The Real Blogger Status

There are millions of Blogger blog owners - and each owner has their own idea, how their blog should look. Not every blog owner is willing to settle for using a Blogger supplied template. Some blog owners design their own templates - and others choose templates provided by non Blogger developers. Some blog owners - even those with no technical background - choose third party supplied templates, and demand instructions in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . Not every blog owner can be supported, according to their personal level of need.

Some new blog owners put a lot of effort into designing a shiny template with lots of features, but omit blog content - or spend time carefully tuning their blogs. Eventually, they will add content, to the blog. Later, they may discover reality. This looks like crap! or Why do I have no readers? Different blogs, with differing content, may look better using different templates. And some sections of the dashboard should be left alone.

One challenging question, that we see from time to time in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , is about one of the neatest Blogger social networking features, Following. How do I find blogs to Follow? And that is a simple question, with not such a simple answer. What came first - the chicken, or the egg?

An occasional question, seen occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , is about cost. Is Blogger free? Too many Internet services are free for the first month, then charge you once you are hooked. The answer here is (should be) good news. Blogger blogs are free - for eternity - as long as you follow the rules. But please, do follow the rules, for best results.

This year, we are finally seeing the beginning of the end, of one problem, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Spam reports - both righteous and spurious - are steadily slowing down. They are not at zero level yet, but there is a distinct decrease. Now, we are seeing questions from people who actually can do something, about their personal contributions, to the problem - borderline spam blogs, with blog owners possibly able and willing to clean up their act. I look in Google Search, for my blog, but it's not listed. Please help me, what is the problem - how can I get my blog listed? This blog owner has the right attitude - if not the right training.

One of the more intriguing questions, that we see in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , involves the Blogger / WordPress dichotomy . Should I migrate my blog to WordPress, where they provide SEO optimized themes, and various plugins? My answer to that question starts with the suggestion, that the blog owner should ask himself Why do I publish a blog? This question has many possible answers - but I will focus on two possibilities.

Similar to starting a blog and immediately focusing on making money , we sometimes see people who start a blog, and immediately start designing the template, with custom features. A beautiful, shiny design is useless, if your readers don't like it. Different blogs will attract different reader populations , who will respond to different designs.

Too many blog owners start their first blog - and the first step is to drop into the nearest online publishing forum - such as Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , and ask the question of the typical marketing expert. I want to start a blog. What should I write about, to make the most money? And there is where many spam blogs start. People who are making money, are busy making money. They do not hang out in forums, waiting for you to ask how to make money, so they can tell you how to make money - probably, some of the money that they want to be making.

The first task in starting a new blog involves taking an available blog name (aka "URL"). The rules for picking a blog name are reasonably simple. Pick a blog name. If "Create a blog" gives you that name, it's yours . Continue with #4. If "Create a blog" shows "Sorry!", pick another name, and continue with #2. Setup your new blog. Some folks need even simpler rules. If "Create a blog" gives you the name of your choice, it's yours. If "Create a blog" does not give you that name, you have to pick another. Which ever rules you wish to go by, the "Create a blog" wizard has the final say .

Too many would be blog owners are unable to create a blog, because they don't understand how to check for availability. I can't seem to type in a URL, without it saying it's not available. Some people don't understand that you do not type a URL - you just type a blog name , when checking for availability.

In terms of questions which seem, to me, to be on the level as the legendary question Who is buried in Grant's Tomb? the question, asked by some folks in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? How do I setup a new blog? would seem to be at the top of the list. But, it's not necessarily so, for everybody.

Let's be honest - blogging is an activity. Like every activity in the world, not everybody can do it. And like every activity in the world, not everybody, who can do it, can do it equally as well. There are billions of people in the world, and everybody is different. Some people build things. I don't do that. Some people race cars - or motorcycles. A nice cop, that I met once, asked me to not do that. I've tried scuba diving - and I'm not good at that, either. So, I found other things to do.

With New Blogger 2006, Blogger added another layer of simplicity in web site development. They redesigned their templates, using Dynamic HTML , and XML , for more flexibility and options. And they added two key improvements. Template objects (aka "Page Elements", which are now called "gadgets" ). A GUI Page Elements editor , to setup, position, and maintain the template objects. The Page Elements wizard lets you add and re locate objects on the blog page, and maintains the blog template . This is Page Elements, in the Classic GUI. This is the Layout page, 2016. This is more of the Layout page, 2016. The Page Elements wizard is reached from the Design link in the dashboard or navbar (when you use the Classic GUI) - or from the Layout menu entry (when you use the New GUI (2011)). If the blog is setup to use a dynamic template, "Page Elements" won't apply - and "Layout" won't even be part of the New GUI menu. The B...

There are many services available on the Internet, for creating and publishing a website. Blogger provides some services so transparently, that people get confused, occasionally, about what Blogger can reliably provide. Blogger provides some equivalents of some of the services available - with others, you may be on your own, or at the mercy of the support staff for other hosting services. Blog content created on Blogger, hosted on BlogSpot. Blog content created on Blogger, hosted outside BlogSpot. Blog content created outside Blogger, hosted on BlogSpot. Blog content created outside Blogger, hosted outside BlogSpot. Blog Content Created On Blogger, Hosted On Blogspot This is the most popular content / hosting option. Simply use "Create a blog", pick an available BlogSpot name, choose a template, and start posting. Blogger One Button Publishing is so easy to use, many bloggers have no idea how many services are involved , here. Blog Content Created On Blogger, Host...

Up until last week, I would advise folks looking for traffic to their blogs that they should publish, publish, publish . Besides friends and family, your initial readers will come through the "Next Blog" link, randomly. You get more "Next Blog" traffic from posting more, less from posting less. And, you'll need this initial traffic. Last week, with the new "Next Blog" link, all of that changed. Now, people hitting "Next Blog" get another blog, but with 2 major differences from the possibility last week. The "next blog" linked to will be chosen for similar content / subject, and same language, as the blog being displayed currently. The "next blog" linked to will not be chosen relevant to updating activity. You're just as likely to get a blog published to 5 years ago, as 5 minutes ago. This gives us two concerns, which we did not have earlier. Finding other blogs of random subject and recent updates won't be as ...

A blog, by tradition, is an online journal. We write the posts, and when we enable post titles, we choose the post titles. When we enable post pages and post titles, the URLs of the posts are a function of the dates, and the titles, of the posts. We can choose the titles of the posts, but the Blogger post editor chooses the URLs. This is a key component in the Blogger Infrastructure . The static page editor ("Edit Pages") uses the same engine as the Post Editor, and Static Pages (aka "Pages") use a similar basic URL structure.

The content of your blog encourages people to read your blog. More people reading your blog gives the blog more value. What you publish today will be in your blog tomorrow - and if what you publish today has value, it will have more value tomorrow. What you publish today, and will be read today, will make your blog more valuable than what you publish tomorrow. Publish today, revise tomorrow - that's progressive publishing .

The Blogger dashboard is at the center of your Blogger world. From the dashboard, you access all portions of your blogs, as permitted by your role in each blog . Besides the blog based links, you also have the language selection pulldown menu , the Following Reading List, and a collection of useful Blogger links. You can access your dashboard from the navbar, on any blog. At the far left of each navbar, the Blogger "B" links to your dashboard . For any blog that you are not an administrator (and thus don't have a "Customize" link), you'll have a "Dashboard" link instead. Or you can start from " www.blogger.com ", in the address window of your browser. If you're not logged in to a Blogger (Google) account, that's what you do first. If you're logged in, you go straight to the dashboard. How you log in to Blogger affects what you see on your dashboard. I have administrative access to this blog, "The Real Blogge...

(Post RePublished 2008/11/01) This post has been republished as Making A Blog or Website Is A Progressive Activity . >> Top

Does anybody remember publishing, before the web? Some people still publish to paper, and they still go through these details. Publishing to paper takes merchandising, project management, time, and other resources, and you have to acquire and apply all of those resources before you print one copy of whatever you are publishing.

Traditionally, setting up a web site is a lot of work. You have to setup the infrastructure of the website , and you have to provide content for your readers to view . Setting up a blog is a lot easier, but a blog gives you the structure of an online journal, and will include details which may distract your readers. Sometimes, you want to take a Blogger blog, and setup a web site. A blog is a web site with a dynamic home page ("main page"). Make the home page static, and you have a web site.

Setting up a web site is a lot of work. Besides the detail work, which I described in my article Blogging , which discusses the issues of content, structure, and attractiveness, a web site has to have an infrastructure. Server Space. Identity / Structure. Procedures and Utilities. With a web site based on a Blogger blog, all of these are provided for you, and for no direct financial charge. Along with what's provided for you comes what you don't get to choose. Two items that you don't get to choose are directory structure and post URLs . You organise your blog logically, by label and by title, which lets your and your readers access the content in ways relevant to you. How the content is stored is up to Blogger - this is something that you don't have to worry about (which is good), and you can't control (which is occasionally not good). You cannot prove blog or domain ownership by uploading a file to the root folder of the blog; you use meta tags for provin...

Setting up a web site is a lot of work. Once you get past the process of actually setting up a web site , you have to write something. If you want very many readers, you have to write a lot, frequently, and regularly. If you want your readers to return, they have to be able to find what you write. And need I say this - if you want readers to return over and over, what you publish has to be attractive and organised.

Blogger blogs are so versatile, and so easy to develop , that some folks don't see the forest for the trees. Every week we see the anxious query Can I write a blog, and sell stuff? or Can I write a blog, and make up stuff? or Can I include ads in my blog? or even Can I include ads from outside Google in my blog? Well, there are quite a few things that are forbidden by law, or forbidden by Blogger or by Google , that will get your blog cancelled. Most of the forbidden items are common sense - or so it seems to me.

Back when the Internet was started, having a web page of your own was a tremendous accomplishment. You had to Setup a web server (or find one with available space). Write content to go on the web page. Format the content. Load the formatted content to the web server. Look at the web page, and how plain it was. Add more formatting, maybe decorations. And that was just one web page. Then you'd add a second web page. Write content to go on the second web page. Format the content, and add links to the first web page. Add links from the first web page to the second. Load the formatted content (first and second web pages) to the web server. Look at the two web pages, and how they didn't work together. Redesign the web pages, to work better. And that was just two web pages. Add a third, and still more details to deal with. Pretty soon, you were spending all of your time formatting the web pages. Not writing content, not making it pretty. Ugh. If you want an int...

OK, you now have a kick ass blog. Congrats. But nobody's looking at it. So what now? Now, you have work to do.