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Blogger Magic - A Static Home Page, Improved

For many years, Blogger blog owners have been asking for the ability to have a static Home page, on their blog.

We came up with a basic solution for that, a couple years ago. Last year, I packaged the procedure.
  1. Set "Show" to "0 posts".
  2. Add a static HTML / Text gadget.
  3. Tweak the template for the new gadget, to display only on Home page.
This was an obvious solution (to some of us) - but it's painfully complex, and it involves editing the template HTML. It's an interesting techie solution - and that's about it.

Today, I realised that Blogger recently gave us this option, in a far simpler solution, last month - but not so many people noticed it.

The "Custom Redirects" feature is just what you need, to create a static home page.
  1. Setup a Static Page. Use the dashboard Pages wizard, and make a "New page".
  2. Use the "Custom Redirects" dashboard wizard, and redirect from the Home page to the new Static page.
  3. Work on the static home page, and make it attractive.

I setup a test blog - Nitecruzr Redirected Home Page Test, and added a Static page - "Static Home Page".
nitecruzr-test-redirected-homepage.blogspot.com/p/static-home-page.html

Having setup the static page, I redirected the Home page to the static page, using the "Search preferences" - "Custom Redirects" feature.
  • From: /
  • To: /p/static-home-page.html
  • Permanent: Yes

Edit "Custom Redirects".
  1. Enter "From:" as "/".
  2. Enter "To:" as "/p/static-home-page.html".
  3. Select "Permanent".
  4. Click the "Save" link.
  5. Hit the "Save changes" button.



And, that is it. You can see my test blog, as a basic demonstration.

Note that just as easily as redirecting the home page to any static page, you can redirect to any dynamic page (aka a "post"). So, you can pin a post to the main page, using Custom Redirects.

Once the "Home" page / tab is static, you can index the posts using any sidebar gadget - such as an Archive or Label index gadget. Or, you can index posts, as if they were pages.
  • Publish your posts to a given label - I used "Posts".
  • Add a label search entry, as a new "external link", to "Configure Page List".
Thus my Pages entry, "Posts" - as a blog within a blog.

Also, a static home page does not have to be just text. You can add a gadget, as part of any static page.

Now, anybody can have a blog with a static home page, in 10 minutes (don't overlook steps #3 and #4, above - as I did, the first time). Click here, for more examples.


(Update 2012/06/30): See The Video, for a live demonstration.
(Update 2015): See here, for more possibilities, and variations.

Comments

Mary said…
Fantastic idea! Congrats for spotting it.

I've been thinking for a while that surely Blogger must be due to solve this one, since it's such a sore point for so many people. Kinda guessing they didn't mean to do it this way ... but I'm not complaining!.
Laura said…
Fantastic. So glad I googled this again.
Unknown said…
Thanks for the info! I was able to redirect my / page to a static home page, but now I can't access my blog posts. My / page is where my blog posts are located. So how did you get an identifiable url to the blog posts so that it can still be linked to?
Nitecruzr said…
Lando,

I published my post using the "Posts" label - then I added a Pages entry for a "Posts" label search.

Then, I renamed the "Home" page as ".", since the Pages Editor doesn't let us hide pages.
Vishal said…
hi, i found some problem with my blog.
I follow your method, and it works well, thanx for that... :)

My Problem is,
When I click on particular label, it will show all posts on same page related to that label, and also I found that, there is one Link came
"Showing posts with label testing. Show all posts"
(testing is my label name)

when I click on "show all Posts" it will redirect me to my home page.

Is there any way to limit number of labeled post per page, like 5 post related to that label on page 1 and rest of the post on page 2, or something alternative like that , so that when I click on "show all Posts" it will stay me on that label page and it will not re-direct me to my homepage. or how do i remove "Showing posts with label testing. Show all posts" thing

and one more thing, how to add page number in blog, like I saw in one blog : http://quick-easy-healthy.blogspot.in/

in this blog the blogger adds page number below all posts...
SuperTenant said…
Thanks for this post!
Heather Adkins said…
Thank you! I was searching for a way to quickly add assignments for my four classes to a blog, yet still have them separated by class AND have a message/announcements that are applicable to all. This did the trick!
Unknown said…
Hi Chuck :-)

I've got a question... You told me about creating a static "custom adult warning" page , then re-directing it to my home page, but it still has all of my columns/blog information on it... Could I just set up a secondary blog, with the warning page as the only page - that way I can make the warning the entire page - and then redirect my blog through that? If I could, would Blogger's adult warning still pop up?

Thanks so much :-)

Jen
Nitecruzr said…
Jen,

That's a good point. My suspicion though is that you will want the published URL (primary blog?) to contain just the warning page - then you'd put your content on the secondary blog.

If you could redirect the home page of your primary blog to the secondary blog, it would work as you suggest. Unfortunately, you can only use a Custom Redirect within the same blog.
Adina Langer said…
Thanks for this. On the dynamic blog page, based on the label, "posts," do you know if there's a way to disable the link that appears tat the top of the page to "show all posts" since it currently redirects to my new static home page? Alternatively, I would be all right if the entire informational banner were removed; I'm just not sure where to edit it.
Unknown said…
This does work well, however now if I click on the navigation link pointing to the blog, it automatically goes back to the landing page. So it seems there is not no way to navigate to blog. Any way to fix this?
Nitecruzr said…
Millie,

This question would be worth exploring, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken.
Anonymous said…
wow. thanks for the info. really worked
Unknown said…
Wow! this is of great help. Thanks a lot...was trying to figure out couple of days before...Thanks again for the great ideas!
Unknown said…
ThankYOU! Been trying to get a static home page for what seems like ages. So quick and simple for someone not capable of coding.
This is so cool!!! Thank you so much!
Olesku.pl said…
Great idea! I'm testing it now :) thanks!
Unknown said…
Thank, for useful information
Amanda said…
I definitely appreciate this post! It's helped me achieve a "splash page" in a sense. However, I do have a question.
I see you already answered it with Lando, but I'm having a hard time following those steps. I too am now not able to go to the "home" page, which is where the blog entries are. It just redirects me to the new redirected page. Would you mind explaining it again- maybe a little slower so I can follow?
Thank you!
Waw.
I cant believe it is finally happened!!!
i tried for along time to make this static page.
really thanks a lot.
Just what I needed- Feel free to check it out.
Http://bible-verses-for.blogspot.com
Thanks a million -
Unknown said…
thank you
This has helped a lot on my homepage, however, mobiles/tablets still access the blog page/home first and not my static home. Any way around that? I have turned my mobile template off.
Nat Weaver said…
Thanks so much for this. I'm gonna give it a try.
Carrie said…
Many Thanks
Anonymous said…
Thanks a lot! Helpful tip!
Sarah said…
Ohhh my goodness... I have been looking for something like this that WORKED for forever!!! You totally just made my day!! THANK YOU!!! It worked perfectly!
Linda said…
Hi, I tried this a few months ago and it worked great but I am trying to set up another static page for a different blog and it's not working. I get this mssg:
The source and destination values cannot be empty or more than 256 characters and must start with /.
Unknown said…
awesummmest buddy uu r a champ =) this was just wat i was looking for...gr8
Anonymous said…
Cool idea boss! Can we add css into that page to get more look and feel...
this is my site and I want a static home page on this http://www.amfastech.com/
Cobbler House said…
Thanks very much. I was close but yet so far. Just needed the / in the "From:" as "/". Blessings.
-Rubén
Nitecruzr said…
Rubén,

Sometimes, the smallest detail ...

Having OCD can have advantages.
McKenna Olson said…
I have done this, and I love having a static landing page before directing people to my blog. But, now my site wont show on mobile devices- it says something along the lines of "redirect loops"... any ideas? I've tried to disable the mobile site altogether so my site would show just as it does on a desktop, but that didn't work either. Thanks!
Unknown said…
Thank you for the hard work. Very helpful. Everything is working other than that my original homepage is actually coming up as ".". It seems like it is reading it after all. Ideas?
Anonymous said…
Very helpful and i read most of the comments and am not sure if I should bother or not. As much as we want a static homepage, i wonder - how will the redirect, etc, effect search results? I'm already hosting on blogger a custom domain, will i just be making things more confusing for the google crawler thingy?
Unknown said…
thanks, this tutorial help me alot
cheers
Mark said…
Rockin! I really appreciate your work on this Blogger hack!

Many thanks and a tribute to your work that the information is so persistent!!

Best, Mark
I am setting this up on my site, and I have a question. How can I get rid of the page title, which shows up above my content? If I leave the page title blank, nothing shows, of course. But then it is given a default name, "blog-page_10". I notice that yours is called "static-home-page", but this text is not inserted above the content below the menu bar. Is this something to do with the template I'm using, or is there a setting somewhere? Thanks so much for your help!
Nitecruzr said…
Hi Elizabeth,

Thanks for the question.

It's been a while since I published this tutorial, so I'm a bit fuzzy on the details - and Blogger does from time to time, change things around.

The "Home" tab, in my demo blog, is labeled "How To". I titled the page "How To", and that page has the URL
http://nitecruzr-demo-static-home-page.blogspot.com/p/how-to.html

The Blog is titled
Nitecruzr Demo Static Home Page
and has the URL
http://nitecruzr-demo-static-home-page.blogspot.com

Does that make sense?
Thank you. I was able to figure out how to do it. Thanks for sharing such helpful information on your site :)
Unknown said…
Thanks for the tutorial. I've managed to set up a static home page using the redirect function. However, at the bottom of the latest page of my blog I am now getting a 'Newer Posts' link which also sends me to my home page. I can't work out how to stop this from happening. Any help would be appreciated!

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