Related Posts for Blogger

One of the many ways to engage your reader to your blog is by providing similar recipes to what they are experiencing now. It is a way of offering similar experience from a different perspective. Related posts widget does that job with ease. This widget identifies the categories of current post and provides other available posts from same category; not just from recent stories, but also from from your blog archive. Advantage includes the reduction of bounce rate as well as growth in traffic. Besides, it helps to improve SEO. This widget, designed with minimal coding, offers scalability overs its appearance and responsiveness.

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Recent Posts Widget for Blogger

As the name specifies, a recent posts widget displays the most up-to-date content of your blog. Unlike popular posts widget that displays most discussed blog posts or related posts widget that showcases posts fall into similar category, it displays a collection of recently published blog articles. Benefit of having such widget is it helps blog readers to find the latest post with minimum efforts. As well as it makes blog visitors to browse further from the landing page without leaving your blog, i.e. reduces blog bounce rate. Additionally one doesn't have to send an email every-time a post has been created, i.e. reduces dependency on email marketing. Unfortunately, blogger team does not provide such feature as pre-build widget; so one has to add this via some third party coding.

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Customize Popular Post Widget

'Recent Posts' or 'Popular Posts' widget is very essential widget for both personal and professional blogs. This widget gives information about your popular blog posts to your readers. So you should look after this widget very carefully. Also if you provide some style with this widget, your reader will be simply overwhelmed. By default blogger provides some styles for this widget but somehow those are obsolete and unprofessional. You are actually recommended to go through those styles for the first time. If you found those are not suitable for your blog, you can come back to this tutorial. I've written few posts about customization of this widget. You can also check those out in my blog in case you're interested. This tutorial will show you how to display popular posts in horizontally rather than vertically. Only problem is it requires larger horizontal space i.e. larger width of of your blog. So before you proceed, make sure you have enough room in your blog.

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Customize Popular Post Widget

'Recent Posts' or 'Popular Posts' widget is very essential widget for every blog. It displays your popular blog posts (based upon some analytic statistics) along with image, title and description (obviously these are optional). By default blogger provides some styles for this widget but somehow these are obsolete and unprofessional. I've written few posts about customization of this widget. This post is also one of those customization using css3 transition property. The main reason for using css instead of javascript or jQurey is that it requires less time for loading of DOM. Also css properties are very easy to understand as well as to implement. Hope you'll like it.

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Customize Popular Post Widget

'Recent Posts' or 'Popular Posts' widget displays your popular blog posts (based upon some analytic statistics) along with image, title and description (although these are optional). It is undoubtedly very essential widget for every blog. I've written quite a few posts about customization of this widget. This post is also one of those. Here some css3 properties like transition, transform, backface-visibility, transform-style etc. are used. You can also use css3 perspective property, but right now this property is not supported in all browser. The main reason for using css instead of javascript or jQurey is that it requires less time for DOM loading. Also css properties are very easy to understand as well as to implement. Hope you'll enjoy it.

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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.

Pages And Posts, Saved As Draft, Won't Be Visible

Some blog owners, when publishing a new page or post, really appreciate the "Preview" option in the page / post editor.

In some cases, some people may use "Preview" so instinctively, they may overlook the limitations. We see the confusion, occasionaly, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue.

Where is my page? There's no selection, under "Pages to show", even!

The blog owner does not realise that unpublished pages or posts won't be visible, outside the page / post editor, and the "Preview" window.

In some cases, the confusion is not apparent, until we view the Pages or Posts menu - and see the "Draft" caption, next to the missing pages or posts.

If you really want to view the page or post, outside the Preview window - maybe to check the links - you have to Publish. In most cases, you can just Publish, then modify / update as you continue.

If it's so important to see the page or post - and you do not want it to be visible to your readers - setup a test blog. Then, copy or edit the page or post in the test blog - and Publish at will.

Just don't be unduly alarmed, when you look at your blog - and don't see the page or post, before you Publish.

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Don't Try To Number Dynamic Pages

One interesting question, which we see occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger, would be about making the blog easier to read - if the blog were static.

How do I number the pages, in the blog?

This blog owner does not quite understand the concept of dynamic content.

With a static website, and each page linked linearly, one after the other, it might make sense to number the pages.

Blogger blog content is dynamic.

A Blogger blog has dynamic content. Each reader retrieves the posts, in reverse date sequence, in a number of contexts.

• In main page view, one page linked to the next - owner selectable maximum posts / page, auto paginated.
• In individual post view, one post linked to the next - one post / page.
• In an archive retrieval, one page linked to the next - a maximum of 20 posts / page, auto paginated.
• In a label search, one page linked to the next - a maximum of 20 posts / page, auto paginated.

Each label in the blog can generate a different label search, one search / label.

We say that the content is dynamic, because each of the above contexts use blog content, retrieved just when a reader clicks on a link.

Each time content is retrieved, for each reader, it will differ.

Each different retrieval will generate a series of physical pages of display, with a different combination of posts. Each retrieval will be paginated according to amount of content, by auto pagination.

If the posts are summarised using Jump Break, pagination will reflect the visible post content. With other "Read More" solutions, this may or may not be the case.

Dynamic indexes can use any combination of various dynamic accessories.

You can index the posts in a blog, using various dynamic sidebar gadgets.

• An archive index.
• A label index.
• Any number of linklists.
• Any number of feed gadgets.

Again, each index will be dynamic.For truly dynamic indexing, you can provide a single blog search - or a multiple blog search - or even a label combination search.

You can get installable gadgets, and custom templates, from various third party developers. Some gadgets and templates will let you setup an index (whether dynamic, or static), with page numbers. This will be third party code - and carries with it the risks of using third party code.

Non dynamic accessories require post template tweaks.

Non dynamic indexes generally install as code, inserted into the post template. The post template is not a blog component that should be tweaked, without understanding the risks.

Also, if you apply to host AdSense ads on the blog, you'll probably get a refusal, cited as "Difficult navigation". The AdSense crawler can't navigate JavaScript based links - and won't be able to analyse post content, to place ads.

The AdSense crawler can't navigate this blog, with numbered pages.



All of the above details affect how much content may appear on one physical page, and how many pages may be relevant to the retrieval. With these unknowns, it is not productive to identify each post - or set of posts - using page numbers.

How many index listings would you want to keep - especially considering that any one index could change, in the next minute, as a new post is published, or maybe a label is added to, or removed from, one or more posts?

Blogger content is dynamic. Treat it, dynamically.