Blogging 101 ~ Lesson #9: Adding Informational Pages to Your Blog

In Simply Blogging 101 Lesson #2 we learned how to publish a page and the assignment was to write an “About Page” either about yourself, your blog or both.  We also learned in Lesson #3 how to publish a post.  Today’s assignment is to publish either a page or a post for each of the following:  About (if you haven’t
already), Contact, Privacy Policy, Disclaimer and Disclosure.

Blogger allows each blog to have ten stand alone pages.  Each blogger needs to decide what they want these to be used for.  They can be deleted later and new ones made if you choose.  So before you publish the following decide if you want to put them in a post or a page.  By putting them in a page they can appear in tabs under your header/above the posts like you see at the top of Simply Blogging Lessons.

If you choose to put them in a post and already have some other posts published and do not want them to appear above those other posts, you can change the date by clicking “post options” below the posting box (above “Publish Post”) and enter a date under Post Date & Time that is before the date of the post you want it to appear before.

5 Minutes:  About

This was discussed in detail in Lesson #2.  If you did not do this yet, go back and read that lesson and proceed to write this informational post if you would like to include it on your blog.

5 Minutes:  Contact Information

It is a good practice for a blog, or any site, to provide readers or potential advertisers a way to contact them.  You can choose any email address you would like to share with them.  It is a good idea to have a special email for your blogs, so if you need to set up a free email now thru Gmail, Yahoo or MSN Hotmail for example go ahead and do it.  Also, when you enter the information on your contact post leave spaces on either side of the “@” and “.” so spammers cannot harvest your email address (Example:  Simplyblogs @ live . com).

7 Minutes:  Disclosure

If you plan on monetizing your blog thru ads or paid posting or plan on reviewing products you receive for free, a Disclosure Policy lets your readers know that.  You can write one yourself, or you can easily use DisclosurePolicy.org to enter the pertinent information and it will write one for you that will incorporate all that is necessary by law.  It is required of bloggers to have a disclosure policy posted.

5 Minutes:  Disclaimer

You may want to write a Disclaimer if you will be giving any information that could be in error (say as in posting a recipe or directions for something on which you may easily make a typographical error).  I have a deals disclaimer posted at Simply CVS because it would be easy to make a mistake in deal posting.

7 Minutes:  Privacy Policy

If you will be collecting data on your visitors for statistical reasons (we will be giving lessons on this in the future) and/or monetizing your site with ads that collect data from your visitors you are required to have a privacy policy.  Google Adsense requires it in their terms of service—you must have one and have a link on your home page titled “Privacy Policy.”  You can see mine at Simply CVS (as I do not have one in place here as I write this post—but when I do there will be a link at the bottom of this page) and you can easily make your own at Free Privacy Policy.

1 Minute:  Add Navigational Links for the Above Pages/Posts

Be sure and add navigational links for these new publications.  You can see Simply Blogging Lesson #7 for details on setting up your blog’s navigational system.

We have just a few more lessons in Blogging 101: The Basics and then we will be moving on to Blogging 201:  Entering The Blogging Community.