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 basic - and yet obscure - tasks in publishing a blog, for some blog owners, is adding posts (and sometimes, pages). Some blog owners may be confused, about blogs, pages, and posts . And the Blogger anti-spam efforts, aka the "broken robot", also confuse people. And, not all dashboard components (and links) are visible , for all blogs, for all blog owners. Creating a post (or page) is not difficult - when you know where to click. Sometimes, though, you need very good eyesight.

Blog owners occasionally delete blog content, and later change their mind. How do I recover a post, after I deleted it from my blog? Sometimes, knowing the URL - or at least the title - of a post, we can retrieve the post from the Blogger database . In other cases, it may be possible to retrieve post content from a cached newsfeed . Some blog owners like to construct a blog using static pages - and this presents a bit more of a challenge, when a static page is deleted.

Occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , we see a blog owner who wishes to use static pages for blog content - and wants the blog visible, in search hit lists. I set up search gadgets for my blog - but have noticed that the search only seems to work with posts. How do I make my pages searchable? The blog owner does not understand the original reason for having static pages . Many blog owners use static pages for content viewable by visitors - but intentionally not indexed, by search engines.

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 ".

Some blog owners use Blogger, as a lightweight website platform. A normal Blogger blog consists of posts, which are published as dynamic pages. Static pages, used in a normal blog, are extra content - that's typically hidden from direct view, and intentionally not indexed by the search engines . A website, on the other hand, will typically use static pages as content. Static pages, by default, are not used as blog content.

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.

With (static) pages becoming a popular component in our blogs, we are seeing a few queries about getting pages content indexed. We see an occasional query, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , which leads to using the new pages sitemap. How do I get pages indexed? Aside from the design issue, where not all blog owners should want pages indexed , there should not be an issue here.

We see occasional confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I let my readers subscribe to my pages? A static page, by definition, does not produce newsfeed content. This is one original purpose for the static pages feature , in Blogger blogs.

Sometimes, we see odd confusion in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I deleted my blog - can somebody help me restore it? I worked so many days writing it! or alternately I am trying to write a new blog, but it says my url has already been taken (by me). If the first owner is kind enough to include the URL of the deleted "blog", we may use our favourite online diagnostic tool - and discover that the blog is still online, and not deleted! In the second case, we may find a new blog, with one post. Investigating further, we discover that the problem here involves terminology. This article that I am writing, "Blogger Terminology - Blogs Vs Posts", is a post, which is part of my blog, "The REAL Blogger Status" (which right now is actually The ONLY Blogger Status - but that is another tale ). The terminology here is pedantic, to us - but it's very real, to the blog owner who has just deleted an important post. Or to the owner who has publi...

One of the most fascinating features of Blogger blogs is the various options to organise our content. Long ago, I wrote a simple article, Adding A Blogger Blog To A Website . That's become one of the most consistently popular posts, in this blog. Most blog owners have multiple interests, and like to organise their different interests , by subject - and have a different blog, for each subject. Some people like to have a blog, and a website - and host both the blog and website in one Blogger blog, under one URL. For a small blog / website combination, that's an easy way to start out - and a good alternative, to having multiple blogs / websites.

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.

Some blog owners are never quite sure how to manage all characteristics of the Pages, in their blog. From time to time, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , we see evidence of the confusion. How do I hide the Home tab? or I can't rename my pages! Some blog owners may know of one Pages management wizard, but not another. To the untrained eye, it may all seem like one big magic show.

Ever since Blogger (finally) gave us the option to add static pages to our blogs , blog owners started asking How do I make my pages URLs cleaner? The "/p/" in the URL is so messy looking. Our typical response would be simple. Sorry, you're stuck with the URL, as is, for a static page. And, that was that. Later, Blogger gave us the ability to redirect URLs within the blog - and that changed.

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 .

We see periodic evidence of the confusion about the differences between dynamic and static pages, expressed as limit uncertainties in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? . How many pages can I have in my blog? and Why can't I have more than 20 tabs in my top menu bar? The Pages editor manages dynamic and static pages so transparently, not everybody realises where the limits are. (Update 2014/11): This limit has been relaxed - but it does not appear to be gone, entirely.