Skip to main content

Put The Post Title Before The Blog Title

Some blog owners want to have the titles of the posts easier to spot, in search hit lists.

The solution, to them, is to have the post titles appear before the blog titles, in the template header. If you want your blog to have the post title in front of the blog title, this is a simple enough change.

It's best to make this change only affect display of individual pages (when indexed), and posts. Other search hit list entries, such as archive, label, and main page displays, should show the default blog page title - and not confuse the potential readers with irrelevant detail, in the search hit list entries.

This change requires a small amount of extra code, to identify the specific search hit entries, where the display change is appropriate.

It's a simple change.
Since none of the code is blog specific, it's a simple "search and replace" change. A check for page type of "item" is all that you need.

As always, I will advise you to backup the blog template, before and after making this change.

Find the default title code, using "Edit HTML".
Use the Template HTML Editor. Locate
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
in the template code.

Add 4 lines of code.
Replace
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
With
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'> <title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title> <b:else/> <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title> </b:if>
And hit "Save template".

The change won't have immediate effect.
Now, wait while your "item" pages (individual pages / posts) are re indexed - and this may not happen, over night. Again, "index" pages (archive, label, and main page displays) won't, and should not, be affected by this change.

The change needs to be selective.
If you click on the label (below) of "Blog Title", you get a label search page, with the pageTitle of "The Real Blogger Status: Blog Title". For label searches, you want the blog title to precede the label name - so, you use "data:blog.pageTitle" (the default).

If you're using Jump Break, to shorten main page entries, this change may have more impact. Blogs which display complete post content in "index" view won't have as much attention paid to the posts in "item" view.

A useful alternative / complement, to the title sequence change, would be well chosen search description meta tags. Proper sizing and wording, of all descriptions and titles, may make your search hit entries more distinctive too.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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?".

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.

Add A Custom Redirect, If You Change A Post URL

When you rename a blog, the most that you can do, to keep the old URL useful, is to setup a stub post , with a clickable link to the new URL. Yo! The blog is now at xxxxxxx.blogspot.com!! Blogger forbids gateway blogs, and similar blog to blog redirections . When you rename a post, you can setup a custom redirect - and automatically redirect your readers to the post, under its new URL. You should take advantage of this option, if you change a post URL.