The Real Blogger Status

One of the simplest ways to make a blog useful is to add label searches. Adding label searches, in page / post text, is not easy - unless you know how to build the URLs. Here's a label search from this blog. http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/search/label/Blogger%20Magic All that I want, when using that label search, is to add another reference to my "Blogger Magic" post series. " Blogger Magic " emphasises how easy it is, to use Blogger. How easy is it, to remember that syntax - to add a label link? Maybe, a " Blogger Magic " reference, in this post?

Not all blog owners know the best ways to update labels, with the posts in their blog. We see occasional signs of confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I add a label, to many posts at once? and How do I correct the spelling of my label, already added? and How do I remove all of the labels, from one of my posts? These owners are not aware how to use the dashboard Posts page - and Post Editor - to add, delete, and edit labels.

Blog owners have been requesting the ability to position various post content items above the post body, for years. We've seen reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about problems moving Comments, Labels, Share Bar, and others. Several years, "Arrange Items" was upgraded to allow Labels to be moved above the post body. That option was provided briefly - then removed later.

Some people who will enjoy your blog may prefer to follow it using their email . It's not difficult to setup email delivery of the comments or posts - from various source selections. FeedBurner offers a wide assortment of delivery options, for the many sources. Blogger offers the "Subscribe by Email" gadget and service , which delivers the posts newsfeed. That's one feed possibility - and you can have many more, with very little work.

From time to time, we've had various queries about content segregation, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger How do I publish adult content, in a section of my blog? Previously, the best answer would typically start with a blog cluster . Publish a second blog, with different content - then merge the two blogs. That's an interesting answer - but it's messy - and two blogs don't aggregate search engine traffic properly. Using a combination of custom redirects, label searches, and static pages, you can make a blog within a blog, to host your mildly adult content.

The subject of indexing of label searches comes up, from time to time, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . I want the label content to appear, in search engine hit lists. Some blog owners cannot understand what gets indexed, by the search engines. Label searches are not unique content - and should not be indexed. Posts are content - and posts are best indexed, as post pages - directly from the automatically generated sitemap .

Some blog owners want to publish posts, and have a dynamic main page - but want to restrict specific posts to a tabbed page. Having created a tabbed page with specific posts, the next question would be But how do I keep those posts off my main page? And long ago, there was no good answer for this question. Then, Blogger gave us the Custom Redirects feature.

With a static website, you use different sized headers to indicate sections of each page - and how important each section may be. That helps your readers search each page, and makes them happy - and making your readers happy increases SEO. With a Blogger blog, what makes your readers happy increases SEO, also. With a blog, you make your readers happy by providing content, for them to read . And you make them happier, by organising the content.

Occasionally, Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , we see concern about another search efficiency report. I'm getting a report mentioning Multiple meta descriptions found for the page What do I do? Similar to the long known panic about blocked label search indexing, this is more confusion about label searches . If you spend time adding search description meta tags , to new and previously published pages and posts in a blog, eventually you will have some posts with search descriptions, and with a common label. A label search page, for a label containing multiple posts each of which have a search description, is going to have multiple search descriptions.

Occasionally, we see a request from somebody who wants to publish a blog with historically significant dates, which precede Blogger compatible dates. In one case, we see a request in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , about writing a blog, as "published" in the 1960s. I'm doing a History project, and I'm blogging as if I was in the 1960's. I was excited to see that I could change that date - but soon realized that it won't let me go back further than 1970. Unfortunately, blog dates will go back no farther than 1970.

One feature of the Blogger home page, enjoyed by some blog owners, is the ability to explicitly set maximum main page size, for the blog when displayed. We see an occasional complaint, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I redirected my home page, using a label search - but the display is now way too long! How do I shorten my custom main page? This blog owner is probably a little disappointed, to discover one tiny limitation, in main page setting. The "Show at most" setting, in Settings - "Posts and comments" - mirrored by "Number of posts on main page", in "Configure Blog Posts" - lets you set an explicit maximum page size. That setting only applies to the native main page URL - and some blog owners like to customise the main page, using a label search redirect.

Drop down menus, and custom sitemaps, are tools used in static websites, to help the readers find website content. Occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , we see a question from blog owners, who are accustomed to publishing static websites. How do I upload a custom sitemap, for my readers to use? or How do I build a drop down, cascaded menu bar, to index the posts? The answer, for Blogger blogs, is that neither is truly useful. Features like cascaded, drop down menus, custom sitemaps, numbered pages, and complex slideshows ("sliders"), are excellent accessories, for static websites. Blogger blogs, however, are dynamic - and don't really benefit from either accessory.

Blog owners have been asking for the ability to search for posts using label combinations, for a while. That option was given us, some time ago - with no fanfare. What we now have is called a "Boolean" label search .

We see confusion, from time to time, about label searches in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Why don't my labels work, consistently? or Why don't all of my pages work? Looking at a blog with the problem, we'll frequently see lack of consistency in label case - some labels appear in lower case ("label"), some in upper case ("LABEL"), some in sentence case ("Label"). This might seem like an insignificant personality issue - but it's not.

This week, we have a number of reports , in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , from blog owners who like to monitor the Google+ +1 counts, for their posts, using the dashboard Posts list. The ability to observe, at a glance, the +1 count for any given group of posts is useful - and popular with some folks. I use it, myself, with newer posts in this blog. Unfortunately, my Posts list shows no +1 counts for recent posts, for some Posts lists.

We see occasional confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I let my readers subscribe to my pages? A static page, by definition, does not produce newsfeed content. This is one original purpose for the static pages feature , in Blogger blogs.

We've been dealing with the limitations of the dynamic template - how you can't easily edit dynamic template HTML code, with a blog published to a dynamic template - for a while. At one time, you could link a dynamic and non dynamic view of the blog - and let your readers use the sidebar, and the many options there, in non dynamic view - and switch back to dynamic view, for the comments and posts. That choice was taken away , in 2014, because of "privacy issues". Like Designer and Layout templates, you can add a Pages gadget - and index dynamic pages, like label searches - as you may have done with gadgets on static pages .

One of the most fascinating features of Blogger blogs is the various options to organise our content. Long ago, I wrote a simple article, Adding A Blogger Blog To A Website . That's become one of the most consistently popular posts, in this blog. Most blog owners have multiple interests, and like to organise their different interests , by subject - and have a different blog, for each subject. Some people like to have a blog, and a website - and host both the blog and website in one Blogger blog, under one URL. For a small blog / website combination, that's an easy way to start out - and a good alternative, to having multiple blogs / websites.

Occasionally, we see a naive question, which requests a value comparison between pages (static pages), and posts (dynamic pages). What are the advantages of using a page, instead of a post? That question, worded in that vague way, cannot be answered. The various differences between pages and posts can provide advantages, or disadvantages . To evaluate a page or a post as an advantage, one must know the specific needs of the blog in question.

Occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , we see evidence of confusion and doubt. Do I really need a sitemap, for my blog? This question, when asked, may help us to design our blogs better. WikiPedia defines a sitemap as a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users Classically, a sitemap is a visual index, to help the people viewing a static website, to easily identify and access a specific article in the website.

Not all blog owners know what pages are - nor how they differ from posts. We see confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? . How do I publish a post, which always appears on the home page? or How do I publish a post, which never appears on the home page? or How do I publish multiple posts on a page? Long ago, we used workarounds, like publishing a post, using a future or past date . The workarounds would create a post which would always, or never, appear on the home page - but there were always side effects, from using either technique.

In late 2011, Blogger Engineering gave us a new Blogger feature - the ability to redirect any URL in a blog, to any other URL in the blog . Like any feature, we found an immediate use for it - something much requested, for a good while. Other people have found more uses for the redirection feature - and still others have found confusion. The syntax used in the redirection "From" and "To" values is not always obvious - and occasionally there is confusion about what can - and can't - be done with redirection .

With more people starting to use the New Blogger GUI, we're starting to see more questions about some non obvious and obscure details. Recently, people are starting to use the New GUI for routine blog maintenance, and are trying to manage their labels. How do I add labels to my posts, using the Posts (previously the "Edit Posts") menu? The answer is right there in front of our eyes - but we need sharp eyes.

In February, we observed that various blog owners were reporting problems with updating label and link lists . We setup a problem rollup in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , where we observed a small but significant number of reports from unhappy blog owners, unable to update the gadgets on their blogs. Last month, Blogger Support supposedly resolved the reported problem, and the volume of problem reports dropped significantly. The problem, however, has not been eliminated.

Mail-To-Blogger is a very simple way of using your email client or mobile computer, to submit photos and text as posts in your Blogger blog. As simple as it is, it offers less options than some folks would wish. Some post content can't be immediately published, using email - but must be later added into the post, using Post Editor.

As people are starting to use the New GUI (2011) , we're seeing questions about apparent restrictions on labels, in the new post editor. Why can't I use an apostrophe in my labels? and Why can't I have a label "Red & Blue" any more? Not all blog owners appreciate the special nature of certain characters, in HTML. Nevertheless, we are all affected by how these special characters are treated.

Not every blog owner wants to display current posts on their blog Home page. How do I display just a Welcome message, on my Home page? Some owners are satisfied with displaying a fixed welcome message - and let the readers click on links in the menu bar , or a menu gadget in the sidebar, to see the posts.

Now that the chaos of May 11 , and the maintenance release rollback, is becoming a distant memory for many (but not all) blog owners, we have a few blog owners, reporting in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , noticing artifacts of that week. My blog has labels with some weird signs in front of them, with no posts - how do I get rid of these labels? The problem is that you won't find these odd labels indexed in " Edit Posts " - so how do you remove them?

One of the most useful accessories that you can provide in your blog, to make it visitor friendly, is a search gadget. A search gadget lets a new visitor, just arrived at your blog from a search engine hit list, find more articles that may interest them. Besides a search gadget, which lets people search your blog on their terms, you may include one or more label searches, which lets people search your blog on your terms. Since you have written the articles in your blog, you know what information you have in your blog - and letting people search your blog on your terms is more logical. A properly structured label array lets your potential repeat visitors find related articles in your blog. You can see my label array on my Topics page .

When it comes to encouraging repeated visits to your blog, by people who are interested in its content, a properly constructed labels array is a very useful feature. Unfortunately, a blog of any substantial size, and fully using the potential of labels, is going to have a rather large labels array - and this blog is no exception to that rule. Long ago, I realised that indexing the label searches in this blog was making my sidebar unacceptably long. Repeat visitors to this blog have complained occasionally, because I removed the labels index from the sidebar, to try and speed up the display load time. This week, I remedied that situation, by making my labels index gadget display as part of a static page, and moved the gadget from the sidebar to the main part of the blog.

Every few days, we see confusion in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , about the archive / label retrieval display limit, vs the main page size setting. How do I get my label retrieval to show more than 20 posts?

Blogger blog owners, like dogs, always want more. Cue the super annoying commercial currently running on some USA TV channels. More, please! And when I suggest using an HTML / Text gadget, tweaked to show only when the "home" page is displayed , I hear cries for "more". But how can I show my latest posts for a given label, on my home page? Surely, I can do that too? The answer here is that yes, you can do this - and fortunately, it's not difficult. It simply require a little more thinking.

If you want to publish multiple "posts" on a static page, using a standard Pages Index gadget, you just edit the static page as required . That gives you multiple "posts" that never appear in archives or label retrievals, or on the main page, on one true static page. If your need for a "static" page is simply to have a collection of "posts", linked from a tabs index, make a custom pages / posts index gadget , and index label retrievals . This gives you multiple posts that will initially appear on the main page, and on any number of dynamic indexed (archives / label retrievals) pages. Continuing my "Contact" example from Static Pages, With Multiple Posts , I can publish any number of individual posts using the label "Contact". Then, my "Contact" tab uses a label search for "Contact" as the target, replacing the URL for a static "Contact" page. Any time that I need an additional post publis...

Along with knowing the URL of your blog , and of your blog site feed , knowing the URL(s) of your FeedBurner feed(s) is a good idea. If you don't want to write them down somewhere, or memorise them, know how to find the URL(s). With FeedBurner, the action starts from the feed dashboard. Login to FeedBurner. Select the feed, by name. This gives you the feed dashboard. Now, select "Edit Feed Details". This gives you the "Feed Details" wizard. Look at "Feed Address:".

As I've written before, labels (which are, as noted, best used with blogs using a layouts template), in my opinion, are one of the best ways to organise your blog , and make it user friendly. But labels are text based. Many of you have blogs, and readers, that like pictures. For those of you that build blogs with pictures, there's LinkWithin. LinkWithin uses thumbnail copies of the pictures in your posts to make a "related posts" index at the end of each post. This is a pictorial equivalent of the labels list, that you see after each post. Note that LinkWithin installs automatically for you, with you logged in to Blogger. This is a process which, as I have written separately, should be considered with care . >> Top

Almost one year ago, I wrote about a newly discovered limit in Blogger blogs . Labels could have, at most, 200 characters of labels (including spaces and commas). Today, we see reports of newly discovered limits, again in labels.

Many bloggers who setup team blogs, and anticipate having significant numbers of authors providing significant numbers of posts, eventually start wondering How can I list all of the posts, by author? This is the sort of feature that one would hope to find in any well designed content management system, which is yet one more thing that Blogger is not . I'm sure that this question came up in the AppsSpot Blogger Enhancements forum , I don't recall that it was discussed terribly vigorously. There is a solution for this need, though it's manual, and may have to be enforced by the blog owner. Simply have each author assign a label to each post , using his / her name. You, the blog owner, can verify consistent and proper labels, by checking against the Edit Posts menu , which lists both author name and label membership of each blog post. With each post properly labeled, simply add a labels index - either a Blogger standard one, or a third party one like the Cumulus Multi-Style...

I use labels in this blog, a lot. I have a lot of related, overlapping topics in the many posts here, and labels are perfect for mapping the different topics. And I use the "Label Actions" pulldown menu, in " Edit Posts ", to add, change, and delete labels on multiple posts. Many other bloggers do too, and some run into interesting problems . There's an option to "remove" a label, but I couldn't get it to click. My cursor skipped over it. Right below that, there were two choices: Publish and Delete. Since the menu I was in is titled "Label Actions," it seemed logical that "delete' in this case referred to labels. So I hit delete, thinking it would then ask me which labels I wanted to delete. And poof, a message that all my POSTS are gone. The blogger reporting the problem has subsequently examined the "Label Actions" menu for a second blog, and discovered the same option currently available on that blog too. In...

Periodically, we see an innocent request How do I use tags (aka labels) if I post by email (aka Mail-to-Blogger)? and the unfortunate response is You can't add labels to a post through Mail-to-Blogger. This somewhat diminishes usefulness of Mail-to-Blogger.

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.

As a publisher of a Blogger blog, besides publishing articles, you have to know how those articles are being read. Just as knowing who is reading your blog , you need to know who is indexing your blog. The Google Search Engine, which feeds 2/3 of the known major search engines, provides Google Webmaster Tools , so we can monitor how well our blogs are being indexed.

When you create a blog, do you just post, endlessly? I don't. For every new post I make, I update, revise, and relink each post to other posts. And the dashboard "Posts" menu (formerly "Edit Posts") is an essential part of that activity. From the Blogger dashboard menu, click on "Posts" - and you're there.

This blog is about blogging, and I suspect that a few of you have subscribed to one or more of the feeds that are provided here . I use a number of feeds, too, in this blog - look in the sidebar. When your blog has an activated feed , every label search can be accessed as a feed . You can subscribe to one of the topics related feeds here - maybe my Labels feed, or my internationally relevant topic - Languages . You can include subject feeds from other blogs, too, using custom feeds published by services like FeedBurner . Just decide what you want, and use your imagination. >> Top

There is no way to directly edit a label, short of editing each post, one by one, and changing the label field. Change the problem label, by retyping it, one post at a time. That's slow and tedious. But - that's not the only way to change a label.

This lets you (any one of your readers) decide how you (he / she) wants to list the Topics (aka Labels) , in my (your) blog. You (your readers) select the Style that pleases you, not the blog owner (you). So, how does it work? Hide Select Hide Style to hide everything except the MultiStyle Labels Menu Bar. Hide Style is the default in this blog; other blogs may vary. List Select List Style for the familiar long list, alphabetised, with post counts. Menu Select Menu Style for a pop up list, alphabetised, with post counts. Zoom Select Zoom Style for a long list, alphabetised, using larger fonts to identify topics with higher post counts. Original code by Ramani of HackOSphere , improved by Chuck of RBS . (Question): This rocks! So, Chuck, how do I get this into my blog? For the answer, see Adding CumulusTopics Code Into Your Blog . >> Top

As I wrote so long ago, Labels are one of the most significant features of New (pka Beta) Blogger . But everything good has its limits . If you use Labels enthusiastically, as I have, you will discover them (they will find you) periodically.

I've written about the feeds from your blog , and I've written about labels in your blog . Both features are very useful, in organising content from your blog. And we can combine the two, to publish targeted blog content, using a feed based upon a label. This blog is http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/ This blog uses labels - and provides label feeds, to help you get the most benefit.

I say every chance that I get, that Labels Rock. They are very user friendly, and produce attractive results. In general. There's one feature of labels that not everybody finds attractive, however.

Labels are one of the more useful new features in Layouts Blogger. Availability of all Labels features can be a motivating factor, in migrating a blog from a Classic (HTML) template, to a Layout / Designer template. Here's my latest Label - WildFires . This shows you the latest major Blogger problems. We currently have 0 wildfires active .

As I wrote so long ago, Labels are probably the most significant feature of (New aka Beta) Blogger . But everything good has its limits. If you use Labels enthusiastically, as I have, you will discover them (they will find you) periodically. You have too many labels, or the total length of your labels is too great. You are limited to a total of 200 characters, in the Labels string, for any post. I believe that this includes all commas and spaces between labels. Look at my example. Labels for this post : Label1, Label2, Label3, Label4, Label5, Label6, Label7, Label8, Label9, Label10, Label11, Label12, Label13, Label14, Label15, Label16, Label17, Label18, Label19, Label20, Label21, Label22, Label23, Label24, Label25, Label26, Label27, Label28, Label29, Label30, Label31, Label32, Label33, Label34, Label35, Label36, Label37, Label38, Label39, Label40, Label41, Label42, Label43, Label44, Label45, Label46, Label47, Label48, Label49, Label50, Label51, Label52, Label53, Label54, Label55, Lab...

When I write a post in my blogs, whether PChuck's Network , or The Real Blogger Status , or whatever, it's a challenge to get the post into a finished state. The most obvious challenge there is writing the content, but linking the content to other content is a struggle too. With a pure blog, you write a bunch of posts, related or not, and have an index to the posts in the sidebar. The reader reads the index, and select a post to read. The posts are linked through the sidebar. My blogs aren't pure blogs - they are hypertext documents, using a blog structure. Using the Blogger One Button Publishing structure allows me to concentrate on writing content, and dealing with formatting, structure, and style later, or as time permits. Some of my blog posts are linked to other blog posts, through links in the text , but with others you'll still need links in the sidebar. With Classic Blogger, the links in the sidebar were provided through the Archives. All of the posts wr...