When Blogger’s redesign launched earlier this month, it was all about the looks; there was no announcement about new features. It seems that, buried under the new interface, some useful new tools have been added anyway, specifically a method for adding any web address to the ‘Pages’ widget. It’s a great and easy way to point to your Google+ profile for example, or to feature some of your labels on the front page. I shared a work-around for this sometime last year and it has proven my most popular article to date, both in terms of comments and of views, so there is clearly a need for it among Blogger users. The procedure is simple enough:
- Log into Blogger in Draft;
- On the left sidebar click ‘Pages’, then in the ‘New page’ menu choose ‘Web address’;
- Type in a name for the new page and the address below;
- Click ‘Save arrangement’ and you’re done!
This solution solves the downside of my work-around of not being able to reorder the pages you added this way. Not to mention manually editing your template is usually frowned upon by the Blogger engineers, because it could cause conflicts with future template updates. The only problem I saw so far is that, if you delete the ‘Pages’ widget and later re-add it (to reset any previous changes you made to the HTML code), these manually added web addresses are deleted and you have to input them again. Another good news is that I couldn’t find any limit to the number of links you can add here – as far as I now, Blogger pages should be limited to 10, but after adding 10 web addresses in addition to the pages I already created I received no error.
Personally I am not very fond of the new redesign and I might write wrote an article about the things that keep me from using it on a regular basis, but it’s worth temporarily switching to it for the small benefits it brings.
Very interesting. I'd like to try this on my health blog. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteIt was a nice work around. I went in to hack the template and put my link in the pages list but it made the resulting tab look funky due to the css of the theme. This way makes it look clean. I didn't know about drafts.blogger.com some if it seems a little cleaner and faster than the other interface some of it seems a little buggy. might get better though. but for this way nicer Thanks
ReplyDeleteRalph
It works beautifully - but I can only get an rss feed to the page I set up with your previous instructions, not with the one I set up in the new draft Blogger.
ReplyDeleteNot sure what's going on with this. I'll see if I have to add the html http://exde601e.blogspot.com/2010/09/add-label-specific-feeds-to-blogger.html)you recommended to my template again. Though, if it's not in the template, how come the earlier page works in an rss feed?
I'm not sure what happened there, Brenda, when I look at your blog now none of the pages pointing to labels have the RSS feed of the label. You should try to manually add the code back to the template, it was probably removed when you made some changes. Mine is still working, so I don't think it's related to the changes to Blogger in Draft.
ReplyDeletevery helpful
ReplyDeletethanks!
OMG!!! I spent the last two hours trying to figure out the HTML coding from your previous post. It didn't work (no clue what I did wrong...). Was about to give up then I scrolled a bit further down and read your update which led to this page. In 5 minutes I was done!
ReplyDeleteThanks very much for your help! Brilliant!
I tried the way you recommended, it works fine. Still, I have 2 more questions.
ReplyDelete1. I don't want those posts assigned with a particular label (ie. in your case, the assigned label is book) to show on Home page; I want them to show only when viewers click the tab I specifically created for them (ie. in your blog, it is Book Review). Is there any way I could do that?
2. How could I create those 'Newer Post', 'Home', and 'Older Post' at the page bottom like yours?
Thanks in advance.
Hi, there again. Just want to tell you to disregard my question #2 since I've already got it. However, I'm still in need of a solution for #1. Thanks.
ReplyDeletenew features are really useful! thank you for the review
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Hi, tnk293!
ReplyDeleteI have also wondered about this. There are some solutions on the web to this problem, for example: Hide Certain Posts from Blogger Homepage. Personally I haven't tested this and I doubt I will ever do that, it seems a little too complicated to me.
I already checked that out but my template codes under the heading are not exactly the same as those shown on that site. So I guess it couldn't work with my blog.
ReplyDeleteGoogle+ turned out to be not very popular though
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Thanks, this is exactly what I needed to know how to do; and I love that it is not necessary to touch the code of the template.
ReplyDeletePeace, Judi
Thank you so much for this post! I followed your original instructions for adding pages in the html code (from over a year ago) but completely forgot how to do it! This feature is wonderful and much easier!
ReplyDeleteDid this but it's not working... it shows on my editing side that the link is correct but it's not correct on the blog, not sure why.
ReplyDeleteBlog is http://sarahandkarl.blogspot.com and I want the Recipes tab to link to http://koepkekitchen.blogspot.com
Help?
Nevermind... I just switched to uing a Link List instead.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Great feature. I've used it on my blog that I'm still tweaking and isn't ready yet. The only problem is the box with "show all posts with label 'blog' - show all posts" (but then in Dutch).
ReplyDeleteIs there any way to remove this? If you could help me that would be fantastic!
The page on my blog is: http://blackbirddesign-nl.blogspot.com/search/label/blog
Hi Merel,
ReplyDeleteI wanted to describe how to hide that box for some time, so here are the steps in a new blog post: Hide Blogger’s default message box.
I also applied it to my blog as well for the label Book added to the 'Pages' list.
George-
ReplyDeleteI'm still lost on the exact steps to link specific labels to my Pages. I'm very new at this and really want to learn. I'm stumped as to how adding one URL (I don't see where I can add more than one...?) can lead to bringing up all the labels I want that page to forward to. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I would LOVE it if I could get my labels to automatically update wthin the Page. When i go to other people's blogs' and click on say, their Tutorials tab it send me to a result page with a box up top that says "Showing posts with label Tutorials. Show all posts." Please explain how to achieve this, it would make my week, no, year!
Hi, Arleene!
DeleteThe thing is that you actually are not creating any new Pages or adding labels to existing Pages. What this tip does is to take advantage of a default feature in Blogger: it can filter all the post by a specific label and render them on a different page, such as http://sodarling.blogspot.com/search/label/chairs on one of your blogs - that's why you also see the message on top "Showing posts with label Tutorials. Show all posts". With the tip described above you are only adding this special page to the more visible 'Pages' widget, to feature it for blog readers. As you add new posts under that label, Blogger will automatically updates it, as if does with the home page.
I think I'm starting to comprehend. I'm sorry, I must sounds totally pathetic! As a creative person I have no technical sense at all whatsoever. If it isn't too much of a bother, since I assume this is something you must do in your sleep :) could you possibly break it down for me in a few steps?...
ReplyDeleteI wan't to make a page/tab that is for Beauty Trends (on myheartistry.com) The one that I have right now I did the long way by manually adding parts from other posts (total fail, I know). I want to convert or re-do that page (and future pages) into this cleaner, more organized, easier format...how would I go about doing that? In super slow late mens terms, haha. It's been a long day.
You're amazing for even getting back to my question, thanks SO much! The simple answer is practically right at my fingertips, I can feel it. If only I could wrap my clumsy brain around it!
Well, I see that you already have the 'Pages' widget active on My|Heartistry, in the sidebar on the right. So you should just follow the instruction aboves; the link to your label-page should be http://www.myheartistry.com/search/label/beauty and type a proper label in the first box, that will show up as the Page name in the widget. If that's not the right address you can go to one of your posts with the label 'Beauty Trends', scroll to the bottom where the labels are listed and click on this label; then copy the address in the resulting page and use it in the Blogger dashboard.
DeleteYou can then uncheck the older page from the widget so that it will be hidden on the blog. If you want more similar pages, just repeat the process with another label and they will be added on the live version; you can also rearrange them, etc.
P.S. if you want to get rid of the message on top "Showing posts with label... you can follow another tutorial I made recently, you can find it here.
I figured it out!! so excited, thanks for your help!
ReplyDeleteomg! thanks so much! I've been finding this all night.. thanks!
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ReplyDeleteThank you so much! Found it very useful :)
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