How to Structure a Blogger Blog Like a Website

December 7, 2007

Nealey Russo who initiated the article AdSense Help for "Used Cars Under $1000" contacted me again via the Help page asking for help. This time she have difficulty in making a blog that has the structure of a web site. This article will answer the questions "How do I structure a Blogger Blog Like a Website?" and it has the following sections:

• Problems
• Analysis
• Answers
• Recommendations

Problems

Here is the quote of what Nealey wrote:

Hi Binh,

First I want to thank you for all your help.

I tried to create a blog for my used cars site but found it difficult. I want the blog to have the structure of a web site. Can you have a homepage , and then a link list to the other sections of the blog? I don't like the way posts work. Can you have pages in a blog? If so how? I havn't done any research on these questions myself yet. I think the help centers are useless. I'm going to try looking for answers, but any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

Nealey

(Source: http://www.binh.name/?page_id=85#comment-158)

Analysis

I was about to ask Nealey to provide more information so I can provide more accurate help. In this particular case the required details are:

1. The blog URL, to see how it is currently organised.
2. Type of blog platform, to see how it can be organised.

After checking her comment I found out the URL to her blog and hence found out the required information as follow:

1. Blog URL: http://usedcarsunder1000dollars.blogspot.com/
2. Blogging platform: Blogger

Current look:

Since this article is focused on website structure, I will not talk about the AdSense placement on the blog. And because this is hosted by blogspot.com, I will talk in the context of Blogger blog.

Answers

Question: Can you have a homepage, and then a link list to the other sections of the blog?

Answer: Yes, you can make a homepage and sections like a normal website would have.

Blogger still help you structure your blog "like" a website, even though it is under-featured compare to WordPress and other blogging platforms.

In fact, blog is just a sub-type of website that has automatic date-based listing of posts. For that reason blog is much easier to manage. Anyone can write blogs, but not everyone can make websites. That's the beautiful of it and that's why it's taking over ordinary websites.

How to create a custom homepage on Blogger.com Blog

Blogger is not that straight-forward when it comes to create a custom homepage. This is not a typical and easily known process. It could be called a "trick to create custom homepage on Blogger.com".

To create this homepage, you need to create a special post following these steps:

1. Create a post and write it as it is a homepage. It will be used to replace the homepage.
2. Set the post date to a long distance future date. This will make it always stick on top of other posts on the homepage.
3. Do you notice in Blogger dashboard you have a link called Settings? Click on it.
4. In the Settings page click on the Formatting link. You can locate the Settings tab right below the header in between Posting and Template tabs.
5. In the Formatting page, locate the first setting box, you should see something like this: "Show [7] [posts] on the main page". Change that number [7] to[1].

Sum up, If you follow the process and complete the trick, you created a sticky post and display only that post on the homepage. In other words, you created a custom homepage for your blog. Congratulation!

How to link to other sections of the blog

OK, this is straight-forward and require very little technical knowledge. However, it require a little more of deep thinking in English and trials. I myself got confused at first, too. Sometimes the big boys forget the Keep It Simple Stupid principle and they unknowingly cause difficulties for users.

The answer is: using Labels. Why? Label in fact is a word used by Blogger.com to refer to Categories, or Sections. Category is a standard word in the web development world to referring to group of inter-related web pages.

Firstly, in order to have a website structure you need to create categories. How? When you create a new post, try your best to create/select a proper label for it. A proper label should be 1 to 3 commonly used words. Each label suppose to be grouping many posts together. If you create 1 unique label for each post, you failed.

If your blog haven't already display the categories, follow the following steps:

1. Open the Template tab.
2. On the Template page, locate the Add a Page Element link where you want to place the links to your labels (categories).
3. On a pop up window called "Choose New Page Element", locate the Labels element then click ADD TO BLOG.
4. On the "Configure Labels" page you can change the settings for your liking. I recommend changing Title from "Labels" to "Categories" for common understanding.
5. When you are satisfied with the settings, click SAVE CHANGES button to finalize the process.

Congratulation, now you know how to properly create categories for your blog-based website.

Question: I don't like the way posts work. Can you have pages in a blog?

This question is asked before I explained how to create a website structure on blogger.com blog. Now, is it still a valid question? If not, please read more.

Unfortunately you can't create pages on blogger.com. The blogging platforms like Drupal, WordPress, Joomla and many more do let you create pages though.

Recommendations

If you still not satisfied with how blogger.com work, please consider migrate to WordPress.com. If you go for WordPress.com you have 2 options:

1. Get it for free, but can't monetize.
2. Upgrade to premium account and pay so that you can display ads.

I'm using WordPress self-hosted package and it has much more powerful than blogger system. You can also consider to self host your own blog-based website using WordPress. This option give you a lot of flexibility. However it require you to have at least some technical knowledge in order to install and configure it.

Other than those, I'm having my own project in mind that can benefit you. I intend to to help non-technical knowledge people to set up their online business. I may give free help and supports too.

Tags: blogger, Blogging, blogspot, Web design, WP