Blogger’s upgrade to version 3 made big news among Blogger (and blog*spot) users. For one, the system gained a lot of improvements over the previous incarnation. However, along with this upgrade came some disadvantages. First, not everyone had the ability to upgrade their Blogger accounts. Then, those who upgraded but had heavily-customized layouts found out that they couldn’t enjoy the new drag-and-drop layout editing features.

Most Blogger users won’t probably have the need to edit raw theme code, and true enough, most users would probably be able to understand what’s under the hood. Even intermediate users resort to cutting and pasting borrowed code, or pasting in pre-made themes downloadable over the Web. After all, majority of Blogger users seems to welcome the fuss-free drag-and-drop layout editing.

If you’re still using the old Blogger version, I suggest you upgrade if you need to use categories on your blog (if an upgrade is possible). Be sure to backup your template by copying it over to a text editor.

Now, if you’ve heavily modified your Blogger theme, you most likely want to stick with your “classic” template, at least until you get to modify a new template that conforms to the new Blogger layout standards.

Let’s say you’ve upgraded already and you want to revert the look of your blog to your old template. Under dashboard, simply click TEMPLATE and then EDIT HTML. You now have the option of pasting back your “classic” template which you had previously backed up.

Now assuming all your posts–or even just your new ones–have labels already, we will generate a list of existing labels on your site. Simply go to the “create post”, and then click the “Show All” link under labels. You will then see a list of all the existing labels you have. We will use this for reference.

Now, under your “classic” template, create a list (ordered or unordered). As contents of that list, use these links, to point to your labels.

<a href=”http://yourpage.blogspot.com/search?label=yourlabels”>yourlabels</>

For the example labels above, we will create an unordered list here.

<ul>
<li><a href="http://yourpage.blogspot.com/search?label=blogger">blogger</a></li>
<li><a href="http://yourpage.blogspot.com/search?label=blogging">blogging</a></li>
<li><a href="http://yourpage.blogspot.com/search?label=google">google</a></li>
<li><a href="http://yourpage.blogspot.com/search?label=posts">posts</a></li>
<li><a href="http://yourpage.blogspot.com/search?label=test">test</a></li>
<li><a href="http://yourpage.blogspot.com/search?label=writing">writing</a></li>
<ul>

And so forth.

When you save your settings, you will now see a list of your labels on your sidebar on your classic template. Also, when you add new labels, don’t forget to add lines on your sidebar that correspond to these new labels.

This is somehow crude, but it should work, until Blogger gives you a way to import your old-style template into the new format.