How to create a blog in a real website

Credit: Web development services

This article explains how you can use Blogger to create a site that looks just like any other website and why you sometimes want to.

Blogs versus websites

Some people are very happy to use Blogger to create a blog, that is, a website that looks like a diary or diary in which they regularly write.

But others are not. So a very common question is "how can I turn my blog into a real website, just like" someone "did it on" this website "?

This is not easy to answer: not everyone means the same as saying "real website". "Someone" may have just changed the background image, installed a third-party theme, changed some settings, or re-written the entire Blogger theme file! They may have just made the blog more professional than the basic themes - or maybe they have removed all 'blog' features so that the site resembles an ordinary brochure website.

The bottom-line is that even without changes a blog is a "real website" because it has:

A url (www.your-blog-name.blogspot.com)

An internet space dedicated to it. (For Blogger users, that space is within Google's servers - we do not have to pay for our own hosting).

Web pages created in HTML that visitors can view using a web browser (eg Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc.)

And there are a number of sites that are not at all ashamed to look like blogs, for example:

www.IkeaHackers.net/ - a site for sharing smart ways to reuse set-set furniture

www.DarkRoastedBlend.com - a site about coffee - notice that their About-page is actually only a post from 2005!

www.HowAboutOrange.blogspot.com - a very stylish craft website

www.RUStling.org - a site with all the songs in a large folk-songbook

www.TableQuizHelper.com - a site with templates, etc. pub quiz organizers

http://www.trendmatcher.nl/ - a Dutch site about technology trends

http://blog.chrisrowbury.com - a site with advice for choir leaders, who very elegantly uses the Simple template (so much so that I initially assumed that it was made with Wordpress).

This Blogger Buster article lists 100 others - and I'm sure there are many popular non-English sites that look like blogs.

But there are many other sites where some or all Blogger features are hidden, for example

www.GalwayTransport.info - a site for local public transport

www.ConcentricsRestaurants.com/ - a promotional site for a company that builds restaurants

www.RenewPilates.com - the site for a Pilate’s studio

You need to do more work to create the second type of site - and even then, if an expert visitor looks at the source code of a page, they can still tell you that you are using Blogger. Usually I advise you to focus on what you want to achieve with the site instead of "away from the blogger."

That said, here are some things you might want to do to "make your blog a website". They are approximately in the order that I recommend to use them to have the maximum effect.

First steps to reduce the "bloggy" feeling

1) Get a custom domain

This is a website address such as www.mySite.com or www.yourBlog.org - or whatever available name you choose. If you use a custom domain, it means that your address does not contain "blogspot.com."

You can also do this:

Use Blogger settings> Basic> Blog address> Add a custom domain, or

By using a URL that you purchase directly from a domain registrar - you may need to do this if the desired address is not available through the Blogger function (for example, I recently need a co-location address for a site) or if you do not have a credit card.

This step is essential if you do not want the site to be seen as a blog because the address is what people see when they first find the site in the results of the search engine.

If you are going to use a custom domain, I strongly encourage you to start at the very beginning of setting up your blog, so all subsequent steps are based on the name of the custom domain instead of a new route description. This is A Good Thing for SEO - and even if SEO is initially not important for your blog, it can become important later.

2) Switch off the navBar and remove the space where it was located

3) Show only 1 message on the main page.

4) Hide the "blog-specific" values ​​of messages on the Layout> Blog Post tab.

At least, things are about turning off:

Post-date

Posted by

Post time

Comments

Links to this message

labels

reactions

Link to e-mail messages

Share post

5) Create a home page - ideally using the custom redirect option

6) Remove the attribution gadget (the bit where it says "Powered by Blogger")

7) Delete the "subscribe to posts (atom)" link

8) Add a gadget for an RSS subscription with Feedburner.

Some people say this is optional - but I believe all "right" websites offer an RSS feed and show that they do so by using an RSS chiclet with RSS feedburner. If you add the Subscribe to Blogger gadget instead, the Atom feed will appear in the form of a blog.

Ban on the Blogger looks good

These next steps really go together: if you do that, you also have to do the others. They are needed if you want to completely remove the blog-like character:

9) Remove all gadgets that display a list of messages. These include the archive, labels. This is just the opposite of the add-a-gadget procedure: edit the existing gadget and click Delete.

10) delete the links "older messages / start page / newer messages".

11) Set up your own navigation system: every post or page must be accessible via a button or via a link in a gadget or other post / page.

It is tempting to think about navigation from the start page. But visitors who visit your site for the first time through search results do not appear on the home page. They may not even think about looking at the home page. Ideally, your navigation system should offer different routes to get to each piece of information, and it should include both logical links between messages and a search-based option.

Tools that you can use to help with this:

Summary messages, with links to detail pages about the subject. (For example my website for public transport has a page with "city bus data", which refers to individual route maps)

A menu bar with links to the most important summary items.

Note If you use the Pages gadget for this, it will automatically be included if you give the site a mobile theme, which is an important step if you want the site to be responsive.

An alternative to your own navigation system is to use categories to place your messages in pages. This does not completely diminish the feeling of a blog, because someone looking at a page sees a list of messages (with only post-summaries if you used jump-links). Changing the status message (the gray box that says "shows all messages with a label, whatever") can make it acceptable in some sites (those where the boundary between blog and website fades).

What you cannot do (at this time)

You cannot remove the post date values ​​from the blog post URL.

If your entire site could be done with 20 or fewer screens, you could use Pages for everything - but IMHO does not have to, visitors do not seem to be overly scared by URLs with numbers in them.

You cannot use a dynamic theme

If you want your site to look likes a website rather than a blog: you must use a Designer or possibly a Layout theme.

Other things that you could do

Maybe you want your blog to stand out in search results to get more visitors - see Getting started with SEO.