Move Blogger's "Subscribe" widget to the sidebar in 2017's new themes

Here's how you can move your blog's "Subscribe" widget from the top of the main page into the sidebar on Blogger's new 2017 templates.

Moving the blog "Subscribe" button from the top floating header to the pop-out sidebar

Why do this?

The main reason I see for doing this is for when you customize the floating header bar to show your blog's logo image instead of its default behavior of showing just the blog's name in text. With a logo in the floating header bar, it can become cramped and take up too much space, especially on a mobile device, to have the "Subscribe" button sitting there. Or you just might like to reduce the clutter in the main viewer. Either way, we want to move the "Subscribe by Email" feature into the expanding sidebar thing. 

The problem is that the widget is locked by default. You can't just drag it over there. OR CAN YOU? (Hint: You can.)

So let's just unlock it and move it over.

Step 1 - Unlock the widget

Edit your blog's theme/template (Theme → Edit HTML).

From the "Jump to Widget" menu, find "FollowByEmail1"

Follow By Email widget (aka "Subscribe" feature): the highlighted line

You'll see that its "Locked" setting is "true". Change that to false. It should look like this:

 <b:widget id='FollowByEmail1' locked='false' title='Follow by Email' type='FollowByEmail' visible='true'>

Now save the template. Refresh the page completely after that. Otherwise the Layout page may not reflect this change.

Step 2 - Move the widget

Super easy now. Go back to the Layout section of your blog. You can see the Follow By Email card/box can now be dragged.

Follow widget is unlocked and ready to move

Just drag that sucker over into the sidebar. 

Done!

One more time, here's what the end result will look like:

Email Subscription sign-up form moved to the sidebar