Apr 11, 2008 | 
37 Comments | 
For many blog authors, Wordpress is the management system of choice. It provides the most flexibility and options for managing blogs. For those that are not using Wordpress, Blogger is a good, free option. Blogger, however, is not nearly as flexible to use as Wordpress. There are fewer options and templates for that system. The one drawback of using Blogger is the inability of uploading, and using static HTML pages.
There is a simple workaround that you can use to create pages in your Blogger blog that will mimic static pages. I will discuss how to create and use those pages in this post.
Creating Posts as Static Pages
The only option, at the time of this post, to creating static HTML pages in a Blogger blog is by using posts. Now you can easily create an HTML page on another server and then link to it from your blog, but it is much easier to use posts as they will include your template.
When creating the static pages, there are a few things that I would like to point out:
- The static pages should not appear in your RSS feeds to your subscribers. They will not be used as posts, so they shouldn’t be included.
- The date published shouldn’t be included.
- Comments for the page aren’t needed.
I will now show you how to accomplish the above points easily within Blogger. We will be creating a post that will act like a static page on your Blogger blog.
- Start a new post in Blogger.
- Enter the information that you would like displayed on the page in the Blogger editor.
- Once you have entered the content, click the Post Options link.
- Now we will satisfy two of the points above. Below Reader Comments select the Don’t allow option to disable the comments for the page.
- Below Post date and time, enter a date that occurs in the past. For my pages I use June 23, 2007 since that is the first day of Technically Easy. This should prevent the post from being sent to your subscribers as an update.
- When everything is ready to be published, click the Publish Post button.
Now we have a new post that has a past date and doesn’t allow comments. The next steps will prevent the post date from being displayed.
- Click the Layout tab to display your blog’s layout.
- Click the Edit HTML link to display the layout in HTML.
- Check the Expand Widget Templates checkbox to display the Blogger code for each widget.
- Search for the location where the post date is displayed. For blogs that use version 2, search for <data:post.dateHeader/>.
- Before that line include the following:
<b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'>
- After the post date line include:
</b:if>
This tells Blogger to only display the post date if comments are allowed for the post. Since we disabled comments, the post date won’t be displayed.
Now load up the new page to see if it is displayed as you would like. You can now link to that page from anywhere on your blog, or another Web site.
If you would like to allow comments on your static page, and would also like to prevent the static pages from appearing in the archives, check out Creating Static Pages in Blogger - Part 2.
Summary
Blogger doesn’t have the ability to add static HTML pages to your blog. To mimic static HTML pages, you can simply create a past-dated post and link to it as if it were a static HTML page. This post also showed how you can prevent the post date from being displayed to make it look even more like a static page instead of a post.
Related Posts
Creating Static Pages in Blogger - Part 2
Grouping Posts By Categories in Blogger
Blog Designing Tips for New Bloggers
What to Avoid When Designing Web Sites
37 Responses to “How to Create Static-Like Pages in Blogger”:
Leave a Reply
Sponsors
Wow. That was a great post!
Thanks. I believe that this is one of the easier ways (that i found) to create a static page.
You are my hero;-) That's the best & easier way to create static-like page in Blogger i found! And what's the most importent, with this 'hack' you can hide everything you want! labels, author, even hole post footer lines…
Big thanks!
This is a truly awesome, simple and effective hack for removing the date on static pages. Thanks for the insight — it’s made Shirts on Sale look that much better.
THIS IS amazing! The only downside is to be seen on my website. As you can see the middle text is not in sync anymore with the text on the sidebars as it should be and can be seen on my guestbook. This is another downside…The Guestbook should not have a date as it is static…, BUT should allow comments.
Is there a possibility to create an empty line whenever comments are not allowed to correct issue 1 as mentioned above??????
actually re above…I did not think..I guess I can just add an empty line myself on all the static pages…so the only issue remains my Guestbook but that I can live with. GREAT!
@John: You can try my other method of creating static pages. You can read it at: http://technicallyeasy.net/2008/07/creating-static-pages-in-blogger-part-2/.
I will include a link to it at the end of this post.
[...] How to Create Static-Like Pages in Blogger How to Create a Development Blog in Blogger Blog Designing Tops for New Bloggers Share and Enjoy: [...]
Paul, this does not work in one of the most popular templates as “” does not exist in here.
http://www.eblogtemplates.com/ads-theme-blogger/
I just hope we can get this to work.
Thanks, John
(data:post.dateHeader/)
I tried all here to hide my static page post,but still it says
Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly.
XML error message: Open quote is expected for attribute “{1}” associated with an element type “cond”.
please help
@Gen: Check your if statement to ensure you have closed all of your quotes. If you would like me to have a look, then just send me your template, in an e-mail.
To fix this problem, add this to the HTML:
NOT THIS:
Hi Guys and @Gen,
The reason you are getting this error:
“Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly. XML error message: Open quote is expected for attribute “{1}” associated with an element type “cond”.”
Note in the line provided by Paul:
The QUOTES if copied from his article are Italicised - delete / overwrite them with regular quote:
Very Subtle, but I hope you see the difference. Blogger cannot interpret Pauls italicised quote.
Cheers
Aidan
UPPPZ - 2ND ATTEMPT:
Hi Guys and @Gen,
The reason you are getting this error:
“Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly. XML error message: Open quote is expected for attribute “{1}” associated with an element type “cond”.”
Note in the line provided by Paul:
’data : post.allowComments’
The QUOTES if copied from his article are Italicised - delete / overwrite them with regular quote:
‘data : post.allowComments’
Very Subtle, but I hope you see the difference. Blogger cannot interpret Pauls italicised quote.
Cheers
Aidan
That did not work out as good either
In your HTML Template editor inside blogger just delete the single quotes and re add them again, they should look straight up not italicised. My last two posts cannot show this due to how pauls blog template is interpreting a single quote, whatever font is being used here for posts / comments is italicising the single quote.
Sorry for multiple posts Paul, delete my first one anyway
Cheers
Aidan
Thanks Aidan. I have changed the quotes in the code above, so hopefully it will copy better.
Hi,
This is exactly what I need to do - just a static spot for the a required privacy policy, but I’m wondering if something has changed on Blogger in the last couple of months? When I put in the code absolutely nothing changed. It rendered without errors, but exactly as before. I tried commenting out the original line with the same effect so maybe I’m looking in the wrong section entirely but this was the only spot where data:post.dateHeader/ exists. Original code section below… Any tips would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Juliet
I tried using the code, with the at the end of the line but keep getting an error message that the XML statement must be closed. But no matter where I put the suggested code to close the b:if statement, I get the same message over and over. Can you help me solve this?
Thanks.
When you copy the code into your template the single-quotes may not be copied correctly. Replace all the single-quotes in the code after you pasted it into your template. This may correct the problem.
I’ll try changing the font in my blog to fix the single-quote issue.
Hi, i have tried deleting the single quotes and re-add them, but the same error exists. Hope you could help me. Thanks.
Can you send me your template and I’ll have a look?
Hi Paul, how can I send you the template? I don’t know your email. Thanks for the help.
You can find my e-mail from the “About” page (link in top nav bar). It is listed under the “Contact Me” section down the page.
Hi Paul, did you receive my email of the template? I was not sure if I get your email right. Hope you did receive it.
I received the e-mail and I will have a look today.
hi Paul!
i to do what you said but after i click on the link of the static page, blogger says that this page does not exist. why is that?
in my tempate the navbar is linkced to external sites. can it be the reason it does not recognize the link from inside the blog?
thanks,
sefi
Try the following:
From your Blogger dashboard, click the New Post button.
When the blank post editor is displayed, click the Edit Post link from the navbar at the top.
When you see your posts, click the View link beside the post you want to link in your navbar.
Copy the URL in the address bar and then paste it into your HTML.
I currently use WordPress as my main blogging platform, but I am thinking of launching a blog with the Blogger platform. I think it will be good experience to widen my niche, and cover Blogger SEO and not just WordPress SEO.
It is interesting to find out some of the differences between WordPress and Blogger for SEO and for making themes for Blogger.
I’d be interested in Blogger SEO as I still have a Blogger blog. While Blogger isn’t has editable as a Wordpress blog, I’m sure SEO can still be done on a Blogger blog.
Paul, I will start next week and setup a blogger blog, design a few themes. Then, I will start working on some SEO, starting with on-page SEO factors. I will then ad a new category to the Spunky Jones Blog for the Blogger platform and start adding information. That is my plan that I currently have. Can you refer some blogs which use the Blogger platform that have good good content, search engine rankings, Alexa rankings, Pagerank? It would be helpful to me and save me some time finding them. Thanks.
The blogs I usually visit use Wordpress, although I’ll see if I can find some Blogger blogs. You’ll probably have as much luck as I will.
Hi,
How to hide the post on the archive widget ?
Thanks
I don’t think there is a way to hide a post on the archive widget. If there is, I’d like to know as well.
Hello.
thanks for your post here.
I manage to follow your step here but I’m lost at number 6 step.
What is ‘after post date line’ means? I can’t find it anywhere
The post date line contains “data:post.dateHeader”. This command displays the date of the current post.
ok, thanks again