Horizontal Link bar - Blog Tabs and Blogger Pages

Create a horizontal navigation bar or link bar under your blogger header with no html involved...?

Horizontal Link Bar - Adding a link/navigation bar to your blog - you know the horizontal bar below your header that helps you sort out all your posts into really cool organised sections - why does this not come standard with a blogger template!
I wrote this a few weeks ago when adding my tutorial from my personal blog to this blog - well lo and behold now it does come standard with a blogger template - no more hacking into the html!  Well almost - this isn't quite so good as the horizontal link list you can add below your header but I will show you how to succesfully combine the two, using your existing horizontal link bar and the new blogger pages.



Simple Blogger Pages Tutorial - how to add static pages and tabs to your blogger blog
  • Go into 'Posting' on your blogger dashboard and then click on Edit Pages.
  • Click on 'New Page' and you will find a place to write up a post although this post will be a static page.  For example, Contact, Home, About Me, Why I love Blogging etc you'll be able to create up to 10 pages in total.


  • Create your page and click on publish page, just like publishing a post. It asks you what position you would like your pages - Blog Tabs -  horizontal (below header) or in the sidebar.  You should now find you have a horizontal link bar.
  • Go back into Layout on your dashboard and click on the new pages 'gadget' under your blog header.  If you have an old template that doesn't have this area available for gadgets then refer to this post about maximising gadget space to get it or just have your static pages listed in your sidebar instead. This should be achievable for everybody with a blogger blog.

  • Now you need to 'Configure Page List' which basically means organising your linkbar. So drop and drag to move the pages about into the order you want.
  • There isn't a great deal more to add other than whether to tick or untick the 'automatically add pages' box.  If you have it ticked then when you create a new page it will automatically add itself onto the list.


    Why aren't blogger pages as good as the blogger template hack of adding a Nav Bar / Link list


    1. You can't link to a search query or your shop or other url directly, you have to write a page meaning 2 clicks - that might be too much effort for some people - If it says shop then they want to go to your shop.
    2. You can't change the appearance of it.  (Personally I think it looks pretty smart but you may want more control over the font size, colour and hover colour.  It defaults to your link colour, so it should blend ok with your existing blog)
    3. You can only add it in one postition, rather than split the ten pages between horizontal tabs under header and sidebar.




    How to use Pages with your existing Navigation bar and how to get the best of both!

    Use the url of the pages to link to in your existing Navigation bar too - you needn't feel left out if you have already added a linkbar the html way.  If you haven't already added a horizontal link list, then use this tutorial  you can then link to static pages and urls from a navigation bar below your header.  Pages are good but horizontal link bar plus pages is even better!

    •  To find the url of a blogger page you have created click on edit pages in the posting tab of your blogger dashboard.
    • Then click on view to bring up that page - you can do this even if you have deleted the 'pages' gadget as these post still exist.
    • Copy the url and then paste into your link bar or into whatever you please, it's your page now!

    OR -

    Why not keep your existing horizontal bar and add the new pages as a sidebar - or mix it up, once you have the url to link to you can add these static pages wherever you please, in link lists, in regular posts - anywhere!
    Simple and you get the best of both worlds.

    I will be looking into how these static pages appear in search engines and I'll update this post as soon as I know more!