Sunday 22 January 2017

How to Create a Homepage for Your Blogger Blog

Learn how to Replace Blogger’s default blog posts feed homepage with a professional and better organized homepage

How to create a professional homepage for your blogger blog via geniushowto.blogspot.com blogger help tutorials
Create a Professional homepage for your Blogspot blog
One of the biggest concerns of every blogspot blogger is how can they represent their content better and keep their readers engaged for longer. In the process of beautifying the site and finding new ways to keep their readers engaged, Bloggers often take help of new extensions, scripts and features resulting in a messy and overcrowded sidebar. While the blogger’s intention was to provide better content recommendations and user experience, all they did was slow down their blog’s loading speed with higher chance of visitor leaving their blog. Following their failure to provide better reading experience to their readers, the blogger soon starts looking for third party templates with awesome homepage features to better express their blog, but had they known that they too can create their own blog homepages, they would have never wasted their precious time behind useless engagement tactics which can be better represented with a blog homepage.

Are you ready to give your blog the appearance and popularity of a corporate blog with your very own brand inspired homepage that replaces your boring blog posts feed with a professional and organized homepage designed by you? Then let’s get started on how to create a homepage for your blogger blog.

Instructions to Follow:

  1. Creating a New Page for Blog’s Homepage

    To create a new homepage for your blogger blog, we will first need to create a new page which we can do so by going to the “Pages” option in the blogger dashboard. In the Pages section click the “New Page” option to compose your new homepage.

    Create a blog page for your blogger blog via geniushowto.blogspot.com how to create a homepage for your blogger blog -step 1- blogspot blogger tutorials
    Create a "New Page" for your custom blogger homepage
    In the HTML page editor name your page “Homepage” or whatever you like and compose the content to be displayed on your blog’s homepage (e.g. sliders, slogans, goals, services, email subscriptions, featured posts, recent posts, categories, etc.). Add a Meta description for the homepage and in the right hand side page settings disable comments and finally publish your homepage.

    Compose homepage for your blog and publish it via geniushowto.blogspot.com how to create a homepage for your blogger blog step 1.2 blogspot tutorials
    Compose homepage for your blog and publish it with the highlighted settings
    Use the “view” option for your homepage and make a note of the created URL. (e.g. /p/homepage.html)
  2. Redirecting the Blog’s old homepage to new Homepage

    Now that our blog’s new homepage is ready, all we need to do is redirect the visitors from blogger’s default homepage feed to our new homepage. To do so go to “Settings” option in blogger dashboard and under the “Search Preferences” menu, edit the “Custom Redirects”.

    creating permanent custom redirects to your blogger's new homepage via geniushowto.blogspot.com how to create homepage for blogger blog step 5
    Creating custom redirects to your blogger's new homepage
    In “Custom Redirects” click the “Edit” option to create a new redirect from blog’s current homepage (“/”) to blog’s new homepage URL (“/p/homepage.html”). Mark it as permanent redirect (✔) and save the redirect. Now your readers will be redirected to your blog’s new homepage.
    redirect your blog's post feed url to your  blog's new homepage url via geniushowto.blogspot.com how to create homepage for blogger blog step 2.2
    Permanently redirect your blog's post feed URL (/) to your  blog's new homepage URL (/p/homepage.html)
  3. Linking the Blog’s new Homepage and Index page to Blog’s Navigation

    Although we have created our blog’s new homepage, we have still not included it in our blog’s navigation tabs. To do so we will take the approach of corporate websites by including the homepage and index page of the blog in the navigation where the new homepage will become the landing page and the blog’s index page will become the website’s blog.

    add the pages gadget through blogger's layout menu via geniushowto.blogspot.com how to create a homepage for blogger blog step 3
    Add the pages gadget to the blogger's layout menu
    To link the homepage and blog’s index page, first a fall we will need to create menu navigation for our blog, to do so go to the “Layout” option in blogger dashboard and under the header section click the “Add a Gadget” option to open the Blogger’s gadget menu in a pop-up window.

    Link created homepage and your blog's index page in blogger's tab widget via geniushowto.blogspot.com how to create a homepage for blogger blog step 4
    Link created homepage and your blog's index page URL in blogger's tab widget
    In the blogger’s gadget menu scroll down to “Pages” widget and add it to your blog’s layout by clicking the plus/add sign. Upon clicking the “Pages” widget you will be redirected to “Configure Page List” where you need to untick the old “Home” option and tick the newly created homepage (✔). To include the blog’s index page click the “Add external link” option and save the opened pop-up with “/index.html” as your site’s Blog. This will add cool menu navigation to your customized new blogger blog.
    linking blog's index page and homepage in blogger's tab widget via geniushowto.blogspot.com blogger tutorials
    linking blog's index page and homepage to Blog's navigation tab
Following the above steps you will get a professional looking homepage for your Blogspot blog which will open new opportunities for both you and your readers as it will narrows down the clutter and make the blog more organized in terms of presentation and SEO. At the very least it is the best way to hide posts from your blogger homepage which is far better than using any unwanted scripts and third party templates.