Can you put Posts onto Pages in Blogger?

Ever since Google introduced "pages" into Blogger, people have complained that their posts all go onto the "home page", and asked how to put posts onto different pages in their blog.

The standard, but unsatisfactory, answer is

"Sorry, that's not how Blogger works.   So called "static" pages in Blogger are meant to be used for reference information that doesn't change often, which you don't want to be part of your regular post-feed, but which you do want users to have easy access to."

Basically, this is part of the difference between post and pages.

Follow these steps:

1   Add Categories

Categorise your posts by adding Labels to them.   (Either all of them, or just the ones that you want to show up on specific "pages".)

2 Make a "pages look alike" menu bar:

There are (at least) are three ways of doing this - choose which ever one suits your blog best:

a)   With a Labels Gadget:    

Use the usual add-a-gadget approach to put a Labels gadget into the spot where you would put the Pages gadget if you wanted to make a horizontal menu bar with it.

If your blog has some Labels that you don't want to have "pages" for, then set it to show only some of your Labels:

         b)   With a Linked-list gadget:   

Use the usual add-a-gadget approach to put a Link-list gadget where you would put the Pages gadget if you wanted to make a horizontal menu bar with it.
Add a link to the list for each Label that you want a "page" for.   The HTML to use for each Label value is

http://YOUR-BLOGS-URL/search/label/THE-LABEL-NAME

You can also add other items (eg individual Posts, or even Bllogger's static "pages" if you really must have them - see why I don't like them!) - see the menu bar at the top of this site for an example of this.

c)   With a Pages gadget:   

Use the usual add-a-gadget approach to put a Pages gadget into the menu bar area.

Use Label-links described above the Linked-list gadget option, as website links to add to your Pages gadget.

Due to the increasing importance of mobile templates, this is now the option that I recommend, because the pages-gadget does automatically appear on mobile-templates. 

3   Deal with the home-page

If you don't want your posts to appear on the "home page" was well as the topic pages, then there are two options:

• Use a technique similar to Showing a Gadget only on the Home Page  to not show the Blog Posts gadget on the home page.  the condition to use is !=  instead of ==)   If you do try this, then I strongly recommend that you consider the various options for giving your blog a home page, and make sure you accept the disadvantages of editing your template.

OR

• Give your blog a "home page" using the custom-redirect option discussed in this post.

Job Done

It really is that simple.  Your readers can now click on the "pages" in your blog from a "menu" at the top, and see a list of posts for the Page that they chose.

Even better, if some posts relate to more than one topic, they show up on both of the relevant pages.    And if you have used the Pages gadget, your blog is well set-up to work with a mobile-template - which is something that is getting more important every month.

Don't forget to test your blog, to make sure that the menu bar is working how you expect it to and that it looks OK, in all the browsers that your readers are actually using.