Custom Blog Site Template
If you are using the out of the box SharePoint blog site and want to change the look and feel away from the ‘boxy’ SharePoint look this post is for you.
During the process of customising this blog I have created a master page and two CSS files that can be used to give a SharePoint blog a ‘cleaner’ look and feel. At the moment it looks like this:
All that is needed to transform an existing SharePoint blog to the above is one master page file and related CSS and image files. I have provided these files in a zip folder for download so you can apply this design to existing blogs. I have also created a site template file (.stp) that can be installed so new blog sites can be created with the design already applied.
Installing the design on an existing blog site
To get the site up and running on an existing blog site simply copy the sample files to the master page gallery of your blog site.
This can be done by selecting site actions > site settings > galleries – master pages > upload multiple files and selecting the five files contained in the zip folder.
Note that this will overwrite the existing master page and customise the site from the site definition. If you ever want to return the site back to the original state simply select site actions > site settings > reset to site definition > reset all pages in this site to site definition version. You can also delete the leftover image and CSS files in the master page gallery to completely remove all the custom template elements.
Installing the site template
To install the custom blog template so that you can create new blog sites with this design you need to add the site template file (.stp) to the site template gallery.
This can be done by navigating to the top level site in the site collection and selecting site actions > site settings > galleries – site templates > upload and selecting the .stp file contained in the above zip folder.
To create new sites based on this template simply select site actions > create > sites and workspaces, then enter a title, description and url and click on the custom tab under template selection and select Blog – Simple Gradient.
About the design
To create this design I have customised the default.master by removing all style/layout information and then adding in div tags to mark-up the elements. I have then used a style sheet named styles.css to style the elements contained in the master page. I have also used another style sheet named sharepointstyles.css to override the style sheet provided by SharePoint (core.css).
In a later post I will provide detailed instructions on how to recreate and extend your this template. You can also expect a much richer set of blog features with the release of an enhanced blog edition by the CKS:EBE team that I am part of. We are hoping to get something out early next month so watch this space…
Yep. Same issue. Add comments is missing. Anyone know how to fix this?
Russ
13 Nov 08 at 2:34 pm
Any resolution to this: "adding comments is missing from the blogs". We have the same issue. Thanks.
nyalex
3 Oct 08 at 4:54 pm
Is there any where else I can get the files from ?? the BlogFiles-SimpleGradient.zip doesn't link here.
dan
11 Sep 08 at 3:57 am
we've been creatign blog sites based on a template for a while with no issues. Howvere recently we now have the issue mentioned above, in that the comments form is missing. The template on which the site is created hasn't changed, but we have recently applied hotfix http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936867 and this is our suspected 'guilty party'. Any news on whether this was ever resolved for you?
Donna
18 Jul 08 at 10:49 am
I see that the form for adding comments is missing from the blogs created from your template. I have encountered the same problem on our SharePoint site.
Any ideas?
Vincent
26 Oct 07 at 11:48 pm
I have the need to re-create the SharePoint Blog "Post/Comment" functionality by creating template Lists that accomplish the same thing as the Blog template "site" does. As we have the need for blogs within existing team sites but we can NOT have them be separate 'sites' just because we need to add blog functionality.
Do you know any articles that explain how to duplicate that Blog Post/Comment linking functionality just into List templates?
Thanks!
MSILinda
30 Apr 09 at 4:57 pm
Was there ever any resolution to the comments form missing from blogs created from a custom template? I am completely missing the add comments form. How do i get it back?????
Test
10 Apr 09 at 8:28 pm
I have the same problem, I like the template, but I think the listviewwebpart for comments is not in the post.aspx file
Lynchy
26 Feb 09 at 2:36 pm
I need threaded comments in my sharepoint blog, is any developed custom template for this.
Advance Thanks
Jenkins
1 Jun 10 at 9:37 am
@Jenkins not that I’m aware of unfortunately
Ari Bakker
14 Dec 10 at 6:21 pm
Although I realize it’s been many years since this was posted… the zip file only contains the template file (.stp), not the other files referenced in this writeup.
Patrick
28 Jan 15 at 8:11 pm
@Patrick apologies but it appears either the link or the files were lost when I migrated this blog from another platform and I no longer have the masterpage or CSS file.
Ari Bakker
28 Jan 15 at 11:23 pm