Publicising Updates To Your Blog, Using Google+

Ever since Google+ was released, blog owners have been asking how to post blog updates to Google+. Previously, there was only the possibility of publishing from Google+ to our blogs - and that option was not well designed. Last week, Blogger released this option, in Draft Blogger.

Today we’re excited to announce the first way you will be able to leverage Google+ -- by making it possible to replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile.

In addition to giving your readers a more robust and familiar sense of who you are, your social connections will see your posts in their Google search results with an annotation that you've shared the post.

As long as you are prepared to use a Google+ profile with your Blogger account, you can send blog updates to your followers.

After you login to Blogger, simply edit your profile. There, you'll see the advice

Connect Blogger to Google+ : Use your Google profile and get access to upcoming Google+ features on Blogger. Learn more Get Started

After you upgrade Blogger to use your Google+ profile, go to the dashboard Settings - Google+, and select "Prompt to share after posting", for automatic sharing. Or, you can use the Posts link "Share" for any post, when convenient.

I suspect there will be several possibilities with this new feature, so watch this space for updates.

Read More

Security Change To BlogSend Leaves BlogSend Email Distribution Broken #2

A year ago, we noted a security change to BlogSend, which left many blog owners with severely deprecated ability to publicise blog updates, when using a private Google Group. At that time, the recommended workaround was to add "no-reply@blogger.com" as a Google Group member.

Today, we see that the ability to add Google Group members directly is no longer offered. It appears now that the use of private Google Groups, for distribution of Blogger blog updates, is not an option.

Last week, Blogger announced the option to publicise blog updates using Google+.

It would appear that use of Google+ may be the future, for Blogger blog publicity. Some time ago, we were advised that private Blogger profiles were being replaced by Google+. It's possible that private blog updates may have the same future.

Read More

Dynamic Templates Lack A Dashboard Link In The Header Bar

Yesterday, we saw a few reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, mentioning the lack of a link, in the dynamic views header bar, to our dashboards.

I'm using dynamic views and now can't access my dashboard!

It appears that the Blogger logo / Attribution ("Powered by Blogger" caption), which formerly linked to our dashboards, is not there, any more. This deficiency appears universal - the links no longer appear on all different dynamic views, on header bars with the views listed side by side or in the pulldown list, or on blogs where dynamic views are default, or optional.

Having reported this problem to Blogger Support, we were informed that they are planning an update, coming very soon, that will provide links in the header bar similar to the right side of the non dynamic template navbar. We will, presumably, have links to "Design", "New Post", and such. Until then, the previous links have been removed from the header bar.

For the time being, you may access your dashboard simply using the link to Blogger.

http://www.blogger.com/

Alternately, you may access the non dynamic alias of any blog, for instance

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/?v=0

---

(Update 2011/11/16): We see now, various blogs with dynamic views, showing tiny Pencil ("New post") and Home ("Dashboard") icons, when the blog owner is properly signed in. You, not being an owner of this blog, will still see nothing, in my dynamic view demonstration of this blog.

Read More

Comments Settings In The New Blogger GUI

Ever since the New Blogger GUI (2011) was offered to us several months ago, we've been seeing odd questions about options for Comments in our blogs, in the New GUI.

How do I select the "Full page" or "Pop-up window" comment form, for my blog?

and

How do I select CAPTCHA verification?

and occasionally

Can I still have notification of comments, as published?

The latter question is easy enough to answer - it's just not as obvious as the other settings, in the New GUI. The first two questions represent genuine concerns, for some blog owners.

The first question - comment form placement - was recently made available, under Settings - "Posts and comments" - Comment Location.

The choice of whether to use CAPTCHA ("word verification") screening is a uniquely personal choice. Some blog owners are certain that CAPTCHA screening is necessary, while others are equally as certain that it's absolutely unnecessary. The absence of the choice causes some questions.

Finally, the comment notification option, while not actually omitted, is not obvious to everybody. Tucked away in the "Mobile and email" page, it's easy to miss, without a careful search.

Just as the several other known deficiencies, some Commenting options remain to be resolved, before every blog owner will willingly use the New GUI.

Read More

Verifying Ownership Of Your Site To Bing Webmaster

As a web master (aka blog master), besides adding posts and enhancing the template, you have a third activity - connecting your web site (blog) to other web sites and blogs. In many cases, you'll simply send the owners of the other web site (blog) a request to link to your blog.

For links to large and very active web sites, you'll use an online wizard. To prove ownership of your web site, instead of sending email, you'll add a file of specific name, or maybe specific content, into the web site. You can't add a file to your blog, though. With a Blogger blog, you have no control over files and folders - all that you do is publish posts.

One of the most important web sites that you can add your blog to, similar to Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer, is the Microsoft search engine, Bing.

Similar to Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer, Microsoft provides Bing Webmaster, which provides you the web site (blog) owner the ability to monitor and tune the relationship between your web site (blog) and Bing, the Microsoft Search Engine. When you add a non Blogger web site to Bing Webmaster, you add a file of specific name and content, to the root. When you add your blog, you add a record of specific content - a meta record - to the template.

This meta record, which provides your verification of ownership to Bing, may be one of the most important single lines of code in the template. Add this with care.

1. First, and always, backup the template for the blog.
2. Sign in to your HotMail / Live / Microsoft account (Yes, here, too, you have to sign in! And you will need a Microsoft accepted account!)
3. You start from Bing Webmaster Center - Home.
4. Under "Sites", you'll see the "Add Site" button. Hit the button.
5. Paste or type the URL of the blog into the "Site:" box.
6. Hit "Submit".
7. Now you'll have "Verify Ownership".
8. Click on "Option 2: Copy and paste a tag in your default webpage".
9. Copy the meta record, as presented to you.
10. You'll take the record as provided, and reformat it slightly. Here's an example of what they provide.
    

    <meta name="msvalidate.01" content="XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX">
    

    
    Here's what I used.
    

    <meta content='XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX' name='msvalidate.01'/>
    

11. In another tab or window, open the template editor window, for the blog.
12. Copy the record into the template for your blog, just below the records added for Google Webmaster Tools and / or Yahoo Site Explorer verification.
13. Save the template.
14. Back in the Bing Webmaster "Verify Ownership" window, click on the "Verify" button.
15. You'll now see your site, added to the Sites list, and the "Dashboard" for your newly added site will be displayed.
16. And again, backup the template for the blog. Save both backups.

Having verified ownership of your site, you now have access to various features of Bing Webmaster.

Read More

It's The Holiday Season Again, And It's Time To Decorate Our Blogs

The Winter Holiday season is approaching, and this week we're seeing queries by some blog owners, getting ready.

Why do my readers see a search display - instead of my blog?

and

How do I make it snow on my blog?

and a few owners, and visitors

Why does my browser freeze or lag when viewing this blog?

Many blog owners, who publish craft, family, and personal themed blogs, just have to make their blogs reflect their holiday wishes for their readers. Only later, they may re think their decision.

Some of us in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken remember this season last year, though not fondly. Many blog owners, having previously decorated their blogs with Falling Leaves (Thanksgiving), Falling Snow (Christmas), and later Falling Hearts (Valentines Day), found themselves spending time in the forum, asking why nobody could see their blogs. The answer that they found was that their blogs, previously decorated with the Falling Leaves / Snow / Hearts animations, were redirecting their readers to websites which were not relevant to their readers interests or needs.

The owners of computers poorly protected against malicious software installation, when redirected from their friends holiday decorated blogs to the hijackers websites, found themselves later consulting their local computer guru. The gurus spent time (not always without expense) removing some unwanted software, installed by the hijackers websites.

The charming thing about the hijacks is that the Falling Leaves / Snow / Hearts gadgets, when installed, did not immediately redirect the various visitors to the malicious websites. This detail appeared to indicate very devious planning by the hijackers, who had waited, patiently, while thousands of blog owners had installed their trickery, before activating the hijack.

This caused some confusion in the forums. A normal part of problem diagnosis - which many of those of you, who have requested help here, may recognise - is the brief and very simple question

What changes have you made to the blog, recently?

Most blog owners, naturally, answered

Nothing interesting.

Later, when a malicious Falling Leaves / Snow / Heart accessory was identified, with the stern advice

Get rid of that!

The answer would be

I installed that 6 months ago! Surely, that's not the problem??!!

Only after large numbers of people had reported problems with their blogs, and we found the Falling Leaves / Snow / Heart accessory on the problem blogs, did we advise everybody

Remove all Falling Leaves / Snow / Heart accessories, from your blogs, immediately.

Besides the blatant blog hijack threat, there's another issue for you to consider. The animation - falling hearts / leaves / snow - requires intense processor activity. If people stop visiting your blog, because their browsers freeze up, you'll need to revisit your decorative decision.

So, as this years holiday season starts, we'll advise everybody to beware of any animated accessory, such as (but not limited to) Falling Leaves / Snow / Hearts. Install any third party accessory with care and discrimination. And remember everything installed, for a long time afterwards.

Read More

Blogs Cannot Be Whitelisted Against Spam Classification

Last week, after some complaints were heard from blog owners who were using the dynamic templates on their blogs, Blogger added "Dashboard" and "New Post" links in the header bar. These new links are accessible when the blog owner is logged in, as a blog administrator.
Unfortunately, their improvement did not take into account the need to login. Blog owners, not logged in, will still see no links.
If not logged in, you may access your dashboard simply using the link to Blogger.

http://www.blogger.com/

Alternately, you may access the non dynamic alias of any blog, for instance

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/?v=0

and you may then use the "Login" link in the navbar.

Read More

Dynamic Templates Lack A Login Link In The Header Bar

Last week, after some complaints were heard from blog owners who were using the dynamic templates on their blogs, Blogger added "Dashboard" and "New Post" links in the header bar. These new links are accessible when the blog owner is logged in, as a blog administrator.

Unfortunately, their improvement did not take into account the need to login. Blog owners, not logged in, will still see no links.

If not logged in, you may access your dashboard simply using the link to Blogger.

http://www.blogger.com/

Alternately, you may access the non dynamic alias of any blog, for instance

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/?v=0

and you may then use the "Login" link in the navbar.

Read More

Google Friend Connect Accessory To Be Provided By Blogger

This week, Google announced the end to its website based community building accessory, Google Friend Connect, for non Blogger based websites.

We're retiring the service for all non-Blogger sites on March 1, 2012.

The announcement notes its replacement with Google+.

We encourage affected sites to create a Google+ page and place a Google+ badge on their site so they can bring their community of followers to Google+ and use new features like Circles and Hangouts to keep in touch.

Blogger blog owners can continue to use the Followers gadget, can use Google+, or can build their communities using both features.

Blogger blog owners were recently offered several suggestions, to integrate Google+ into their blogs.

• The Google+ badge, placed on the blog, directs your readers to your Google+ profile.
• You can replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile.
• Replacement of your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile enables you to publish your blog updates to your Google+ followers.

With Google retiring Friend Connect, this allows Blogger to take over its functionality. Blogger blog owners, who like the idea of letting their Followers display their icons on the faces of our blogs, and view our blog updates in the Blogger Reading List / Google Reader displays, can continue to use the Followers accessory.

By removing Google Friend Connect from the Followers accessory, Blogger is hoping that the code supporting the Followers gadget can be simplified, and will become more stable. This will hopefully resolve many of the recently reported outages, both in the blog face display, and in our dashboard and Reading Lists.

Read More

Will Legacy Accounts Deletion Automatically Make The URL Of Your Choice Available To You?

If you believe some of the discussions in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, a lot of Blogger blog owners are lining up at the gate - or will be doing that, starting 2011/12/05 23:59.

For a number of technical and operational reasons, we’ve decided to finally end our support for migrating legacy accounts and blogs after December 5, 2011.

Some discussions include speculation about deletion of blogs owned under legacy accounts, which will result in their personal dream URL being made available to them, finally.

How much chance is there that dozens of unhappy Blogger blog owners will finally get use of the URL to match their blog subject / title?

Does anybody here wish to guess the values for these numbers?

1. Total number of URLs that exist, in BlogSpot.
2. Number of URLs that interest you, in BlogSpot.
3. Total number of legacy accounts.
4. Number of blogs owned by legacy accounts.
5. Number of legacy accounts that will be deleted, immediately, on December 6.
6. Number of URLs that will become available on December 6.
7. Number of people like you, that desire the same URL that you desire.
8. Certainty that Blogger will clean up BlogSpot, and actually delete all blogs owned by legacy accounts.

If you are waiting for your dream URL to start your blog, how much chance is there that your new blog will be coming online December 7?

I'm thinking a working formula might be something like

( ( b / a ) * f ) / ( g + 1 ) * h

Comment lines are now open, and operators are waiting for your call.

If you have a blog in mind, get your blog online today, and make it valuable, using the content. Don't waste time, waiting for an event that may never happen. Especially given the fact that nothing stated by Blogger implies

h > 0.00

Read the note provided by Blogger, again.

we’ve decided to finally end our support for migrating legacy accounts and blogs

I have seen no mention of planned deletion of blogs, owned by the legacy accounts.

Read More

Holiday Decorations And Your Blog, #2

Last week, I issued my annual reminder to blog owners, to consider their blog holiday decorations with care. That reminder mainly focuses on the more controversial issue of blog hijacks, and computer hacking. Besides the long term and subtle computer hacking, your readers, visiting your blog decorated with the latest animation, will have a more immediate and obvious problem to consider - browser freezes and other computer overload problems.

Besides the blatant blog hijack threat, there's another challenge from the animation, for you to consider. The animation - falling hearts / leaves / snow - requires intense processor activity. Every time one heart / leaf / snowflake changes position on the screen (ie, "falls"), the processor has to redraw the screen, with the heart / leaf / snowflake in the new location. Similar to one Designer Templates problem, many computers will run a bit slower when displaying a blog with decorative animation.

People who publish blogs, that are appropriate for these decorations, tend to have readers who may not have purchased a new computer for a couple years. Older computers tend to be marginally able to deal with the load generated by the latest browser updates and other newer software - and adding animation on your blog may be just too much extra load.

Similar to the effect from blog owners who install automatically playing background music, your visitors may decide that reading your blog makes just too much trouble for them.

If people stop visiting your blog, because their browsers freeze up, you'll need to revisit your decorative decision. Maybe, thinking about it now is a better idea.

Read More

Blogger Magic - A Static Home Page

Every week, somebody asks for such a simple blog feature.

How do I have a single blog post always displayed, for the home page?

There are many things that Blogger has yet to provide, and this is one. A blog, by definition, contains a dynamic home page, with the most current posts displayed.

Today (sorry, too late!), if you view this blog, this post will be displayed, at the very top of the home page. Tomorrow, this post will be displayed, just not at the top of the home page. In a couple weeks, this post will not be displayed on the home page, at all. That is how blogs work. If you want to display anything else, you don't have a blog.

That's the purist position, anyway. A blog is simply a web site with the latest posts displayed on home page (the main page), and hidden older posts (the archives).

---

(Update 2012/06/06): The recent "Search preferences" feature allows us to setup a true static home page, with none of the complications below.

---

The neat thing about this magic trick is that it's not difficult to make it work. I categorise this trick as a snake, after the old taunt from my mother

If it had been a snake, it would have bitten you.

It's so simple, really.

1. Make the blog not display any posts, for home page.
2. Add a text gadget.
3. Tweak the text gadget to only display, when home page URL is displayed.
4. Use the Pages gadget, and index the rest of the blog. Add links using various label searches, pages, and posts, as you like.

Make The Home Page Not Display Any Posts
If you make the main page not display any posts, you get an empty home page. Settings - Formatting (Classic GUI) / Settings - "Posts and comments" (New GUI) contains the "Show" setting. Set "Show" to "0 posts", and the blog has an empty home page.

Add A Text Gadget
Add an HTML / Text gadget, positioned just above or below the "Blog Posts" gadget. Setup the new gadget just like the blog post, that you would want permanently displayed. If you want to use the post editor to compose the gadget, do that.

Tweak The Template
This is the one part of this project, that requires any technique. Use the Template Editor, and edit the gadget template, for the gadget that you just added, so the gadget only displays when the home page URL is being displayed.

Use The Pages Gadget, To Index The Rest Of The Blog
Once you have a static home page gadget, just add links to the rest of the blog. You can have links in the new gadget - and you can have an index in the blog header, or in the sidebar. Use your imagination here, it's your blog.

That's it. Really.

Read More