser, and then see the form again, when I only wanted to read the latest post. The only way these forms work is if the site only displays the box once per IP address or if it can detect if someone subscribed already through the current IP address.

Flash… of Any Kind

Integrating Flash as a prominent part of a site is a sure-fire way for determining whether you want visitors to return to your site. Flash is a prominent part of the web for video and animation, but doesn’t belong on your blog. Blogs should focus on the content—there is no reason for a thirty-second animation with a separate page welcoming me to your site. It’s quite similar to the subscription forms. Once, it might be cool to see, but the second time around, not so much.

Although Flash can be used in innovative ways, much of this innovation has been reserved to the interactive sites offering static content, which results in a degraded experience when integrated into a text-heavy blog.

The main problem with Flash is that it is overused as it is, and may not present the best experience across all platforms. While on the subject of “flash,” having “blinking lights” around your site can detract the value of your content. Visitors will be focusing on the graphics, rather than what you have to offer.

A Hidden Search Form

Having the ability to search one’s site is the key. If you make it inaccessible, then it will be difficult for your users to find previous content. For example, someone may want to read more information about a particular subject, to only find there are no links to archive pages or categories.If this is the way your site is right now, the best solution to this problem is to make the search box more visible.

Until we can pinpoint specific content without browsing through archives, tags, and categories, we’ll still need to integrate a search field and other methods into the designs of our blogs.

Conclusion

While these tips may have been on the basic side, they are essential in your design, as you shouldn’t be including unnecessary elements or leaving out elements that should be included. Testing is also extremely important, as you’ll be able to determine what works for your site and what doesn’t—effectiveness is key.

[Photo Source]

By creating a test on the site, you can upload your design, and then pick a test format, either “Ask users what they remember about your design” or “Ask users to click on parts of your design.” With these two options, you can get all the feedback you need.

There is also an option to allow random testers to participate, but you might want to uncheck this if you want feedback only from a select number of people.

You are able to do a sample test using this link, and leave feedback or simply try out the tool. More than 98,000 designers have already used it to receive feedback.

If you are unconvinced that the tool works or is useful, I recommend using it for A/B tests. For example, before redesigning your site, test your site, then do it again to see whether visitors have noticed an improvement.

Registration is option, there are only a few features deemed as premium, and the tool is fast and responsive.

As new features are introduced or planned, they are posted to their Twitter profile.

However, there have been some great themes released that are aimed at specific niches, which might perform better than themes designed solely for blogging. They are sometimes priced differently than normal themes, either higher or lower, depending on the set of features and the specific niche.

The Main Types of Themes

CMS – These themes are ideal for a wide variety of sites, and can be customized to suit your needs. They generally have more features to make managing and organizing your blog fairly easy. Rather than having to change the title through the editing of code, you can do this through the back-end panel. The main page of this site generally focuses on directing the visitors to internal pages.

Photography – There are dozens of photography themes now available, making it easy to publish photography to your site. Traditional themes are not that good for photography, as there is little to no control over how archives are created, and you really need a photography-related theme to publish photos to your site. They often have settings as to how your photography will be displayed and options for your visitors to interact more easily with your photos.

Business – While many businesses would rather have a custom theme designed for their site, there are plenty of themes that do the job on smaller business sites. They revolve around providing a simple, but functional template for promoting the services and/or products provided by a company. The main page may simply be a landing page, with a separate blog area, or a complete template with everything included on one page.

Video – VIdeo themes are ideal for bloggers who are publishing video – whether their favorite videos from the web or their own that they have uploaded. Again, they are more specific, and may not be best for people who want to publish text to their site in addition to video. Using these themes makes it easier to properly showcase your content.

Magazine – Magazine themes are one of the most popular types of themes, ideal primarily for sites that showcase a lot of content. Like popular news websites, they allow visitors to quickly browse and scan through the content on your site. Advanced options panels are often included, as these themes are often a pain to edit – there is a lot more complex code included to setup the themes.

Personal – Personal themes have been around for some time, although they have been given a new light recently. People want a place to showcase all their content as well as more personal thoughts. They are generally simpler, and have fewer options than “blog” themes, but still allow posting. Social networks are generally showcased within these sites.

Portfolio – Personal themes are often designed to showcase your thoughts, but portfolio themes make it easy to publish your work online, such as photos, projects, and video to your site. Portfolios are extremely important to make distributing a “real” résumé online with everything you’ve done.

Conclusion

While there are other, more specific categories of themes on the market, these are some of the most popular. What types of themes do you prefer to use? Please recommend some themes that others should check out within the categories above.

Theme designers have made it possible to get a similar-looking appearance as WordPress, although the back-ends and customization panels aren’t really present. Take a look at some recent, innovative themes for Blogger users.

FlipFlop Blogger [Demo] – Price: $12.00

Featuring powerful elements, a left-aligned layout, and four different advertisement locations, plus many options within the administration panel to customize the theme, this theme is idea for people who want to feature a lot of content on their blogs.

Buy Themes [Demo] – Price: $10.00

This theme is ideal for people who want to create a professional showcase using the Blogger system. Included within the package is the ability to edit or add your own logos, add advertisements to the sidebar, configure a ratings system, plus the PSD file for more advanced editing.

Airmail [Demo] – Price: $10.00

Airmail is a unique, two-column theme with Flickr integration, advertisement areas, and is easy to customize with commented CSS.

Golden Grace [Demo] – Price: $12.00

This theme features a top header navigation menu, social network link section, a PSD file for customization, advertisement areas, and Flickr photo integration.

Elegumus Business Template [Demo] – Price: $10.00

This theme is ideal for small businesses, with two different color schemes – neutral and dark. Some of the other features include: integrated menu bar, easily customizable options, custom header style (with PSD included), as well as a tabbed sidebar navigation feature.

Gallery [Demo] – Price: Free

A clean, simple gallery-styled theme built for Blogger users who want to place photos or other designs on their site.

Chucky [Demo] – Price: Free

Ideal for magazine and more advanced sites, this theme utilizes a vibrant color scheme and contains a featured article area for directing visitors to your most powerful pieces of content.

The Latest [Demo] – Price: Free

This is a clean, magazine theme built for Blogger with a magazine/photography-oriented design. There are two columns for content, with another for sidebar widgets, and a three-column footer. An advertisement area is also integrated.

WoodMag [Demo] – Price: Free

Featuring a three-column layout, cross-browser compatibility, advertisement areas, plus a three-column lower area, this template is ideal for more advanced sites desiring a magazine-like look.

Conclusion

If there are any themes/templates that you have been using, please let us know. As not all of my readers are using Blogger, you can also recommend your WordPress themes. Please leave them in the comments area below.

While each blog may be different, in this day and age, we all need to consider the “social sharing” aspect of blogs. Two years ago, it wasn’t nearly as popular as it is today, but more and more people are sharing Twitter usernames, following one another, and reciprocating what they enjoy on the web.

In the image above, you can see some great examples of footers, both in terms of the content chosen and the visual design.

Sites include: CSS-Tricks, StrawPoll, Bits & Pixels, Volll, and CSS Beauty.

News-Related Blogs

Because news blogs often focus on driving the most traffic to their top stories, you’ll find that there is less information in the footers. News should be placed in the header or closer to the top of the site, possibly in the sidebar.

News sites don’t focus on “sharing” as much as regular blogs, although they may place a small Twitter stream in the sidebar. The footer is usually used for links to their main areas, such as U.S., Politics, World, Entertainment, Tech, Travel, etc. They want to keep the traffic on the site, without driving traffic away because the visitors already know the news.

Value-Driven Blogs

Writers who regularly publish posts that are more than a thousand words in length and may not be posted as frequently as a news-related blog, per se, should be focusing on driving visitors to specific articles. This is even more important if you only have a few few articles (between three and five) on the main page, driving focus to recent topics covered.

Information about your site, copyright information, latest posts/calls to action, and possibly a Twitter stream should be placed in the footer.

One-level (in respect to the rows) footers are typically harder to organize, as you may be torn over placing contact and personal information here, rather than content from your blog. While the upper portion of the sidebar is often reserved for advertisements, the sidebar for value and service-driven blogs often focus on driving visitors to an area where they can discover how to obtain your services or products.

In General

While I wanted to focus on the two main types of blogs above, there are thousands of other categories of blogs, specifically those in niches. Many fit into the categories above, but vary by how the publisher wants to organize content.

Consider the following types of content when creating your footer and juggling content between your footer and sidebar.

• About Information – Personal blogs are already able to focus on the personal sense with information placed on a dedicated page or at the top of the main page, although it may also be important to place information about your site here.
• Lifestream Information – We’ve seen how powerful social media sites have become in promoting content. Why not use them while promoting your name in your footer with links to or a stream of your latest tweets?
• Contact Information – This information may be necessary if you invite people to input their opinion or share additional links.
• Pages – Links to your pages can improve navigation and can yield some more SEO benefits as you are pointing more links to your internal pages.
• A Blogroll – Your blogroll can help your readers become more familiar with other sites and also help if you don’t necessarily have “enough” to place in your footer.
• Recent Comments or Posts – Focusing on a more minimalistic approach, placing links to recent posts can help if you only place one or two articles on your main page.
• Advertisements – Even though it isn’t the most desirable for your readers, placing additional ads in the footer can increase the space that you have for advertisers.

Getting to the Basics

The footer is not meant to be overused, but it is often underused. It is a great place to expand upon, especially if you have a difficult time fitting everything in your sidebar. Three-column footers balance out most designs, while one-column footers don’t really add as much value, due to how the content is organized. The best advice is to browse through sites and see what really works.

The main reasons that widgets were added was to make it possible for people to add different areas of content to their sidebars without having to enter the “code” view all the time, and having to try to figure out where everything went, what code to use, and so on. The problem is still somewhat here – you have to know basic code, as many widget editors only support raw HTML coding. With widgets, it became easy to move your blogroll from beneath your advertisements to the footer area of your site, and back, without seeing any code.

The Wrong Way to Use Widgets

Even though everyone may have their different uses of WordPress, there are some that over-use them, for every area of their site, when it could be easier to just insert code into the theme template or not insert the widget at all.

1. Using them to replace basic functionality, like an “about” statement, links that don’t change often, or other elements that you don’t have to frequently edit.
2. Making widgets the premier place for everything, from countdown clocks to music widgets, and anything else that has an embed code. The sidebars should be kept as clean as possible. If you want to place that “stuff” on your site, place it on a separate page or use abridged posts that don’t display them on the main page.
3. Placing widgets where they really don’t belong, such as in the footer, which makes the average page much slower-loading and more likely that you’ll lose visitors because they don’t know nor want to use what is loading.

The Right Way to Use Widgets

Widgets were created for a few select reasons, which are being abused more and more often as of recently. These are some of the best reasons to use widgets and use them properly.

1. Use a widget, rather than hard-coding into your site anything that you need to have “instant” access to or need to update in the future (like ads or link lists). For everything else, just use the “sidebar” coding area.
2. Use only a few select widgets, modules, or “gadgets,” depending on which content management system you happen to be using. They are all designed for nearly the same purpose, and that is to add extra functionality without adding dozens of lines of code for something basic.
3. Optimize the code within your widgets to ensure that your sidebar doesn’t load first or take an extremely long time to load after the main content area – you need them to load nearly at once or your visitors won’t be subjected to the additional sidebar ads.

In Conclusion

Designing your widget area can be a critical step in your blog’s design process. Making sure that it is both balanced and customized to set your blog apart from the rest can be difficult, to say the least. Widgets, when used properly, can be a great addition to your blog, and that is the reason why nearly all themes now have them built-in to some degree.

In the end, it just makes sense that not all blogs need them, while some will use dozens of them before they can say that their theme is complete.

How do you use widgets on your blog?

Creating a theme that focuses on a simple color scheme is the best way to present your message. Choose a color palette – Colour Lovers should help with this selection process. However, you also have to keep in mind the default text color of your blog, which is (and should be) black. Additionally, the background should be white, so it is easier for your visitors to read what you have published.

Think about how you want to integrate the colors that you have chosen. Again, you need to keep the whole process simple and use colors that people are “familiar with,” or those that invoke emotion in your readers. All of this depends on whether you have chosen to change a single area of your site or focus on a complete redesign.

Personally, I would rather see a design with three or four main colors, rather than a “crazy” design with literally hundreds of colors, with no logical format. When you use an image or design, it is a different story, especially if you operate a design-oriented blog/website, and want to focus on a visually aesthetic and pleasing design. It is all about how you want your visitors to see your site and interact with your blog.

Crowding your site with any form of excess isn’t good, either. It indicates that you have no structure and can’t control where your content is placed. Readers are immediately “told” to leave the site and look for another site with a better purpose.

Some Additional Ideas:

• Use a stronger, bolder color in your header.
• Don’t hesitate to use multiple colors (two or three) in the border ares of the template, which helps define where your content and theme begin and end, typically seen in centered templates.
• Use another color in your theme’s footer, especially if it is multiple columns.
• Don’t let the colors you choose overpower what you have to say and your message.
• Choose a color scheme that is really appropriate for your niche and that represent you. You don’t want to choose a vibrant theme for a topic that really isn’t that.

Conclusion

Choosing the appropriate color scheme for your blog is extremely important. As previously stated, you need something that is simple and straightforward, but doesn’t lack the style that might be required of you to make the entire template work properly. Experiment, experiment, experiment is one of the key principles in this, and choosing a color scheme is no exception. Judge what works and what doesn’t – do split A/B testing to see if the changes rally impact the readership and traffic levels of your blog, or whether your site could work with no colors (not recommended, either).