Blogger Draft gave us static pages!

Along with the new Blogger Static Pages we get new issues while trying to merge the static pages with our Blogger templates.

One issue that was brought to my attention by David Bergeron in a comment here on SoSwitcher.blogspot.com was - How do we remove the “Read more…” link/text from the new Blogger Static Pages?

It took a few minutes to tweak the new template code, to remove the “Read more…” text/link from my new “Contact Me” static page (top left corner of this blog).

I doubt everyone has the exact same “Read more…” code in their template, so I’ll show the steps I took to fix this issue.

1) Backup your template.

2) Open your template in a text editor, I used the Blogger Dashboard text editor, & made sure to check the “Expand Widget Templates” checkbox.

3) In my browser I did a search for the text “Read more”, make sure to search for the exact text that shows in your blog (Read more, Continue, etc…)

4) My old “Read more"…” template code looks like this:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != &quot;item&quot;'><br/>
<a expr:href='data:post.url'>Read more...</a>
</b:if>

5) My new “Read more…” template code looks like this:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;static_page&quot;'><br/>
<b:else/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;index&quot;'><br/>
<a expr:href='data:post.url'>Read more...</a>
</b:if>
</b:if>

 

Technorati Tags: Blogger,Blogger Hach,Static Page

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Pages, Pages, & more Pages, that’s what Blogger brings to everyone that has a Blogger template. You can read more about how easy it is to setup the new Blogger Static Pages, over at Bloggertricks.com

After you see how easy setting up new static Blogger Pages inside your own blog, you’ll soon find out that Blogger has set a maximum of 10 static pages allowed per Blogger blog.

This blog post will show you a trick that allows us to have more than 10 static Blogger Pages.

Before I get started, I do want to stress that this hack may not be permanent, & it’s possible to lose a static Blogger page permanently, & you follow this tutorial at your own risk.

1) We’ll assume you have already reached the maximum limit of 10 static Blogger Pages, & you want to create page number 11.

2) As of this blog post static Blogger Pages can only be created inside of Blogger Draft dashboard

3) With your 10 static Blogger Pages already created, inside Blogger Draft navigate to Posting –> Edit Pages, & find your first page (see screenshot below) then click the Edit button.

4) With page one open in Edit mode, get the Blogger Page URL from your browsers address bar, then copy & paste in a safe place on your local PC.

Note: If you lose this Blogger Static Page URL you will never be able to use the existing static Blogger Page again, so it’s very important to keep the unique Blogger static Page URL while in Edit mode. Also note that the Edit mode address is not the same as your Blogger Static Pages URL while a visitor is browsing your blog. I can’t stress enough how important the Edit page URL is to keep safe. See screenshot below of my Blogger Static Page one in edit mode, showing the URL in my browsers address bar.

5) After you have saved the static Blogger Page number one URL in a safe place (text file on your local PC), we will delete Blogger Static Page one from inside Blogger Draft. This will leave us with 9 static pages left, & also now show the Blogger Static Page “New Page” button, click the New Page button & create another page, this will be page 11, make sure to save the new static page.

6) Open a new browser window or tab, then copy & paste the Static Page one URL that we saved in step number 4, & navigate to that old URL. This will now display the Blogger Static Page one that we had previously deleted, click the Publish button, & you will now have 11 Static Blogger pages, repeat all steps to add additional static pages beyond page eleven.

 

The screenshot below shows 14 active Blogger static pages.

Note:

This Blogger Static Page hack has not been tested long term since Blogger Draft has just recently released the static pages for Blogger, so I don’t recommend you try this hack on any blog except for testing.

By following this tutorial you do so at your own risk, so don’t complain for any static Blogger pages that you lose on a real blog, it is very possible that you can lose a static page, If blogger makes any changes in how it saves deleted pages.

Also note that I’ve had all 14 of my static Blogger pages up & running with no issues since the first day that Blogger Draft released the all new static pages.

Technorati Tags: Blogger,Static Page,Hack

See screenshot:
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There might be a recession, but there is certainly not a shortage of people looking for great bloggers!

Why not turn your hobby into a part time or full time blogging job?

Maybe your into snowboarding, fashion design, music, SEO. or choose from a wide list of interesting jobs.

Take a look at this list of 23 jobs for bloggers, and see if your next paid blogging job is waiting for you!

Jobs powered by

Simply Hired

Technorati Tags: Blogger,Jobs,Freelance

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Want to change the default Blogger icon in your template?

1) First thing you need is a new icon! You can create your own image in whatever image editor you are comfortable with (Paint Shop, Inkscape, MS-Paint, etc…), make the image 16x16 pixels & save as a .png image.

An alternative is to search Google for a 16x16 pixel .png image that’s already finished.

Here is a Google Image search I did for the word star imagesize:16x16 , you can change the word star to any subject you like, just keep the rest of the search string the same:

(example = cell phone imagesize:16x16).

2) We need to convert our .png image into a .ico file (icon image). Go to the Dynamic-Drive website, & use their online converter to upload you .png image, & create your new .ico file (icon image). After the icon is created, download the new icon to your PC desktop.

3) Now that we have our new icon, we need to upload the icon, to the internet. Blogger won’t let us host our own .ico file so we can use Google Sites for our host, you can follow a blog post I did Blogger - Host Javascript File for Free , this link will show you how to host your own files online for FREE, you do not need to change the extension for this tutorial, your icon URL should look something like this:

http://sites.google.com/site/YOUR_GOOGLE_SITE/PAGE1/YOURICON.ico

4) Paste the code below into your Blogger template just below the <HEAD> tag

<!-- Favicon -->
<link href='http://sites.google.com/site/YOUR_GOOGLE_SITE/PAGE1/YOURICON.ico'
rel='shortcut icon'/>
<link href='http://sites.google.com/site/YOUR_GOOGLE_SITE/PAGE1/YOURICON.ico'/>
<!-- end Favicon –>

NOTE: Make sure to change both of the URL’s to your own links, from your Google-Sites webpage. Press the Save Template button in your Blogger editor. Make sure when you paste the code into your Blogger template, that you have four individual lines of code, if the lines are broken you will get an error message in the Blogger Editor.

That’s it!

Visit your blog & you should see your new FAV icon at the top of your browser window.

Technorati Tags: Blogger,Icon,Code

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I’ve been busy working on a really cool bit of Blogger Meta Tag code, the last couple of days. This new code will let me control all my meta tag content dynamically with the exception of my blogs homepage, which will have its own static meta tag content, that is still totally customizable.

What's all this mean, why do I need this?

The old way of creating Meta Tags for a Blogger Template, will only let us set the Meta Tag content for all of our Blogger blogs, as single Meta Tags, that shows the same content on every single blog page.

My new improved code will automatically write this dynamic content to the Blogger template for each individual blog page:

• TITLE
• Description Meta Tag
• Keywords Meta Tag

1) Title Tag = Blog Post Title + Blog Post Labels + Blog Title

2) Description Meta Tag = Blog Post Title + Blog Post Labels + Blog Description

3) Keywords Meta Tag = Blog Post Labels

The Blog Title pulls it’s content from Blogger Control Panel –> Settings –> Title. The Blog Description in the Meta Tag Description pulls it’s content from the Blogger Control Panel –> Settings –> Description. All the Label content pulls it’s content from each individual blog posts labels, so we use those Labels as Keywords inside the Meta Tags.

What all this does is provide Google our own unique content & keywords, that have a very good chance of showing up inside the Google Search results Pages description, just below the Title. The reason I say a very good chance of showing up is, it’s impossible for any website on the net to force Google to use content. With the Meta Tag Description, Google most times will look for that tag & use it in the SERP.

I’ve had my new Dynamic Meta Tags crawled by Google & already showing up in the Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page), after only a few hours of testing.

The image below, you can see a screenshot of my new Meta Tag content, from my last blog post

Blogger – Change your Tools

My intention is to have Google notice my blog for a wider dynamic selection of keywords & phrases, than my old static template. I’ll wait about a month & keep monitoring how Google Search handles the content in my SERP results, before I post any code for others to use on their own blogs, I want the code to be 100% up & running with results to show everyone.

Keep an eye out for related future blog post.

While I’m tweaking the code, have a look thru this blogs source code, to check out how every single page on this blog has dynamic Meta Tags & Page Titles (no two pages are the same).

Technorati Tags: Blogger,Meta Tags,Code,Google

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Blogger & Google Webmaster Tools, make for a great SEO team. A little known secret that GWT has buried deep inside it’s treasure chest of handy tools, is a feature that I’ve been very happy to find.

Have you ever wandered which of your own blog post was the highest rated on the Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page)? I’m about to show you a very cool feature, that will show all of your most popular blog post, & not only that, everyone can view their own highest ranking SERP results for FREE!

Let’s get started!

1) First thing we need is a blog (check)

2) Go to Google Webmaster Tools

3) Select your blog name from the list of your blogs/websites

4) Click on the link Your site on the web

5) Click on the link Top search queries

6) You should see a list of words/phrases. Go to the far right side of the screen & click on the link that reads Position (see screenshot below)

What you see in the above screenshot is the most popular search results from real people on the internet, searching for relevant information to this blog, from the last seven days.

Beneath the Position link, shows the real position for each group of search words, that the visitors to my site used to find this blog (soswitcher.blogspot.com).

Here is how I rank for these search strings in the past seven days:

1) google for free javascripts hosts

2) visible title code for blogger

As you can see I’m indeed number one in both of those search strings, for the last seven days. What’s better is, you can search for longer periods of time, example the screenshot below is for August.

The most interesting search I found, that just blew me away was one of the shortest search strings. The search string blogger change, shows I was number one in the month of August, but get this (here’s the good part) The search string blogger change has over 451,000,000 other pages, below my blog (I’m now 2nd place as of this post, still very happy).

All I can say is WOW!

Note:

Google Webmaster Tools takes a while to crawl your blogs pages, If you are new to GWT then you should follow my other blog post Better Google Sitemap when setting up new sitemaps for Google to crawl. The longer your involved with GWT the larger your list of SERP keywords will be.

Go check out your own Google Webmaster Tools, list of most popular search words, I think you will be very surprised at how well some of your blog post are ranking.

Lets hear how well your ranking. :)

Technorati Tags: Blogger,Google,SEO

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