Blogger.com Help – Lesson 10 – Formatting Settings

Blogger.com provides a variety of basic formatting options for you to use outside of modifying your template directly. Items such as dates and times, the default language and how many posts display on your homepage are all controlled with the Settings – Formatting admin tab.

These are items that you probably will review once or twice in the initial set up of your blog, however, there are a couple of items on this administration page that can help you out with each and every post. Read on to learn more.

Note to new visitors! If you would like to know more about this series or view all available lessons, just follow the appropriate link.

The Formatting Settings Options

Let’s hop right in and find out what each of these controls does!

• Show – The ‘show’ control allows you to define the number of posts that display on your homepage. The value you enter can either be for ‘Days’ or ‘Posts’. So, if you stay with the default value of 7, then 7 posts or 7 days worth of posts will display on your homepage.
• Date Header Format – Each post you write normally states the day it was published. If you want the date to be in a particular format, this is where you tell Blogger how to format the date for your posts.
• Archive Index Date Format – Presumably, this is how your links in the archive on your sidebar will display. However, with all my tests, this didn’t seem to do anything. I’m not sure if the configuration settings for the Archive are super-ceding the value you might select here or not. It simply doesn’t seem to do anything!
• Timestamp Format – Each post displayed on your blog carries with it the time of publication. If your template displays this time, you can format how the time will look with this control.
• Time Zone – This is where you would specify the time zone you are in so that your posts reflect the correct time in relation to where you sit on this spinning blue ball. If you wanted people to think you are posting from Thailand, you can aid your little ruse by changing the time zone here.
• Language – This was fun to play with. When you change this, all the default text that you find around your site, including the format options you might make on this admin tab will change to reflect the language you select. For instance, if I change the language to Arabic (Syria), I won’t be able to understand anything on the site because all the default text (text I did not write, but Blogger supplied) will change into their language. Really want to play around with your readers on April 1st? You might want to slip this one in your back pocket until next year.
• Convert Line Breaks – Converting line breaks will insert the HTML equivalent of a carriage return. When you simply hit return when writing your posts, Blogger will insert a
  tag which tells your browser to start a new line. The
  tag is similar to hitting the handle on the typewriter and swinging the platen to start typing on a new line. Remember typewriters?
• Show Title Field – This is defaulted to ‘Yes’, but if you feel no need to display a title for each post, you can change this to ‘No’, and viola! No titles! Existing posts already written will retain their titles, however, when you write new posts, you will not have the option to supply a title.
• Show Link Fields – If you choose to show the Link fields on your post entry screen, you will see a new field immediately under the Title field. When you enter a URL into this field, your post title will use the value supplied in the Link field instead of the default link to the post you are writing. You can see on the Views on Life blog that I have a post where I linked back to my site here. You might consider using this if you operate a blog that basically links out to other articles or pages.
• Enable Float Alignment – For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what this control is for. If there is anyone that knows how to use this control, I’d love to hear it. The help text states “Allows image and text alignment options using the
  tag. (Choose “No” if you are having post layout problems.)”, however nothing I have tried seems to be affected by this control.
• Post Template – The post template is a pretty nifty control mechanism. Any text or HTML you enter into this control will be present in each and every post you create (this doesn’t affect your existing posts, only new posts). Let your mind wander with the possibilities available to you with this control. If you wanted to have an ad in each and every post, and wanted to have a special format for each post, you could design the HTML structure for the post, and insert it here. Each post that you create from then on will contain all the same text you entered, giving you a head start on each and every post! That’s pretty cool!

That’s it! There are a few powerful controls found on this page that can help save you time. For instance, the post template allows you to define text or a structure that allows you to be consistent with each post.

There are a few questions left open, like what does the Archive Index Date format control, and what does Enable float alignment actually do? If there is anyone that can answer these in the comments, and everyone agrees that the response is the right answer, I’ll provide a square of ad space for a month to the first person to correctly identify the purpose of these controls.

I’m purposely placing this offer at the bottom so that people that subscribe and are actually trying to benefit from these posts get the first crack at some free advertising. Hope it helps!

Blogger.com Help Topics

Show Link Fields Help
Post Template Help

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