Blog List

After providing thousands of gadgets to make your blogs beautiful, Blogger has changed the design of its Dashboard also. So, after you sign-in the Dashboard that appears looks as shown below :





Now, let us get to know how to add the basic gadgets from the Add a Gadget page to your blog. So, click on Layout to go to the Add and Arrange Page Elements page.










To Add a Blog List



1. Click on Add a Gadget.







The Add a Gadget window pops up






2. Click on Blog List.








The Configure Blog List window pops out

3. Title – will display the title of the blog list and not the title of the blogs that is to be included in the blog list. The default title is My Blog List. But, you can change it to anything more creative that you can think of, e.g. My Fav Blogs.

4. Sort – will display the blogs included in the list alphabetically by their titles or as the most recently updated blog list. The default is Most recently updated. Click on the drop-down menu to select Alphabetically by blog title.

5. Show – will display the full blog list or just 5, 10 or 25 while the rest are hidden. It’s better to display only 5 blogs if you have a long blog list and let your readers click on Show all if they want to see all the other blog titles on the blog list so that there is space to display other gadgets.

6. Icon – box is checked by default to display Blog icons before the blog titles in your blog list. Click to clear it if you do not want to display the icons.

7. Title of most recent item – is also selected by default and displays the title of the recent post – not the post from your blog, but from the blog that you have selected to include in your blog list – below the blog title in the blog list.

8. Snippet of most recent item – will display the first few words from the recent post from the blog listed in the blog list.

9. Date of last update – will display the number of days since the blog in the blog list was last updated.

10. Click on the Add a blog to your list link shown in the box.

The Add to your blog list dialogue box pops out

11. Type the blog address in the box provided.

12. Click Add.

13. For adding more blogs to the blog list, click Add To List button.

14. Repeat step 11 & 12.

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Blog Gadgets

In the week between this post and the last, Blogger has done something quite amazing. The page that pops up on clicking the Add a Page Element has been changed. Therefore, you will not see the page that is shown in the screenshot in the last post. You may ask what is so amazing about that. Well, let me tell you what the amazing part is. It has provided thousands of elements that you can add to your blog! Besides the 18 basic elements that were provided in the earlier Choose a New Page Element, there are thousands of elements – now called Gadgets – to choose from 12 different categories.

When you click the layout link on the Dashboard, the Add and Arrange Page Elements appears.



Here, instead of the Add a Page Element, you will see Add a Gadget written. But, the function is the same as it was for Add a Page Element. It allows you to add elements (gadgets) to your blog.




But, when you click on Add a Gadget, the page that pops up is entirely different. It not only has the earlier 18 elements provided in the basic category, but has thousands of gadgets in different categories also.


Click on each category to see how many gadgets it contains and which you would like to show off in your blog and make it more attractive. Check them out!

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Add a Page Element – Overview

Adding a new Page Element will require you to decide what you want to add. When you click on the Add a Page Element a new window opens up containing a list of elements that you can choose from to add to your blog.

Blog roll, Link list & List are similar and are for displaying a list.

Slideshow, Picture & Video Bar are also similar for displaying slides, photos or videos.

Subscription Links & Feed are similar. Subscription allows your readers to get the contents of your blog, whereas Feed allows you to get the contents from other blogs & websites and display them on your blog.

Newsreel allows you to get the current headlines from Google News.

Poll is for taking a survey to know the opinion of your readers on a particular topic or issue.

Logo is for displaying a nice Google logo on your blog.

If you wish to write something, then you should click on the TEXT button e.g. “Aside” in this blog.

If you wish to add a script, e.g. the script for Goose Seekers’ globe in this blog, then click on SCRIPT/HTML and type or paste the required script.

Label is for categorizing your posts under a certain category and is displayed so that your readers can find the topic of their interest easily.

Page Header, Archive and Profile were discussed in the last tutorials.

And, finally, the main element that you would be very eager to know about – Google’s Goose that lays golden eggs – Adsense!

Next post will provide the details for adding these elements to your blog.

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