Custom Redirects, And Old FTP Published Blog URLs

Long ago, Blogger blog owners would publish a blog as part of an existing website. With the website published as "www.mydomain.com", they would create a website subdirectory "www.mydomain.com/myblog", and publish the blog there.

The option to publish a blog as "www.mydomain.com/myblog" required an externally maintained domain / website - and the Blogger feature "FTP Publishing". In 2010, Blogger, with many man hours spent fixing a constant stream of problems, retired "FTP Publishing", in favour of "Custom Domain Publishing".

Custom Domain Publishing, like FTP Publishing, lets us publish our Blogger blogs to non BlogSpot URLs. Unlike an FTP published blog, a custom domain published blog requires a separate subdomain for each different blog. If a non Blogger website is hosted as "www.mydomain.com", a Blogger blog can only be published to "blog.mydomain.com" - and "www.mydomain.com/blog" became an impossibility.

Last year, Blogger introduced Custom Redirects, as part of the "Search Preferences" feature. Now, once again, a Blogger blog can be addressed as "www.mydomain.com/myblog", when hosted as "www.mydomain.com" - though a non Blogger website (if one exists) cannot be directly hosted as "www.mydomain.com", simultaneously.

It may be possible, however, to host an externally published website as "site.mydomain.com", and a Blogger blog as "www.mydomain.com" - and use the Blogger "Missing Files Host" feature to locate website pages, dynamically, in "site.mydomain.com". There may be hope, for people who declined to migrate their FTP Published blogs, in 2009 - and who now have static "blogs" as frozen pages in their external websites.

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Blogger Magic - A Static Home Page, Improved

For many years, Blogger blog owners have been asking for the ability to have a static Home page, on their blog.

We came up with a basic solution for that, a couple years ago. Last year, I packaged the procedure.

1. Set "Show" to "0 posts".
2. Add a static HTML / Text gadget.
3. Tweak the template for the new gadget, to display only on Home page.

This was an obvious solution (to some of us) - but it's painfully complex, and it involves editing the template HTML. It's an interesting techie solution - and that's about it.

Today, I realised that Blogger recently gave us this option, in a far simpler solution, last month - but not so many people noticed it.

The "Custom Redirects" feature is just what you need, to create a static home page.

1. Setup a Static Page. Use the dashboard Pages wizard, make a "New page", and select "Blank page".
2. Use the "Custom Redirects" dashboard wizard, and redirect from the Home page to the new Static page.
3. Work on the static home page, and make it attractive.

I setup a test blog - Nitecruzr Redirected Home Page Test, and added a Static page - "Static Home Page".

nitecruzr-test-redirected-homepage.blogspot.com/p/static-home-page.html

Having setup the static page, I redirected the Home page to the static page, using the "Search preferences" - "Custom Redirects" feature.

• From: /
• To: /p/static-home-page.html
• Permanent: Yes

Edit "Custom Redirects".

1. Enter "From:" as "/".
2. Enter "To:" as "/p/static-home-page.html".
3. Select "Permanent".
4. Click the "Save" link.
5. Hit the "Save changes" button.

And, that is it. You can see my test blog, as a basic demonstration.

Note that just as easily as redirecting the home page to any static page, you can redirect to any dynamic page (aka a "post"). So, you can pin a post to the main page, using Custom Redirects.

Once the "Home" page / tab is static, you can index the posts using any sidebar gadget - such as an Archive or Label index gadget. Or, you can index posts, as if they were pages.

• Publish your posts to a given label - I used "Posts".
• Add a label search entry, as a "Web address", to Pages.

Thus my Pages entry, "Posts".

Now, anybody can have a blog with a static home page, in 10 minutes (don't overlook steps #3 and #4, above - as I did, the first time). Click here, for more examples.

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(Update 2012/06/30): See The Video, for a live demonstration.

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