The Real Blogger Status

One of the most obscure Blogger error messages - next to "Another blog ..." - is the monolithic advice seen on main page display of some blogs. No posts. or maybe There's nothing here! What can you say, to a blog owner who has started a new blog, and spent days publishing blog content - only to view the blog, and see "No posts." - or "There's nothing here!"?

One of the most visible changes, to the blog display , involves properly setting main page size. You change the posts count using "Show at most" on the dashboard Settings - "Posts, comments and sharing" page - or "Number of posts on main page" in the "Configure Blog Posts" wizard. Both let you set the main page display limit. You can limit main page size by days with posts, or by total post count.

Some blog owners would like their readers to view the entire blog in one page. A small blog, with very limited size, can theoretically fit on one page. If you intend to publish a blog with any future, and page rank , you will have to publish content periodically - and the size of the blog will increase, steadily. And eventually, thanks in part to main page limitation by auto pagination , older posts in your blog will be forced into archive pages.

Besides optimizing post content , to make the blog easier to read and encourage readers to remain. you have a similar task in optimizing the blog structure. The posts content is what people read, when they are in the blog. The blog structure is what you similarly need to optimize, to get people into the blog.

Along with consistently using Jump Break, properly sizing and wording of important post sections can make the blog pages neater, and easier to read. You see my opening paragraph, above. Sizing and wording of important post sections, such as the opening paragraph, helps make the main page layout more consistent - and gives a slightly more professional look to the blog. And, a cleaner and more consistent page layout, to complement a carefully structured blog , encourages readers to read more of the blog.

Some blog owners are unsure what a Jump Break looks like, when applied to their blogs. Occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , we see the confusion. Where's the Jump Break? or I added a Jump Break to several posts, but it never shows up! When asked for a screen print of what they're seeing, they may provide a image of the post, in the Post Editor Preview window - or possibly, the published post, but in post page view.

Some blog owners want to publish posts, and display a static main page - and want to view blog content, in one or more tabbed pages. It's not difficult to create the tabbed pages. The difficulty would come, long ago, when setting up the main page. We had several workarounds for making a static main page - none of them equally easy to use, effective, and elegant . Then, Blogger created Custom Redirects - and gave us static main pages, that are easy to use, effective, and elegant.

Some blog owners want to publish posts, and have a dynamic main page - but want to restrict specific posts to a tabbed page. Having created a tabbed page with specific posts, the next question would be But how do I keep those posts off my main page? And long ago, there was no good answer for this question. Then, Blogger gave us the Custom Redirects feature.

With a static website, you use different sized headers to indicate sections of each page - and how important each section may be. That helps your readers search each page, and makes them happy - and making your readers happy increases SEO. With a Blogger blog, what makes your readers happy increases SEO, also. With a blog, you make your readers happy by providing content, for them to read . And you make them happier, by organising the content.

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.

One feature of the Blogger home page, enjoyed by some blog owners, is the ability to explicitly set maximum main page size, for the blog when displayed. We see an occasional complaint, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I redirected my home page, using a label search - but the display is now way too long! How do I shorten my custom main page? This blog owner is probably a little disappointed, to discover one tiny limitation, in main page setting. The "Show at most" setting, in Settings - "Posts and comments" - mirrored by "Number of posts on main page", in "Configure Blog Posts" - lets you set an explicit maximum page size. That setting only applies to the native main page URL - and some blog owners like to customise the main page, using a label search redirect.

A few blog owners become concerned about how their blogs are indexed - and why the search hit lists, that point to their posts, point to archive or main pages - instead of the individual post pages. "www.mydomain.com/2015_01_01_archive.html" , "www.mydomain.com/2014_12_01_archive.html", and similar URLs are part of the same URL structure as "www.mydomain.com" - and as "www.mydomain.com/2015/02/whatever.html". They aren't harmful to the blog search engine reputation. They are annoying, though. When I setup this blog, long ago - and would find my posts listed in index pages, they used to annoy me, too.

One of the neatest features added to Blogger, this decade, has to be the Custom Redirects. For many years, we asked, over and over, for the ability to optionally publish a blog with a static home page . 2 years ago, Blogger gave us that ability, and more, with Custom Redirects . But, Custom Redirects had a problem - it did not work with a mobile template , and a redirected mobile home page. Recently, however, that changed.

Occasionally, we see a report in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , that reflects on the reader audience - not necessarily only the blog content. Why is my blog behind a Content Warning? Some readers of this blog have contacted Google because they believe this blog's content is objectionable. Occasionally, a quick eyeballing of the blog in question may turn up some dodgy content, which may be suggested, in the forum, as problematic. This story may not end immediately. But, I've had that picture gallery, for years! Why did I just get the Content Warning? Here, the blog owner is not considering changing standards - or the possibility that the blog, becoming more popular, may be adding readers who don't appreciate a photo gallery started years ago.

Some blog owners don't understand why Stats displays show that no one is reading their latest post. I know that my most recent post is being read - but Stats shows pageviews, for that post, as 0! This owner does not understand the difference between main page, and post page, access. If you read this blog , without being interested in any particular post, you can access the main page. On the main page, and other index pages, you'll see anywhere from 10 to 15 carefully summarised , recently published, individual posts. Clicking on "Read more »", at the end of any of the summaries, you can read any complete article. This complete article, and others in this blog, is published as an individual post page - and summarised on index pages, using Jump Break. Not every blog owner uses Jump Break , to display the posts. Some blog owners publish complete blog articles, in each index page post. Depending upon how any blog is designed, some readers may click on a link, to ...

Auto pagination, and "Jump Break", have been a (controversial) feature in Blogger blogs since 2010 . Oddly enough, not all blog owners yet understand the difference between "Jump Break", and other "Read More" features. And there are more than a couple "Read More" features available, in the Internet - some not so beneficial . Occasionally, we see the confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . I have 12 articles which must appear on my homepage. Just 10 of the 12 articles are showing up. When I added 2 new articles, another old post disappeared from my homepage. This blog owner, like many, suffers from the effects of auto pagination . When I suggested using "Jump Break" , to make the posts smaller, I was met with confusion. Did you not look at the blog? I have "Read More" there, already. And looking at the blog again, I saw that he was correct.

One of the stranger confusions, seen occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , refers to the posts feed, from our blog, displayed on other people's blogs. I just published a new blog post - but it does not show up on my friends blogs. Is there a problem, with my feed? When we investigate, the blog feed shows no problem. We display the feed in the browser, and compare with the blog main page - and everything on the main page is in the feed. It just does not show up on our friends feed gadgets. So, what's the problem here? Were we imagining a problem? No, it's not imagination.

In late 2011, Blogger Engineering gave us a new Blogger feature - the ability to redirect any URL in a blog, to any other URL in the blog . Like any feature, we found an immediate use for it - something much requested, for a good while. Other people have found more uses for the redirection feature - and still others have found confusion. The syntax used in the redirection "From" and "To" values is not always obvious - and occasionally there is confusion about what can - and can't - be done with redirection .

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 . Set "Show" to "0 posts". Add a static HTML / Text gadget. 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.

Ever since Blogger gave us the option to add pages to our blogs - and provided the complementary Pages index gadget - blog owners have asked, periodically How do I publish my posts to pages? This is a pretty simple procedure, too - once we understand the complementary nature of dynamic and static pages .