The Real Blogger Status

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.

One interesting question, which we see occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , would be about making the blog easier to read - if the blog were static. How do I number the pages, in the blog? This blog owner does not quite understand the concept of dynamic content.

Blog owners add the Blogger supplied Contact Form, then wonder about the details, and what options are available. The Blogger supplied "Contact Form" gadget provides a very basic form, with few options. There's not a lot to do or see.

When it comes to encouraging visits to your blog, by people who need help, a properly presented "Contact" form is a very useful feature. Some time ago, I used a comment form, and a specially written post, " Contact Me " (titled "Leave Comments Here"), to provide private contact . For this blog, with comment moderation before publishing, I simply read the unpublished comments published against my post "Contact Me", without publishing them. Time moved on, however - and various changes made by Blogger made my unpublished comments based contact form less useful.

Long ago, Blogger blog owners would publish a blog as part of an existing website. With the website published as "www.mydomain.com", they would create a website subdirectory "www.mydomain.com/myblog", and publish the blog there. The option to publish a blog as "www.mydomain.com/myblog" required an externally maintained domain / website - and the Blogger feature "FTP Publishing". In 2010, Blogger, with many man hours spent fixing a constant stream of problems, retired "FTP Publishing" , in favour of "Custom Domain Publishing".

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 .

Every week, somebody asks for such a simple blog feature. How do I have a single blog post always displayed, for the home page? There are many things that Blogger has yet to provide, and this is one. A blog, by definition, contains a dynamic home page, with the most current posts displayed. Today (sorry, too late!), if you view this blog, this post will be displayed, at the very top of the home page. Tomorrow, this post will be displayed, just not at the top of the home page. In a couple weeks, this post will not be displayed on the home page, at all. That is how blogs work. If you want to display anything else, you don't have a blog. That's the purist position, anyway. A blog is simply a web site with the latest posts displayed on home page (the main page), and hidden older posts (the archives).

Even before Blogger added static pages as a blog feature , blog owners have been asking how to make hidden or separate pages for their blogs. When static pages, and the Pages index gadget, were added, people started asking about indexing label searches and external links in the Pages gadget. There are several solutions to the need to have a Pages gadget that indexes archive / label searches, and external URLs. Each solution has its advantages, and disadvantages.

The articles in this blog, which discusses production and use of Blogger blogs , are written as posts. The various posts are combined, using embedded links , in different ways. Each new post appears on the main page, as it is written - and the various posts, appearing together on the main page, create opportunities for confusion, with the readers of the blog. Long ago, the task of moderating comments was rather depressing to me, as the focus of many of the comments made me think that nobody was actually reading the articles. Maybe, I would write an interesting post about URL availability ; but when moderating comments, I would find questions about posting comments on static pages . Or maybe a post about dynamic template concepts would attract complaints about referer spam . Why should I publish my advice, if nobody cares enough to read the articles and comment relevantly?

We've been using the static Pages editor for over a year . When the Pages editor was first released, we saw a few questions, which indicated a shortsided design for the Pages index gadget. How do I link a page to my other blog? and How do I index a label search, in the Pages gadget? These were just two typical questions. Up until this month, the only possible answer, to either query, was to suggest that the blog owner replace the Pages gadget with a linklist . This is simpler than it appears - but still, not all blog owners wanted to take the effort. We've been asking Blogger to make this easier, for a while.

Not every blog owner wants to display current posts on their blog Home page. How do I display just a Welcome message, on my Home page? Some owners are satisfied with displaying a fixed welcome message - and let the readers click on links in the menu bar , or a menu gadget in the sidebar, to see the posts.

With Following becoming increasingly important in many blogs, as part of creating an exciting and ongoing community, many blog owners are using improved versions of the Followers gadget. Repositioning the Followers gadget, outside the sidebar, will let you show more Followers - or you can show the same amount of icons, but larger ones, in a gadget with the same height. If you want to encourage more Followers, using larger icons wouldn't hurt. All that you need to do is publish the Followers gadget as a static page, using the Pages Editor, in "Edit HTML" mode. You can display Followers in a separate page, without having to edit the template . Or, you can use an HTML / JavaScript gadget, instead of the default Followers gadget.

When it comes to encouraging repeated visits to your blog, by people who are interested in its content, a properly constructed labels array is a very useful feature. Unfortunately, a blog of any substantial size, and fully using the potential of labels, is going to have a rather large labels array - and this blog is no exception to that rule. Long ago, I realised that indexing the label searches in this blog was making my sidebar unacceptably long. Repeat visitors to this blog have complained occasionally, because I removed the labels index from the sidebar, to try and speed up the display load time. This week, I remedied that situation, by making my labels index gadget display as part of a static page, and moved the gadget from the sidebar to the main part of the blog.

Some time ago, I wrote how to make a static home page, where the key element was an HTML gadget, tweaked to display only with the home page of the blog . That's a useful tweak - and it's a tweak that can be used in various other conditional displays also. If you know a little template XML code, you can construct alternate conditional statements, and have template objects display in any of several other specific conditions.

One of the features of blogs, which a lot of blog owners seem to take for granted, is the maintaining of the posts and structure of the blog. With a static website, you design the URL structure, and you publish the pages in the website to the URLs as you wish. If you link the various pages to each other, this requires that you keep a glossary, of the URL of each page. The larger your website gets, the more painful a task this becomes. Make a mistake with one URL, and you have a broken link. Search engines don't like broken links - so if you want your website to be featured in search result pages, you want to minimize broken links.

Blogger blog owners, like dogs, always want more. Cue the super annoying commercial currently running on some USA TV channels. More, please! And when I suggest using an HTML / Text gadget, tweaked to show only when the "home" page is displayed , I hear cries for "more". But how can I show my latest posts for a given label, on my home page? Surely, I can do that too? The answer here is that yes, you can do this - and fortunately, it's not difficult. It simply require a little more thinking.

The ability to have a static home page for our blogs has been on the wishlist for many blog owners, for a long time. The wish, for a static home page, became even stronger when Blogger released the static pages option, and the Pages editor. With the tweak to index label searches and other dynamic pages , some folks really wanted a static home page, to accompany their indexed label searches and other dynamic pages. After Blogger continued to ignore our pleas for a static home page, we found a 2 step workaround for this omission. In Settings - "Posts and comments", we set "Show" to "0 posts" . With some clever custom template code, we make a text gadget that only displays on home page . This gives us a home page with nothing but a static text gadget displayed - and links (where provided) to other dynamic and static pages.

If you enjoy single deck card games, such as the magic trick of Three Card Monte , you probably depend upon an unbroken rule. All cards, in a deck, are unique. There can be only one Queen Of Spades. Some blog owners don't accept this rule, when setting up their custom domains. How do I use two domains, with one blog? This question is vaguely similar to swapping domains between one blog - and there is where some confusion starts. I bought a second domain for the blog - and the first domain stopped working!

One of the reasons why The Shell Game / Three Card Monte is a legendary fixture, in some cities, is that it's a favourite feature in some magic shows. The magician uses sleight of hand to move the pea or Queen of Spades around, and confuse the audience. It's the same game, just in different settings. The street corner version is more exciting. You're trying to win some money, and the scammer is trying to steal your camera, purse, or wallet. The parlor show is more fun. You're seated, having a drink, and watching. You pay for either show - just in different ways.