Blogspot: How To Make Your Blogger Blog Look Like A Website By Adding Stand Alone Pages

Spruce up your Blogspot blog

If you want to spruce up your Blogspot blog and make it stand out from other Blogspot blogs try adding pages. Blogger has added a feature that allows you to add stand alone pages to your Blogspot blog. This creates page navigation across the top of your Blogspot blog or down the side of your blog. I recently published an article (Hub) showing how I used Blogger’s new “Pages” gadget to embed an Amazon aStore into a Blogger blog. Now, my Amazon aStore has the same appearance as the other pages on my blog. It has the same header, color scheme, etc. You can use the “Pages” gadget to create other kinds of pages also. For example you can have an “About Us” page, a “Contact Us” page, and a “Frequently Asked Questions” page, just to name a few. You can add up to 10 stand alone pages. Adding pages creates a clickable tab or sidebar link that takes you to a stand alone page which is still a part of your blog. It makes your Blogspot blog look more like a regular webpage than a blog. It does so even more if you remove some the things that are typical to a blog such as the blog archive, recent post and followers.

Blogspot Blogger

Step by step how to add Pages to Blogspot blog

The instructions I’m going to give are basically the same as the ones in my Hub about embedding an Amazon aStore in a Blogger blog, but this has different screenshots and is more tailored for this Hub. The steps are very easy. You’ll have your pages created in no time. Your Blogspot blog will be unique and look more like a website when you’re done. Without further ado, here are the steps to spruce up your Blogspot blog by adding pages. Click on screenshots for larger view.

Click "Add A Gadget".

Click "Pages".

Part 1 - Add a “Pages" gadget to your Bloggspot blog.

• Log in to your Blogger account.
• Go to your blog’s dashboard.
• Click “Layout”.
• Under “Page elements” Click the blue “Add a gadget” link located between the header and the blog post elements.

• This will bring up the “Add a Gadget" pop-up window. Click on "Pages".

Click "Save" on configure page list pop-up.

The Pages gadget will appear between header and blog post elements.

• This will bring up the “Configuration Page List” window.
• Look over the options, make any changes you need to, then click the “Save” button.
• You will now notice the “Page” element located between the header and the blog post elements.
• Click “view your blog” to see how your blog looks.

"Home" link will appear across top of your Blogspot blog.

• You should have a “Home” link or tab located under your Blogger blog’s header.

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Click on "Create a Page".

Type in title & content for your page.

Part 2 - Add a stand alone page to your Blogspot blog.

• Go to your blog’s dashboard.
• Click “Edit Posts".
• Click “Edit Pages”.
• Click “Create a Page”.
• Type in a title for your page title.
• Type or paste in content for your new page. To use HTML, click on “Edit HTML” tab.
• Click “Publish Page”.Click “View Page”.

Your new page will be next to "Home" link.

Clicking your new page link will bring up your new page.

Success!

You should see your page under your Blogspot blog’s navigation bar and see the page title you gave it. Clicking “Home” should take you to the front page of your Blogspot blog.
Clicking your new page title should take you back to your newly created page.

Want more pages? Add them under "Edit Pages".

Once you add the "Pages" gadget as shown in step 1, you can add up to 10 pages. To add more go to the "Posting" tab, click "Edit Pages", and click the blue button that says "New Page". Then just add your content and click the "Publish Page" button.
Note: I have successfully added the "Pages" gadget to some customize templates that I downloaded from the web. It works with them too. However, if your customized templates has a link bar, you probably won't need to add the "Pages" gadget.

You can move Pages navigation to sidebar.

This is how the Pages sidebar looks.

If you want your navigation in the sidebar, move it there.

If you want your pages navigation bar on the side column instead of across the top of your page, you can move it. All you have to do is click the “Layout" tab and “Page elements". Then just click and drag the “Pages” gadget to the sidebar.
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