The Real Blogger Status

The Theme Designer rocks. There are GUI adjustment / selection wizards, for dozens of theme objects, in any given blog. You can make font and color changes, using various GUI wizards - and see results, in real time. And the wizards are logically grouped, by function. If you know what objects you need to change, you can tweak your blog theme, without worrying about CSS coding. But depending upon the browser zoom level, some of the available wizards may not be immediately visible, on some "Advanced" submenus.

The exciting, new "Responsive" themes are a move forward, for Blogger. Like every move forward, though, there's always a couple steps backwards. The "Responsive" themes are not as easily customised as the earlier "Designer" and "Layout" themes - and they lack some enjoyable features.

For those not yet familiar with the new "Responsive" class themes, I offer my demo 4 "Responsive" blogs - one blog per exciting theme. You can see the links to the 4 demo ("Test") blogs, at the top of the sidebar. You'll also see links to 2 live blogs, for a better idea. You have to make an effort, to find the sidebar, however. The effort is necessary, to help the "Responsive" class templates replace the "Layout" / "Designer" class templates - and their special "Mobile" template.

Earlier this year, I took a leap into the future, and upgraded this blog to use a "Responsive" class template. There are four "Responsive" templates - Contempo, Soho, Emporio, and Notable. The differences between the four include more than merely the visible design.

There are three possible dashboard wizards, used to recover a blog with a corrupt template aka "500 Internal Server Error". The Template Designer page. The Template page. The Template Editor ("Edit HTML") page. With most blogs, one of the three can eventually be used, to install a clean, new template - and recover a blog that's offline because of the broken template. Some blogs, unfortunately, cannot be recovered this way.

It's always wise to backup the blog contents - and the template. If you are publishing a blog, you may occasionally make a mistake. Being able to recover from a mistake, using backed up content, is always a good idea. Blogger provides a dashboard wizard to backup the blog template - and a complementary wizard, to backup blog content - comments, pages, and posts .

We're seeing a few reports from blog owners, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , with blogs being inaccessible. My blog can't be seen at all, it just says error when I'm trying to open my blog. I also can't edit anything, like HTML or Template. When the blog is viewed, it will issue one of several bX codes. So far, I've identified bX-3o92c2, bX-ppgc07, bX-tqn3zr, bX-v2vqfh, bX-vg1g6a. When the blog is viewed, using an HTTP trace , the trace will terminate, showing an old friend. Error 500 Internal Server Error

If you've ever done programming - including updating existing code (generally made by another person, who you grow to hate) - you know of the value of backups. Any time you improve or repair existing code, there is always the possibility of making mistakes. Code is written by people - and people make mistakes. Sometimes, the mistake may be in the code, as originally created (and used for months, until you touched it). Other times you make one mistake on your own, and the whole thing crashes. Experienced programmers know that making mistakes is part of programming. When you make a mistake, be prepared to recover from - and learn from - the mistake. This is true, when making template changes, in your blog.

A few times recently, we've had reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , of mysterious text, appearing in the middle of the posts . How do I remove unwanted text appearing in the middle of the page? Frequently, all that we can see is a mass of text. Occasionally, the mysterious text has been readable. Extracting key phrases from the text, we can some times locate the source of the mysterious text, in the post code.

The new Template HTML Editor has been with us for just under 2 weeks . Not every blog owner sees the new editor as an improvement. Some folks don't understand how to find the code sections, where they need to apply changes - and would probably be happier if "Expand All Widgets" were an option.

Occasionally, a blog owner wants to add the Pages Index gadget to the blog, but just can't. I go to add it - and I see "Already Added" - but where is it? The first thing to check, when this happens, is the "Show pages as" option in the dashboard Pages display. Sometimes, you'll find "Don't show" selected. Other times, you'll find "Top tabs" - but the template may lack the code which houses the "Top tabs" gadget. This will be a problem for older templates, installed before the Pages index gadget was offered - as well as some third party templates. Try selecting "Side links" (or change from "Side links", to "Top tabs", and back to "Side links") - and see if the gadget shows up, in the sidebar. Each time you change the setting, hit "Save arrangement". After each change, view the blog, to verify success. Remember to clear cache , and restart the browser, each time yo...

This blog started out using a Layout template, name "Minima". When I applied a Designer template, I selected the Designer equivalent of "Minima", name "Simple". Long ago, I picked a template background - which looked slightly better than boring - for this blog. The blog looked fairly decent with the content text floating over the background, when viewed using a high resolution, full colour ("32 bit" palette) display. Unfortunately, not everybody who views this blog uses a high resolution, 32 bit colour palette. During the past couple years, I have observed various comments published here, from people who did not find it easy reading the text, floating over the naked blog background.

Since the most important part of almost all Blogger blogs is the posts, the "Blog Posts" gadget is an essential element in the template. Sometimes we have to remove the gadget though - maybe the gadget is corrupt - or in odd cases, we may have a duplicate "Blog Posts" gadget . In either case, the solution is known, and is quite simple. Remove (the / one) "Blog Posts" gadget. Unfortunately, not everybody, needing such advice, is able to do this. People using the Template Editor in the New Blogger GUI (2011) may find, to their frustration, that removal of a "Blog Posts" gadget isn't permitted.

We've been using the static Pages editor for over a year . When the Pages editor was first released, we saw a few questions, which indicated a shortsided design for the Pages index gadget. How do I link a page to my other blog? and How do I index a label search, in the Pages gadget? These were just two typical questions. Up until this month, the only possible answer, to either query, was to suggest that the blog owner replace the Pages gadget with a linklist . This is simpler than it appears - but still, not all blog owners wanted to take the effort. We've been asking Blogger to make this easier, for a while.

There's a popular adage In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. I would amend this to read In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes, and browser differences. I've written about this before , yet still we see the occasional confusion and naivete, reported in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . Why does my blog look so good under Firefox, yet so scrambled under Internet Explorer? I can name three possible problems, which may be present in the template in any blog. Custom code. Old code. Third party code. Custom code . If you installed any template tweaks , did you test your changes in multiple browsers ? Old code . Blogger releases various changes , in the templates which they provide. If you got your template last year, there may be a fix that could help you, this year. Third party code . I've published various warnings about third party code. This article continues that series. In case you s...

The gadgets ( previously known as widgets ) are the template components that can be manipulated using the " dashboard Layout " wizard. The post template is the most commonly used gadget (found in virtually every blog) - but it's not the only gadget.

The posts are the most important part of the blog as a whole - they contain the material which your visitors read, which is generally what attracts them to the blog. Most of the blog content, that's indexed by the search engines, comes from the posts. It follows, then, that the post template is the most important part of the blog template . When there are problems with the posts or post accessories, and the problems can't be resolved by editing the posts using the Post Editor, or adjusting the various settings in the Blog Posts gadget, the post template is corrupt, or out of date. There are three possible techniques , to resolve problems with the post template. Resetting the post template is a fairly simple task, when you get used to it. It's done using the "Edit HTML" wizard in the Classic GUI Template Editor - and it's done without Expanding Widget Templates . Using the "Edit HTML" wizard, look for the "Blog Posts" gadget. ...

When you tweak the code in a gadget, based upon my instructions, you'll be editing the template HTML . Or, you might be using the Layout wizard, to locate and remove a problem gadget. You'll do most editing with widget code unfolded . You'll have a lot of code to sift through - and with many gadgets in your blog, there's always the chance that you'll see the code for one gadget, and confuse it for another. If you delete or tweak the wrong gadget, you may not like what you get. Before deleting anything, or editing the template, take an extra minute, and find the specific gadget, by its name. This could save you a lot of grief.

There are always details to deal with, and the "Linklist as Pages Index" solution, to provide a "Pages" gadget that indexes non pages , is no exception. As pointed out to me this morning , a "LinkList" gadget, when simply substituted for the "PageList" gadget, doesn't have the right stuff to make the selected tab light up, when the requested page is being displayed. The lit up tab makes the Tabs gadget seem so user friendly, and some folks like that little detail.

Ever since static pages were released by Blogger, bloggers have been asking how to index non static pages in a static pages (aka "tabs") index. Questions like How do I publish a label page with my static pages? and How do I link to another blog, in my Pages gadget? and How do I publish posts in pages? are asked, fairly regularly.