Menu Tabs

Sunday 11 July 2010

Beginning Blogging 5. Adding Pages.

In this post I am going to show you how to add some pages to Blogger. This ability to add some pages to your blogger Template is a recent addition but a welcome one. What are pages? Well, they can be anything you like but are usually used for giving your readers more information about yourself such as an About Me page, so the Page tabs that are usually used by others Bloggers tend to take you to more information, other blogs, other sites etc.

Newbies current layout of gadgets etc

For this how-to, were going to add an About Me page which our readers can click on and then access more information about ourselves. By far the best place to put your pages is across the top and that horizontal space  underneath your header and title area is ideal for that purpose.

First of all you need to create your About Me page so let’s work our way through doing that.

From the Blogger Dashboard, Click on New Post followed by clicking on Edit Pages. This will take you to the New Page screen. You can add up to 10 stand-alone pages and if you need more info about Pages then click on Learn More.

Next click on New Page. You will be in the familiar Blogger editor. Give your page a title such as About Me, then simply fill in the details about yourself that you want your readers to be able to have access to. You might like to add a photo of yourself as well. You can then click on Preview your page to see what it looks like or Save it. When you are happy with your completed page click on Publish.

Now we need to add the Pages Gadget to our Page Elements. So click on the Add a Gadget inside the top horizontal area under your blog title in the Page Elements screen, and select the Page Gadget. It will already contain the Home page (which is necessary for your readers to return to your blogs Home page from any other pages that they might visit) and also your newly created About Me page. You can give your list of Pages a title (such as Menu) and alter the order that they appear on your Menu. As you can see by the picture below, you can choose to have the Page Gadget  set as Tabs (which we are going to use for this how-to) across the top of your blog page under the header, or alternatively in the side bar as a list of links. Once you have created lot’s of Pages you can also choose which one’s to show by either ticking or unticking them.

Lastly click on SAVE and your new Page Menu will be added to your Blogs layout.

Setting up your Pages

NOTE.  It is not possible at this time to add a tab to the top Page area under your headers as a straight through ‘one click’  link to another blog or webpage.  If you wish to enable that feature for your readers, you will have to add the Page Gadget to your sidebar, and unfortunately you cannot have the Page Gadget both in the sidebar area as links and also the top area as a tab Menu. 

Let’s now work our way through adding another Gadget to our Blogger blog from an external source other than Blogger Gadgets. One of my favourite Gadgets is the flickr cloud widget from Roy Tanck. Note that this Widget will work with Picasa as well.

Go to http://www.roytanck.com/get-my-flickr-widget/ If you are using this Gadget with flickr, you will need to go and grab your flickr RSS feed from flickr first. This can be found at the bottom of your photostream page and by clicking on the orange RSS feed icon, then copying that URL from the address bar. Now paste your flickr feed  URL into the feed URL box under Create your own widget.

RoyTanks Photo cloud gadget

If the area where you intend to place this widget is quite wide, you can alter the size in the respective boxes. The default size is 200 pixels by 200 pixels. The widget background colour can be left alone if your blogs background is white but if it’s not then tick the use background transparency box.  Now click on Generate code snippet. If your feed URL is correct, you will see a preview of your  photo gadget and the widget code will be available underneath for you to copy.

You can now return to your Dashboard in Blogger, click on Design and then Add a Gadget. From the Gadgets list choose  the HTML/Javascript Gadget. Give it a title such as My Photo Cloud or some such, paste your code into the contents window and then click on Save. Don’t forget to place your new Gadget in the area where you want it to be in your page elements. Here is my newly added Page and new Gadget in my blog. Looks good I think!

Photo Cloud Added

In the next post, we are going to completely change this current template using  Bloggers new Template designer. We will be adding a background, a header, changing the colours and making our blog area the full width by doing away with the sidebar altogether so our current Gadgets will be moved elsewhere.

TG

10 comments:

  1. TG, thank goodness I remembered you had this page as well as your other. Go to your other blog "neither here nor there". No one can leave any comments because the word verification box is obscured on the bottom by the next box for "older posts". Nowhere to type the verification or hit enter.
    I read the last 3 posts over there and thoroughly enjoyed them all. The trip to the grocery store, your poor toe, and the new pics of the neighbor's birdfeeders and the yummy calorie laden choc. dessert -- just couldn't leave you any notes and knew you'd want you know. Move the "older posts" box down about 3 inches or so and that should fix it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Jenny, I'll take a look at that. It might be a problem with that theme. I do hope I don't have to change it. I love that GrungD theme.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jenny, to read each blog click on read more. I have just tried the comment box and it looks okay. Now I will try to comment as a person who isn't signed in so hang on whilst I test it out.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jenny, now try it. I have switched word verification off for now until I can sort out the problem with that theme.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anther great post, TG. I'll be following this one, step by step, when I get around to adding the pages I've been meaning to set up on my blog. Thanks for the info!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks Rocket Man. Glad you are finding my posts helpful

    ReplyDelete
  7. A wonderful tutorial...
    and very helpful...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thanks Michelle, glad you found it useful

    ReplyDelete
  9. I have been all over your blog looking for this one. I want to try it again.
    Thank for adding so much information here. I truly appricate it all.
    Word press looks so inviting but do think for now I have enough to deal with lol.
    Love your page here.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Luckily for us bloggers, both platforms seem to be trying to outdo each other at the moment with new features! We are the one's to benefit. Thanks Lisa for the compliment and I will probably be adding some more blogging posts in the near future if only to add the new additions!

    ReplyDelete

Say what you think