A Brief History of Blogger Time

Blogger Themes and Templates Throughout the Ages

Early Blogger themes lacked a sidebar and other features we take for granted today.

The customizable responsive themes that Google introduced in 2017 (Notable, Emperio, Contempo, Soho) are the latest family of Blogger offerings since Blogger's inception (pre-Google) in 1999.

The three most recent "generations" of themes, Designer (2010), Dynamic (2011), and Responsive (2017), are each still widely in use.

Let's call them the "Modern" themes. (Google sometimes refers to them as "second generation layout" themes.)

Themes used to be called templates, and the terms are interchangeable.

Older themes are still in use, but are not as common.

The Modern Age

Designer (2010). These templates, Simple, Watermark, Awesome, Picture Window, and Travel, were introduced in conjunction with the Theme Customizer (then called Template Designer).

Customizer permitted thousands of variations and customizations without once editing the theme code directly.

These templates were a huge step up for Blogger, and are still used widely today. Though not responsive, they are good general-purpose themes, customizable and flexible. 

The addition of corresponding mobile themes in 2011 extended the usefulness of the Designer themes.

Dynamic (2011). These 7 templates are technically one template with 7 views (Classic, Flipcard, Magazine, Mosaic, Sidebar, Timeslide).

Blogger promoted them as alternatives rather than successors to the Designer templates released the year before. They are quite striking!

Some of these views are substantially responsive, paving the way for the Responsive themes in 2017.

One trick I like is how, without actually switching, you can peek at any blog as if it were on this theme by adding "/view/flipcard" (or other) to the root url of the blog. 

You can link to these views if you like! For instance here is this blog in Mosaic.

Drawbacks: The dynamic themes are not very customizable. Also, because these themes rely on a published blog feed, they are not available to private blogs.

Mobile (2011). The Designer templates are not responsive and were unreadable on people's phones. Google wrote a mobile-specific template in 2011.  It is limited in scope, but an improvement.

This is the mobile option available on the Theme page for non-responsive themes. (Responsive themes do not need one.)

Responsive (2017). These elegant themes shift and flow based on the size and shape of the browser window. There is no separate "mobile" theme, just a single theme for every view, which adapts to the viewer.

These responsive themes, however, are also specialized. They can be brittle and sometimes difficult to customize. 

In this respect, they are kind of a midpoint between the Designer and Dynamic themes.

With mobile bloggers in mind, Google added the simpler (but still responsive) Essential theme to this family in 2020.

Older templates have proved durable, if not fully functional.

Ancient Blogger

From its inception in 1999 until the 2010 introduction of Designer templates (above), Blogger went through a few big technological changes, several in conjunction with new template architecture.

I did not start blogging until 2008, so I missed some of these.

Original (1999) The original Blogger was basically just a collection of posts: the most recent post became the home page, and there were few pathways to older material.

That changed in 2004, the year after Google bought Blogger.

Classic (2004). These themes showed multiple posts on the home page and provided an archive gadget. This was kind of a flowering period for Blogger, with many hundreds of graphically sophisticated templates, some commissioned by Google and some by third parties.

I find many of these more attractive than the Designer defaults, but they are not up to snuff technologically with their more-modern counterparts.

A once-popular Classic Blogger theme, "Thisaway Green."

I'll add that with a little elbow grease it is possible to customize the Designer themes to resemble the old Classic templates.

I did exactly that with my apple blog, which superficially looks like the Classic template called Thisaway Green. (But under the hood, it is built on the ca. 2010 Picture Window.)

Note: My grasp of Blogger pre-2008 is fuzzy. I would welcome any corrections, which I will incorporate into this report.

Update: In light of this, here are my thoughts about which theme might be best for you.

Above: public domain photo of a Neolithic rock painting from the Lascaux caves in southwest France. The paintings there are 15,000–17,000 years old. The photo of the Greek inscription is courtesy of Maurice Flesier via Creative Commons license.