The Real Blogger Status

During the past few days, we're seeing a few reports in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , from owners of blogs that use an image in the header, instead of or in addition to, plain text, claiming changes in the appearance of the header. The exact problem report varies - that the image has been resized, has shifted in position, has become pixelated, or has simply disappeared.

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.

Everybody has their own idea how they want their blog. Not everybody wants the blog title to link back to the main page at all, while some folks would like to have the title link back to the main page even when the main page is displayed. The default Blogger code enables a link in the blog header, when anything but the first segment of the main page (aka "home" page) is displayed. Some people would like the link completely disabled , on all segments. Others would like the link enabled , on all segments. Some folks don't like the way the title changes colour - in many blogs, the "links" (unvisited links) and "visited links" have colours that stand out from the text. Look below - see the purple and blue text? Those are links. If you don't like the title to colour itself, you remove the links - or replace the title with a picture - as I have done above. In most of my blogs, I could do without the clickable title, completely, as I have my ...

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.

When someone starts decorating their blog, one of the first things done is to replace the plain text page header with something more stylish. That task has become gradually easier, starting with the rollout of New Blogger (2006). With a Classical template, this was done by editing the template HTML . When New Blogger (2006) started out, this was originally done by creating an HTML page element, and putting it in place of the Page Header page element . Recently, Blogger added options in the Header GUI, which lets you create a passable custom element, in just a few minutes. From the Page Elements GUI, click the Edit link in the page header. This gives you the "Configure Header" wizard, which has several key abilities. Upload a graphic file (from your computer or elsewhere or in the web). Select whether the uploaded graphic is to replace the text Title and Description, or simply be placed behind it, as a background element. Select whether the uploaded graphic is to be shrunk...

Background images make the blog so much more colourful than plain old solid colour backgrounds. A background image Is not clickable. Can be seen where no foreground content is present. Look at using a background image under the text title, for instance. Note that this is the opposite from replacing the text in the title with a picture . If you put a picture in the title, no background will be visible, unless you intentionally make the picture too small for the title space, or use a transparent .gif file for an image.

It's not hard to widen the display of your blog. There are 5 containers in a standard 2 column template, each with a separate width to change. Outer (contains, in turn, post and sidebar). Header. Post area ("Main"). Sidebar. Footer. There will be challenges here, so prepared. With a "standard 3 column" template (left sidebar - main column - right sidebar), #3 Main will be divided into Left Main and Right Main, with one being a second sidebar, and the other being the posts column. A variation on the "standard 3 column" template puts the left and right sidebars next to each other , as you can see in my home blog, Nitecruzr Dot Net . In the latter case, the Post ("Main") column will float opposite the sidebar column, and the sidebar column will contain the left and right sidebars, each floating opposite each other. You'll generally make Outer, Header, and Footer equal width, but you don't have to. It's OK to have the header wide...

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.

I have written various articles about customising the blog headers, in various ways, to use graphic elements in place of boring text. In comments for The Real Blogger Status - Beta: "Customising The Header In A Beta Blog" , Peter aka Enviroman writes I think keeping the Header is important as removing it will remove the blogger tag $BlogPageTitle$ which is important for search engines.I did it another way. I added a "Add a Page Element" to the Header and put the graphic there. Very good, Peter. So here are the headers for The Real Blogger Status (HTML), and The Real Blogger Status - Beta (XML), for your perusal. Firstly, Beta. <head> <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title> <meta content='The Real Blogger Status: What Blogger Won"t Tell You' name='description'/> <meta content='.......' name='keywords'/> Secondly, Classic. <head> <title><$BlogPageTitle$></title...

Replacing the boring text title in your blog is easy enough. Making it look really pretty is easy - when you know how. Removing the header element in a New Blogger (2007) blog is not too hard. Replacing the template entry , or adding a new header page element , isn't terribly difficult. But some templates require just a bit more work. if you want to do a good job. I started out with a plain text header, the default for Minima, in a pair of ugly boxes. I replaced the default blog header with an HTML page element . <a href="http://bloggerstatusforrealbeta.blogspot.com/index.html"><img border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/560/527000594325287/ 1600/RBS%20Header%201.gif"/></a> <p align="center">What Blogger won't tell you.</p> The graphic content is nicer, but still the ugly boxes. I then had to edit the template HTML. I found the code for the Blog Title. <div id="header"> <a...

Earlier, I wrote about how to Restore The Main Page Link To The Title , in a New Blogger (2007) blog. That was a hack, and a messy one at that. Blogger fixed that little omission, so it's no longer necessary. The blog title is now clickable, and links back to main page view - in a blog with default setup - just as it did for a Classic blog. But it's still boring text - a title, followed by a description. So some will ask How do I customise my blog header? How do I (for instance) replace the boring text title with a picture? You have several choices here. The easiest , and probably the most popular, will be to use the "Configure Header" wizard in Page Elements . The least popular will be as you would in a Classic blog , to edit the template HTML. The choice with the most possibilities will be to use the GUI Page Layout editor, and replace the standard blog header with a hand created HTML / JavaScript gadget . Go into Template - Page Elements. Edit the Blog Heade...

Those of you who are artistic, and handy with Photoshop or another image processor, eventually decide that having a blog labeled in text is boring. So you spice it up. And one of the easiest things you can do is to replace the blog title with a picture. (Question): Does this blog use a Layouts template? If so, read about Customising The Header In A Layouts Template Blog , first. (Note): The code below has extra line breaks liberally inserted, to avoid yet another post / sidebar alignment problem . The hardest part in doing this is to get the image hosted somewhere. If you use Flickr, Photobucket, et al, this is not an issue (hopefully you know the URL). You can't do image upload when editing your template. If I want my image hosted by Blogger, this is what I do. Create a new post in the blog, and Title it "Photos" or whatever. Upload my picture to the post. Look carefully at the code created in the upload. In my case, I have <a onblur="try {parent.deselec...

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.