How to not show any posts on your blog's home page, using Blogger

You can set your blog up so that no posts are shown on the main screen - provided you have used some of the other "home page" approaches to give readers other ways of getting to your content.

Previously I've explained how to only show one post on the main page of your blog.

But some people who want to give their blog a home page go further than that, and don't show any posts on the main screen at all.   (Remember, the main screen is where people who navigate to your blog, rather than to posts within it, go.)

This sounds like a strange thing to do - after all, blogs are about posts.

But actually it's fine, provided you use some other tools to let readers move around the blog.  I've made a 150+ page blog this way, and it works very nicely because I have organised the information and used some index-pages (containing lists of bus-routes, suburbs, maps etc) with tables that link to many other posts.

How to show no (ie zero, 0) posts on the main screen

Some people want to do this, as part of the process of giving their blog a home page.  It's not possible if your blog has a Dynamic thene, but can be done for blogs with Layout themes.

There are at least two ways of doing it.

Option 1 - use a custom re-direct for your home-page

Make a new Page (Pages > New Page) and add the material which you want to show on your main screen.    Publish this page.

Take a note of the URL of the Page that you use created.

Go to Settings > Search preferences > Errors and re-directions . Custom re-directs

Click Edit then New re-direct

In the dialog box which opens:

• Enter a back-slash (ie   /  )into the first (From) box.

• Enter the URL of the page that you noted earlier into the second (To) box
• In the To box, remove the blog-address, because Blogger already adds that for you.
  Eg if your URL is     http:/www.myBlog.com/p/home.html
  then just enter           /p/home.html
  
  (note that you keep the backslash (/) just before the P.

Click the Permanent checkbox.

Click Save just under the entry you just made - it now looks like this:

Click Save changes.

Job Done!   Anyone who goes to your blog's home page will now go automatically to the alternative page you made - and the effect is that no posts are shown on the home page.

Option 2 - use the Posts and Comments setting

Choose the Settings > Posts and Comments panel from the left sidebar.

Enter zero (0) into the Show at most field

Click Save Settings in the top right hand corner of the screen.

About this method

The method in Option 2 works:   no posts are shown on your home page.

But by default, nothting else is shown, either.    Unless you take steps to avoid it, your readers will see a grey box saying "0 Posts" when they look at your blog's main URL.   

Some of the things you can do to avoid this include hiding the "showing posts with label XXX" message, and creating a gadget that only shows on the "home" page.

Recommended option

The custom re-direct option is probably the best approach - and is certainly what I've used for my blogs recently:   it's clean, and doesn't need any special messing around with gadgets etc to put content onto the "home" page.

But there may be cases where the second option is better - and I have recently confirmed that it still works.

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Related Articles

Limiting your blog to only have one post on the main page

Giving your blog a home page

What are dynamic view themes?

Blogger theme types
.
Using tables in your blog

Displaying a gadget only on the home page

Growth of Ecommerce industry in India - An Insight

How instantly we make our mind to buy certain products online which is giving the highest discount? We, do without second thought. Isn’t it? Considering the shift from traditional shopping to online one, the craze these days for online shoppers is more towards searching for the products with the highest tag of associated cashback offers, discounts and deals. Why not, when the users are enjoying this new found way of possibly saving a lot of their money with every single shopping they do.

So, how ecommerce industry is able to register growth of roughly 35% every year?

There are so many offers and deals waiting for you to grab them that you literally want to shop the entire list. I mean, they are too enticing to be refused and this is a thing, which creates quite a marketing mechanism for companies whose modes of profit results from "mass sales".

Online industry has bridged the gap by creating an affordable mechanism for buyers to go for branded products

If I can say about myself, I was quite poor at bargaining during the days of traditional shopping. However, the glorifying journey which online shopping has offered seems to help me save a lot. Even the branded products which were very expensive, perhaps an impossible thing for middle class people like me, has now turned to be so cost effective after available promocode discount bash.

Considering the digitalized world we are heading, where all of us have smartphones to book anything from the comfort of our home be it railways or movie tickets, order food etc. Online shopping has actually fulfilled the expectations of masses where they don't have to take out time from their busy schedule.

One can shop at any time, it is so easy that even older generations who have never been so aware about the smartphone’s functioning, can be seen booking products with ease and are paying cash on delivery.

Rural areas are not de-attached from online industry

So, the usual misconception of how Indians by and large take it forward has ended a long time back and since many years, the online industry is only growing in leaps and bounds. Yes, this growth couldn’t have been possible without the love and support of people even from rural areas who are now actively seen purchasing products.

There are hot deals for specific time which may end in few hours. Then they are deals on weekends and likewise, lots and lots of offers continuously displaying with them.

Final words

Now, the biggest drawback which one used to face towards the last days of month due to mis-management of money will end once and for all. Yes, you will be in a budget. According to a saying, "money saved is money earned". So, your earnings will indirectly improve with all the savings in store for you. We, Indians are traditionally known towards making ways to save money and this new shift (which is also seeing a continuous rise) will continue to create smiles on the faces of Indians for ages to come.

Author Bio:

I am Jessica, a blogger, passionate about writing articles related to travel, Fashion, Health and technology. Apart from writing blogs, I love to explore the world by visiting different places and share my experiences with people. Now I am working for an e-commerce website that provides Amazon, Jabong, latest Myntra, paytm, freecharge, eBay coupons and many more hot deals.

How to get a valid URL for a picture in Google Photos

This article explains the problems with getting valid, SEO-friendly links to images that are in Google Photos - and shows a way of doing this using Google products.  

Previously I've explained how to get a URL for a picture stored in Google Photos - and the difference between Photo's "shareable links" and real photo URLs.

The sort of link you get with this procedure looks like this:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRMHdvKXlpSCxh3J_mlldObX5TfDPyqyiF3siOV1OZMh_wWi74Hq_TjigDfg6SFS1810DEIL4L6haFBZUdeMO6pBVz3bBl25yaDboyd-pNcGHhUvIcWxOyvtCgvWJQ0EcChIqo7qFrRksA/w1006-h566-no/

There are some issues with using URLs (aka web-addresses) obtained like this:

• They aren't recognised as valid image file links by many online tools which ask for the URL for an image (eg phpBB, Blogger - and many others)

• Sometimes they stop working
  (I've not been able to track down exactly when, but there are reports around the internet from people who say that links like this work for a while and then stop).

• They don't include the SEO-targeted keywords which you carefully used to name the photograph file before uploading it to Google Photos.  
  (Not everyone does this, and it's a lot harder for photos that were taken on your phone.   But some people do it, and to them not having the keywords in the photo URL is a big deal.)

Luckily, there is a way around these problems, which gives you a web-address for a picture stored in Google Photos that ends with the same file extension which you uploaded to Photos  (eg .jpg, .png  .bmp), and which includes the keywords which you used in the file name.

How to get a valid URL / web-address for a picture in Google Photos, using Blogger

1    If you haven't done so already, then upload the photo to Google Photos, in whatever way you usually would  (if you have your smartphone synched with your Google account, you may not even notice uploading it).

2    In Google Photos, find the photo and put it into an album.  
(It doesn't matter which album you use - and  you can delete the album again later, you just need the photo to be in an album for now, and you need to remember which album this is).

3    Using a desktop or laptop computer (ie not your phone), go to Blogger

• If you've never used Blogger before, you may be asked to accept the terms and conditions.   Just say "yes" to this   (you are't actually going to use Blogger to publish anything).

• If you don't already have a blog, the click the Create a blog link, and follow the steps to create one.
  (You won't be publishing this blog, so it doesn't really matter what name you give it or what template you use - just pick anything that's available.   )

• Or if you do have one or more blogs, just pick one (any one is OK: you're not actually going to publish to it) and go into the Blogger Dashboard.

4    Click New Post

This opens up the post editor.  

5   In the tool-bar at the top of the post editor window, click the Insert image icon.

6   Choose the From the Google Album Archive tab.
(Google have changed the name for this a couple of times since they introduced the feature - right now it says exactly what I've listed here - the name may vary, but you get the idea:   choose your Google Albums).

7   Navigate to the album that you put the picture into, in step two.   Open it, and find the picture, and select it.

8    Choose Ok.  

9     Wait a moment while the image is placed into your blog-post, and automatically resized.   

10    Click on the Edit HTML tab (currently at the top left side of the post-editor) to go into Edit HTML mode.     You will see HTML code like this.

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_iGHTOqK9CKaKPdLGxmQlOlRUBo14GGyKGldX9pCfoq5XqrDjcjimMoGdi2YrvMnTeqs55pTzgXEwntH5itbPX1SVOPEz5NEmDGl-3SNc92pEPn57qxBoPqpqGgZlSYmVOqfwTIgv0hM/s1600/tarmacadam-promenade-sunny-september-day.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_iGHTOqK9CKaKPdLGxmQlOlRUBo14GGyKGldX9pCfoq5XqrDjcjimMoGdi2YrvMnTeqs55pTzgXEwntH5itbPX1SVOPEz5NEmDGl-3SNc92pEPn57qxBoPqpqGgZlSYmVOqfwTIgv0hM/s320/tarmacadam-promenade-sunny-september-day.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>

Or like this, if you didn't give the image a better filename before uploading it:

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbl3axFbu9zqjAgKSGfRUesjSvbW_kfjzGOwpYCpQPmD1VeTeRlnu_hHQTiua_anzZe7t6KYXWrneI7cKxJfICdgvo0ARChee7TTC_zlSDM7fXU0fTbfe5Pprk3ndAYOfOdXuUFSbTMWM/s1600/DSC_3573.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbl3axFbu9zqjAgKSGfRUesjSvbW_kfjzGOwpYCpQPmD1VeTeRlnu_hHQTiua_anzZe7t6KYXWrneI7cKxJfICdgvo0ARChee7TTC_zlSDM7fXU0fTbfe5Pprk3ndAYOfOdXuUFSbTMWM/s320/disc0137.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>

11   Find the part which starts   src="     and ends with a closing quote-mark.      This is the URL for the picture you chose.   In the example above, it's the part in bold-red

12    Select and copy the text between the two quote marks after src=    ie   the equivalent to the piece of code shown in red.

Job done!     A general-purpose, valid, well-formed, web-address for the picture you want is now in your computer's memory, and can be pasted into anyplace where you want to use it.

To get out of Blogger, click Close (near the top right of the screen), and agree to leave the page anyway even though it means you will lose your work.

Troubleshooting / Extra for experts

Finding the image code in your post

If there is other material in the post that you are using, then you may want to put some marker text before and after the photo while you are still in Compose mode, to make it easier to find the right  part when you are in Edit HTML mode.

Getting a valid link to someone else's photo

You may want to find a valid URL for a photo that someone else has shared with you - but of course you cannot add this to one of your own albums.   In this case, the solution is to download a copy of the photo which was shared, then upload it to your own Google Photos.

Using the blog you've made for other things

Maybe using Blogger like this has given you ideas about other things you can use it for:   that's great, Blogger is an excellent tool for publishing material on the internet with a minimum of fuss - while also having enough features to let you do some sophisitcated things.   And even just the post editor can be a handy HTML generator at times.   You might like to read Getting Started with Blogger, for some tips about how to set up your Google account and very first blog.

Other challenges?

Do you have any questions around this approach, and how to solve problems with it?   Please a message in the Comments box at the bottom of the page, and I'll see if I can find a solution.

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Related Articles

How to get an URL for a picture stored in Google Photos - version 1

Using marker text to find things in your post's HTML code

Things to consider before starting to use Blogger

Using Blogger's post-editor as an HTML generator