Make Sitemap Page in Blogger.

This post is NOT about adding your blog sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools. It is about creating a sitemap page in Blogger which contains the links of all the post titles in your blog.


Such a sitemap page is commonly seen in other blogs and prominently linked to from the Main Page. Blogger does not have such a sitemap page. Instead it has the Blog Archives in the sidebar. To save space these show just the latest month posts and the rest can be accessed through drop down arrows. This hides most of your posts from the noobie viewer. Creating a sitemap page is then the only option to show all posts in one page................

CREATE A PAGE IN BLOGGER

In Blogger there are no specifically designed 'pages'. Instead each post is put on it's own page by default. You should have Post Pages turned on in Settings------->Archiving. The Layouts template has this turned on by default. To create a page in Blogger :

1. Login at Blogger.com.

2. Click New Post button on Dashboard under blog title.

3. Post Editor will open.

4. Put title as "Blog Sitemap.".

5. In the post editor type in a few introductory words like I have done in my sitemap post.

6. Publish post.

7. Click Edit Post link to open post again for editing.

8. Click Post Options link in bottom frame of Post editor.

9. Change the date to any date in the recent past.

10. Publish Post.

11. The Post will not appear on Main Page since it has been backdated. This is the only way to change the post order in Blogger.

CREATE THE SITEMAP GADGET

To create the sitemap gadget see How to create a Table of Contents with Post Preview for Blogger. Follow the instructions under this heading : "TOC for ONE BLOG".


This will place the Contents table gadget in your blog. Use Click and drag on Page Elements subtab to drag the gadget below the posts column.


The gadget is now seen on ALL blog pages. The next step is to place it only on the Sitemap page. To do this first we need to get the permalink of the sitemap page we created in our blog. Look in the Blog Archives gadget and expand all the arrows to see the "Blog Sitemap" title we gave to the post. Click on the ttle to open the post page. Copy the permalink from the address bar of the browser.

PUT GADGET ON SITEMAP PAGE

To put the gadget on the sitemap page we use conditional tags. To do this :

1. Login at Blogger.com.

2. Click Layouts link under blog title on Dashboard.

3. Click Edit Html subtab of Layouts tab.

4. Click Expand Widgets Template checkbox on top of the Template Code box.

5. Wait for the page to refresh.

6. Scroll down to locate the code for the Table of Contents gadget.

7. Modify the code as shown below (Put in the red lines of code) :

<b:widget id='HTML1' locked='false' title='' type='HTML'>
<b:includable id='main'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.url == "BLOG_PAGE_URL"'>


WIDGET CODE

</b:if>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>

Replace the CAPS : BLOG_PAGE_URL with the permalink of your blog sitemap post.

8. Save Template.

LINKING TO SITEMAP PAGE

To link to the sitemap page from Main Page first you will need to create CSS navigational menu in your header. Then get the permalink of the Blog Sitemap post and put it in the code for the navigation menu tabs.

How To Create New Pages In Blogger?

Newcomers to Blogger are confused as how to create new pages in Blogger. In a general website every page has a new link/URL. In Blogger however you do not create new pages. Instead you create new posts. A blog is an online diary where every post is dated with the date of it's creation and a timestamp. The date is at the top of the post and the timestamp at the bottom. If you create several posts in one day then the last post gets the date at the top of it.

To create new pages in Blogger we have to understand how the blog is constructed.........

BLOGGER PAGE TYPES

These are the page types in the new Blogger :




1. The Main/Home Page (MULTI-POST PAGE):

This is the page which opens when we click on the URL/link of the blog. The URL of the blog in Blogger takes this form :

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com

where YOURBLOGNAME is the name you chose for the blog when creating the new blog. You can choose how many posts your main page can have by going to Settings----->Formatting----->Show __ posts on Main Page and save the settings. It is better to choose a smaller number of posts on the main page since it makes the blog faster to load. You can also choose to alter the appearance of this page by using conditional tags. You can choose to prevent the appearance of certain widgets by wrapping them in conditional tags.





2. The Profile Page :

This is the page which is accessed by clicking the link to your profile in the profile widget in your blog sidebar. You can choose what appears on this page by clicking Edit Profile link on your Dashboard. This page is common to all your blogs. You cannot format it. You can also choose whether to show it or not at all by checking the Share my Profile option in the Edit Profile section. If you wish to increase traffic to your blog it is better to show your profile.






3. The Post Pages (SINGLE POST PAGE) :

By going to Settings------>Archives----->Enable Post Pages----->Yes----->Save Settings you give each post it's own page or URL. The page URLs have the following structure :

http://BLOG_URL/year/Month/Post-Title

Generally blogger includes the first five words of your post title into the post URL. Make sure you include the main keywords of your post in the post title at the beginning so that they get into the post URL. This is important for search engine optimization. See picture below that shows the Blogger Pages :



To create a new page simply create a new post. You can change the appearance of post pages using conditional tags.





4. The Label Pages (MULTI POST PAGE):

The Label Pages are created when you add labels in the bottom frame of the post editor. These are used to categorize your posts under different subjects. They serve like tags on your luggage at the airport. Do not add more than two/three labels to each post. Five or six labels on each post means five or six pages of the same content. Duplicate content is frowned on by the search engines. Each label post has the URL/link of this type :

http://Blog_URL/search/label/LABEL_NAME.

You can add labels to your sidebar using a label widget. You can also add a label cloud using the Technorati Top Tags widget.







5. The Archive Pages (MULTI POST PAGE):


In Settings--->Archive you can set each Archive page to show monthly, daily, weekly or no posts.






6. The Feed Pages :

Your blog has RSS and Atom feeds. Their feed URLs are :

For the Atom feed :

http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

For the RSS Feed :

http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

For labels the feed URL is :

http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/TYPE/-/LABEL

For comments the feed URL is :

http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/TYPE

Substitute actual blog name in place of yourblogname and instead of 'TYPE' substitute 'full/short/default' - whatever you have chosen in Settings----->Site Feed.

Your feed footer can be changed by putting what you want to appear there in the Feed footer box at Settings----->Site Feed. If you want to customize your feed header you have to channel your blog feed through another party like Feedburner.