You may have recently received my newsletter on "Thinking about starting a membership site or online club?" and how you may be able to use your existing tools to accomplish that (depending of course on what your goals are and how many pages you will need, how many clubs you offering, etc.). It was an exclusive article for newsletter subscribers only.
Blogger Pages Setup for Online Club (or simply how to hide Pages)
However, a question came in regards to Blogger pages. So I also thought it was a good question for everyone using Blogger and wanting to learn how to "hide" pages for whatever reason (such as starting an online club or sharing specific information with your newsletter subscribers, etc.).
Using "Hidden" Pages in Blogger
Blogger has a Pages Gadget. When you create a page and Publish, it asks you where you want to add the Pages gadget – List (sidebar), Tabs (NavBar) or No Gadget.
You can continue to use the Pages gadget (Tabs is the most popular view), but you will need to Edit it (in Design->Page Elements if using Old Blogger Interface, or Layout if using the new Blogger Interface) and "uncheck" or "hide" certain pages for your online club.
Notice in my above example I am "hiding" certain pages (no member-only pages in my example. This is strictly to show you the Edit screen and how to uncheck pages); those that are NOT checked are hidden from the public and will not appear on the Pages gadget. The pages exist, you are simply setting not to show them in the Pages gadget. Instead, you will notify members of your Club content.
Sharing Your Online Club Material with Members Only
If you need to email or use the page link in a newsletter, then be sure you View Page (with the links to your Club PDFs or YouTube videos or embedded YouTube video, etc.) to get the page's URL. That is the link you can then to copy and paste later into a newsletter or email or however you plan on letting your "members" know about this new page that has all the club materials.
Advance Option: You can add password protected code to the page, but then have to remember to inform your members of that password.
Manage and Know Your Limits in Blogger
Please keep in mind when building your Online Club and overall Blogger site, that you only have a max of 10 pages to use.
- So you may currently have a page about Join My Team, About Me, so say 2 pages for your regular, main blog.
- Then you may create a public page to advertise your Club and all the information members can receive and include a PayPal button for people to pay for your Club. So that's 3 pages now in total.
- Then you may create another page, that is "hidden", that will contain your "members only" content. So now that's 4 pages or the 10 you have. This is plenty for many of you.
But the more "clubs" you have the more pages you'll use. So with this type of 1-1 layout (one page for main club page and one page for "member only" content) and the 10 page max, and using 2 pages for non-club information (such as a Join My Team or About Me), you can have 3 Clubs max.
- 2 public pages, such as Join My Team and About Me
- 2 "member only" pages (hidden) for Club 1
- 2 "member only" pages (hidden) for Club 2
- 2 "member only" pages (hidden) for Club 3
- 2 pages (hidden) for other needs such as making a generic "Thank you for joining my Club" page or a "Thank you for signing up for my newsletter" page.
This is just a sample concept. Your Club layout may be different where you use many pages per Club if that's how you choose to set it up. So just continue to be mindful that you only have 10 pages to work with per Blogger blog.
if you have any questions, feel free to share them here with everyone in a comment 😀
Happy Blogging!
Heather 😀
www.BlogsByHeather.com
Related Links
- A "MUST" READ: Read all my articles on Membership Sites!
- You can also always build your own Nav Bar using this tutorial to create your own Nav Bar in HTML code.
- Purchase a domain for your club!
- How to create a page in Blogger.
- Learn more about Pages and how they work.
Thanks for tips… 🙂