WYSIWYG Instead of Preview

Many Bloggers are unhappy about the Blogger notion of Preview. They do not like either the one in the template or the one in the html editor. Many are dissatisfied with the Compose mode of the Blogger Editor being only an approximation of the appearance of the published post. There is no "What You See Is What You Get", they think. So how does one wiggle past this problem?

My solution is to create a private "practice blog" where the template is exactly the same as in The Real Blog. All the Styles created in the CSS section will be identical and the "published" posts in The Fake Blog will look EXACTLY like they will look in The Real Blog.

This will leave you free to start with a rough draft (but one that you can Publish right away and see how it looks!), to make various revisions, and, lastly, achieve the polished post. All this work can occur in the private blog and no one will have access to see that post while you're fumbling around with it in The Fake Blog. When you copy it later and paste it into The Real Blog, you can Publish it for real and be back in the normal public view.


WARNING: Name your practice blog so that it can't be confused with The Real Blog at any time! Avoid having both blogs open at the same time.

Create A Practice Blog

Assuming there is a recent download of the template for The Real Blog on your hard drive, follow these steps: Create The Fake Blog, using any Blogger template. Create a quick phony First Post and proceed if post and blog look okay. Click "Customize" or otherwise get to the Dashboard. Click "Layout". Click "Edit Html". Follow the instructions about uploading a copy of the template from your hard drive to The Fake Blog. Click "Browse" unless you actually have the full file-name at your fingertips. After you browse for it, double-click it. Then click "Upload". There will be a warning about losing widgets and you'll be asked if that's okay; answer Yes. It will both delete the contents of all the Widgets except Archive and Profile (which may have to be re-added to the page elements, but will be intact) and it will Save the new template. YOU ARE NOW READY TO WRITE YOUR FIRST POST IN THE PRACTICE BLOG. When it is close enough to being perfect, copy all the code in the Blogger Editor and paste it into a new post in The Real Blog.

Remember this is a Practice blog for Posts and it doesn't matter if the Widgets or the Gidgets get deleted! Here again, it's important to not be confused about which blog you have open in front of you! If later you want to work like crazy to re-create all the Page Elements, that's up to you. I just figure the sidebar is generally very monolithic, very unchanging once you like it. The WYSIWYG for it is less important than for the posts, that's my view. (And there is a Preview button on the Layout page that lets you view the rearranged gadgets before you Save.)