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Monday, March 24, 2008

Learning to Blog 2: Expandable Posts

[Note: Blogger now has its own native expandable post system. I talk about it in this post. The method I wrote about here is now obsolete.]

Many, if not most, blog readers don't like having to scroll down a long long post just to see the next entry. Some are even outraged. So I followed the directions in section 21 of Blogging in a Snap (here's author Julie C. Meloni's related blog) and learned how to make my posts expandable.

Now, this took quite a long time because I had to find exactly where I had to put the snippets of XML code in my blogs' templates. Blogger, unfortunately, doesn't let you post expandable entries by default. You have to find the code online (the link on the word "expandable" above gives the best directions), find exactly where to put them (the search feature in Firefox and Flock is invaluable here), and then type or paste in the code. It's almost as hard as getting certain things in Linux working right. But it'll save my readers a world of aggravation.

This is my lesson for today. But there's still so much more I have to learn...

[EDIT 12/28/2008: The link above to the web tutorial on creating expandable posts in Blogger points to a new site, since the URL has changed. I have changed the link accordingly.]