Features:
- Automatic thumbnail and read more
- Bookmarks post icon
- RSS Subscribe
- Twitter update
- Banner advertisement
- Adsense ready
- Three column
- Three column at lower section
- Navigation menu
Wordpress and Blogger/Blogspot template reviews, download, how to install and SEO tips.
Recently on my post Types of 'Read More' option in blogger blogs I had discussed that the Automatic Read More option uses a javascript and needs you to host it. Now we will do some trick to let our script embedded directly to our template that makes the script no need to host.
What is the advantages of doing this trick? It saves our time to upload the script to our hosting account. Also, because the script is not hosted, it speeds up the page load of our blog. Does it means if I hosted the script my blog will run slow? No, this is only for a prevention. Why? It sometimes happen (the slow loading) when the host is some kind of busy like doing maintenance and some other related issues.
How to do this trick? Just follow the instructions below: (FireFox Mozilla is the browser that was used in the illustrated images below)
and Save.
</head>
<body>
<div class='post-header-line-1'/>
<div class='post-body entry-content'>
<data:post.body/>
<div style='clear: both;'/> <!-- clear for photos floats -->
</div>
For the preview of what the automatic read more option that we just added look like check this blog homepage.
You can also customize the size of the image thumbnails and how long the summary of your article will appear on your homepage. Just search our script that we embedded and find the couple of codes below and change the number highlighted in green for the image thumbnails size and the number highlighted in blue for the length of article summary for whatever would you like.
</script>
<script type='text/javascript'>
var thumbnail_mode = "float" ;
summary_noimg = 390;
summary_img = 390;
img_thumb_height = 120;
img_thumb_width = 120;
</script>
If you have some expertise in editing CSS (short for Cascading Style Sheets) to change the appearance of the Read More option you can use the codes below:
a.readmore { /*your prepared style here*/ }
Zinmag Remedy blogger template is a very professional looking template. The only problem is that if you don't have any knowledge about HTML editing it is not advisable to pick this professional looking template. It happens to me before, but usually being a blogger we need to adapt the trend.
Zinmag Remedy template is originally a wordpress theme or template and converted by Falcon Hive into a blogger/blogspot template. This template is great and comes with hundreds of features. You can read more about the the template in my post The Zinmag Remedy Blogger Template.
What are the differences of the Zinmag Remedy 2.0 to Zinmag Remedy? The 2.0 version is much easier to customize. Falcon Hive who converted the template said that they fixed every possible SEO issue and improved the ‘h tag’ of the template. They also rearrange the code to make its structure more completely similar to the standard template, the Minima’s structure.
The 2.0 version is 99% widgetized or customized. Like I said, the old version needs you to have HTML knowledge to setup and that's often causes unpredictable error. But for the 2.0 version it is "99% widgetized" all the part from the top navigation bar to the bottom tabber section. So as Falcon Hive said: "you can now wipe out all your worries and just customize Remedy in Page Element section!"
The CSS and template structure of 2.0 version has improved. The new modified template’s CSS code fixes some issues like misaligned image in the ads space on the main page. Modifications on JavaScript/HTML gadget have made also to make customization faster and easier. And lastly, a new layout view is been made. See more to Zinmag Remedy 2.0 page.
So what is the unusual difference to the two version? See the images below. (Click the images to enlarge)
New Version:
Old Version:
Did you see the unusual differences? You notice it in the ‘Carousal Panel’. The new version uses a scrolling image navigation and the old version uses the sliding image navigation. I have notice this unusual thing when I installed the new version on my new blog. Thinking it might be an upload error, I try to upload the new version many times but it don't resolve the problem. So I end up uploading the old one. See my next post for the solution to the problem of 2.0 version ‘Carousal Panel’.
Update:
The differences of two templates here only happens if you use the default hosted javascript files which is been disabled by the host. For best results upload all javascript files located in the js folder to your hosting account. If don't have hosting account you can try hosting it here. It is free to host and to register.
Hotrod is originally a 2 column Wordpress theme created by Jinsona designs and converted into blogger by Templates Novo Blogger. I saw this template in Templates-blogger.com. But as I experienced the converted blogger version has some problems. It seems OK in the homepage, but if you browse to the individual post, the content of your post is not appearing. It also happens on archive page and label page.
You see, this template is very cool and hot because of the red sport car viewed on its header. Because of its coolness I tried to fix the problems. But as you can I really love 3 column templates, specially the Minibox 3 Column Modified, and this template is a 2 column version. So instead of fixing the problem I thought it is easier if I just combine it to my favorite 3 column template.
As the result the Mini-Hotrod 3 Column Blogger Template was born. This template is a combination of the Minibox 3 Column Modified and the Hotrod. It has the same features of Minibox 3 Column Modified and the coolness and hotness of Hotrod.
Features:
Minibox is a free 3 column blogger template created by James William that was heavily based on the popular Minima template. This template is an XML based. The code uses here is very similar to the structure of the Minima template. It is almost identical in variable names and section identifiers so that people can be familiar with it to modifying the Minibox template code. Minibox is completely compatible with Blogger's drag-and-drop layout manager.
How to disable right click on Blogger(blogspot)? It is easy to disable the right click option in blogger, we just need to add a javascript code to our page.
Why we do this? We all knew that if we right click to the images and articles (highlighted) in our pages a menu will pop out for many options like copying the links, to save, to open a link to a new tab or window and etc. We want to disable this option to prevent people for copying our blog posts, articles, images and other kind of information owned by you.
Minibox is a free 3 column blogger template heavily based on the popular Minima template. This is an XML based Blogger template for newer Blogspot blogs. The code uses very similar structure and almost identical variable names and section identifiers so that people familiar with modifying the Minima template shouldn't have much trouble modifying the Minibox template code.
Minibox is completely compatible with Blogger's drag-and-drop layout manager. The original 2 column version of Minima was written by Douglas Bowman of stopdesign.com. Here's a quote from his website:
The goal was to provide a fresh selection of well-designed and efficiently-coded, standards-based templates that provided solid yet flexible starting points for anyone to use as a design for their new or existing blog.

This free professional magazine template comes with hundreds of features, so it need skills for customization. Here is the demo for the template before customization (click here) and here after customization (click here).
This template is compatible with Internet Explorer 8, Firefox RC3, Opera 9.6, and Google Chrome 0.3.154.9. This template has 4 columns, gadget ready, 2 navigation bars ready, search box ready, 3 feature content boxes, 2 rss icons ready, 3 ads blocks ready, video space ready, footer gadget ready, and the amazing thing is the great top navigation bar that you must check it out.
You can download it here in a zipped file. Extract it and read the instruction file called installing-zinmag-remedy-Help.txt that will help you to set up the First Header Navigation Bar, the Second Navigation Bar, the ‘Feature Slide Carousal’ on the top of the main page, the ‘Featured Content’ on the top of the main page, the Main Page’s Ads Space, the ‘Video of the day’, the Tabber, the ‘Highlight Reel/ Featured Content’ on the top of the sidebar, the 125×125 Ads, the Email Subscribe button, the Content page’s Ads Space and how to hide article’s content on the main page.
If you want some more information about this template visit here.
Without a doubt, this is by far the best free WordPress theme I’ve yet to come across. Created by Arun Kale, the theme was developed based on a user survey about the features needed in a magazine like WordPress theme. It’s very powerful and setup like a newspaper or magazine.
This theme requires some work or rather creativity from your part too, to utilize it’s full potential. You need to create your own header image, latest post images etc. Don’t be surprised at how vanilla it looks once you install it. Take some time and read through the author’s release notes to understand how to best setup everything. Download it here.
Basic Usage
Once the theme is activated, the first thing you need to do is to create two categories called ‘Asides‘ and ‘Featured’. After that’s done, your home page will be displayed correctly.
Also, for the best results, please disable the visual rich text editor from the Users > Your Profile page in your WordPress administration panel.
The theme also requires some plugins (not mandatory) to enable the extended functionalities.
Plugins Recommended
These plugins are all included in the download file but might need to be updated to the latest version. Be sure to check after you install in your plugins area.
Important Note: If you’re running WordPress 2.3+, you’ll want to make a fix to a part of the code. You can find the details here.
To read a more detailed review of the WordPress theme, check out themecritic.com’s nicely done The Morning After review.