The Real Blogger Status

Some blog owners would like their readers to view the entire blog in one page. A small blog, with very limited size, can theoretically fit on one page. If you intend to publish a blog with any future, and page rank , you will have to publish content periodically - and the size of the blog will increase, steadily. And eventually, thanks in part to main page limitation by auto pagination , older posts in your blog will be forced into archive pages.

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.

One interesting question, which we see occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , would be about making the blog easier to read - if the blog were static. How do I number the pages, in the blog? This blog owner does not quite understand the concept of dynamic content.

Auto pagination, and "Jump Break", have been a (controversial) feature in Blogger blogs since 2010 . Oddly enough, not all blog owners yet understand the difference between "Jump Break", and other "Read More" features. And there are more than a couple "Read More" features available, in the Internet - some not so beneficial . Occasionally, we see the confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . I have 12 articles which must appear on my homepage. Just 10 of the 12 articles are showing up. When I added 2 new articles, another old post disappeared from my homepage. This blog owner, like many, suffers from the effects of auto pagination . When I suggested using "Jump Break" , to make the posts smaller, I was met with confusion. Did you not look at the blog? I have "Read More" there, already. And looking at the blog again, I saw that he was correct.

Last month, Blogger took the next step in making us use the New Blogger GUI, and started migrating our accounts, aggressively. This change did not please a lot of people. Why won't Google admit the new interface is an utter failure, and scrap it? This is an example of misguided optimism. Blogger is not simply going to scrap it.

One interesting question, seen occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? , seems to focus not on what can be done - but on what can't. What are the limits, that apply to my Blogger blog? Some people are accustomed to dealing with resource limits, imposed on websites hosted by paid hosting services, which meter service based on bandwidth and storage space used by a blog or website. Blogger / Google does not spend time monitoring our blogs, and what resources we use. Neither bandwidth or storage size are limited. However, there are some limits on the content, which may restrict growth of our blogs. If we're aware of these limits, we can work around them.

Ever since Blogger installed auto pagination . Blogger blog owners have been asking How do I disable auto pagination? and Why can't I display my blog on the main page, without my readers having to use "Older Posts? The response, up to this year, has been simple. You cannot disable auto pagination. You have to allow sharing of network resources. Though technically correct, the latter response has not always been met with appreciation. The solution, for avoiding auto pagination, is now simple. Install a dynamic template , on your blog.

The problem of auto pagination, triggering display page segmentation, has been with us since early 2010. Even in the beginning, auto pagination was not 100% popular with blog owners . As more blog owners got used to the inevitability of auto pagination, more scenarios were discovered, where it critically affected blogs. The most recently identified scenario, where auto pagination was involved, was with images hosted as Base64 content - first discovered a year after the initial opposition started.

Now that the new dynamic templates have been available for several weeks , and people are actually using them on their favourite blogs, some folks are disappointed that they can't use them. I'm trying to install the dynamic template on my blog, and I'm seeing Sorry, dynamic views aren't available for this blog. Why me? What did I do wrong?? And these people simply have no idea how the new templates work - and why they don't always work.

When Auto Pagination was introduced , many blog owners, who preferred to display their blog as one long main page, were insulted. If I design my blog to display all of my articles on the front page, my readers should see my blog on the front page! They were unable to see the need to segment the main page display . If your blog uses one of the new dynamic templates, you may have noticed that there is no Archives link (nor an Archives gadget). With a Dynamic Template, there is no Archives link, because there are no archived posts, period.

We see this complaint, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , almost daily. I hate the comment filters - I'm moving my blog to WordPress! or WordPress gives you SEO tools, why are there no SEO tools for Blogger? or I can't stand Blogger requiring that I enable third party cookies to not count my pageviews - I'm setting up a Tumblr blog!! or How dare Blogger tell me that I can't publish my entire blog on the main page! I'm setting up my blog on my ISP's blogging service, where there no limits!!!

Auto Pagination has been an accepted part of Blogger life now for just over a year . Almost all blog owners are used to this feature, and complaints about its interference are finally rare. Recently, we've seen a new scenario where it is involved. The best way to look for a problem with auto pagination is from looking at the source code , for the blog page being displayed. Recently, we see very odd code, using the browser View - Source menu option . Note the " ... " snippet, in the example below, represents several hundred lines of similar content, intentionally removed just so this post can be displayed, without triggering auto pagination.

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?

As a result from a few (justified) complaints about Auto Pagination and its effects on blogs with classic (HTML) templates , Blogger has released an enhancement which will make classic templates, in general, more usable. In Creating pagination links on Classic Templates , we see two new options for classic templates. If you are using Classic Templates and would like to add pagination links to your blog, there are currently two options for setting this up. Both involve adding a snippet of code to your blog's template, which can be done from the Template | Edit HTML tab. You even have the ability to customise the link caption, with the phrase of your choice, or even a graphic - as you can see on some of my blogs. "<$BlogPaginationLinks$>" (for language automatic, "Older / Newer" captioned links). "<$NewerPosts$>" / "<$OlderPosts$>" (for manually labeled custom captions). Anybody with a blog with a classic template will...

Many of you who publish blogs have home computers, connected to the Internet. If you don't live alone, you probably share the use of your computer, or your Internet access. Even those who live alone may share resources occasionally. It's possible that, if you own your computer and provide your Internet access, you recognise two truths about computer and Internet use: Network resources have a cost . Neither your computer, nor your Internet service, is free. You (or somebody) had to buy your computer, at one time. Somebody pays your ISP a monthly fee, so you can surf the Internet. Network resources are shared . You may have a problem downloading the latest blockbuster movie, while your roommate is listening to his / her favourite Internet radio station. You may notice that it takes 2 - 3 times as long to download a movie in the evening, as it does very late at night. If your household shares a computer (I believe this is still not uncommon), you may have to wait to us...

Among the many odd circumstances connected with the controversial Auto Pagination feature that was introduced a month ago , we see reports by a few bloggers of broken inlinks, caused by segmentation of archive and main pages. Most reports specifically mention broken SERP entries, which link to content that's now found in an archive or main page segment that's reached by one or more clicks of "Older Posts". The new and currently un indexed segments have URLs which differ from the SERP entries. This effect is similar to a problem which I wrote about some time ago, which affect SERPs linking to main page content . Both the archive pages and the main page in a blog are more likely to be indexed by the search engines, because there is more content on these pages, and some content has already been indexed. Some posts, lacking inlinks completely, and depending upon the publishing frequency, may never be indexed except as archive or main page content.

Some bloggers seem to treat dynamic Blogger blogs like static web sites. They design their blogs so specific blog posts are consistently presented as part of the main page view. They overlook the basic design of blogs, where the main page simply contains the most currently published posts. This attitude is merely eccentric, except in cases like the current controversy about Auto Pagination . I have chosen to display 12 posts, because mine is a listing of twelve exact posts which i update daily. I now have only nine of the posts showing regardless of how many - 12 or 50 or 500 - that I preset to display. I need them all to show, because I daily print out this entire list in an MS Word booklet format - and without having the entire blog display, I can no longer do this. This is merely one example of the bloggers who are having trouble accepting the reality of Auto Pagination , and the consequently segmented archives, labels, and / or main page displays.

Besides the somewhat predictable cases of blogs with lots of text and / or pictures, comes a third possibility for problems with Auto Pagination - excessively complex HTML. We've noted before that Microsoft Word generates a lot of complex and mysterious HTML - and some large blogs, which contain a lot of articles composed under Microsoft Word, appear to be suffering from segmentation - possibly without justification . My blog was BIG, and no one ever, not once, complained it was slow loading. It's (almost) unbelievable how long Google is taking to flick the switch and restore things to how they were pre auto-pagination. and the reply It appears that you have done a lot of copy-pasting from MS Word into your blog, and unfortunately doing so will add a very large amount of unseen (but still 'heavy') HTML tags to your post.

The Mercedes brand automobile is a marvel of efficiency, engineering, and safety (so I've heard). It's designed for comfort, and for speed. If you drive one in Germany, where it is designed and built, you can even enjoy its comfort at speed - whatever speed you desire - perfectly legally. Get on the Autobahn , get in the fast lane, and use your headlight flashers when you approach someone from the rear. Keep an eye in the mirror, for someone using their flashers at you - and be prepared to move over, when someone uses their flashers. In this country, Mercedes owners (and other drivers) have to obey the speed laws, just as everybody else does. Try telling the policeman My car is safe at 90 MPH. I'll pay extra fuel tax, and use the premium lanes - and I can go 90 MPH, because I want to go 90 MPH . and see what response you get.

Possibly the hottest issue this week, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , is the Auto Pagination feature , which was introduced last week . Auto Pagination automatically helps people to limit the sizes of their archive / label / main pages , as downloaded from Blogger servers. Before the Blogger post editor "Jump Break" solution was provided, there were at least 3 known variants, for auto summarising posts. One was provided in Blogger Help: How can I create expandable post summaries? ; and at least 2 others were provided as third party suggestions. It's possible that any of these 3 variants are present in some blogs, where the owner has not seen fit to remove them, in favour of deploying the "Jump Break" in new post editor.