The Real Blogger Status

If your blog is published to a dynamic template, neither you or your readers will have a navbar, when your blog is being viewed. The navbar, found on blogs which use a non dynamic template - when selected by the blog owner - has a number of reader friendly icons and links. Dynamic templates have a "menu bar" 1/5 of the way down the page - which provides a combination of the Pages gadget, and limited navbar functions. At the far right end of the menu bar, you'll see 2 tiny icons - when you are properly logged in as the blog owner. New post, the "pencil" icon. Home, the "home" icon.

Some blog owners add pages - dynamic and static - to their blog, then discover that the Pages gadget lists them in the wrong sequence. We see an occasional question, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . My pages are poorly organised. How do I change the sequence? This is not a difficult problem, to correct.

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In order to make the Pages gadget "Pages to show" useful, you need to add one or more static pages. Without entries under "Pages to show", you've nothing to do but add dynamic pages , using "Add external link". There is one way to access Page Editor - though several ways to access Post Editor . You use the Page Editor, to publish static pages - which then are listed under "Pages to show", in " Configure Page List ".

From time to time, we've had various queries about content segregation, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger How do I publish adult content, in a section of my blog? Previously, the best answer would typically start with a blog cluster . Publish a second blog, with different content - then merge the two blogs. That's an interesting answer - but it's messy - and two blogs don't aggregate search engine traffic properly. Using a combination of custom redirects, label searches, and static pages, you can make a blog within a blog, to host your mildly adult content.

One of the most versatile ways to organise a blog is by using a Pages index. Long ago, the only possibility, for indexing a blog attractively, was a horizontal table, with manually added links. We called it a horizontal menu bar . Alternately, a vertical linklist might be used. Then Blogger added static pages - and later, the Pages index gadget .

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.

Drop down menus, and custom sitemaps, are tools used in static websites, to help the readers find website content. Occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , we see a question from blog owners, who are accustomed to publishing static websites. How do I upload a custom sitemap, for my readers to use? or How do I build a drop down, cascaded menu bar, to index the posts? The answer, for Blogger blogs, is that neither is truly useful. Features like cascaded, drop down menus, custom sitemaps, numbered pages, and complex slideshows ("sliders"), are excellent accessories, for static websites. Blogger blogs, however, are dynamic - and don't really benefit from either accessory.

We see confusion, from time to time, about label searches in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Why don't my labels work, consistently? or Why don't all of my pages work? Looking at a blog with the problem, we'll frequently see lack of consistency in label case - some labels appear in lower case ("label"), some in upper case ("LABEL"), some in sentence case ("Label"). This might seem like an insignificant personality issue - but it's not.

We all know the limitations of the dynamic template - how you can't easily edit dynamic template HTML code, or accessories as freely. At one time, you could switch back to dynamic view, for the comments and posts - and view the complete blog, using a non dynamic template. That ability was taken away , in early 2014. That doesn't mean that you have to give up completely, however, on adding pages - though this may not yet provide a solution for a custom home page.

We see an occasional blog owner, having renamed a blog to a new BlogSpot URL, reporting in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue that the Pages gadget stopped working. I changed the URL of my blog, from "myoldblogspoturl.blogspot.com" to "mynewblogspoturl.blogspot.com". All of the links are working fine - except when I click on a pages link, I get Blog not found. Sorry, the blog you were looking for does not exist. However, the name myoldblogspoturl is available to register! Long ago, we observed this to be a problem with static pages . It appears that this is a problem with both dynamic and static pages, for some blogs, when renamed.

The dynamic templates, magical as they may be, may not suit everybody . Some blog owners eagerly publish a blog to a dynamic template - then ask WHere are all of the sidebar gadgets? One of the downsides of the dynamic templates is that gadgets have to be specifically written to work with them. Not all of the accessories, available in "Add a Gadget", have been re written to support dynamic templates - and some may likely not ever be re written.

The "Configure Page List" wizard is an extremely useful - yet obscure - feature in the dashboard Layout page. Not every blog owner sees the "Pages" gadget, in the "Layout" page and knows to click on "Edit", to access "Configure Page List". Nor do all owners know how many assorted functions, previously part of the "Pages" dashboard wizard, are now found, exclusively, under "Configure Page List". "Configure Page List" is an essential component in the pages management suite , in the Blogger dashboard.

The recently redesigned Pages gadget and wizard has been with us for just over 3 months. We are occasionally seeing some confusion from people who can't add a dynamic page link to their blog - even when they manage to find the redesigned Pages gadget. I added a dynamic page, linking from "mymainblog.blogspot.com" to "mysecondblog.blogspot.com". Imagine my dismay, when the new page link goes to "mymainblog.blogspot.com/mysecondblog.blogspot.com", instead of to my actual target "mysecondblog.blogspot.com"! Here is a blog owner who is not aware of the unforgiving syntax of the "New Page › Web Address" wizard, and the "Web address (URL)" entry.

The recent Blogger redesign of the Pages list / Pages gadget has caused some confusion. How do I create a "Web address" page? and How do I hide a page? and even How do I edit a "Web address" page? Once you understand how to use the newly designed Pages gadget, it's not complicated do each of the above. Then there are those who want to rename the Home page - which used to be obvious. Just use the Pages gadget . Look under “Pages to show”. There’s the box, containing “Home” (in the language of the blog). Type a new value for “Home”. Hit “Save”. Done. That's how it used to work. Now, you can hit "Save" all that you want. It just won't accomplish anything.

A week ago, Blogger redesigned the dashboard wizards, that are used to setup and maintain pages . The most visible change involved a complete redesign of the Pages wizard . Now, mirroring the look and feel of the Posts wizard, the Pages wizard has a pages index / menu - with layout, button / link set, and similar features resembling the Posts wizard. To make the new Pages wizard design fit in, the Pages wizard now only indexes and maintains "static" pages. Conversely, "dynamic" pages are maintained using the Layout "Pages" gadget. Archive retrievals. External links. Label searches. Additionally, all other Pages functions have been relocated, and are also provided under the Pages gadget, in the Layout wizard. This redesign did not go unnoticed, among the blog owners.

Occasionally, we see a naive question, which requests a value comparison between pages (static pages), and posts (dynamic pages). What are the advantages of using a page, instead of a post? That question, worded in that vague way, cannot be answered. The various differences between pages and posts can provide advantages, or disadvantages . To evaluate a page or a post as an advantage, one must know the specific needs of the blog in question.

Not all blog owners know what pages are - nor how they differ from posts. We see confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? . How do I publish a post, which always appears on the home page? or How do I publish a post, which never appears on the home page? or How do I publish multiple posts on a page? Long ago, we used workarounds, like publishing a post, using a future or past date . The workarounds would create a post which would always, or never, appear on the home page - but there were always side effects, from using either technique.

We get occasional reports , in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , about a broken Pages gadget. I created a new page - but when you click on the link, you get bounced back to the Home page! When you look at the blog with the problem, it's easy enough to verify the report - just look at the URL behind the link , for the most recent page created. Indeed, it points straight to the Home page (base URL for the blog). When this happens, there is a very simple workaround. Just create another page, identical to the problem entry.