Shutter is a free photography portfolio Blogger template (Blogspot theme) for photographers, designers, and creatives. A fixed dark sidebar holds your branding and navigation while the content area opens on a fullscreen photo slider, followed by an animated masonry grid of your work - with three pagination modes (numbered, infinite scroll, or arrows) and 100% vanilla JavaScript.
Created and maintained by Colorlib, Shutter is a fullscreen portfolio theme with a fixed sidebar and animated masonry grid — free for personal and commercial use.
Live Demo | Download ZIP | Changelog
- Fullscreen photo slider - a viewport-filling Swiper 11 hero fed by any post label
- Animated masonry grid - posts reveal with a choice of entrance animations as readers scroll
- Fixed sidebar navigation - branding, menu, and social links always in view
- Three pagination modes - numbered pages, infinite scroll, or prev/next arrows, switchable from the Layout editor
- Vertical mega menu - a chevron-paged post browser inside the sidebar menu
- Three-column footer - About, Archive, and Labels out of the content's way
- SEO-optimized markup — exactly one
h1per page, JSON-LD structured data (WebSite,SearchAction,BlogPosting), Open Graph and Twitter card meta tags, semantic landmarks - Fast page load — zero jQuery, zero CSS frameworks, no render-blocking external assets, preconnect hints, native lazy loading, and right-sized images served by Blogger's CDN
- Accessible — skip-to-content link, labeled controls, ARIA tab roles, keyboard-friendly navigation, and no user-zoom blocking
- Easy color customization — change the color scheme from Blogger's theme editor, no code required
- Font Awesome 7 icons and Google Fonts, loaded without blocking the first paint
- Self-updating copyright year in the footer
- Download the ZIP or clone this repository
- Sign in to Blogger at blogger.com and pick your blog
- Open the theme editor — Theme → Customize dropdown → Edit HTML
- Replace the code — select everything, delete it, and paste the full contents of
Shutter-Blogger-Template.xml - Save - and preview your blog
- Set mobile to Desktop — in Theme, click the gear icon under the Mobile preview and choose Desktop; the template is fully responsive and this removes Blogger's legacy
?m=1mobile wrapper (and its extra redirect) for mobile visitors
To preview the template with sample posts before publishing your own:
- Go to Settings > Manage blog > Import content
- Upload
Shutter Demo Content.xmlfrom this repository
- Colors — Theme → Customize → Advanced exposes the template's color variables (accent color, backgrounds, text) with live preview
- Menus — edit the navigation LinkList widgets in Layout; prefix an item with
_for a dropdown level, or set a link to[Mega Menu]-style label syntax where supported - Homepage sections — the label-driven widgets are configured from Layout by editing each widget's content (the label name and post count)
- Ads — paste your AdSense (or any) ad code into the advertisement widgets in Layout
| Library | Version | Loading |
|---|---|---|
| Swiper | 11 (pinned) | On demand, only when a slider/carousel exists on the page |
| Font Awesome | 7 | Non-blocking, pinned via jsDelivr |
| Google Fonts | — | display=swap, non-blocking |
Everything else is hand-written CSS and vanilla JavaScript inside the single template file — no jQuery, no Bootstrap, no build step. Feeds load over same-origin fetch() with alt=json.
Is Shutter really free? Yes — free for personal and commercial use under GPL v3. Attribution to Colorlib is appreciated but not required.
Does it work with AdSense? Yes. The layout includes dedicated ad widgets, and you can add more ad units through Blogger's Layout editor.
Will it slow down my blog? No — the template loads zero render-blocking external assets and removed all legacy frameworks (jQuery, Bootstrap, Owl Carousel) in version 2.0. See the changelog for the full performance work.
Can I use it on multiple blogs? Yes, on as many blogs as you like.
Shutter is one of nine free, open-source Blogger templates we maintain on GitHub - every one modernized with vanilla JavaScript, structured data, and an accessibility pass. Pick the design that fits your blog:
 Pixel News & Magazine Blogger template |  Minimal Clean & Minimal Blog Blogger template |  Simplify Minimal Personal Blog Blogger template |
 Ember Magazine Blogger template |  Kaplan Magazine Blogger template |  Plasma Travel & News Magazine Blogger template |
 PhotoMag Photography Blogger template |  FutureMag News & Magazine Blogger template |
Looking for even more? Browse the full collection of free Blogger templates on Colorlib, or explore our free WordPress themes and free HTML website templates.
Shutter is released under the GPL v3 license. You are free to use, modify, and redistribute it for personal and commercial projects.
Made with care by Colorlib — free website templates and WordPress themes since 2013.