Today Insider-Insights asked me an intriguing question in a comment:

Hi, what if I dont want to remove the counter instead I just want it to appear on the right side of the months ( e.g MAY (3) APRIL (2))rather than seeing it below the Months? Thanks.

This set me thinking because I have found that if you use a standard Blogger template the post count appears next to the year or month in the Blog Archive list. But, when the Blog Archive widget is added to a third party template the count always appears below the year or month. This is untidy and was one of the main reasons that I decided to remove the count from my Blog Archive lists.

This post: Removing the Count from Blogger Categories and Archives detailed how to remove the count.

Whether it was a Blogger template or a third party template the code was identical but the result was always different.

I used my tester blog, which I use for experimenting, and found a very easy solution. So here goes:

First the usual advice to use Download Full Template before doing anything, in case of disasters. Click on Expand Widget Templates and use your browser’s search or find to look for archive. This should take you straight to the Blog Archive widget.

Scroll down to locate the following code section:

<b:loop values='data:intervalData' var='i'>
      <ul>
        <li expr:class='&quot;archivedate &quot; + data:i.expclass'>
          <b:include data='i' name='toggle'/>
          <a class='post-count-link' expr:href='data:i.url'><data:i.name/></a>
           <span class='post-count' dir='ltr'>(<data:i.post-count/>)</span>
          <b:if cond='data:i.data'>
            <b:include data='i.data' name='interval'/>
          </b:if>
          <b:if cond='data:i.posts'>
            <b:include data='i.posts' name='posts'/>
          </b:if>
        </li>
      </ul>
  </b:loop>

What you need to do is select everything in red, then cut it and paste it in front of the </a> immediately above it. Also type a space in front of the span so that your count is separated by a space from the year and month.

It should now look like this with the altered line highlighted in blue:

<b:loop values='data:intervalData' var='i'>
      <ul>
        <li expr:class='&quot;archivedate &quot; + data:i.expclass'>
          <b:include data='i' name='toggle'/>
         <a class='post-count-link' expr:href='data:i.url'><data:i.name/> <span class='post-count' dir='ltr'>(<data:i.post-count/>)</span></a>
          <b:if cond='data:i.data'>
            <b:include data='i.data' name='interval'/>
          </b:if>
          <b:if cond='data:i.posts'>
            <b:include data='i.posts' name='posts'/>
          </b:if>
        </li>
      </ul>
  </b:loop>

Use Preview to check that the counts are now where you want them then save the template.

I hope that it works for you. Now I may even consider putting the count back in this blog.

Technorati Tags: Templates,Blog Archive

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