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.

Some blog owners add pages - dynamic and static - to their blog, then discover that the Pages gadget lists them in the wrong sequence. We see an occasional question, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . My pages are poorly organised. How do I change the sequence? This is not a difficult problem, to correct.

One of the most useful features of Blogger is the ability to add many different accessories, to a blog. There are accessories, for every blog - and for every owner preference. The "Add a Gadget" wizard, in the Blogger dashboard, is the best procedure for adding accessories , to customise a blog reliably. Using "Add a Gadget" is a simple process. It will be most useful, in the long term, if used cautiously, however.

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 .

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 of the most visible changes, to the blog display , involves properly setting main page size. You change the posts count using "Show at most" on the dashboard Settings - "Posts, comments and sharing" page - or "Number of posts on main page" in the "Configure Blog Posts" wizard. Both let you set the main page display limit. You can limit main page size by days with posts, or by total post count.

Adding a FaceBook developed gadget is - or should be - just like adding any HTML / JavaScript gadget . Sometime, though, adding a FaceBook gadget just does not produce hoped for results. We see the problem reports in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . The gadget is blank! or The gadget does not update anything! The problems will typically involve gadget code - and the FaceBook Debugger wizard is unlikely to provide any help.

Last week, Blogger Engineering announced their latest feature, "Featured Post" . Whether you’d like to re-share that delicious holiday recipe from a few years back, spotlight a can’t-miss promotion you’re running, or just revive something quirky from the archives, the Featured Post gadget is a simple way to show off the content that matters most. This is a quick and easy way to highlight a specific post in your blog, that will be enjoyable or useful for your readers. I hope to use mine to provide useful advice, as "Read, and Learn" - once the Followers gadget has been updated , and is fully operational.

I've been seeing the Pinterest "Pin It" hover icons, in various blogs, for a few weeks. Today I decided to try adding an icon to this blog. I spent more time reading the instructions, then installing the icon.

If you have a malicious or misbehaving gadget in your blog, one of the easiest blog cleanups is removal of a malicious HTML gadget . Unfortunately, this does not work, for every gadget on every blog. Depending upon how a gadget is installed, malicious code may, or may not, be visible - and if visible, may, or may not, be easily removable.

A few folks have asked me about my social media toolbar, that I added a couple months ago. It took very little work, to develop and install this gadget. I just went to the AddThis website , registered, selected the options, and got the code. Then, I added one more HTML gadget, to my blogs.

One of the more challenging limitations of Classic (HTML based) templates involved the template packaging. Each template provided a combination of background, colours, fonts, and layout. If you wanted any different combination - a different background, for a set of colours and fonts, you would have to compromise on the layout. Or a specific layout meant a compromise on the colours and fonts. Surely, somebody remembers the "Minima" vs "Minima Black" choice? And settling for the serif fonts, to get the right layout? With the Layout class templates (XML based), Blogger introduced the "Fonts and Colours" wizard - and a beginning to making the packaging more modular.

One of the most versatile ways to organise a blog is by using a Pages index. Long ago, the only possibility, for indexing a blog attractively, was a horizontal table, with manually added links. We called it a horizontal menu bar . Alternately, a vertical linklist might be used. Then Blogger added static pages - and later, the Pages index gadget .

We've dealing with owner installed malware, for over 5 years , when reported in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . In early 2010, we diagnosed the first mass malware installation. Owner installed malware can be quite deceptively marketed , by the hackers who produce it. With proper blog setup, and accessory installation policy, though, identifying and removing misbehaving accessories can be made easier.

Some blog owners try to add a new gadget to their blog, unsuccessfully. When I try to add my own gadget to my blog, it won't accept it. It says We are sorry, this gadget appears to be broken. This gadget has errors and cannot be used until fixed. I've seen the gadget used, on other blogs. Why not, on my blog? There is a small problem in understanding, how to add gadgets. Blogger lets people add HTML / JavaScript based gadgets, provided by various developers and non Google services - and they let people make their own, XML based gadgets. Some people confuse the two types of gadgets.

Some blog owners, who also have activity in Twitter, would like to display their Twitter feed on their blog. This is not at all difficult. Twitter will custom build you an HTML gadget, using a wizard in their website.

Occasionally, a blog owner wants to login to Blogger from the blog - but there's no link to login. I can't get to my dashboard! How do I login to Blogger? The simplest solution is to just use the Blogger login link https://www.blogger.com Bookmark that, and you can login any time - using either a Designer / Layout, or a Dynamic, template. A long term solution would be to have the Navbar enabled, on the blog. All blogs can't use a navbar, however.

Blog owners frequently have to edit or remove various blog gadgets - and sometimes need coaching, to edit or remove. Editing or removing gadgets, normally, is pretty simple - when you know what you're looking for. Whenever you are logged in to Blogger, as a blog administrator, you can find the "Edit" link, on the dashboard Layout wizard - or the "Quick Edit" link on the blog (when "Quick Edit" is enabled), as displayed. Sometimes, identifying a problem blog gadget, to another person, isn't easy. What happens, if someone misreads your instructions?

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.

The "Configure Page List" wizard is an extremely useful - yet obscure - feature in the dashboard Layout page. Not every blog owner sees the "Pages" gadget, in the "Layout" page and knows to click on "Edit", to access "Configure Page List". Nor do all owners know how many assorted functions, previously part of the "Pages" dashboard wizard, are now found, exclusively, under "Configure Page List". "Configure Page List" is an essential component in the pages management suite , in the Blogger dashboard.