The Real Blogger Status

I recently updated an old post, to add a link to a newly published post - and experienced panic. Adding a link to an old post, Deleted / Locked Blogs Have Several Causes , I discovered an oddity which caused extreme heartburn for several hours. Maybe you have experienced this, also. Editing my post, and adding a simple single sentence, with embedded link, at the end of the post, I refreshed the display (always test your changes - no matter how minor!), and watched as the paragraphing scrambled itself.

Some blog owners see encoded special characters, in Blogger dashboard displays - and do not understand why they are there. I recently noticed that the comments, that I view in my Blogger dashboard page, have like a series of numbers and symbols in some of the comments. This owner is looking at comments, displayed in the Dashboard Comments pages ("Published", "Awaiting moderation", and "Spam"), which right now may contain strange character sequences. The " HTML entity codes " for special characters, like ampersand, apostrophe, and quote marks, are HTML code - that will probably be with us, forever. Blogger blog content (like many other blogs and websites) uses HTML - and those characters have syntactical importance. Using them in blog content, unencoded, causes problems with browser operation.

This week, we have a multitude of complaints about Windows LiveWriter, and similar third party editors, unable to login to Blogger. Blog owners who use LiveWriter, and similar third party products, to compose and publish posts, have reported authentication problems. I have used Windows Live Writer, to publish to my blog, for years. I now cannot publish, and the message I get is that the ID and password are not correct.

If you do any work on your blog, and the template, eventually you will need to extract gadget source code. The ability to extract source code can be useful in various tasks. Identifying a problem gadget, to others. Publishing a gadget on a separate page, by embedding the code in a page or post. Recovering the content of a deleted gadget. In each case, use of the proper text browser or source listing is where I start.

We see panic, exhibited by many blog owners, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . I used the W3 Template Validator, and got hundreds of errors! Is my blog broken? This blog owner, like many others, does not understand the differences between W3 Standard HTML / XHTML, and Blogger HTML / XML. The unpleasant truth is that, ever since Blogger released the Layout class templates , in 2007, Blogger has been providing templates that can't be successfully validated using HTML / XHTML standards. Blogger has a lot of features that don't validate, according to public standards.

As a web master (aka blog master), besides adding posts and enhancing the template, you have a third activity - connecting your web site (blog) to other web sites and blogs. In many cases, you'll simply send the owners of the other web site (blog) a request to link to your blog. For links to large and very active web sites, you'll use an online wizard. To prove ownership of your web site, instead of sending email, you'll add a file of specific name, or maybe specific content, into the web site. You can't add a file to your blog, though. With a Blogger blog, you have no control over files and folders - all that you do is publish posts.

As people are starting to use the New GUI (2011) , we're seeing questions about apparent restrictions on labels, in the new post editor. Why can't I use an apostrophe in my labels? and Why can't I have a label "Red & Blue" any more? Not all blog owners appreciate the special nature of certain characters, in HTML. Nevertheless, we are all affected by how these special characters are treated.

One fun and sometimes practical accessory to add to your blog is a video. When added properly , you get a picture, that your readers can click on, and watch a movie, right in front of their eyes. This is called " streaming video ", where the video content is downloaded from the distant server while you watch. Here's a demonstration video that I have used in another post. This is one example of why I prefer to live in California. » www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCoxOReXlHI <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/YCoxOReXlHI?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/YCoxOReXlHI?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess=...

As a web master (blog master), besides adding posts and enhancing the template, you have a third activity which is almost as time consuming. You will be constantly connecting your web site (blog) to other web sites and blogs. In many cases, you'll simply send the owners of the other web site (blog) a request to link to your blog. For links to some web sites, you'll not use email, you'll use an online wizard. To prove ownership of your web site, instead of sending email, you'll add a file of specific name, or maybe specific content, into the web site. You can't add a file to your blog, though, with blogs you have no control over files and folders - all that you do is publish posts.

As a web master (blog master), besides adding posts and enhancing the template, you have a third activity which is almost as time consuming. You will be constantly connecting your web site (blog) to other web sites and blogs. In many cases, you'll simply send the owners of the other web site (blog) a request to link to your blog. For links to some web sites, you'll not use email, you'll use an online wizard. To prove ownership of your web site, instead of sending email, you'll add a file of specific name, or maybe specific content, into the web site. You can't add a file to your blog, though - with blogs, you have no control over files and folders - all that you do is publish posts.

Most web pages that you will view on the Internet are written in HTML. HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language , was designed long ago to enhance simple text, giving it ability to display more than simple letters, numbers, special characters, etc. What you're looking at is mostly simple text. Here, on the other hand, is an example of bold text . And here, italicised text . And here, red text . Are you interested yet?

For years, bloggers have complained about the inability / complexity of displaying HTML code in a blog post. Being told to display "<" as "&lt;" and ">" as "&gt;" confuses many folks - it's not easy typing "&lt;" and "&gt;" - and it's still harder to type "&amp;lt;" and "&amp;gt;", which is how you display "&lt;" and "&gt;", respectively. Don't ask me to go any deeper.

Blogger, and the Post Editor, are wonderful tools in helping us produce a legible and quick document on the Internet. Blogging is an easy way of reaching out to the world with our messages, and many folks are doing just that; without interference from porn blogs , many messages are being seen again. Yet the post editor presents us with a major challenge. The post editor is designed to save us from ourselves, and our spelling and syntax mistakes. In whatever language we type, when we make egregious mistakes, the post editor automatically corrects our mistakes. And in some cases, what we type must be used as "commands" to the post editor, or to the browser as it processes the HTML in our blogs.

A Layouts template, the template in a New Blogger blog, when published to Blog*Spot (or to a Google Custom Domain) is written in XML, not HTML. A lot of HTML based tweaks won't work in New Blogger. If you force HTML into your template, you may end up with one of the new, cryptic error codes bX-lgwej This says that your post template contains invalid HTML . Are you seeing this error? If so, don't despair. Revert the template back to Classic , so your readers can access the blog. Build a test version of the blog , and work on a New Blogger template, while your readers are accessing the production blog. Take your HTML based template tweaks, that made your Classic blogs unique, and add them as HTML / JavaScript page elements. Test everything, carefully, in all available browsers . When you have a New Blogger template for your blog, looking as you like it, Save the template to a known location. Migrate your production blog to a New Blogger template again. Restore the saved templ...

In my tutorials that instruct you how to make your blog friendly to search engines in general, and to the Google spider specifically, the meta tag is a key element. The meta tags are very versatile code that should be located immediately following the blog title, in the blog header. You'll be using the Template Editor to view, and to modify, this code. As always, if you intend to make changes to the code, backup the template before and after making changes.

Photos are an easy way to make your posts more interesting . Going one step further, we have moving photos, ie videos. Just Link To The Video, Hosted Externally Including a link to a video is as simple as including a link to a photo , hosted elsewhere. >> The Perfect Plumber &gt;&gt;<a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay? docid=2638976382458360943&q=plumber">The Perfect Plumber</a> >> Top Or Embed The Video In The Post But look at my post in PChuck's Network: Don't Do It Yourself - If You Don't Think About What You're Doing Here we have a Shockwave Flash movie, Embedded in the web page . <embed style="width: 400px; height: 326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf? docId=2638976382458360943&q=plumber"> </embed><br clear="left"><a href="http://video.google.c...

OK, you now have a kick ass blog. Congrats. But nobody's looking at it. So what now? Now, you have work to do.

By adding a Google sitemap to your blog, you can more easily submit your site for indexing, to the Google search engine spider. You get better coverage by the spider, than by simply submitting your blog to the Google search engine . You'll also get detailed statistics about how Google sends traffic your way, and how the Google spider sees your blog.