The Real Blogger Status

Some blog owners see commenting as a community building tool, as important as Following, or maybe Stats. They see various forums, and other blogging platforms, and wonder why Blogger doesn't provide formatted, quoted, and threaded commenting, like Google Forums, or maybe WordPress. There, to reply you hit a button "Reply", compose your reply, and "Publish". Blogger doesn't track individual comments. You have to publish a comment for a given post - and there's no threading, to indicate the comment to which you're replying. When you moderate comments , and you see one that deserves a reply, you Publish the comment in question. Find the comment in question, in the "Published" folder. Click on the post title presented with the published comment. Click on "Post a Comment". Post your reply to the comment, as a comment. This is a complex procedure - though before the new comment moderation system, it was even more complex. I...

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 .

Some time ago, I reported that the Blogger Wishlist had been eliminated as a form in the Blogger Help database . Yesterday, I was somewhat dismayed to learn that the Blogger Wishlist form is no more. In its place, a list of tips, with one suggestion Have a great idea or suggestion? Let us know! We enthusiastically read and tally all your suggestions. and the link "Let us know!" leads straight to the Blogger Help Group. Blogger provides the AppsSpot forum, Product Ideas for Blogger , where concepts and ideas about the Blogger product are discussed. The specific URL changes occasionally, so check here from time to time for the current URL (and let us know, here, when it is not working), if you wish to participate in ongoing discussions. Note that you will need to sign in to Google , before using AppsSpot. >> Top

Blogger, for all of their imagination and wisdom (and collectively, they have a lot of both) can never hope to keep up with the collective and individual desire and imagination of all of their customers (aka "bloggers"). Nor should they hope to do so. The strength of Blogger / Google lies in their vast customer base, which is practically infinite in diversity. One of the key screens in the Blogger Help database has always (in my mind) been the Blogger WishList form . Until this week, anyway. Yesterday, I was somewhat dismayed to learn that the Blogger Wishlist form is no more. In its place, a list of tips, with one suggestion Have a great idea or suggestion? Let us know ! We enthusiastically read and tally all your suggestions. and the link " Let us know !" leads straight to the Blogger Help Group . So now, we are to hope that Blogger Support regularly reads through the Blogger Help Group , looking for suggestions. Some bloggers are using the Blogger Help Sur...

If you're like me, you moderate comments that are being posted to your blog. How many times have you needed to reply to a comment, after you moderated and published it, but just didn't feel like making the effort. Open the post in question. Scroll to the bottom of the post and the comments (or open the commenting screen / window). Enter a reply in that little tiny box. Hit "Post Comment". Wait to see if the comment posts, or do you again see Your reply could not be processed. You're in your email program, why can't you post a reply, to a comment just published, through email? Hit "Reply". Compose your reply. Hit "Send". Get on with life. Tell Blogger to allow us to post replies to comments through email , as we moderate through email. >> Top

Every week, some hopeful blogger asks How do I make my newer posts post below the old posts? or I want my oldest post to show up when the blog opens. How can I do that? and the answer given, unfortunately, is simply Change the dates on the posts . That is a rather lame answer, if you think about it. Why couldn't the Blogger code just use ASC in the ORDER BY clause for the dates ? This would even provide a solution for one of my favourite private wishes. Give us the ability to have a permanent Home page for a blog. If the oldest post became the displayed post when the blog is opened, there's your Home page. Badda bing. The Welcome post is good for small messages, constantly visible. But the Welcome post isn't universally useful - it doesn't use labels, large Welcome posts take up too much screen space, and sometimes, you only want the welcome to show up once. That's what the Home page is for. This is yet another item for the Blogger Wishlist . Tell them, plea...

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...

Occasionally, we see the wistful forum query I want to include mathematical formulas in my blog. Will Blogger include Latex support, as WordPress has recently done? The concept of Blogger including Latex, or possibly Mathcad or Mathematica , is probably a matter for the Blogger WishList . Short of a Blogger enhancement, consider using the standard practice of hosting the mathematical content in a WordPress blog, or another web site. You can then include the other web site in your Blogger blog . You can include large articles or discussions in separate pages, with links in the posts or maybe sidebar linklists. Small articles or discussions can be displayed in iframes, sourced from the articles in the other web sites. With single equations, you can always make pictures, and embed the pictures in the posts. >> Top

As our blogs become more a part of us, and we connect more to our friends and their blogs, we use more gadgets that connect our blogs to our friends blogs. Things like lists, bloglists, and linklists become larger, and become more important in our blogs. Responsible practices, as bloggers, include backing up our blogs and their contents. Backing up the comments, the posts , and the template , are all possible, and all are a good idea. Unfortunately, the gadgets such as lists, bloglists, and linklists aren't part of the posts (they aren't blog content), and neither are they part of the template (they aren't blog structure). So occasionally, we hear the plaintive cry I just deleted my blog. I had the posts exported to an .xml file, and I back up my template regularly, but what about the blogroll in my sidebar? Oh no!!! and right now, we have no answer to that. Other than Start over. or Maybe Blogger Support will restore the blog - if you are patient enough. >> To...

I setup my first Blogger blog with a Layouts template - The Real Blogger Status - Beta - in August 2006 , and converted this blog to Layouts in early 2007. Since then, Blogger has developed Layouts Blogger, and made some great changes, to smooth out what started out very roughly. But, there are still improvements to be made. Some, badly needed. Open In A New Window . Blogs are simply specialised web sites, and one of the benefits of web sites is that they are designed to be linked, one to another, in endless chains. Many people, myself included, like to open a new window, for any links that lead to other web sites. This is a convenience to my readers - they can read my web site as they read another web site which provides complimentary information. And after they finish reading the other web site, they simply close the window, and they are back here. Blogger gadgets and scripts don't provide for this need , unfortunately. Scripts like image embedding in post editor, and gad...

As the Following product matures, and many blogs gain significantly large quantities of Followers, we occasionally see the anxious query My blogs now has nn Followers, but I can only see 18 pictures. What happened to the others? More and more bloggers are discovering an odd limitation of the Followers gadget - it shows a maximum of 18 Followers. As your blog gains a new Follower, you lose the icon of the oldest Follower, previously displayed, from the display. Obviously, the more popular blogs don't want to show all Followers - some blogs would have their entire sidebar reduced to one big cloud of icons, were that so. It would be nice, though, if we could select the number of icons which we wish to display. A second limitation to Following is that we can only Follow up to 300 blogs, at any time. This is simply a Following limitation, that prevents our advertising ourselves on more than 300 blogs - which I cannot see as a bad idea, since Following should involve some activity by...

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Lately, there have been a few odd complaints in the Google Blogger Help forums . Help, my toolbar is missing buttons! I can't change the text colour. Where's my font name / size list selection? Why do I see code, instead of text and pictures? Now, these complaints aren't strange at all. Blogger makes changes to their code , and has even admitted to causing these problems , occasionally. You, too, can cause your problems - on your computer or network . Besides permanent changes caused by security on the computer or the network, you can also have temporary, and transient, problems. If we don't use the same URL when we login, consistently , we can have problems. If we don't use the Post Editor the same way, consistently, we can have problems too. Oh No! Where are my toolbar buttons? If you don't see a tab for Compose mode, do not panic. Go to Settings - Basic, and under Global Settings, set "Select post editor" to "Old editor" (or to ...