Some blog owners would like their readers to view the entire blog in one page.
A small blog, with very limited size, can theoretically fit on one page. If you intend to publish a blog with any future, and page rank, you will have to publish content periodically - and the size of the blog will increase, steadily.
And eventually, thanks in part to main page limitation by auto pagination, older posts in your blog will be forced into archive pages.
For a blog with any future, and publishing activity, there are four possibilities for main page size.
- Segment main page, limiting post count.
- Segment your blog, using virtual blogs.
- Use a dynamic template, and "continuous scrolling".
- Use a non dynamic template, and Jump Break - and accept archiving.
Segment main page, limiting post count.
One of the simplest ways to make your blog reader friendly is to limit main page size, using a post count limit. This won't work as a final solution, however, if you're planning to publish the blog with any regularity.
Segment your blog, using virtual blogs.
If you can break your blog into multiple subjects, you can use a Pages tabbed index to access each different subject. You can fit each different subject, possibly using Jump Break, onto one page.
To complement the virtual blogs, you can have a static main page - providing a "welcome" message, and / or indexing the virtual blogs.
Use a dynamic template, and "continuous scrolling".
For public blogs, a dynamic template, with continuous scrolling, may provide a solution. Dynamic templates, unless you a very comfortable with editing the blog template, will never offer the accessory and customisation possibilities of non dynamic templates, however.
With a dynamic template, you won't be able to use Jump Break - though some dynamic views may provide a summarised main page view.
Use a non dynamic template, and Jump Break - and accept archiving.
Careful use of Jump Break will let you limit the size of the main page. If you continue to publish posts - which is necessary for a blog with any future - you will eventually have posts displayed on archive pages.
For best results, design the blog structure - and the posts structure - consistently, and accept archiving and pagination.
Some #Blogger blog owners would like to display all post content in one page - and ignore page display size. They do not realise that not all blog readers want to read a blog with an unlimited page size, all at once.
We see an occasional suggestion, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger, about archive convenience.
Some blog owners, presumably ones who do not publish so often, would like to archive posts on a yearly basis.It would be great, if you would add the option of "Yearly" under the Archive gadget "Archive Frequency".
This blog owner may not know why posts are archived on a weekly or monthly schedule.
One of the most challenging tasks in the post editor has to involve post URL creation.
Post URLs absolutely must be unique.
Besides having to create a URL from the post title, the post editor has to ensure that no post title causes a previous URL duplication - after removal of unnecessary words. One unbreakable rule of Blogger posts (Internet life, in general) is that two posts can not have the same URL.
Post URLs use a structure that includes the Year and Month, as "/yyyy/mm". That is how the Archive gadget opens the post list, for the "Monthly" archive option.
My previous post, on this subject - and the Archive gadget ("Contents") opened, to the month of its publishing.
The Archives gadget opens the post index to the proper year and month.
The Archive gadget display opens to the year and month of the first post on the page. It does that, by using the URL of the post displayed.
The Post:
Blogging - The Directory and URL Structure
The URL:
http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2009/08/blogging-directory-and-url-structure.html
The Archives gadget can't show a year - or infinity - of posts.
See how the Archives gadget opens up, to the year / month ("/2009/08") of the post?
Can you imagine the performance issues, if the Archives gadget were to open up an entire years worth of posts? Then there is the resulting sidebar length increase - causing main page length increase.
The archives list for this blog, for 2009/08. I'm not going to try to display the entire list for 2009.
Every Blogger feature has to have limits, to make the Blogger service usable by everybody.
Like the oft misunderstood auto pagination feature, Blogger features should display only so much, at one time. One display limit includes retrieval of content - and archiving is an important component in limiting content retrieval.
Some #Blogger blog owners would like to archive posts on a yearly basis, so they could open the Archives list for an entire year, at once.
Not all blog owners understand how the Archives display follows the post URL structure - which includes the year and month, to prevent URL duplication. Like auto pagination, monthly archiving limits mass content retrieval - and makes the Blogger service more useful, for everybody.
Among the many odd circumstances connected with the controversial Auto Pagination feature that was introduced a month ago, we see reports by a few bloggers of broken inlinks, caused by segmentation of archive and main pages. Most reports specifically mention broken SERP entries, which link to content that's now found in an archive or main page segment that's reached by one or more clicks of "Older Posts". The new and currently un indexed segments have URLs which differ from the SERP entries.
This effect is similar to a problem which I wrote about some time ago, which affect SERPs linking to main page content. Both the archive pages and the main page in a blog are more likely to be indexed by the search engines, because there is more content on these pages, and some content has already been indexed. Some posts, lacking inlinks completely, and depending upon the publishing frequency, may never be indexed except as archive or main page content.
In the case of the SERP entries affected by page segmentation, the potential reader may click on an interesting SERP entry which lands them on a page which contains only the later posts for the period, with the rest, including the content featured in the SERP entry just referenced, behind one or more "Older Posts" clicks. Finding no relevant content on the displayed page segment, the potential reader abandons this SERP entry, and moves on to the next in the retrieval page.
The bloggers with blogs subject to this treatment are naturally concerned about loss of potential readers, and cite this scenario to justify their demands that Auto Pagination be made optional; meaning that they want it turned off for their blog.
Fortunately for them, the broken inlinks are a temporary problem. Blogs that are properly publicised will be re indexed by the search engines, periodically. As the re indexing occurs, the content of the new page segments will be indexed, and will replace the current SERP entries. This effect is similar to the gradual re indexing of blogs re published under a different URL, for instance as part of publishing to a custom domain.
You can - and should - monitor the indexing of your blog, page segmentation or not. Here, the diagnostic reports provided in Google Webmaster Tools will be quite valuable.
The inaccuracy and latency, in indexing blog content, is an inherent problem with search engines in general. It's not a problem unique to Blogger blogs, and certainly not to the Auto Pagination feature in Blogger. It's simply a problem which we all have to live with.
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Setting up a web site is a lot of work.
Once you get past the process of actually setting up a web site, you have to write something.
If you want very many readers, you have to write a lot, frequently, and regularly. If you want your readers to return, they have to be able to find what you write. And need I say this - if you want readers to return over and over, what you publish has to be attractive and organised.
In other words, your web site has to have Content, Structure, and Good Appearance.
That's a lot of work, and you have to do it over and over. Can you say "Sisyphus"?
Content added == content that must be made accessible.
As you add content, you have to make the content accessible. As you make it accessible, you have to keep it organised and attractive. Add more content, and you have to make the relevant content accessible from content with a similar subject. And more content constantly requires you to make it pretty.
And hopefully, you have a private life. Or, what do you find to write about? How do you make enough time, to do everything? If your job / life doesn't revolve around web publishing, you simply can't.
The Internet is full of dead web sites, or web sites that should be dead. Web sites which are huge, and badly organised or ugly. Or very pretty web sites, that contain nothing useful. Many web sites started by folks who ran out of time, energy, or content.
A blog takes the drudgery away from web publishing, with dynamic content.
Enter Blogging. The initial blog setup is simple enough. You can find more advice in Blogger Help, or in dozens of other web sites.
Here, I'll just say - Start from the dashboard, select "Create a Blog", and follow instructions. That's a 5 minute, linear process. Then, learn how to get the URL of the blog, so you can pass it to your friends. Been there, done that.
What you do after the blog has been created - that's the fun part. Still, it's way less complicated, using Blogger One Button Publishing, than it was working with my one web site 10 years ago.
You can separate different tasks of web publishing into independent tasks.
Blogging, using a Blogger blog with a Layouts template, lets you separate Content, Structure, and Good Appearance, and make them independent tasks. You can work on each issue as you like, and when it suits your schedule. If multiple people work together on a blog, each person can be responsible for a different aspect of the blog.
The Content part, which is what you probably should spend the most time on initially, is the easiest to define. Write articles that contain information that's relevant to your reader's needs. Post each article, as written.
The blog Structure should be as important to you as Content. Structure lets your readers, having found your blog and read one or two posts, find other posts related to what they've just read. You need to group related posts, and separate unrelated posts. The blog structure starts with an Archives Index (an includable part of any Layouts template), which lists each post in the blog. The Archives Index is dynamic - as soon as you add a post, it's indexed. That's your base structure, and requires none of your time. Just write, and post.
As you continue, though, you can add more structure, both within the blog and outside it.
You give up some control, of infrastructure, to gain ability.
Note that, unless you setup a blog that's externally hosted, using FTP Publishing, you'll only have control over the data. With a blog hosted by Blogger / Google, you give up control over ease of setup. You pick a template, and you make posts. That's all that you do - you don't setup folders, or files - that's all up to the Blogger wizards.
If you have an external blog utility, like a Google Webmaster Tools, that requires blog ownership verification, you will need to install meta tags into the template, not named files into the blog root. You'll have no ability to install named files, or to make named folders in the blog structure.
The Good Appearance is one of the most fun aspects of Blogging. Every blog owner has his / her own favourite templates, which are built using Cascading Style Sheets. If your blog uses a Layouts template, you can republish the blog in seconds, giving it a new look, using the "Pick New Template" wizard.
You can add, configure, or reposition accessories (aka "gadgets") within the template, using the "Page Elements" wizard. You can change the colors and text using the "Fonts and Colors" wizard. And each change is separate from the others - you can change to a new template, and a totally different look, without affecting the widgets. Or, you can change the colors in the blog, without affecting the posts content or the template.
For the best blog, balance your attention to each task.
I'm not going to tell you which of these aspects are the most important - they all have equal importance. Just setup a blog, and work on the blog, as you like. Use enough balance in each aspect, and some work publicising the blog, and you'll have readers. Then, watch what readers you get, and adjust as necessary. And when you make changes, test the changes, immediately after you make them.
You may benefit from reading the Blogger Getting Started Guide, and the Official Blogger FAQ. And when you need help, read how to ask for advice intelligently, and how to learn from advice provided.
And from time to time, look at other blogs and see what they are doing - maybe you'll see a new feature occasionally. If you see a new feature that interests you, ask yourself how this new feature works. And when you see other blogs that interest you, you can peruse them from time to time, at your convenience.
And that's Blogging, in a nutshell. Now, follow the links - and read the other articles.
