Skip to main content

Putting A Post At The Top (A "Welcome" Post)

Many people have asked how they can have a Welcome or Index page in their blog. I have a Welcome page, on PChuck's Network, or on this blog, for instance.

The most obvious way to do this is to set the post date far into the future, so it always displays above any other posts, including ones which you may make in the future.

This is, fortunately, not hard to do. You can change the post date on any blog post, any time you feel the need.

Thanks to the ability to schedule the publishing of posts in the future, publishing a Welcome post with a future date is just slightly complicated. You'll have to add the Index / Welcome post, in two steps.
  • Publish the Index / Welcome post, as normally.
  • Edit the Index / Welcome post, and give it a date well into the future.
With a Layouts template blog, you can create a special post, and have it always appear at the top. That won't be an actual post though. Fortunately, there is a better solution.

>> Top

Comments

Richard Mercer said…
This is a variation on the above question.

I have a blog about climate change and energy solutions. I have two main articles which I would like to have always displayed first.
They are the basic message I want people to read. I would like to add more posts, like the one on Bioplastics, and have them appear after, or on another part of the page, like maybe on one side. I can't have two welcome posts, I would imagine.
My URL is http://energysolutionswecanbelievein.blogspot.com
my email is capt-rick@sbcglobal.net

Thank you
Nitecruzr said…
Actually, you can have as many Welcome posts as you like, subject to how much room you wish to take up, above the posts. Remember that every view of the blog will include these posts at the top.

But try it. You may need to check settings for the main column, but having done that, you can have 2 or more text gadgets above the posts.
Chris said…
Couldn't you write a dynamic meta item for the description? (In the head element, of course.) If you do that, Google (at least) uses that for the description.

<meta content='Blog Description Here' name='description'/>

There are some things in blogger you can use for a dynamic header. For individual entries ("post pages"), you can use the following code to insert the name of the blog and the title of the entry.

<b:if cond='data:blog.homepageUrl == data:blog.url'>
<meta content='Generic Blog Description (Main Page)' name='description'/>
<b:else/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageTitle' name='description'/>
</b:if>

You can add " + "" to add more words (inside the single quotes). I haven't figured out how to add more dynamic content. If you figure it out, let me know! I'd like to add the author's name as well...
Nitecruzr said…
Chris,

Meta data is visible to the search engines, but doesn't show visually on the blog. A welcome post is a visual display, to invite your readers. The two are completely different.

And the Description contains straight text, no HTML.

Popular posts from this blog

Adding A Link To Your Blog Post

Occasionally, you see a very odd, cryptic complaint I just added a link in my blog, but the link vanished! No, it wasn't your imagination.

Embedded Comments And Main Page View

The option to display comments, embedded below the post, was made a blog option relatively recently. This was a long requested feature - and many bloggers added it to their blogs, as soon as the option was presented to us. Some blog owners like this feature so much, that they request it to be visible when the blog is opened, in main page view. I would like all comments, and the comment form, to be shown underneath the relevant post, automatically, for everyone to read without clicking on the number of comments link. And this is not how embedded comments work.

What's The URL Of My Blog?

We see the plea for help, periodically I need the URL of my blog, so I can give it to my friends. Help! Who's buried in Grant's Tomb, after all? No Chuck, be polite. OK, OK. The title of this blog is "The Real Blogger Status", and the title of this post is "What's The URL Of My Blog?".