One of the biggest issues with the Blogger Platform (and what ultimately caused me to jump ship over to Wordpress.org) is the inability to create ’static’ pages. My original Blogger web page is located here if you want to see what my first blog looked like. Notice the brown navigation bar at the top of the page with ‘the feed’, ‘about’, etc. (I did set up this feature I’ll describe below as well, including the second step, but as I was re-designing before I moved, I forgot to go back and add it back in, so it’s not shown here.)

The idea is, every time you write a new blog post, the blog get it’s own new web page, which is just fabulous if you are trying to get your blog indexed at all by search engines. But, what you cannot with Blogger do is create your own WHATEVER pages. Unlike a traditional website where you might have a ‘contact me’ page or a ‘my favorites page’, Blogger limits you to, well, blog posts.

Why, might you ask, would you want static pages?

The reason is simple: they help break down your web page into ‘chapters’ that make it easier for readers to follow your content. How many blogs have you seen (I know I’ve seen them) that go on and on and on down a single page? The reality is, people are not going to scroll much further than the ‘fold’ of your page. All that nice stuff at the bottom of your page (hopefully not your favorite post you’ve ever written) is not very likely to be seen if it’s buried under 5 minutes of scrolling.

The other reason you want static pages is, again, the holy grail of anything Internet related: search engines. Chances are, your page is not going to get indexed well at all, if you have 90% of your content on the front page crammed in among awards, icons, blinking lights and daisies. Search engines tend to ‘favor’ pages of a certain size. And, if all of your content is on one big page, and you tend to use the same keywords (generally a good thing), you could actually end up with too many keywords on one page and hurt your rankings.

The idea here: break your blog up a little. It makes it look better, it’s easier to read, and it makes Google happy, which isn’t that what life’s all about?

Okay, so how do you get around that? Instead of re-creating the wheel, I’m sharing so web pages of people who explain it very well. I used these pages myself when I was doing this on my own Blogger site.

The idea is a fairly simple workaround: First, you change your BLOG DATE settings slightly within Blogger, and then when you create a ‘page’ that you want to be appear ’static’ you back date the page to a far off date (i.e. 2006.) That way, the post doesn’t appear in your feed or any current blog settings.

The second step is a little more tricky, and not entirely necessary, as you are playing with coding. If you are comfortable with coding, backup your Blogger code first, and try out the next steps which essentially involve hiding any posts with a certain date from your blog archives. If you follow the steps exactly as listed, it should work. What this does is allow you to create your ’static’ pages but not have, for example if you backdate to 2006, a ‘2006′ section appear in your archives. This is not absolutely huge, it just again makes your page look better organized.

Keep in mind that even if you are able to get the backdating set up, you need to have chosen a theme that shows ‘tabs’ at the top or has a navigation bar of some type so you have a place to link your static pages. It won’t do you any good to go through all of these steps and make a nice static ‘About Me’ page if there’s not a place to link to it at the top of your page. So check our your theme first. You might actually need a new theme in order for this to work well.

Here are my recommended websites if you want to try this (and really, the first step is not that hard, just BACK UP your blog first!)

1.) http://technicallyeasy.net/2008/04/how-to-create-static-like-pages-in/ (this was the site I used. It’s well written, and he includes steps on how to complete the second step I described. Also, let me add, he responds to e-mail requests for help! Yes, you read that right. I had a comma or period or something out of place, one small thing, I e-mailed him and he sent back my entire page of code, FIXED. There’s some major blog love for someone who will do that for you.)

2.) http://www.bloggingtips.com/2008/04/28/creating-static-pages-with-blogger/ (I used this page as well when I was learning this process. Another page that explains the process in simple steps.)

Last thought? You might already have a theme that allows you to skip these steps. Some themes provide for built in ‘tabs’ or already have a navigation bar, waiting for you to add to it and create those ’static pages’. In those cases, you need to find the section of the code, usually found in the ‘header’ section of your code where the sample tabs are set up and add in your own tabs. I cannot say it enough: back up everything first, which is very simple with Blogger. If you have a theme that has pre-set tab, and you just need help setting them up, just post a comment here and we can probably get you going.

If you need help, have a question or tip, just use the comments section below!