Creating a sandbox blog for your development and testing purposes on a BlogSpot blog is one of the best things you can do to help you increase your knowledge of web development using Blogger without impacting your visitors. In this video I show you the changes you need to make to create a sandbox blog and explain why you need one.
Once you’ve created your sandbox blog, you can now make changes to any template you want by simply copying the template code into your sandbox template, without impacting your live blog, or your visitors.
I recommend doing all changes in your sandbox blog first. Once you’ve determined the exact changes you need to make, you can then transfer those changes to your live blog.
For development of my BlogSpot blog, I won’t be using a sandbox since I want everyone to see the progress as I create the blog. However, once the blog is live and receiving traffic, I don’t want those visitors to be impacted by any tinkering I might do, so I’ll use a sandbox blog then.
Happy Testing!
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Wayne John is a web developer in Southern California that shares his 25+ years of programming and web development experience freely and happily to anyone willing to learn. He also loathes speaking in the third person. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you 
Thats cool, sandbox blog, always when i am testing some new design elements on my blog i was thinking to set up something like this.And it is pretty good idea.I will set up a twin blog a sandbox and uploading my template there as well.
Thank you!
WB
The tutorial made it so easy for me… not to mention I did it so much faster than if I had to figure out what I was doing!!
Thanks agian Wayne – you’re doing the hard work and we all benefit from it!!
hahah, you’re very, very welcome Manz. Glad it’s shining a light on things for you.
I finally set up my sandbox blog and used it to widen and update the GritFX blog template… it’s live now and I love it!! THANKS FOR THE TUTORIAL WAYNE!!
Manz, a cascade of issue can happen. So yeah, mess up the wrong thing and you have a crap storm of issues. But if you go methodically, you can usually make one change, see the results, and if they’re bad, reverse them and save again. Then go back to scratching your head until you brave another change.
Back and forth is your new best friend. lol Welcome to my world. Muahahaha
See this for backup of template: http://www.waynejohn.com/post/2008/11/11/Bloggercom-Help-Lesson-19-Edit-HTML-Layout.aspx
And see the top of the Basic Settings admin page for a blog export link.
There’s your backup. And that just gave a great idea for a post…thanks!
Ah, is that where that went…he’s still silent. lol
FYI – you mentioned Heff in “7 More Things People Don’t Know About Me”…
That live screen capture works great for the video tutorial. I’ve never seen that kind of thing before… just the regular old static screen grab!
This post is perfect… I had been wanting to play with some elements of the GritFX blog template – ie page widths, but was a little terrified I’d stuff it all up and loose what I’ve got going now… I’ll be setting up a sandbox blog.
My turn for a somewhat stupid question… when you make template changes, does it mess with the posts and all the comments, etc?
And is there a way to back-up your blog and all that’s there – including comments at any given time? Or can you only do a template backup?
Hey Heff, I commented about you somewhere around here…don’t think it’s this post…
Hell, I could be complete wrong too. I mean, who knows if I hit Save Comment on that or not. haha
Glad to see you keeping it real
My blog IS my sandbox, LMAO !!!
Ah ha, yeah, you just found something I missed. See this post for the missing information: http://www.waynejohn.com/post/2009/02/03/Removing-Blogs-from-your-Blogger-Profile.aspx
Each blog in your profile can be shown/hidden, and that management is done on your profile.
Thanks for bringing that to my attention!
Wayne, I have created a new sandbox blog and have made the three changes you mention in order for this blog to be hidden. However, I noticed within my new regular blog, under About Me, when I click on view my complete profile, I see my sandbox blog and my regular blog under My Blogs. How can I keep my sandbox blog from showing here? Maybe I missed something…
Gary, you got it. No more public humiliation, hopefully! haha
Carolyn, ahh…well, better you accidentally do that now before you’re years into the blog eh? Sorry to hear that. Programming and development require that you keep many things in your head and your awareness peaking. Otherwise bad things happen. Time consuming things.
Bell, wow man. I don’t know what to think about that. It’s just a blog.
The deepest night hide’s our sins like a test blog throw’s a shroud of shadows over our mistakes!… And under dark’s cover we can meet and satisfie all our wildest and obscure wishes…
Wayne, I guess it’s a good thing that my blog was just for fun. Seems I’ve goofed. When I created my sandbox blog, all my profile type stuff was tied with both blogs. I didn’t like that, and, inadvertantly deleted the blog I’ve been using. I suppose that’s ok, because my heart wasn’t really into the content. Now, I have a new blog and will have to create yet another sandbox blog.
a great way to experiment, and learn by making mistakes—been there done that—–sort of thing. Nobody likes looking stupid, this way we can do the stupid stuff—-but noone ever knows—cool.
I use a tabbed browser, and sometimes it bites me too. It does become habit to check “where am I” before committing changes, but you have to consciously remember the first few times.
The nature of any development ensures that you will bang your head once in a while, lol, best be prepared.
Well John… I didn’t do any mistake! Is not such a big disaster… One of my blogs is hide’d, that’s all… And Blogger’s link “show all” is not working. I’m not that stupid to do a fatal mistake like Google did! Hahaha! Of course that’s frustrating to know that from a stupid mistake Blogger can delete your own, adored blog, but i’m not afraid of my self?! I don’t do mistakes! It’s all about servers and software errors inside Blogger’s system! Well, i hope i didn’t upset someone! I know a little bit from everything… Quite enough for not making fatal mistakes.
Sounds like a good system but will definitely have to be careful whilst using it
That’s a real good point you bring up Bell. Flipping between two or different blogs might cause you to make some mistakes if you aren’t paying attention to what blog you’re on. If you’ve made a backup of your site before you start making any changes, you can recover quickly from disaster.
Be safe, be cautious, and make sure you don’t paint yourself into a corner.
I’ve just done that… Lol! But i’ve ruined everything… Hahaha! I made two test blogs and i was to net cafe and I’ve uploaded two beautiful templates on my test blogs… Then i start to move all widgets and few posts from my old blogs, one by one in new blogs! I still need to work on menu bars, where things are a little bit more complicated because i can’t do that from my phone, but I’ll try to work on that from net cafe… Well, now i try to find my way and to go on blogging! And why not, to winn some money too! I think Garry will help me on that… All good and pinky till now. But my financial situation is a disaster! With a computer i could do much more and quicker! But this is the situation! I will fight with the demons. Thanks for compliments Wayne!