Static Pages, And A Custom Pages Index

Ever since static pages were released by Blogger, bloggers have been asking how to index non static pages in a static pages (aka "tabs") index. Questions like

How do I publish a label page with my static pages?

and

How do I link to another blog, in my Pages gadget?

and

How do I publish posts in pages?

are asked, fairly regularly.

The typical answer, to the question above, has been

You can't index anything but pages, in the Pages gadget. You have to make a custom index bar.

Posts are dynamic content, and pages are static content. Posts and pages are simply different blog content. And the standard Pages index gadget only indexes static pages.

Fortunately, a horizontal menu bar, to replace the Pages index gadget, isn't difficult to make. You can see one right now, in my home blog, Nitecruzr Dot Net.

If your blog has a new Designer Template, you may wish to go a bit further, and make a custom Pages Index. With a Designer Template, we simply position a linklist in the Pages Tab Index space, and we get a horizontal menu bar / tabs index with the look and feel of a Pages gadget.

1. First (should you ask?), backup your template.
2. Go to "Page Elements", and look below the page header space, in the Tabs section. If you do not see a space just below the page header, upgrade your template. The picture below shows what you will want to see. If you have an old blog, with a template created before static pages were released, you'll want to use the Template Designer, and give the blog a nice Designer Template.
3. If you have a Pages Index gadget already installed in the template, delete it.
4. Create a linklist, and put some links into it. You can add or change any links that you put into your new linklist, whenever you feel the need. If you want to index posts, use labels, and index label searches. In some cases, you may be better off creating an HTML based linklist, using raw linklist code copied into an HTML / JavaScript gadget.
5. Position your new linklist where the Pages gadget was (or would be).
6. Save.
7. Backup the template, again (yes, do it again)!
8. Test.
9. Add more links to the linklist, when you feel the need. It's a linklist, and you hopefully know how to add links to a linklist.

See the "Add a Gadget" space below the header ("Nitecruzr Designer Template")? If you don't see that space there, you need to get an updated template.



You can see my demonstration in Nitecruzr Buzz. I just took the linklist out of the sidebar, repositioned it as I discuss above, and voila. It took me 2 minutes.

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Of course, there are details which should be attended to, any time you tweak a new Blogger feature.

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For more detail, see Roberto's Report: New Designer Template and the Tabs Index.

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(Update 2011/08): The pages editor, in the New Blogger GUI (2011), now provides us with this option.

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