The Real Blogger Status

Blog owners ask about Followers activity, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I can't Follow my Followers! They appear to be referring to the Followers gadget, which is currently useless for surfing.

The Followers gadget was recently changed - and not for the better . Find the Followers (aka "Google Friend Connect") gadget, on this blog. Look for "Follow Me" near the top of the sidebar. Click on any icon in the community display - or click on on the community "pop out" window icon at the top right of the gadget. See how it now opens all Followers content, where the gadget is located?

Just as many blog owners enjoy the option to include photos and videos to their blogs, some would like to add office type multimedia. Queries about adding PDF documents, spreadsheets, and Word documents, to our blogs, are frequently seen, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . One of the issues that need to be considered is that many professional documents are created using proprietary office software. PDF files, for instance, are created using Adobe Acrobat. Excel spreadsheets and Word documents are created using Microsoft Office. Another issue may involve confidentiality. Office documents may contain confidential data, that's not intended for the world to view. Google has a solution for handling all of these proprietary file formats, and for the confidentiality issue.

A little over two years ago, I wrote about Following, and an odd detail . I clicked on the users picture. Where is the button to Block the user? People, even when logged in to Blogger, as an administrator of their own blog, were being treated as a Guest, when using Following on that blog. I attributed that oddity to the fact that Following was served inside an iframe , which made the Blogger login cookie irrelevant to Following, since Following is served from a separate domain . The navbar, another fascinating artifact of Blogger life, is another iframe hosted feature - but it is served from "blogger.com", the main Blogger domain . Recently, I discovered that this was no longer the case.

Video content, like music (audio content), can provide education and enjoyment to your readers, when properly included in your blog. Video, also like music, can be a problem, when improperly included. If played without warning, as part of your blog, video content can be a worse problem than music that plays automatically. Just as it's not in your best interest, as a blog publisher, to include music that plays automatically, it's even less in your best interest to include a video that plays automatically.

Occasionally in Blogger Help Forum , we see questions about using a Blogger blog for forms entry. How do I let my readers submit information, like their email addresses? Forms entry, which is found in some content management systems, is yet one more feature that isn't offered , with Blogger blogs.

We see confusion occasionally from bloggers trying to use Following or Friend Connect I want to Follow this person, but when I click on the Follow button I'm asked to sign in. I'm already signed in to my blog, am I being hacked? or I clicked on the users picture. Where is the button to Block the user? Both questions come from someone who isn't aware that Following / Friend Connect are applications separated from Blogger, and separated intentionally.

Having multiple blogs in a custom domain is a simple matter, with a custom domain array . Sometimes, you may want to publish just one blog, but use multiple domain URLs for that blog. There are several ways to do this , producing varying results with some subtle differences. Recently, I changed the domain URL for my church blog " Martinez United Methodist Church ", from martinezumc.org , to martinez-umc.org . I started out with a stub at the new location, and slowly added content. The new URL was fully operational last week, and over the weekend I finished the job. The blog now has 4 URLs The primary URL is martinez-umc.org . There are 3 secondary URLs The original BlogSpot URL martinezumc.blogspot.com . The original domain martinezumc.org . The current BlogSpot URL martinez-umc.blogspot.com . Each of the secondary URLs redirects, using a "301 Moved Permanently", to another URL. The original BlogSpot URL " martinezumc.blogspot.com " redirects to the or...

Having multiple blogs in a custom domain is a simple matter, with a custom domain array . Sometimes, you may want to publish just one blog, but use multiple domain URLs for that blog. There are several ways to get what you want - each represent subtle variations from the several standard custom domain models , that are occasionally confused with each other. The variations will produce completely different results, so consider these details carefully.

One of the many ways of including one web site (blog) inside another web site (blog) is by using an IFrame . The host web site contains a frame, and the source of the frame is the other web site. And you can do that as well in what looks like a custom domain, but won't give you the same results. <frameset rows="100%"> <frame title="http://www.mydomain.com" src="http://www.mydomain.com" name="mainframe" frameborder="0" noresize="noresize" scrolling="auto"> <noframes>Sorry, you don"t appear to have frame support. Go here instead - <a href="http://www.mydomain.com"></a></noframes> </frameset> Put that in the template for your web site, and behold - you have the contents of your Blog*Spot blog displayed right there. And if all that you care about is your readers visually able to read the content of the blog, you're done. <frameset rows="100%...

If you compose your blog, as I do, with lots of links to other blogs and web sites, you may make it convenient for your readers to view those other blogs or web sites then return to your blog. Instead of viewing the other blog or web site in the same window, you open the other blog or web site in a new window. When your reader finishes viewing the other blog or web site, he / she simply closes the new window. The article that he or she was reading, in your blog, is right there in front of them. You can, similarly, do this with pictures. If you want your reader to view a picture, then return to the text in your article, you open the picture in a new window . Instead of coding each individual link to a blog, picture, or web site, you can make all links within your blog open in a new window. Simply add a " <base target='_blank' /> " to your blog, in the header. Find <head> And change that to: <head> <base target='_blank' /> But, consi...

One obvious way to merge two websites (either or both being a blog), is to use the same template on each, and link between the two in a consistent fashion. The reader of either blog never has to know when he's viewing the other, unless he habitually observes the content of the browser Address window. But how about if you would like to display one blog, in its entirety, in the middle of the other blog page? That's a feature called an IFrame.

Most of us who publish a Blogger blog just setup a blog, and start . Some people already have a web site, and simply want to add a Blogger blog to the web site. Other people have two (or more) blogs, and want to display all blogs as one.