The Real Blogger Status

We see some concern about providing email subscriptions, from blog owners in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . How do I provide email subscriptions for my blog? Neither Follow by Email or Subscription Links works, for email! The blog in question is using a dynamic template. In some cases, even "Subscription Links" does not provide a "Subscribe by Email" option - and it appears that the blog owner is really out of luck.

The "Blog Archive" gadget is used, by some blog owners, to provide a date sequenced post index . Some blog owners, with smaller blogs, would like their readers to index their blogs by post title - but without the date being involved. They would like a straight alphabetically ordered list of post titles. Blogger does not have a "Title Index" gadget. It's not hard to make one, however, for smaller blogs.

One useful alternative to the "Archives" gadget , when you want to help your readers index your blog by Title, is a LinkList. You can make a LinkList in 5 minutes - and you can add a new entry, when you publish a post, in 10 seconds - and index your blog by Post Title. Just don't confuse the terms "linklist" and "list", when you add a Title index.

Occasionally, we see a request from somebody who wants to publish a blog with historically significant dates, which precede Blogger compatible dates. In one case, we see a request in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , about writing a blog, as "published" in the 1960s. I'm doing a History project, and I'm blogging as if I was in the 1960's. I was excited to see that I could change that date - but soon realized that it won't let me go back further than 1970. Unfortunately, blog dates will go back no farther than 1970.

Even before Blogger added static pages as a blog feature , blog owners have been asking how to make hidden or separate pages for their blogs. When static pages, and the Pages index gadget, were added, people started asking about indexing label searches and external links in the Pages gadget. There are several solutions to the need to have a Pages gadget that indexes archive / label searches, and external URLs. Each solution has its advantages, and disadvantages.

We've been using the static Pages editor for over a year . When the Pages editor was first released, we saw a few questions, which indicated a shortsided design for the Pages index gadget. How do I link a page to my other blog? and How do I index a label search, in the Pages gadget? These were just two typical questions. Up until this month, the only possible answer, to either query, was to suggest that the blog owner replace the Pages gadget with a linklist . This is simpler than it appears - but still, not all blog owners wanted to take the effort. We've been asking Blogger to make this easier, for a while.

If you want to publish multiple "posts" on a static page, using a standard Pages Index gadget, you just edit the static page as required . That gives you multiple "posts" that never appear in archives or label retrievals, or on the main page, on one true static page. If your need for a "static" page is simply to have a collection of "posts", linked from a tabs index, make a custom pages / posts index gadget , and index label retrievals . This gives you multiple posts that will initially appear on the main page, and on any number of dynamic indexed (archives / label retrievals) pages. Continuing my "Contact" example from Static Pages, With Multiple Posts , I can publish any number of individual posts using the label "Contact". Then, my "Contact" tab uses a label search for "Contact" as the target, replacing the URL for a static "Contact" page. Any time that I need an additional post publis...

Ever since static pages were released by Blogger, bloggers have been asking how to index non static pages in a static pages (aka "tabs") index. Questions like How do I publish a label page with my static pages? and How do I link to another blog, in my Pages gadget? and How do I publish posts in pages? are asked, fairly regularly.

As our blogs become more a part of us, and we connect more to our friends and their blogs, we use more gadgets that connect our blogs to our friends blogs. Things like lists, bloglists, and linklists become larger, and become more important in our blogs. Responsible practices, as bloggers, include backing up our blogs and their contents. Backing up the comments, the posts , and the template , are all possible, and all are a good idea. Unfortunately, the gadgets such as lists, bloglists, and linklists aren't part of the posts (they aren't blog content), and neither are they part of the template (they aren't blog structure). So occasionally, we hear the plaintive cry I just deleted my blog. I had the posts exported to an .xml file, and I back up my template regularly, but what about the blogroll in my sidebar? Oh no!!! and right now, we have no answer to that. Other than Start over. or Maybe Blogger Support will restore the blog - if you are patient enough. >> To...

I setup my first Blogger blog with a Layouts template - The Real Blogger Status - Beta - in August 2006 , and converted this blog to Layouts in early 2007. Since then, Blogger has developed Layouts Blogger, and made some great changes, to smooth out what started out very roughly. But, there are still improvements to be made. Some, badly needed. Open In A New Window . Blogs are simply specialised web sites, and one of the benefits of web sites is that they are designed to be linked, one to another, in endless chains. Many people, myself included, like to open a new window, for any links that lead to other web sites. This is a convenience to my readers - they can read my web site as they read another web site which provides complimentary information. And after they finish reading the other web site, they simply close the window, and they are back here. Blogger gadgets and scripts don't provide for this need , unfortunately. Scripts like image embedding in post editor, and gad...

When we want to connect our blogs to our friends blogs, and vice versa, the first thing we think about is a linklist. Taking a basic list, and attaching a link to each list member, gives a nice structured list of links, called in some cases a BlogRoll, and called by Blogger a LinkList . That's simple, and that's boring. So Blogger went one better, replacing the links with blog feeds, and voila - the BlogList. For each LinkList entry, you provide a caption, and a link (URL). For each BlogList entry, you provide only a URL. Blogger does the rest, and you have a list of feeds. You can display the feeds in several different formats. For each feeds, you can choose to display The FavIcon of the blog. Title of most recent item. Snippet of most recent item. Thumbnail of most recent item. Date of last update. THis gives you a nice set of choices what you want your BlogList to look like. Want to see one in action? Look at the bottom of my sidebar, for my current BlogList (subject ...

Along with several key fixes to Blogger this week, the release contained one useful new page element - the Blog List. A Blog List is a combination of a Linklist (aka BlogRoll) and a Feed Reader, where you specify a series of feeds, and it generates a linklist with each feed as a separate item in the linklist. The Blog List improves on our Link List page element by using blogs’ RSS and Atom feeds to show update times, post titles, and snippets. You have several options that let you decide what you want to show in each Blog List. Icon . When available, you can present a favicon from each site in the list. Title . You can present the title of the most recent item, in each feed. Snippet . You can present a snippet of the most recent item, in each feed. Update Date . You can present the date of last update, of each feed. With all of that said, there is a key difference between a Blog List and a Link List. A Blog List is a list of blog posts feeds. Each item in a blog list will be the ...

This lets you, the blog reader, decide whether you want to see the BlogRoll / LinkList . You select the LinkList view that pleases you, not the blog owner. So, how does it work? LinkList Hidden Here you see no linklist. LinkList Shown Here you see the linklist, as you would normally do. (Question): This rocks! So, Chuck, how do I get this into my blog? For the answer, see Adding CumulusLinkList Code Into Your Blog . Note that, unlike MultiStyle Labels (which support only one labels widget), Hidden Linklists support multiple linklist widgets in your blog. This necessitates very careful coding, so follow the Cumulus instructions religiously.

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