Admin Widget

In my last post I taught you how to remove the ugly Blogger navbar from the screen. One minor setback is that now you don't have access to your dashboard, settings, layout and posts, because the navbar is gone.

In this post you will learn how to add an Admin Widget to your sidebar.

Step 1: Backup your template
Although this is not a very risky modification, it is always good practice to backup your template before modifying it.
Go to the Layout|Edit HTML-tab, and download your template as an XML-file and save it to your harddisk.

Step 2: Create an new Link Widget in your sidebar
From the Layout|Page Elements tab Add a Widget to your sidebar. Select the link-widget from th list. Set the title for example to Admin, and add 4 links to the list.

Dashboard       : http://www.blogger.com/home
Change Settings : http://www.blogger.com/blog-options-basic.g?blogID=####
Change Layout   : http://www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=####
Edit Posts      : http://www.blogger.com/post.g?blogID=####
New Post        : http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=####

In this links you have to change the ####### to the ID of your Blog. The easiest way to do this is to go to your dashboard, and view the list of your blogs. Hover your mouse over the links (Layout, Settings, etc) and watch the status-bar of your browser. You will see the link there. The easiest way is to right-click each link, copy the hyperlink, and paste it into the link widget.

Step 3: Save
Save the Widget and display your Blog. If you are viewing your Blog, clicking one of the Admin links will bring you to the appropriate screen. Visitors of your Blog will not be able to modify it, because they are not logged in to your blog. If you are not logged in, clicking an admin-link will bring up the Blogger login screen.