Basic Lesson 6: Layout of a Blog Explained & Modifying Your Profile

The layout of the default blog is pretty much the same for all of the standard templates provided by Blogger. There are two columns. One contains your posts and the other contains useful elements that provide functionality to your readers. The two default elements that will appear in a basic blog are the Blog Archive and the Author Profile (About Me). In subsequent lessons, we'll discuss other elements that you might want to add to your blog layout, but for the rest of this post we'll discuss the two default elements.



The Blog Archive provides a listing of your posts grouped by month (you can change this to other periods) in reverse chronological order. This helps readers find past posts in your blog that they may want to read and provides an easy way to navigate to them. But chronological archives aren't always the best way to navigate a blog. Grouping postings by topics if often much more useful. See Lesson 7 to learn how to organize your blog by topic.

The about me section provides you with an opportunity to list details about yourself on your blog. This blog element brings in information from you Profile. You can reveal as little or as much information in your profile as you wish. To edit your profile click on View My Complete Profile (in the About Me section) and then click on the Edit Your Profile button that appears on the next page.



Explore the profile at your leisure and decide what you wish to reveal. If you don't feel comfortable revealing some piece of information (even your name)...then don't put it in the profile! Remember...