How To Create A Static Stand Alone Page In Blogger

As of February 2010, Blogger announced their new feature called Blogger Pages. So in this blog post I want to show you How To Create a Static Stand-Alone Pages In Blogger. I also have a video tutorial on how to make one if you're not comfortable with just photos.

If you have tried using a Wordpress blog, the first thing you will notice between blogger and wordpress is the ability of Wordpress blogs to make static stand-alone pages unlike in Blogger. But today, Blogspot users are catching up those Wordpress users because of their new feature.

Before I teach you on how to make a Blogger Page, let us discuss first What A Blogger Page Is.

Blogger pages let you to publish static information on stand-alone pages linked from your blog. For example, you can use pages to create an About This Blog page that discusses the evolution of your blog, or a Contact Me page that provides directions, a phone number, and a map to your location.

You create a page similar to how you write a blog post. From Blogger.com click Posting | Edit Pages tab, then click New Page. (Note: you can create up to 10 pages)

Once your page is published, you can link to it from the new Pages widget. The Pages widget lets you add links to your pages as tabs at the top of your blog, or as links in your blog's sidebar. (Note: existing third party templates may not support pages as tabs, but pages can still be added as links in your blog's sidebar)

In the Pages widget, you can decide which pages will have links, and in what order they will appear. You can also choose whether or not you want links automatically created for pages when you create them by checking or unchecking the box to the left of Add New Pages by Default.


Making Custom Templates Compatible With Pages Tabs

If you are familiar with HTML and want Pages as tabs, follow these steps carefully (caution - this is not for the faint of heart!):

1. Make sure the Pages Widget hasn't already been added, if so, remove the widget
2. Go to the Layout | Edit HTML tab for your blog
3. Download a backup of your template by clicking Download Full Template
4. Click the checkbox next to Expand Widget Templates
5. Look for the following three lines of HTML. If this HTML exists, change showaddelement='no' to showaddelement='yes'

<div id='crosscol-wrapper' style='text-align:center'>
<b:section class='crosscol' id='crosscol' showaddelement='no'/>
</div>

6. If this HTML does not exist, paste the following lines of HTML where you want the tabs to appear (for instance, after)

<div id='crosscol-wrapper' style='text-align:center'>
<b:section class='crosscol' id='crosscol' showaddelement='yes'/>
</div>

7. Confirm tabs are correctly added, click Save Template
8. Go to Layout | Page Elements and look for the new horizontal Gadget area and add the Pages gadget there.


If you still don't get it, you can check out my step by step video tutorial on how to make one.