The Real Blogger Status

Some blog owners decide to include music, to accessorise their blogs - and the first thing they ask for is instructions. Please give me step by step instructions, to add music. They don't consider that adding music, for any blog, will be their personal choice - and a music player will be personal too.

Some blog owners are accustomed to editing their Blogger profiles, from time to time. Publishing a blog that presents oneself to ones readers, openly, is important to some blog owners . The Blogger profile becomes a blog component that is edited, periodically, to keep the blog reader friendly. The Blogger profile editor produces content which is displayed in the "About Me" gadget, for single owner blogs. Multiple owner blogs, complementarily, display "About Us" - which provides a different display .

Many popular accessories start with raw HTML / JavaScript code, from different third party services. One of the advantages of publishing a Blogger blog is the abundance of available accessories . With Blogger being in the top 3 of Internet publishing platforms, every third party service wants customers who publish using Blogger. There are plenty of abusive or malicious accessories , that should not be installed, even when offered - and there are ways to best install the accessories, that can be safely installed.

To encourage email subscriptions, and other social connections, some blog owners provide gadget toolbars, with useful links. Some blog owners would like to position their gadgets in fixed screen positions . I want to have a subscribe button hover at the top of the page, while people read my blog. This blog has a hovering AddThis toolbar , which provides selected social sharing options. And, it has a hovering "Top of Page" button .

Some blog owners can't get their new FaceBook gadgets to work, on their blogs. We see the occasional report, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . The blog won't accept the code that Facebook Developer generated for me. Adding HTML gadgets - and HTML gadgets using FaceBook code - can be frustrating. But, it's possible.

When you use the BlogLovin supplied instructions to claim your blog , you will get a BlogLovin link, with an embedded token, which you install in your blog. Paste this text into a new blog post ... In some blogs, it's necessary to put the code at the top of the blog post. BlogLovin would have you publish a new post, and put the link / token at the top of the post. This ensures that the claim link displays at the top of the page, in the blog.

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.

Blog owners are constantly asking how to add post specific accessories, from third party services. How do I add a Like button, for my posts? Adding many post accessories requires adding XML code, to the post template. Adding code to the post template is scary - and it can cause problems, when incorrectly done. The easiest way to add a per post accessory is to add an HTML gadget that references the post by the URL, as displayed for the page. The problem with an HTML gadget is that it simply references the page displayed. If your posts are read from the main page, or an archive page - and somebody uses a Like accessory, what happens?

One of the easiest improvements, in a Blogger blog, is customising the "About Me" / "About Us" ("Contributors" / "Profile") gadget. The default gadget gets its content from the Blogger profile - and is edited, using the Blogger Profile Editor. With a team blog, the gadget changes to a list of team members - and this cannot be edited. But given 15 minutes, and some imagination, you can make your own Profile gadget.

Sometimes, a problem with a specific gadget or post, when displayed, can affect the appearance of the entire blog. We've known for years, about the mysterious dropped sidebar . Sometimes, we see similar problems, in other blog performance. Gadgets missing. Gadgets visible, but they don't work. Gadgets visible in the desktop view - but not the mobile view (or, vice versa). Posts that are unreadable - or worse, previously published posts, in that index page, that are unreadable. Both the HTML / JavaScript gadget, and the page or post, can be edited either as code ("HTML"), and as displayed ("Compose" / "Rich Text"). If you spend a lot of time in "Compose" / "Rich Text" mode, when editing gadgets, pages and posts, you may not know about "HTML" mode - or its dangers.

Many people who publish Blogger blogs also publish to FaceBook. Some have their own Wall, others post to friends Walls. We see occasional questions, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , about the desire to combine the two products. How do I publish posts from my Wall to my blog? and How do I link my blog to my Wall? Like any combination of Blogger and non Blogger content, there are techniques to combine a Blogger blog, and a non Blogger website. Some techniques don't work - and others may work, but won't be good for the blog.

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.

The dynamic templates, magical as they may be, may not suit everybody . Some blog owners eagerly publish a blog to a dynamic template - then ask WHere are all of the sidebar gadgets? One of the downsides of the dynamic templates is that gadgets have to be specifically written to work with them. Not all of the accessories, available in "Add a Gadget", have been re written to support dynamic templates - and some may likely not ever be re written.

This week, I added a gadget that's been needed, on this blog, for some time. You may see my new "Top" button, at the lower right corner of this blog. If you have a normally wide browser window, with wallpaper showing on either side of the posts / sidebar section, you'll see the new gadget floating on top of the wallpaper. If you have squeezed your browser window to save horizontal space, you may see the new gadget floating on top of the sidebar (but beneath the sidebar gadgets).

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.

Long before Blogger developed static pages, blog owners had wanted to have some accessories or gadgets visible only on specific pages. Initially, we discovered that gadgets could be displayed conditionally , based upon the URL being displayed. This is a fairly simple task, when you get used to it - but it requires editing the template HTML - and can look a bit scary, to those inexperienced in template editing. Recently, we realised that some gadgets can be embedded in a page or post, by editing in HTML mode - and accomplish the same. I demonstrated my custom "Contact Me" gadget , using that ability.

We're seeing a few reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , mentioning problems adding or updating the HTML and Text gadgets. The most common symptom, when reported, is very simple. When I try to update the gadget, all that I see is javascript:void(0); In this case, we have to first explain that " javascript:void(0); " is not the problem - it's simply a symptom of the problem . Once we explore the problem itself, we see various possible causes. The base cause for problems with the HTML / Text gadget is simple - the script which processes gadget updates provides no diagnostics when detecting errors.