YES - Startpage / HompageURL filtered by Label for Blogger.com
As Blake Matheny remarked in his post in 2007, most Blogger Help Forum entries and responses for requests to filter the default hompage list of posts by a Label state it there is no solution. But Blake has found and described a solution, which we applied line-by-line, with a little twist: we just left the original Google code section about the rendering of posts as it is, including the now standard lines for the eventual inclusion of Google ads. And it works, we haven't found an issue yet, cross fingers :-)
So here is the former BeeCMS code (which had already been modified from the original code, see previous posts).
<b:includable id='main' var='top'>
<!-- posts -->
<!-- <b:include data='top' name='status-message'/> -->
<b:include data='posts' name='breadcrumb'/>
<data:defaultAdStart/>
<ol class='hfeed' id='posts-list'>
<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'>
<li><article class='hentry'>
<b:include data='post' name='post'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "static_page"'>
<b:include data='post' name='comments'/>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<section>
<b:include data='post' name='comments'/>
</section>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:post.includeAd'>
<b:if cond='data:post.isFirstPost'>
<data:defaultAdEnd/>
<b:else/>
<data:adEnd/>
</b:if>
<div class='inline-ad'>
<data:adCode/>
</div>
<data:adStart/>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:post.trackLatency'>
<data:post.latencyJs/>
</b:if>
</article></li>
</b:loop>
</ol>
<data:adEnd/>
And here is the new revised code including our version of Blake's hack. The main difference is as mentioned above the tags for Google Ads, and the positioning of the "includable", Although we intially pasted it somewhere else Google / Blogger, seemed to re-adjust the location of that code.
So here is the new code:
First the Includable 'printPosts' which can be found between the "post-feed links" section and the includable "feedLinksBody". The formel within the includable printposts is the default Google call to list posts and individual posts (items) with or without comments.
<b:includable id='printPosts' var='post'>
<li><article class='hentry'>
<b:include data='post' name='post'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "static_page"'>
<b:include data='post' name='comments'/>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<section>
<b:include data='post' name='comments'/>
</section>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:post.includeAd'>
<b:if cond='data:post.isFirstPost'>
<data:defaultAdEnd/>
<b:else/>
<data:adEnd/>
</b:if>
<div class='inline-ad'>
<data:adCode/>
</div>
<data:adStart/>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:post.trackLatency'>
<data:post.latencyJs/>
</b:if>
</article></li>
</b:includable>
And here is the original hack by Blake:
<b:includable id='main' var='top'>
<!-- posts -->
<!-- <b:include data='top' name='status-message'/> -->
<b:include data='posts' name='breadcrumb'/>
<data:defaultAdStart/>
<ol class='hfeed' id='posts-list'>
<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<b:if cond='data:post.labels'>
<b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>
<b:if cond='data:label.name == "home"'>
<b:include data='post' name='printPosts'/>
</b:if>
</b:loop>
</b:if>
<b:else/>
<b:include data='post' name='printPosts'/>
</b:if>
</b:loop>
</ol>
<data:adEnd/>
...
It worked: the default 'homepage' is now filtering the posts using the label "home" (I hope after posting this article, the 'home' in the code remains bold and red :-) ). Thanks Blake.
If you want to publish an article on the first page / start page, just add the label "home" to that post. And don't forget, Blogger doesn't display the post, if you spelled the tag "Home" or "HOME" instead of "home". Yeah, it is a bit nick-picking of Blogger to make such a distinction for labels...
So all remained for us was now to remove the #featured section, the Javascripts etc, which had become obsolete. Also we don't need the original hack anylonger, which wrapped an "if else /if" around "featured" and the "main" sections of the template.
So only major todo which remains is the bottom of the page, where we would like to update the "bio" section to make it expandable / collapsible . Don't know whether to use AJAX / Javascript, maybe using an invisible tabbed box (where the initial tab is empty, thereby "collapsed", or whether to us DHTML... We'll see, for now the biggest roadworks to adapt Nexus 5 to a more classic website style use with CMS-like publishing capabilities. Stay tuned :-)
