The Real Blogger Status

One easy way to make a blog more visible is to add a favicon. A favicon makes a blog easy to find, in a typical browser window, with lots of open tabs. Adding a favicon is now just a matter of using one more dashboard wizard. Not so long ago, you would require a pair of files, hosted by a special (non Blogger) service - then you would edit the template, to add the URLs of the hosted files.

The Stats "Audience" page is now showing a mysterious entry, in the "Pageviews by Countries" list, for some blogs. The list of the top 10 most active countries, for the "Now", "Day", "Week", and / or "Month" lists, for some blogs, includes a non country name - "Unknown Region". The "Unknown Region" entry appears to be associated with a second Stats oddity, a monochromatic "Pageviews by Countries" map. This oddity is causing some concern, in various forum discussions . Where one would hope to see a familiar Stats multi-shaded Audience map, with various countries displayed in differing shades of green or black, some blog owners are seeing a monochromatic pale green display. The monochromatic display appears to be accompanied by the mysterious "Unknown Region" entry, in the countries list. I am examining the Stats "Audience" page, for this blog - in different time range...

After many years of waiting, people who publish blogs using custom domains can provide HTTPS connectivity, to their readers. Right now, HTTPS Availability / Redirect can be enabled, for custom domain published blogs, using Draft Blogger.

The disappearing scroll tab, in the latest Chrome browser version, is tres elegante - for some blog owners. Personally, I'm not convinced. Hover the cursor in the scroll tab area, to get the tab to pop out. If you use the Chrome browser, and the display content is longer (or wider) than one physical screen, you may not realise that.

Making a blog searchable is the first step in getting search traffic, and readers, for our blogs - when we want them visible to the public. Not all blog owners want their blogs visible to everybody. Complementing the ability to publish a blog, and have it visible only to invited readers, Blogger gives us the ability to make the blog invisible, to the search engines. If we want readers for a blog, and do not have a private reader audience in mind, we first make it visible to the search engines.

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.

Both the historically infamous "Another blog ..", and the currently infamous "Error 12", are part of the custom domain publishing process. Similar to the mysterious "bX" codes being an enhanced version of "We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.", "Error 12" (and variants) is an enhanced version of the monolithic "Another blog or Google Site is already using this address.". "Another blog" (which was generally seen during use of the Blogger Publishing wizard) is complemented by the equally annoying "Not found" (which is generally seen after Publishing is used).

Earlier this year, Blogger upgraded their dashboard - and eliminated the opening "My blogs" / "Reading List" page . They changed from a dashboard home page, listing all blogs owned by a given Blogger account - to a home page, showing the dashboard for the most recently updated blog. To the dashboard menu for the blog displayed, they added a pulldown blog selector list. If you want the dashboard for a different blog, or need a different important "My blogs" function, you use the selector list.

With the pre 2016 Followers gadget, the Followers population for a blog was managed through an Options link on the Followers gadget . This required the blog owner to sign into the Followers gadget, to access the Options link. Authentication - and an owner specific Options menu - is no longer a pert of the Followers gadget. It is possible to Block Followers, from a blog - the option is just not part of the Followers gadget, any more.

Some blog owners, who publish multiple blogs with different subjects, may decide that some subjects would be better discussed in a different blog. With various posts published in one blog, the owner may decide that those posts should be published in a different blog, to continue discussion. The question now is how to move posts, from one blog to another? The dashboard "Export / Import" feature, which is now labeled "Import & back up" , lets us copy pages and posts from one blog to another. Just copying all pages and posts, though, will create problems with duplicated content.

For a long time, blog owners have been requiring the ability to delete their blogs. In the beginning, people would delete a blog - whether intentionally or mistakenly - then change their mind, or realise their mistake. I did not really want to delete my blog. And the inevitable question. How do I get my very important blog back? Surely, it's in your computer somewhere?? But this question was not always answered, with encouragement.

Long ago, when Blogger blog owners were given the option to associate their Blogger account with Google+, some would try out their new identities - then change their minds. Some blog owners would upgrade to a dynamic, exciting Google+ profile - then regret their decision. Not everybody appreciated the features offered by Google+, as applied to a Blogger blog. Blogger gave us the ability to revert to a Blogger profile - within 30 days. This did not help people who took over 30 days to observe problems.

SSL has been an option, for BlogSpot published blogs, since late last year - and we still see occasional questions, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about its use. When I saved my post, I saw the error message This page contains HTTP resources which may cause mixed content affecting security and user experience if blog is viewed over HTTPS. I clicked "Fix" - and the error message went away. Should I have to go back and "fix" all my old blog posts, this way? This blog owner will be better off, with "HTTPS Redirect" disabled.

Ad blockers are popular Chrome add-ons, which let us manage various websites abilities to serve ads in our browsers. Many ad blockers include a script blocker. Like NoScript in Firefox, ad blockers may interfere with various Blogger features - such as the "Don't track" script, in the dashboard.

If your blog is published to a dynamic template, neither you or your readers will have a navbar, when your blog is being viewed. The navbar, found on blogs which use a non dynamic template - when selected by the blog owner - has a number of reader friendly icons and links. Dynamic templates have a "menu bar" 1/5 of the way down the page - which provides a combination of the Pages gadget, and limited navbar functions. At the far right end of the menu bar, you'll see 2 tiny icons - when you are properly logged in as the blog owner. New post, the "pencil" icon. Home, the "home" icon.

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.

Viewing comments, on some popular blogs, one may get the idea that not as many comments are being published, as are immediately visible. With a large comment complement, comments are paginated - with some comments hidden behind a link, captioned "Load more". The "Load more" link is JavaScript based - and there is a problem. The "Load more" link does not always work, on all blogs.

Not all blog owners know the best ways to update labels, with the posts in their blog. We see occasional signs of confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I add a label, to many posts at once? and How do I correct the spelling of my label, already added? and How do I remove all of the labels, from one of my posts? These owners are not aware how to use the dashboard Posts page - and Post Editor - to add, delete, and edit labels.

When you Follow a blog, the blog feed is added, as a subscription, to your dashboard Reading List. This lets you read the blog content, conveniently, using the newsfeed. Separately from the Reading List, you can choose whether to have your personal Followers icon displayed , in the icon cloud on the blog display. Besides maintaining anonymity in Following , you can hide any number of blogs, in the Reading List index, to make the index manageable.

Owners of private blogs have, periodically, lamented the lack of options for distribution of comments and posts. We've seen a few queries, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I let my readers subscribe to my private blog? There's no good answer, to please everybody, here. You can't use EMail, FeedBurner, or Reading List, for sharing private blog content. FeedBurner requires the blog comments / posts newsfeeds - and private blogs don't produce newsfeeds .