(See also: Restoring the Quick Edit Pencil to Posts.)

One thing that many of the template designers do is to leave the Quick Edit links out of the widgets they supply with their templates. There are times when their absence can be quite frustrating. This is particularly true if your blog does not have the Blogger Navbar so that you can click on Customise to return to the Layout>Page Elements tab.

If your blog and the Dashboard are open in separate tabs then all is well, as you can switch tabs. But, if you just clicked on View Blog without opening it in a new tab then, especially if you have been clicking all over the place in your blog, getting back to the Dashboard can be frustrating.

You may want to add something to your Blogroll. This is easy if you can just click the Quick Edit link and open the Configure Link List from your blog page, add the link and save it. Without the Quick Edit link this is impossible.

When I first encountered this my first reaction was to switch to Settings>Basic and double check that  “Yes” was selected in the Show Quick Editing on your Blog? section. It was and despite saving the setting again they still did not appear. They did, however, appear for any gadgets I added after installing the template.

The solution is simple. All you need to do is add one short line of code near the end of any widget on which you want to show the Quick Edit link:

<b:include name='quickedit'/>

As in this sample the place to add it is after the final closing div tag and before the final closing includable and widget tags. This is from the footer tabs widget included in eBlog Templates excellent WP Premium Red template:

</div>
<b:include name='quickedit'/>  
</b:includable>
</b:widget>

Sometimes there is no div tag because the widget is a list like this Blogroll widget from the same template:

</ul>
<b:include name='quickedit'/>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>

All you need to do is scroll through the templates HTML and add the code at the end of each widget on which you want to show the link.

The Quick Edit pencil is also left out of these templates. I have successfully added this back in one template but not another so further investigation is needed on this one. I will post it as soon as I have puzzled this one out.

I have now posted an article on replacing the Quick Edit Pencil.

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