The amazing "Configure Blog Posts" controls

Nested away in your blog settings is a control panel for blog posts.

I don't mean the screen for editing individual posts, of which you surely know already; this lets you change the uniform way all of your posts are rendered in your blog.

At stake are things like whether and where to show the date, labels, even title of posts.

Edit the elements

Blogger's layout page, at Layout, is the powerful graphical-interface control panel for your blog. There you can add gadgets and even rearrange them just by clicking and dragging.

Perhaps you know that you can also configure those gadgets by clicking their respective "edit" links. But look over at the rectangle labeled "Blog Posts." That's right, you can configure them too.

Blog elements

In the beginning was the blog, composed of posts.

But there are many other pages and parts of your blog, some added later by Blogger (such as static pages), others generated automatically (such as label searches).

It's handy to know what you can do with these. Here's a field guide.

Better tabbed navigation with link lists, not the Pages gadget

There's an old Vaudeville routine about a man in an airplane and a series of reversals.

Unfortunately--he fell out.
Fortunately--he was wearing a parachute.
Unfortunately--it wouldn't open

and so forth.

The unhappy conclusion:

Fortunately--he missed the pitchfork.
Unfortunately--he missed the haystack.

Well, fortunately, Blogger provides a nifty Pages gadget that automatically lists all of your static pages. Blogger nudges you to set one up if you publish such a page, and if you put it in the horizontal area over your posts, many templates render it as a handy tabbed navigation system.

Navigation gizmos like this can connect readers to your content, making your blog more useful, fun, and, ultimately, popular.

Unfortunately,