The Real Blogger Status

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.

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.

Blog owners are periodically asking themselves How do I invite my readers to leave comments? Some blog owners think of commenting as the most important way to get new readers. One of the most seemingly insignificant components of the Blogger template is the link to invite the readers to leave comments. This is not a simple feature - it varies according to where the comment form is placed, and to different language and style decisions.

Some blog owners, when publishing a new page or post, really appreciate the "Preview" option in the page / post editor. In some cases, some people may use "Preview" so instinctively, they may overlook the limitations. We see the confusion, occasionaly, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Where is my page? There's no selection, under "Pages to show", even! The blog owner does not realise that unpublished pages or posts won't be visible, outside the page / post editor, and the "Preview" window.

Some blog owners like to publish blogs that use custom colours, in the titles. Carefully coordinated colours are important, in some blogs. Both the blog title, and the individual post titles, in many blogs, are clickable link captions. The blog title links to the blog home page, and / or the post titles link to the individual post pages. Some blog owners get confused, when they try to set the colour of the titles, to a custom colour - and see link colours (which vary according to status) , instead of the selected custom colours.

Not everybody likes to be known, everywhere. Some folks prefer to publish a blog, without their name appearing. Anonymity is a goal, for many blog owners. Blogs using both Dynamic and non Dynamic (Layout, Designer) templates can be made anonymous - but different tasks are involved. Fortunately, both tasks are simple.

One very useful Blogger feature is the option to bypass the Blogger dashboard - to edit the various gadgets, and existing blog posts. The feature, termed "Quick Edit", provides two different icons, generally visible to the proper recipients, with the option enabled, on the published blog. The "Quick Edit" "pencil" is visible to administrators and authors, in the posts toolbar, to the right of the "Email Post" icon. This will generally be in one of the post footer lines. The gadget "screwdriver / wrench" icon is visible to administrators, to the lower right of each template gadget (except for "Blog Posts"). Though the "screwdriver / wrench" icon is more visible, that icon has no name, and no selection option in the Blogger dashboard. And, there are more mysteries.

Every person who maintains a Blogger blog (or other web site) has his or her own idea about what features she or he wants to present, on his or her blog / web site. With a Classic template, this need was provided only by editing the blog template, using HTML. With a Layouts / Designer template, besides letting us add and move template objects all over the display page, Blogger gives us the ability to add and move objects all over the post layout. This, too, is done without even opening the "Edit HTML" Template wizard.