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| George J. Mitchell Field, formerly a US Navy Fuel Depot and now a public/dog park in Harpswell, Maine. |
About once a year I give my blog a makeover. My aim this time was to integrate my stand alone website (for my artwork and writing) with my blog. I also wanted to reduce the clutter in my sidebar. On google blogger you can add up to 20 stand alone pages with tabs appearing under the banner (like mine) or in the sidebar. Thanks, Carol, for nudging me to add a homepage.
Under the "Posting" tab click "Edit Pages"and then "New Pages." You create a new page like writing a blog post and then publish.
To create the automatic jump from the new page to my website, I added new code to my "Edit HTML" screen of the new page:
angelfire.com's instructions on adding automatic redirecting
This code would also work if you changed blog addresses and wanted to forward visitor to your new site. I changed the lag time from 1 to 5 seconds to accomodate search engines, but it jumps instantly due to the javascript. Don't worry, this is all much easier than it sounds.
More Posting Tips:
To improve your blog, read The Story Siren's Ten Things I Dislike About Your Blog. This is a must read post for all bloggers. The only point I disagreed with was word verification. I get bombarded with spam without it.
Here's my Advice for New Bloggers with your helpful comments.
Bookstore Watch: one of my favorite authors, Ann Patchett has opened a bookstore.
Shakespeare Watch: from the latest New Yorker, "Who Wrote Shakespeare," by Eric Idle. Hilarious!
19 comments:
Excellent post. Most useful.
Thank you very much. This post should be filed under "Public Service", so good and informative it is. It's also a nice departure from your regular book reviews which are always so pleasant to read and at the same time balanced.
I think blogger just added a few gadgets to the basic format but my experience with its new techonology has not always been very satisfactory. I remember about a year ago they introduced a new "edit html" function and I adopted it straight away. It was so easy to upload photos and work on them as you wrote. Yet, my computer would freeze and sometimes the browser shut down without saving my changes. I had to revert to the old format. Now, they have a new interface which I only ever use to see the statistics: who's reading me, where the traffic is coming from, which are the more popular posts.
Excellent post, as usual.
Greetings from London.
Very useful. I have had people ask me to make a page with just photos of plants and the names so they can see them and find them easier. With all my free time I have not yet hahaha but this does make the thought of it much more manageable. I might just start. I get more proficient with blogger as time goes on but I still have a lot to learn. Thanks for the post!
Hello Sarah
Very useful information and I appreciate you sharing.
Glad to know your friend has opened up a bookstore. With so many small bookstores closing--it nice to hear one has opened up.
Have a great day!
Best
Tracy :)
Sarah, I read the link about the 10 things I hate about your blog earlier this year. Like you, I tried to remove the word verification and immediately started receiving a bunch of spam. More recently though, I removed word verification and haven't had a problem...only 1 spam comment. If you haven't tried it in a while, you might. Seems Diana at Elephant Eye said blogger has really improved their spam filters.
Dave, nice to reconnect with you!
ACIL, happy birthday! I loved your post today. I demo-ed the new blogger dashboard and decided to stick with the old one. I’m also sticking with my old template because the stretching means photos don’t get cut off and the post can adjust to the size of the screen. New isn’t always better.
Kacky, a good project for a rainy day, now that it has finally come.
Tracy, I don’t know Ann Patchett personally, but I love her books. I’ve read them all.
Cat, I did try removing my word verification this weekend and got 10 spam comments that day. Mostly they come to old posts anonymously with commercial links. I have comment moderation on old posts, but that still fills my email in box and wastes time. I could eliminate the anonymous option for commenting but then non-bloggers (often friends) couldn’t comment.
I really need a blog makeover so this is good info. I've also decided to wait until I finish the fairy tale I'm working on. I must get done!
Dear Sarah, Thanks for the mention and tips for improving our blogs. I confess to much of all this being over my head. Pages I can handle. I did also enjoy reading your older post with lots of good tips. I have often wondered if my blog with the grey background and white print is hard to read. I would love to know how to put the share configuration on the end of each post. I have a hard time with the word verification and simply approve comments . . . I notice that many have the wf and approve before publishing comments. It can take too much time for many readers.
Very interesting photographs!! The first serene and the second thought provoking.
I love Ann Patchett too. I cannot wait for her next novel. I read somewhere else that she was opening a bookstore. Kudos to her. Thanks so for the link.
Hi Sarah,
You are the first one I visit with my new laptop! My previous comment on your new puppy disappeared into cyberspace.
This has nothing to do with your present post of course, but I just want to share it with you.
Be sure that I will be about frequently from now.
Enjoy your gorgeous new dog!
Happy day with all around you!
Jacoba
Tricia, best of luck with your writing!
Carol, black on white is dull, but it’s easiest to read and doesn’t clash with photos or artwork. I’d get rid of word verification if the spam blocking improves. I’ll keep checking. Thanks for taking the time to do mine. That second image caught my imagination – call it industrial art.
L3J, I’m honored to be your first new comment! How sad to lose your words. I wasn’t online much this fall due to my kids’ after school activities. November and December are good months or catching up.
i really like what you've done with your blog - the new pages are a great feature. thank you for sharing what you've learned - i can always use help like this.
the photos are great as well - particularly the second one - an appropriate image to illustrate tidying things up!
p.s. i agree about the word veri - a necessary evil to keep out spam.
I think blogger makes it so easy to modify your blog and so on. I can't tell you how many of those blog posts I've read that advise on blogs but ultimately I think you have to make your blog the way that you like while considering the readers. For me I love love love large letters so mine is modified in that way since I wear glasses. It is not a modification I see often so perhaps others do not like it but I tell you I can hardly read some blogs due to the tiny letters. I know many of my readers who are elderly appreciate the big letters and have told me it is hard to sometimes read on the computer so it is what I do. I hope that was not one of the things the writer hated!
Lots of sensible advice!
Your blog looks splendid. I don't much care for Blogger but it is pretty easy to tweak the design --unlike Typepad where it is a nightmare.
My current pet peeve is people who put strings of quotes --not their own material.
Maybe they think other people are cleverer, but somehow the blogosphere should be all about character and originality.
Like the commenter above, I rather like BIG WRITING.
I have some sort of setting that won't allow those sneaky link people posting comments on ancient post when they think we aren't looking......
off to walk the dog.
Thanks for the helpful advice--I'm bookmarking this page for future reference, Sarah. I need to do some updating of my page one of these days, too.
Thanks for the link to the "New Yorker" article; it was hilarious! I'm still chuckling at the idea that no one would claim Henry James' writing:)
This was very helpful. I liked the article with the ten tips in too. Thanks!
Hello
Thanks so much for this very useful info. Your explanations are simple and much easier to understand than the complicated ones I read before. "To add stand alone pages" sounds so temptating! I'd love to try it when I have spare time.
The first photo is lovely. I can hear the sea's sounds. I love the shimmering surface.
Always good to know these kinds of things....thanks!
Hi Sarah,
It was interesting to read all the tips. I can't say that I would agree with all of them but many of them were food for thought for me. E.g. the colours. It is true that the black print is easily readable on the white background. But if you post photos, they are often much more prominent in contrast with a coloured background. My favourite combination is white letters on dark blue. I change it from time to time but I always come back to it.
It's amazing how much work it requires to keep a blog current, isn't it? I always a fan of integration.
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