Learning About Advanced Templates

Now that we've explored Custom CSS, let's discuss a bit about designing with Advanced Templates.  Today's post comes from Colleen from the TypePad Support team:

What are Advanced Templates?
Advanced templates allow you access to the template code for your weblog, including the HTML, CSS and TypePad tags. Changes and edits to the templates must be coded by hand but doing so can provide greater flexibility. An Advanced Template is created when an existing Basic Design, configured with the template builder, is converted via Weblogs > Design > Saved Designs.

Who can use Advanced Templates?
Advanced Templates are available to Pro, Premium and Business Class members. If you're comfortable with learning new code structure and making edits by hand, then Advanced Templates might be a good option for your blog.

Why would I use Advanced Templates?
Using Advanced Templates allows you to have complete control over the look and feel of your blog. You can add additional stylesheet elements, add functionality that isn't available with a Basic template, or create an entire template from scratch to match an existing website.

How are Advanced Templates different from Custom CSS?
Custom CSS allows you to edit the theme elements of your blog - font colors, column widths, adding background images, etc. Anything that is included in the stylesheet for your blog's theme can be edited and customized with the Custom CSS feature. Advanced Templates give you access to the template code - the structure of posts, the content in the sidebars, adding content between posts, and so on.

In short, Custom CSS allows you to customize the blog's theme and Advanced Templates allows you to customize the content and structure.

Where do I start?
Our Knowledge Base has several articles about Advanced Templates to get you started:

• Creating an Advanced Template Set
  Information on how to convert your Basic template to Advanced.

• Advanced Template Sets and Template Tags
  A basic overview of how Advanced Templates work.  There are also links to more information about tag syntax and an index for each element of a blog.

• Advanced Templates: Creating and Customizing Template Modules
  We consider this article to be an essential primer on how to work with and customize the modules that you'll see in your Advanced Templates. Includes a video tutorial.

• TypePad Tips and Tricks
  This article has a list of Advanced Templates Tips with information on how to achieve some commonly used Advanced Templates customizations.

Here are two examples of blogs designed with Advanced Templates:

• http://watergarden.net/

• http://www.myamericanartist.com/ 

Did you use Advanced Templates in the creation of your blog?  If so, link to it in the comments.

Comments

[Patricio]

Hi, you mentioned creating an advanced template from an existing drag and drop template in the saved designs page, but I cannot seem to duplicate it with advanced capabilities...

How is this done?

Thanks
pw