How to Create a Static Homepage on Blogger

They said we’d never walk on the moon. They said we’d never have a black president. And they said we’d never have a static homepage on blogger.

But nobody told them about me.

So I managed, mostly because my teacher said I couldn’t do it, to figure out how to make a static homepage for a blogger site. I’ve compiled the information needed to do this (and the complications that arise from it) on this one easy to follow (hopefully) page.

First, the concept so that you understand it. You’re not really creating a static homepage. Blogger forces your homepage to be the blog. And by homepage, I mean the part that ends in .com (aka http://duckpindustin.blogspot.com). So this is really just a workaround (Ed note: The easiest workaround is using wordpress). What you’re doing is setting up a redirect so that when somebody types in or clicks on that address, it sends you to another page within your website. You have to then create another page called “blog” or whatever you like and have that page redirect to all blog posts. The way I’ve figured to do this is by labeling ALL posts with the label “blog” (or whatever you like). OK, let’s get to the hard part:

Step One: Create the “Blog” page. I ran into trouble doing things before I did this. Like I couldn't see any of my blog posts because I had the main blog page redirected to my static page. So I couldn't prove I had done anything. How to do this?

1.       From the dashboard, go to “Pages.”

2.       Select “New page” and from the dropdown menu, select “Web address.”

3.       Type in your homepage followed by “/search/label/Blog”, e.g. (http://duckpindustin.blogspot.com/search/label/Blog)

4.       Make sure to label all your blog posts with the label “blog.”

This will create a page on your blog that will be all blog posts with the label “blog.” Again, this is a workaround for blogger sites. There are much easier ways to do this somewhere else. Suck it up.

Step Two: Create the Homepage you would like. Figure out what you want your homepage to say. Maybe you want it to function as an “about me” page. Maybe you want it to be links to all funny cat videos. Maybe you just want a photoshopped picture of you with all your ex-girlfriends for some unhealthy reason. I’m not here to judge.

1.       From the dashboard, go to “Pages.”

2.       Select “New page” and from the dropdown menu, select “Blank Page.”

3.       Put that stuff in there that we talked about earlier. For information on how to create a webpage, go anywhere on the web.

4.       Name the page “Home” or whatever you want.

Step Three: Create the redirect from the original homepage to your new static homepage. This is the tough part. So get your big girl pants on for this step. Apparently, you can create custom redirects within your website.

1.       From the dashboard, go to “Settings.”

2.       Click on “Search preferences.”

3.       Click on “Custom Redirects.” This will lead you to a dropdown box where you can type in two web addresses, the “from” and the “to” address. All addresses start with your website domain name (a.k.a http://duckpindustin.blogspot.com).

4.       In the “from” field, type in only a slash “/”. This will indicate that it is supposed to come from the main page.

5.       In the “to” field, type in “/p/home.html” if you’ve named your new static homepage “home” as I suggested. Otherwise, try to find that page and replace “home” with “whatever the hell you chose to name your silly little page.” Note: The “/p/” stands for “page”. Just so you know.

Step Four: Hide your original homepage. If you’ve done everything correctly, you should have two pages called “Home,” your original homepage that blogger defaults to your blog AND your created static homepage which the address now redirects to. Well, it can get confusing with two pages called “Home,” so I recommend you change the ORIGINAL home to “*” or something equivalent that no one will really care to click on.

1.       From the dashboard, go to “Pages.” There should be two pages labeled “Home.”

2.       Under the “Home” page that ONLY has selections to either “Edit” or “View,” click “Edit.”

3.       Change the name to “*” or something short you would hope no one would click on.

4.       Move the other “Home” page to the top of your list.

Step Five: Hide your original home page. This is a tough one because I’ve found that I could only accomplish this through the old blogger interface (Ed note: I’m reminded now of the time during our first class where the teacher said we should use blogger because “it’s more user-friendly” than wordpress).

1.       From the dashboard, click on the gear-looking thing in the top right of the page.

2.       From that dropdown menu, select “Old blogger interface.”

3.       Select “Design” under the blog you wish to edit.

4.       Select “Edit” within the “Pages” element.

5.       Deselect the Home page in the box under “Pages to show” as shown below.

6.       Scroll down and click “Save.”

This should hide your original home page (the one that defaulted automatically to the blog) so you only have one home page. I think.

Once again, this is a Blogger workaround. There are several issues that shouldn’t exist if life was perfect (or if you went to wordpress). For example, you have to remember to label every post with the word “blog” or it won’t show up anywhere. Also, the blog will have the following bar at the top. And if you click on the link that says "show all posts," it redirects you to your new homepage, not your blog. That can be a project for someone out there to figure out. But all in all, if asked to make a blogger site for a class and you want to have a static homepage, this is how you do it.