2016 Blogger.com Dashboard Overview

If you are new to blogger.com, then it no doubt, you are yet to fully understand your dashboard. I'm going to explain each element, in your blogger.com Dashboard, to enable you gain a better understanding of how things are on the inside. The truth is, almost everything is customizable on your blogger.com Dashboard, but it better you understand your dashboard, so you know areas to not to touch, or areas to touch, and how to touch them.

Blogger.com Dashboard Overview

There are two dashboard for your blogger.com blog, (User Dashboard, and Blog Dashboard). The first dashboard that greets you, when you log on to www.blogger.com, is the user dashboard. This is also known as your admin panel. From here, you can continue to your blog dashboard, of any blog, to which you are an administrator. The user dashboard, carries all your blog in one place. From here you can have a brief overview, of your total traffic and posts, for each of your blog. You can also, either visit your blog (using the 'view blog' icon to the right), or compose a post, by clicking the white pen, in Pink background, or entering your blog control panel, by clicking the drop down, between the two. Touching any item in the drop down will take you straight, into your blog control panel.

Blog Control Panel Overview 

Aside the pink new post button, at the top left corner of your dashboard, there are about ten (10) elements, that controls your blog from the inside:

1. THE OVERVIEW: As the name implies, the overview panel, provides you with the latest activities on your blog. At the center, is your traffic graph and the source(s). While your total posts, page views for the day, and your followers, are contained in a separate container, by the right hand side. 
2. THE POSTS: The post panel contains all your blog posts and articles, for that particular blog. By default, it is set to display 25 posts per panel, but you can change it, if you want to, Just touch the drop down box. The posts panel, can group your posts into; published, draft, imported or scheduled. Note however, that if there are no posts for a particular category, that category will automatically be ignored. for example, if there are not saved drafts, then the draft category will be ignored. Also note, that articles that are written in a page, will be excluded from the post panel. From this panel, you can delete, edit or view a post. You can also see the number of traffic and comments, each post has commanded on your blog. 
3. THE PAGES: The pages is very similar to the post panel. Just like the post panel, you can see all published pages for your website here, traffic and comments of each page, date of creation, and options to either edit, delete or view. By default, it has 10 pages per view, which can be increased. 
4. THE GOOGLE+: This panel is used, to simply link your blog with Google plus. It very important, to link your blog with Google plus. The good side is, if you already have followers on Google plus, you could start receiving visitors for your blog in no time. You can either create a separate Google plus page for your blog, or use your personal Google plus account. Which ever way, ensure you tick "automatically share after posting", and "use Google+ comment on this blog"
5. THE STATS: The statistics panel have four major aspects; the overview sub panel, showing all your traffic data, at a glance; the posts sub panel, showing the traffic contributions of each post on your blog; the traffic source sub panel, showing the most referring url to you blog, and the audience sub panel, showing your traffic, based on country, browser or operating system. 
6. THE EARNINGS: The earning panel, of course, is your Adsense panel. This is the panel that integrate your blog and it contents, with Google Adsense. As inviting as this panel could be, I will strictly recommend that you leave it alone, until your blog is ready for Adsense. The truth is, the panel looks inviting, but getting Adsense approval is not easy, so ensure your blog is ready before you apply. 
7. THE CAMPAIGN: Google does not only make you money, by advertising on your blog, they also take from you, and show you to the world. That is exactly what the campaign panel is used for. So if you wanna show your business to a large audience, on a quick, quick note, the campaign is for you. it is also known as Google Adword. 
8. THE LAYOUT: You see all these gadgets, and widgets, displayed on Novice Hive here and there; I mean this contact forms, menus, email subscription and so on? This is where there are created. A little care should be exercise when dealing with this panel, else you could turn your blog upside-down. Note however, that your layout, is dependent on the template in use, so in a nutshell, all blogger do not have same layout, except they are using same template (also known as theme), even so, their layout can still differ. 
9. THE TEMPLATE: I'm sure you've visited few blogs before now, right? Are all their looks same with Novice Hive? No! The reason for that is the template. Blogger.com support different templates, with which you can spice up the look of your blog, and if non of this templates, is fancy enough to your taste, there are also free and paid template available, from third party, which you can download. For free or paid third party templates, where to download and how to install them, please refer to our theme section. 
10. THE SETTINGS: The settings panel is divided into six (6) other sub panels. Although this panel have less to do with the overall look of your blog, but whether your blog can be found by others, is dependent on what you do here. So strict care is advised. 

On how to properly set up a blogger.com website, some of the things that needs to be changed, removed, or included among others, click through, to the next page.