Change A Post To Draft, To Change The Post URL

Long ago, a renamed blog post would automatically receive a new URL, to match a change in date or title.

Blog owners would happily rename posts - and see a new URL, with no problem. Those blog owners who monitored search engine activity, however, later became concerned by the "404"s, shown in the search engine activity logs, in Webmaster Tools - or from various test searches.

Blogger later gave us dashboard and post editor options, to let us intentionally change a post URL, when necessary - and stopped allowing incidental changes to the date or URL, when editing post content.

Settings - Search preferences has the "Custom Page Not Found" and "Custom Redirects" wizards, for dealing with existing posts with changed URLs - and the Post Editor "Post settings" has the "Permalink" wizard, to change URLs of new posts.

This gives blog owners the ability to Edit and Publish posts, and to adjust URLs, independently - and makes it harder for owners to accidentally generate "404"s with existing posts.

You can change a post to Draft status, to change the date or URL.

Recently, people discovered that changing a Published post, to Draft status, would reset a post. A Published post, changed to Draft, and later Published again, would act as a new post would have, when Published.

Blog owners wishing to change the URL of an existing post would change a post back to Draft status, change the Date and / or Title, then Republish - and the post would have a new URL to match the new Date / Title.

This worked great - for owners intentionally wanting a new URL for their renamed posts.

You can also publish a post to Draft, to re use the URL of that post.

If you delete a post, then publish a new post with that same title, you will get a post with a URL containing a duplication prevention suffix - because deletion of a post does not let you re use a URL. If you publish a post to Draft, that resets the URL - and lets you publish a new post to that same URL.

Saving a post as Draft, to edit, can allow URL change - and cause broken links.

Some blog owners use Draft status, for previously Published posts, differently

You can take a published post offline, as a Draft post - then change the Title, and various other settings. This will not change the URL - unless you also change the Permalink, before you Publish.

If you do change the URL, be mindful of the links that may refer to the old URL.

If you want the URL to change, you will have to change the permalink.

While the post is in Draft status, find "Permalink" in "Post settings", in the right sidebar of post editor. Select "Custom Permalink", and change the title section of the post URL. Then select "Done".

Note you will only be able to change the title section of the permalink. You can't change the year, month, or extension ("html") any more.

If I wanted to, I could rename this post, when in Draft status.

Change Posts To Draft, To Change The Post URLs

I could change the post URL, to match.

change-posts-to-draft-to-change-post-urls

The most obvious change that I could get, then would be

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2015/01/change-posts-to-draft-to-change-post-urls.html

Fix broken links, by adding a custom redirect.

We can use the same tools to correct mistakes, as we can to make changes.

If you change the URL - and cause broken links, and / or "404" entries in Search Console / Webmaster Tools, when re Publishing a Draft post, just add a Custom redirect from the old URL, to the new URL. One new redirect takes but a few seconds to add - and will keep your readers, the search engines, and you happier.

Change The Sequence Of Your Posts

If there's one question, seen occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger?, that confounds me, its a simple one.

How do I change the order of my posts?

or

Why does my blog display the newest post first? Where is the option, to change to oldest post first?

It is very difficult to respond both correctly, and helpfully, to both questions, equally well.

Blogger does not provide a dashboard setting, to change the post display sequence. Post sequence is only changed, by altering the date and time of the posts.

Long ago, changing the post sequence was simple.

Change the date and time of each post.

You could use the Schedule wizard in Post Editor "Post settings", select "Set date and time", and change each post, to whatever value you require. Each changed post would have a new URL - and would display according to the new URL.

To prevent various problems, caused by uncontrolled date / time changes, Blogger later changed the post editor. Now, once a post is published, you can't back date the post date or time.

The key word there is "published". You can't back date a published post - but you can re publish a post, by saving it as Draft. Just un publish each post as Draft - then use "Set date and time", back date, and Publish again.

You can back date as far as 1970. If you need the blog to display dates preceding 1970, you'll have to use "fake" dates, as you back date.

You can use the Posts menu to set up to 50 posts, in one step, as Draft. You will have to use Post Editor, one post at a time, to back date and re publish, however. This will be some tedium, for you.

Now, be careful here! If you resequence the posts after they have been indexed by the search engines - and if the resequencing involves URL changes - you're going to have "404"s from broken links. This is going to hurt reader and search engine reputation.

If your resequencing involves URL changes - and you care about the reputation of the blog - plan to add a custom redirect, for each post that gets a new URL, pointing from the old URL to the new URL. And this will be more tedium, for you.

But at least there is an answer to

Where is the option, to change to oldest post first?

The answer simply involves some repetitive work, on your part.

Change Per Post Comment Settings, One Post At A Time

Occasionally, we have a blog owner trying to enable commenting, on a blog - and being unsuccessful diagnosing commenting problems.

Checking the per blog comment settings, in the the dashboard menu under Settings - Posts and comments, there's no obvious problem. The problem, in some cases, is in the per post settings, in the Post Editor "Post settings - Options" wizard - but not all posts will have a problem.

The "Reader comments" setting, for any new post, is taken from the setting for the previously published post. If you publish a post today, with "Reader comments" selected as "Don't allow", the next post will also be set to "Don't allow" - unless you change the setting, before publishing. Similarly, if it's set to "Allow", the next post published will have it set to "Allow".

• Allow
• Don't allow

That's the choices, for each new post.

If the setting for any post is wrong, according to your policy, it's up to you to change the setting, for that post.

Since the per post setting overrides the per blog setting, any existing posts, with the setting "Don't allow", will not allow comments. To change this, you have to edit each post, one by one, and change the setting.

If the setting is "Allow", and you want to disable comments, you have to change the per post setting, one post at a time. Again, any new posts will then have the setting "Don't allow" - but any existing posts will have to be changed, one post at a time.





If you occasionally disable comments, check this setting before you publish a new post - and make sure that comments are enabled, when appropriate.



If you backdate a post, and publish it before any previously published posts, the setting for the previously published posts won't change. If this creates a range of posts, with inconsistent settings - some allowing comments, the others not allowing comments - you'll still have to change the setting as you wish, for each post, one by one.

If the setting for a post is currently "Allow", and a post has comments, you'll have 3 options for that post.

• Allow
• Don't allow, show existing
• Don't allow, hide existing

That's the choices, for each post with comments.

If you're in the habit of changing the comment setting for various posts, you'll want to check the setting, for each new post - and make sure that it's appropriate. Better that, then to have to change a whole bunch of posts, one by one, later.

The Post Editor And HTML Special Characters

Most web pages that you will view on the Internet are written in HTML.

HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language, was designed long ago to enhance simple text, giving it ability to display more than simple letters, numbers, special characters, etc. What you're looking at is mostly simple text. Here, on the other hand, is an example of bold text. And here, italicised text. And here, red text. Are you interested yet?

Here's how I coded the above paragraph in HTML:

Most web pages that you will view on the Internet are written in HTML.<br /><br />HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language, was designed long ago to enhance simple text, giving it characteristics beyond simple letters, numbers, special characters, etc. What you're looking at is mostly simple text. Here, on the other hand, is an example of <span style="font-weight:bold;">bold text</span>. And here, <span style="font-style:italic;">italicised text</span>. And here, <span style="color:rgb(255,0,0);" >red text</span>. Interested yet?

The above paragraph was translated, from the introductory paragraph at the top, by Postable, a web based utility.

You can use Postable, other similar utilities, or Notepad, and convert your HTML to displayable text. When you compose a post, in "HTML" mode, there are several special characters, that you can't enter as simple text.

• The quote symbol " which must be entered as "&quot;", or "&#34;".
• The apostrophe ' which must be entered as "&apos;" (If you are reading this in Internet Explorer, you may not see this properly!), or "&#39;".
• The ampersand & which must be entered as "&amp;", or "&#38;".
• The less than sign < which must be entered as "&lt;", or "&#60;".
• The greater than sign > which must be entered as "&gt;", or "&#62;".

When you display HTML code in your posts, you'll have to translate each of these characters as in the above examples - or using the corresponding ASCII numeric codes - if you want your code to be selectively readable as code, in a post.

If you want the entire post to display all special characters as code, you can use the Post Editor "Post settings" feature - Options - "Compose mode", and select "Interpret typed HTML". This lets you display a block of code without requiring special character translation, as above - though it prevents you from using formatting in the post, in HTML mode.

To display "&quot;", "&apos;", "&amp;", "&lt;", or "&gt;", you enter "&amp;quot;", "&amp;apos;", "&amp;amp;", "&amp;lt;", or "&amp;gt;", respectively.

I'll let you figure out how to display "&amp;quot;" "&amp;apos;", "&amp;amp;", "&amp;lt;", or "&amp;gt;".

Now that the post editor in New Blogger June/July 2008 is part of Production Blogger, you can, optionally, display HTML routinely, by a selection in the Post Editor "Post settings". Or, you can still enter special characters in HTML.