Blogger Magic - Custom Domains and Redirected Feeds

Ever watch a magician do "sleight of hand", say the old disappearing quarter?

Here's an ordinary quarter (in my hand). Nope - not in my hand! Where did it go? What's that, behind your ear? There it is (behind your ear)!

How did he do that?

Blogger / FeedBurner / Google has a magic trick for you, and it's just as mysterious to many bloggers.

If you publish your blog to a Google Custom Domain, and you use FeedBurner, you have 3 "magic tricks" aka "URL redirections" which you enjoy.

Your old BlogSpot URL redirects to your custom domain URL. "yourblog.blogspot.com" --> "www.yourdomain.com".
Your custom domain root redirects to the custom domain "www" alias. "yourdomain.com" --> "www.yourdomain.com".
Your Blogger native feed URL redirects to your FeedBurner URL. "www.yourdomain.com/atom.xml" --> "feeds.feedburner.com/YourDomainCode".

When this works, someone subscribing to the original BlogSpot based feed gets the FeedBurner feed.

"yourblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml" --> "feeds.feedburner.com/YourDomainCode".

That's sort of like

My hand to behind your ear (nope, nothing there either). But, do you feel anything when you walk? Check your shoe! There it is!

Unfortunately, not everybody likes magic. Some folks just want the quarter back in their pocket. The Google Webmaster Tools based sitemap, and many external services, are written for a plain old Atom feed. What FeedBurner does to the feed isn't acceptable. In those cases, we use a feed modifier.

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Where's The Dashboard?

We see this confusion, a couple times a week, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? . Where is the dashboard? In the Classic Blogger GUI, the display which contained the "Blog List" (at the top), and the "Reading List" (at the bottom) was labeled "Dashboard". Many people also called the "Settings" / "Template" screens for the various blogs, linked from the Blog List, the dashboard. The New Blogger GUI has no page with the label - and no links "To The Dashboard". The Navbar (another unlabeled feature) has two links - "Design" and "New Post" - which lead to different dashboard sections, when you are appropriately logged in to Blogger . And, the "B" logo at the far left of the navbar will, similarly, take you to the Blog List / Reading List.

What's The URL Of My Blog?

We see the plea for help, periodically I need the URL of my blog, so I can give it to my friends. Help! Who's buried in Grant's Tomb, after all? No Chuck, be polite. OK, OK. The title of this blog is "The Real Blogger Status", and the title of this post is "What's The URL Of My Blog?".

What Is "ghs.google.com" vs. "ghs.googlehosted.com"?

With Google Domains registered custom domains becoming more normal, we are seeing one odd attention to detail, expressed as confusion in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . My website uses "ghs.google.com" - am I supposed to use "ghs.googlehosted.com", instead? It's good to be attentive to detail, particularly with custom domain publishing . This is one detail that may not require immediate attention, however.

The Real Blogger Status

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