Tech Tip: Blogger Latest Posts

If you add a "latest posts" gadget to your blog sidebar, that means people can quickly see your latest posts no matter where they might enter your blog (and remember, most people will probably be accessing your blog via a direct link to your Introduction or to a story, not to the homepage). You can see the latest posts widget in the left-hand sidebar of my class blog.

You can also use this same widget if you want to add any other RSS feed to your blog! So if you have another blog or if you have the RSS feed of a newspaper, etc., you can add multiple Feed boxes to your blog sidebar, displaying any RSS feeds, not just the feed for your own blog.

Here's how to add this gadget to your blog:

YOUR BLOG ADDRESS. Start by copying your blog address from your homepage; you will need to copy and paste that into the dialogue box that comes next. It is the super-short address: NAME.blogspot.com.

BLOGGER LAYOUT. Go to Blogger Layout, and click "Add a Gadget" to the sidebar. Then choose the "Feed" by clicking on the plus button.

CONFIGURE FEED. Use the dialogue box to configure the feed; I accepted all the defaults and just changed the title that will display in the box to "Latest Posts." When you are done configuring the feed, click Save. Then you can drag-and-drop the widget to the position you want in your sidebar.

Finishing Up: Write up a blog post where you alert people to the new box in your sidebar.

You might also take a moment to look back through your blog post titles: are they good titles? You can always change post titles, editing the title just like you can edit the content of a post. The "latest posts" widgets does not update instantly, but it updates pretty quickly, so if you change a post title, you will see the new title soon in the sidebar box.

Make sure to include the phrase "Tech Tip: Latest Posts" in your blog post title and also use "Tech Tip" as the label on the post; then you can do the Declaration.