How To Create a Blog on Blogger For Testing Templates and Codes

recommend you create a blog on Blogger for testing templates and codes before making changes to your live blogspot blog. By doing this, you won't mess up with your blog by uploading a corrupt template. I always use test blogs when testing templates, scripts and other hacks before implementing the changes on my blog.

Since text blogs are used only for experimental reasons, I set them up in a way different from the way I set up my main blogs. First of all, I ensure that they are not listed in public listing of blogger, not visible to search engines; not appear in my Google+ or blogger profile page. Atimes, I also set them up in a way that no one else can view it except me.

Luckily, Blogger allows us to set up any number of blogs for FREE and also makes it easy to create a Blog on Blogger with the settings highlighted above.

How To Get Started

==> Go to www.blogger.com and sign in with your Google account details.

==> Choose a name for your test blog e.g My Test Blog 1
==> Next you will need to choose your blog address (something.blogspot.com). Try to use an address which is unlikely to be used by other Bloggers
==> Choose one of the default templates and create your blog.

The next screen invites you to make your first post. This is actually quite important as having a few posts in your test blog will be of great benefit in seeing how your experiments will work when you try them out. 

I recommend you change a few settings as explained below, before adding posts to your test blog. 

1. Go to Settings tab.
2. Go to Basic sub-tab.
3. Add description for the test blog eg a test blog for testing templates and scripts.
4. Via "Privacy", Set 'No' for Add your blog to our listings? option and also Set 'No' for Let search engines find your blog? option as seen in the screenshot below:

After configuring these settings, neither your test blog will be indexed by search engines, nor it will be displayed in public search listings of blogger blogs.

How To Restrict Readers From Viewing the Test Blog

1. Go to Settings tab.
2. Go to Basic sub-tab.
2. Scroll down to Permissions.
3. In Blog Readers section, select the "Private - Only blog authors" option.

After configuring this option, no one can view your blog except you.

Disconnecting Test Blog From Google+ Profile

If you've linked your Google+ profile with your Blogger account, you can follow the steps below to disconnect your test blog from auto-sharing the posts on your test blog on Google+ :

==> Go to Google+ tab of your test blog
==> Scroll down and click on "Disable Google+ Link"

If you're still using Blogger Profile instead of Google+ profile, go to your dashboard, click "edit profile", select blogs to display and uncheck your test blog from the listing. 

So, How Do I Add Posts To My Test Blog?

For posts in your first test blog, you can copy some individual posts (eg 10 posts) from your main blog making sure each post has at least an image in it. Also ensure you add at least one label to each post. The images and labels will be useful when testing templates with featured images and label widgets. 

When creating more test blogs, you can simply import posts from your first test blog to the new test blogs. 

You can also easily generate a paragraph or two of dummy text using the Lorem Ipsum generatorbut ensure you add images and labels to the posts. 

Now you can use your test blog for whatever experiments you choose! You can upload your existing template to test new modifications, try out your scripts or codes, or even try a new Blogger template you've downloaded somewhere!

When you have finished using your test blog, you can easily delete it by going to Settings >Other and choosing the "Delete blog" option. Once you do this, the blog will be deleted forever. Also the blog url will be released and available for others to use instead.

Do you use test blogs ? If not, how do you manage the modifications done on your Blogger blog?

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