Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Static pages

A tombstone bearing the inscription "About, Links, Contact, Bio"

In the beginning was the blog, made of posts.

Archive and label-search pages helped readers to find the posts they liked.

In late 2009, in response to popular demand, Blogger added static pages: Blog pages that do not comprise any posts at all.

Typical uses include an "about this blog" page, or an extended profile of the blog author, or an index of blog content.

These pages sit apart from the rest of the blog. Your readers won't find them unless you link to them from a post or widget.

These pages are nonetheless integrated into your blog by (1) having the same page design (including sidebar gadgets) and (2) a Pages gadget that automatically generates links to all the static pages plus the main blog page. (However, I suggest that this gadget is not really very useful.)

Conceptually, these stand-alone pages sit outside of the blog's natural chronological hierarchy. They are all equally "now." You cannot characterize them by label.

If you want those things, publish the content as a post.

Static pages are also not mini blog pages to which authors may post blog posts. That is what is static about them. Blog authors seeking that functionality should investigate labels and label-search pages.

Uses

Within these limitations, pages are useful places to put "timeless" information (such as an About page or an index).

They are also good for very large collections of images, since Blogger's unavoidable auto-pagination feature would deform the pagination of the blog were the photos in a regular blog post.

A static page is also a good place to park a "journey" page showing your blog content, or any subset of it, in chronological order. You can make that using one of these hacks.

(Combine that with a label feed for a page that shows, say, your trip to Greece in chronological order, oldest-first.)

Just don't knock yourself out trying to turn your static pages into mini-blogs of multiple blog posts. Blogger will resist your every effort.

2 comments:

  1. So what is the point of adding and using pages? I can't add anything to them. Whenever I add a page to my blog on Blogger, it just says this page does not exist.

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    Replies
    1. @Madomeda,

      I have done my best to suggest what "the point" if these pages is. I am sorry if that is not adequate.

      They are useful, I think, but not indispensable.

      It sounds as though you are also having a technical problem. If you take that to the help community, I'll bet you will be able to resolve that.

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