K is for King of the Posts

You know how on some blogs they have a list of popular posts on the sidebar? In Blogger, there's two ways to do that. The easy way and the hard way. I'm going to talk about both.

But why, why, WHY would you ever want to do it the hard way?! Because it's better. Here's why:

Blogger has a popular posts gadget. It makes it simple. The only problem is, it goes off of page views, not number of comments. Which is great and all, unless you use images in your posts. If so, a post that wasn't really one of your most popular might show up as being so, just because it contained an image that comes up as a search result a ton on Google. It might just be a popular image--- not so much a popular post. With me so far?

So, way #1 is easy, and might do you just fine. Way #2 is harder, but it will actually let YOU choose which ones appear in it. (Other thing to consider: Way #1 will update itself. Way #2 has to be updated by you.)

Way #1: The EASY way.

For the new Blogger layout: (just click on the image to make it larger)

For the old Blogger layout: (Click the image to make it larger)

Way #2 The HARD (albeit more flexible) way.

Step 1: Figure out what posts you want to spotlight.

Step 2: Save an image you want to use from each post somewhere on your hard drive.

Step 3: Create the html code. Now don't freak out if you can't write code from scratch! It's all going to be okay. Blogger is fabulous at writing code for you. We're going to let it. Go into Blogger just like you are creating a new post.

Step 4: Click on the button to insert an image, then select one of those images you just saved onto your hard drive from one of your posts.

Step 5: Click on the image. Select both Original Size (trust me for a minute) and Left. (I prefer the old Blogger layout, so my images are going to be from that. It's the same either way, I believe.)

Step 6: Obviously, we aren't going to want this image to be its original size when it's in our sidebar. But choosing Original Size makes this step easier. Click on the Edit HTML tab at the top. The code for your image should look something like this:

See that part I circled that says "s1600"? That's the part that matters (s1600 is in two places-- it's the one toward the end we want). That 1600 is telling the maximum height/width the image can be. We don't want it that big. We want it to be somewhere between 60 and 100. (I changed mine to 60. Take a look at my popular posts in my sidebar to see if that's a size you'd like. If not, change the number.)

Step 7: Click on the compose tab again. Now your image will show smaller. Like this:

With me?

Step 8: Type in the text you want to have show on your sidebar. (This will generally be the title of the post that goes with that image.)

Step 9: In a different tab, open that post, highlight the URL, then press Ctrl+C to copy it.

Step 10: Come back to your post, hightlight the text you've typed in, then click on the link link at the top of the post, and paste (Ctrl+P) the URL you just copied. Now it should look something like this:

Step 11: And you're done with the first one! Give your post a title (something like "My list of Popular Posts" or something else that will help you remember), then click SAVE. This will be a post that you will never publish, but that you will want to keep, in case you want to update it later.

Now, go through these same steps for as many posts as you want to have show.

• Once you get them all, click on the Edit HTML tab.
• Press Ctrl + A to highlight all the code in the post.
• Press Ctrl + C to copy it all. 
• For old blogger: click on the Design tab at the top. For new blogger, select Layout on the left.
• Click Add a Gadget in your sidebar.
• Scroll down and find the HTML/Java Script option, and click on the blue plus sign.
• For the title, type Popular Posts (or whatever you want it to say).
• Click in the content area, the press Ctrl + V to paste in all that code you created. Then click SAVE.
• At this point, you can move it to wherever in your sidebar you want, then click SAVE.

And you're done! Whew! I know it seems like a lot to do, but once you do it for the first post, it gets a ton easier. Really. I'm not kidding.

Or you can use the easy way and see if it works for you. You can always put in the work to do the harder way later! (Oh, and I should mention that there is a medium way. That's adding a link list gadget. That'll work, too, and let you choose which posts you want, but it won't allow you to have an image with it.)

Questions? Let me know.