Place Gadget Above The Posts?

It's sometimes possible to create a page element and then slide it across (drag and drop) the blog and drop it above the posts. If that won't stick, you may have to find this line in your "edit html" (template): <b:section class='header' id='header' maxwidgets='1'> and change the maxwidgets number to 2. Don't neglect to Save template before you return to the Layout page. Now you should be able to "Add a gadget" from above the header. Then you can drag and drop that new Page Element below the header, where of course it'll be above the posts.

What Is A Layout Page?

In case you're wondering what Blogger is talking about. It's the page where you can create, move and arrange the page elements (especially the ones for the sidebar) as you would like them to be. Place your cursor on the boxes after you create an element, hold the mouse left-click down as you move the mouse.



PAGE ELEMENTS AKA "GADGETS".

ALSO SEE: Page Elements Screenshot

Unordered List In Sidebar

You have two options:

• Unordered List (with bullets)
  
• Unordered List (with bullets)

OR

1. Ordered list (numbered)
   
2. Ordered list (numbered)

Newbies using New Blogger template may be better off using the Link List in the Page Elements. It is easier for the lazy Blogger; however, it is more difficult to backup the Link List widget than to just backup the Page Element. You'll also have more control over it later (when you've become more informed) in a Page Element.

Before I forget, there is a third kind of list; when you just start your list items and don't specify either ordered or unordered, you will get plain bullets (or whatever your CSS specifies)

There is an even newer Blog List type of page element if you're trying to create a BlogRoll and you may find it preferable--it does a very different (and nifty) thing for you!

[More below...]

(Page Element and Gadget (or Widget) are different names for the same thing--one is more accessible to you (through the Layout page) and the other, in the template, you can go into more deeply as far as editing it IF you know how!) So I prefer the ul or ol list, whose html code I can keep backed up in a Notepad file or other plain-text program, in an html/javascript page element.

If you are using a Classic template, you will need a list of this sort for the sidebar. In a Layout template, you'd put the code in a Gadget.

Put this after or at least not inside the other ul lists in the sidebar in the template.

Below is the code for a list of links that you could use HTML to put it in your sidebar via the Classic template or into a Gadget (html/javascript Page Element)in a Layout template. First one below is an example of a link. <h2>New Category</h2> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.zandria.us/">Keep Up With Me </a> </li> <li>list another one! </li> <li>list another one! </li> </ul>

If your template uses a particular "class" for it's titles in the sidebar, just imitate (copy) them in order for your new list titles to match the old ones.

For a second list, if needed, do another title and pair of start and end tags and fill in the middle part.

For just one link in the sidebar, use code as below: <a href="http://rodentia.blogspot.com/The Rat Squeaks</a>

The difference between an unordered list as above and an ordered list which Numbers your list is merely using an ol tag instead of the ul tag!

Page Elements Screen

This post was written before several of the new categories, such as the Blog List, Slideshow, or Video or Poll, so that the screenshot below will not quite match what you would currently see. Sorry, someday I'll catch up.

Some people still complain they can't see this item. Sometimes it helps to use Refresh (F5 or Ctrl-F5) or to clear your cache and cookies (in Internet Options-Tools). At times, you might even have to do it twice.

Here is a partial screen shot of the Page Elements list. Others listed below my screen shot are "Logo, Profile, Blog Archive, and Page Header". It is easy to select one and add it.

Click on page-element in the Label box below for other posts on this topic.



See also: Text and Html/javascript page elements

END.

Page Elements--Html/Javascript & Text

The Html/Javascript Page Element Is Better!

At first I chose some Text Page Elements for my information at the top of the blog, but I have since changed it to an HTML/JAVASCRIPT Page Element. For some reason, both require line breaks in order to separate the text into paragraphs. Fair enough, I can do that. But the Text element loses those line breaks every time you return to do some editing, and that's crappy.

So if you had paragraphs or any kind of one-line-at-a-time "grocery list", you'd have to revamp the post to restore it to what you started with! Not hard, just time-consuming!

Text page elements are only good for a straightforward paragraph of information or for some other kind of information that you don't have to edit often.

In the HTML page element, nothing changes or is lost, and you can just edit what you meant to without a lot of special revamping. This is important to a ceaseless reviser like me--I often re-edit!

It is misleading to all users that we are able to put HTML into a Text page element when it's so problematic to do so! And there should have been a warning about this difficulty with making paragraphs. Anyway, fair warning from me!