Saturday, November 14, 2009

A "blog" with more pages?

TC [Girl] wants to know how she can make a site or a blog with more than one page, it seems the free blogs are not designed to have that. She says:

Basically, I LOVE the concept of having more than one "section" or "page" WITHIN ONE BLOG where I could have ideas grouped...like WordPress's 'Pages' idea...but I am finding WordPress a bit of a challenge to figure out how to use a 3 columns template where, say, one sidebar is the usual blog options; then the actual blog, in the middle; and then the various 'Pages' on the left and furthest sidebar...where a person could create however many pages they need per [in my case] book ideas...and the program actually be FREE, still! I know; not asking for much, here! lol! ;-)

Any ideas?
(Note: I do suspect that what TCG really wants is simply a web site rather than a blog. But I don't know if there's a good, simple, and free solution out there for that.)

20 comments:

Monsieur Beep! said...

There should be a way to create more blog sections on the "dashboard", top right corner, where there´s a button "Create a Blog" or so. ("Crear un blog" on my Spanish speaking screen).

I myself have two more blogs which I´ve switched off for the public, because I no longer use them, I integrated them in my main blog. But they are still there.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I haven't tried it much, but does that option not create a whole new blog rather than a sub-page of the present one?

Ray said...

On 'Blogger', try going to Settings -> Formatting and change the number of posts per page from whatever it is now to '1', and that gives you the whole page for each posting.
Would that help you?

Alex said...

Yeah, they are all owned by one person, but they manifest themselves as separate blogs. You can give links to them, but are they really "pages"?

I liked the idea of a personal website, but keeping it pretty while adding stuff was just too cumbersome.

Most ISP's provide a free home page, but Comcasts new one is too rigid. My old ATTBI one was pretty free format.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yes, I do suspect that what TCG really wants is simple a web *site* rather than a blog. But I don't know if there's a good, simple, and free solution out there for that. (I built all my sites by hand, keeping them very basic indeed.)

Ray said...

Here's something else I found:

http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-basics/browse_thread/thread/e933eb8970056af3

It's about having more than one page in a Blogger blog.

neeraj said...

I'm not sure that I understand correctly what TC needs really, but how about a forum software? Or maybe a wiki software? As far as I know, there are free versions of both kind.

Unfortunately, I have no own experience with any of them, and also not with blog software, but I think it would be good to look around in an extended way.

Anyway, in both cases you need a server account of an ISP (= Internet Service Provider, like for every homepage), which needs a little bit money per month.

TMT said...

There is no way with Blogger! You can look at WORDPRESS.com Becarefull with color and images!

Michael said...

If you head over to Kelby Training they have a class on Wordpress for Photographers. The 2nd lesson talks about the date based vs the category based site. The first three lessons are free and you have to make an account (also free). If you ignore the Photography bit, this might be the thing.

http://www.kelbytraining.com/online/all-classes.html&id=rc_wordpress#rc_wordpress

TC [Girl] said...

Thanks for all the feedback:

MP: I have checked Blogger. Not sophisticated enough, I guess; they don't have a 'page' option. I was hoping to avoid having multiple blogs. :-(

Eo: Yes...pages and sub-pages was what I was hoping for.

Ray: thanks for your suggestions. Unfortunately, the "pages" they are meaning, I believe, is just how many posts fit onto one "page" before the blog scrolls to a "fresh" one. Unfortunately, setting the 'posts/page' to (1) won't get me what I'm hoping to do. :-(

Alex: exactly: they are NOT pages; rather separate blogs. :-( Was wanting it all contained in ONE BLOG. :-)

TMT: Right. I have been trying to work w/a template in WordPress that gives a 3-column option. I was trying to have the left sidebar display 'pages' where I could organize various book ideas - (1) book per page - and then have the middle column be a running blog; and the right column be the usual listing of recent blogs or archive but...as I was goofing around w/it, the 3-column disappeared (even though the template that I had chosen still showed as being the one being used) and it would EITHER show the page OR a posting on the left sidebar and I could not find anywhere where I could set the column count back to 3 nor show a page on the left sidebar AND the posting in the middle. :-( Make any sense?

WordPress looks to be the nearest to what I was looking for (that was still a free option) but...I've been wrangling w/it for sometime and...yeah...for a beginning blogger (never having done any programming, before, either), it seems to be quite a bear to use!! :-( I am hoping that I have written what I am trying to accomplish in as clear ['...as mud,' still?!) a way as I could.

Thanks for everybody's input. I really appreciate the help.

Neeraj: unfortunately I don't quite know what you are suggesting, here, either. :-( Hopefully, what I have described will make more sense, now? I will have to check out what you are referring to...although I am not wanting a website nor am I able to pay a monthly, right now. It was just a place that I was going to be writing some book ideas and hoping to be able to share and get feedback on; hence, why I thought of the blog idea.

Thanks, again, everybody...and Eo for being kind enough to post this. :-)

Ray said...

@ TC[Girl] -

Have a look at this -

http://www.110mb.com/

I haven't checked it out, except for
reading the main page, but maybe it
might be worth a look...

Timo Lehtinen said...

TC: Yes...pages and sub-pages was what I was hoping for.

Blogs don't have pages or sub-pages. Blogs have articles that are organized into categories. A blog is for publishing dated articles in reverse chronological order.

You want a generic website, not a blog.

Eolake: I built all my sites by hand, keeping them very basic indeed

That's cool! So you finally had enough with Adobe Golive?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

No, I use that still, only I no longer load the big domai site file.
I meant that I don't use site templates or automatic site design software, I just make a text page and put in a background and a couple of small graphics.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

110mb.com looks good, maybe too good to be true. How does the company make its money if there are no ads?

There are hosting services which will let people host their adult picture galleries for free. But it's typical that every so often they give the visitor a fake "page could not be found" message, which has links to site which the *host* earns money on.

neeraj said...

...pages and sub-pages was what I was hoping for.

I propose to have a look at wiki-software: It's a very flexible tool to develop and organize thoughts around e.g. a book idea, or anything else, as "clouds" of hyperlinked pages. You may use it either locally on your computer only for your personal use, or put it on a webspace to share it with others over internet.

For general information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki. The most simple example of wiki- software I have found: www.dokuwiki.org (it's open source). I have not yet tried it myself, but it's one of the many points on my To-Do list.

BTW looking at the subpage of DokuWiki, where one can contribute to the translation of this software into other languages (http://translate.dokuwiki.org/), you will find "eo" as language code for "esperanto" ... funny.

The software itself is free, but if you would like to share over internet, you will need a webspace. Maybe a friend of you has a homepage and is willing to share the webspace with you to make it cheaper.

Basically you could also install a webserver on your computer (there is free software, too), but that is a bit dangerous and needs your computer always switched on, and it needs a constant IP-address (which is mostly not the case today - the IP-address is changing daily dynamically, at least here in Germany). I wouldn't recommend that.

neeraj said...

@Eolake
... I don't use site templates or automatic site design software, I just make a text page and put in a background and a couple of small graphics.

If you make your own CSS template (could be very simple, too), you will have much more possibilities to make different designs, to experiment creatively with that and to change it very fast (without changing anything about the content), basically just by changing the "global.css" file.

But I have to admit that I'm not a web design expert.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yeah, I've never taken the time to learn stuff like CSS.

But then I regard my sites pretty much as just containers to allow easy access to the content, and it's not all that durn important to me which font my visitors see, and such.

Actually I'm sort of pleased when I see a site occasionally which is pretty much only text, no design at all, like useit.com.
At the same time, I think adding just the basic graphics like I do gives added aesthetics without really compromising on the simplicity of the text page.

TC [Girl] said...

Michael: Thanks for the suggestion. I appreciate that. Better hurry back to those girls! ;-)

Ray: Thanks so much for that last link. Looks interesting.

ttl: Alrighty, then. If you say so! Thanks for setting me straight on that (Eo, too!).

Neeraj: Wow! Sounds way more complicated than I had envisoned for myself...but interesting! Thanks! :-)

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

I think the most reliable solution, TC, remains to GAIN experience. It takes patience, of course...

"Blogs have articles that are organized into categories."
Hey, there MIGHT be a way here to accomplich something close to what TC aims for.
Create categories on your blog by using the "labels" option (at the bottom of your composing window, and they can be added/edited later) and choosing only one for each post. Set the column with the labels and archives etc. to be on the left side (click Layout). Each label will be equivalent, by clicking on it in the menu, to a "sub-blog", displaying only the articles bearing that label.
Not EXACTLY several pages on a single screen, but maybe close to what you were aiming for. Several "sub-blogs" in a single one, isn't it?
I think you can sort the items in your blog's menu to appear in the order you want them, and that you can put the paragraph of your labels/sections close to the top, very visible.

"How does the company make its money if there are no ads?"
Same question could be asked about Blogger, no?...

"Yeah, I've never taken the time to learn stuff like CSS."
Neither have I, but if you view it with a text editor, it's pretty simple to understand and edit.
What Neeraj suggests is a bit similar to changing the graphics files of your site, like the background texture, so you can easily modify its appearance on all pages at once... like you once did a while back, Esperanto, I mean, Eo!

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Blogger is clearly "pure research" and a tax write-off for Google. But we don't know who's behind the other company.