Update 2: You can find an up2date workaround described here
Change title tags for your blogger posts swap title hack
Update; Major issue ! Seems this and similar "title-above-head-tag-hack" breaks the visual layout editor in blogger when you subsequently want to add new pagelements via the visual editor ...... sigh
Note; following the advice from MYSS I'm pitching in the sidebar and focus my pages, thus will switch to blogging about different themes on different blogs.
Originial post below:
An updated march 2008 version of the popular "Swap Blog Title and Post Title on Blogger".
From a SEO point it's more optimal to have the post title appear as the page title instead of a generic blogtitle first.
There's one minor issue I haven't been able to solve yet, the title tag ends above the head tag, which is not according to W3C standards for Title tag - but it should be rendered correctly by all browsers and even more important picked up by searchbots too .... so until something better shows up this hack should do the trick.
The hack's basic feature and design is similar to the old hack but I've eliminated some unneeded code, I suspect the original hack were done by someone without solid coding background (and understanding).
I've annotated the code to enhance clarity, but no guaranties for minor inaccuracy as I'm not completely confident with Blogger's framework yet.
anyway, here goes
1) Take a backup of existing template first ! - click Download full template and save it
2) Click expand Widget
3) Find this code in the top of blogger template,
4) Substitute with the code in table below - download link at the bottom of this post
5) Save Template
Note; Apparently Blogger integrates the new widget introduced in the hack with other widgets present, so when you re-open your template it will look differently and your widget hack code has been re-formatted and integrated with other widgets present in your template - it could be a problem later ..... so use this hack at your risk and keep your original back-up a safe place.
It's possible to re-find the added widget code after reformat by blogger, but it's not easy.
Note; Beats me why blogger keeps floating the table below down ... still looking into that
| <b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/> | Include head content, loads page variable (I'm not totally clear about this one - no available documentation found) |
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'> | if this is an item page we want to do something |
<b:section id='titleTag' class='header' maxwidgets='1' showaddelement='no'> <b:widget id='SwapTitle' locked='false' title='Swap Title' type='Blog'> | Widget needed for the code to work so we declare one, and as widget needs to be in a section we declare a section too |
<b:includable id='posttitle' var='record'> <title> <data:record.title/> </title> </b:includable> | Declaration of subfuntion posttitle which takes the parameter record (parameter will be an object which contains information related to a specific post). For each record passed we generate a title tag (knowing we only will be called once, but since the post record is a part of an array we need to do this loop thing) |
<b:includable id='main' var='top'> <b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'> <b:include data='post' name='posttitle'/> </b:loop> </b:includable> | Main routine in widget. Loops through all post (which is exactly one as we are only doing this on a item page), calls the subfuntion posttitle |
</b:widget> </b:section> | widget and section closure |
<b:else/> <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title> </b:if> | Use blogtitle if on main blogpage |
<head> | Header tag is placed here, below our title hack!. Reason for placement below; otherwise we will get this error when trying to save our template; Your template is invalid because the tag 'b:section' appears inside of the tag 'head' |
Click here to download the code to Swap Blog Title and Post Title on Blogger
If you like this hack, give me a blogger-hug .... read - a link to this post !Thanks to following resources
- Jackbook.com where I found the original hack (or one of the many publication of it)
- Hoctro's Place for some solid walkthrough of widget's on Blogger
- Blogger Help on widgets
