How to create a custom landing page in blogger and other tricks. Quick links.

Just some quick links for my personal reference:

1. How to create a custom landing page in blogger. Worked great!
2. How to find free pics to use in your blog posts.

Cheers!

Add Google Analytics to Blogger

1. First you have to create an account on Google Analytics if you don't have one, check here. They'll give you an ID that you need to use there. If you have the account already, you can get the info on how to get the ID here. 
2. Follow this link on adding Google Analytics.

Note: when you setup Google Analytics, they also give you a piece of code that you need to paste on every page to help track it. Nevertheless, this is NOT needed if you are using blogger (that is automatic when you do #2). You should start seeing stats about a day after you set it up...

The other thing that I got to set up is how to exclude my own views... I found a link explaining this but I have not done it yet.

Grouping your posts by categories

Here they describe the major thoughts on how to arrange this...
Basically:

1. Add labels to your posts (you do that on the screen where you edit your posts...).
2. Go to Design-->Layout and click "Add a Gadget" wherever you want to add it. For instance, in the image below, before we add what shows on the image as "Categories", we had something on its place like the "Add a Gadget" on the right.

3. Select Link List. 
4. Filling in the information is quite straightforward. See this example:
   
   The only question could be where does one get the address... Basically, when you click on the label, all the posts with that label show up on the page. Copy it from the browser address bar.

Rest should be straightforward...

A way to insert code in posts for Blogger

For a way to insert the code in blogger, I used the instructions here:
http://codeformatter.blogspot.com/

Also, I found this, but I didn't use it:
http://www.craftyfella.com/2010/01/syntax-highlighting-with-blogger-engine.html

Paste pictures in blogger

After having trouble with cut and paste kind of action, I found this link with useful hints:
http://tips.blogdoctor.me/2007/10/tips-on-pictures-in-blogger.html