The Real Blogger Status

As I told you earlier, in Backup Your Template (Classic), you should always keep a copy of your template local to your computer, just as you should always keep a complete copy of your blog itself. That advice hasn't changed for New Blogger blogs; if anything, it's more necessary.

There is no way to directly edit a label, short of editing each post, one by one, and changing the label field. Change the problem label, by retyping it, one post at a time. That's slow and tedious. But - that's not the only way to change a label.

New Blogger and the Layouts template, while a great improvement over the Classic template, is just a little rough around the edges. We've all learned that over the past year, though some have had a worse time than others. Some folks have had enough . Maybe they can't take the problems or suspense . Maybe the promised features just aren't there. Maybe there are incompatibilities with some essential tweaks. Maybe the selections of third party templates, for New (Layouts) Blogger, aren't inspiring enough. Maybe they want to setup a blog that publishes by FTP . Whatever. Well, if you can't work with the Layouts template, you can use a Classic template. Select Template. Select Edit HTML. Select Revert to Classic Template. This will give you an old template, with the unfortunate limitations. You'll lose any tweaks that you made to the New template. You won't have new features like GUI template editing, or page elements. You'll still use your Google account f...

A new post starts out with wide vertical spacing. Look at what we have here, from line to line. Nice and wide vertical spacing. Clean and easy to read. The perfect look for a blog, right? Now, let's throw in a quote. In the past, and looking at my example shown in Spacing Changes In Layouts Templates , you'd start seeing the problem here. My immediately previous article Spacing Changes In Layouts Templates #2 suggested an obnoxiously tedious workaround to this problem, which involved surrounding each indent element, such as <blockquote> ... </blockquote> with an extra span set to give <span style="line-height: 1.2;"><blockquote> ... </blockquote></span> This was fine - it made my blog posts look neat and tidy again - but it had its drawback. It was a major pain in the ass to use - any of my blog posts, of any length, would include 2, 3, or more formatting elements, which I would have to surround each one. So today, whilst bro...

(Note 11/25): The below content is informational only. The problem in question is not demonstrated, because of the workaround currently in place . A new post starts out with wide vertical spacing. Look at what we have here, from line to line. Nice and wide vertical spacing. Clean and easy to read. The perfect look for a blog, right? But don't get used to it - what does this look like in Internet Explorer ? In my previous post, Spacing Changes In Layouts Templates , I showed the problem. Maybe the advice given by Paul R will help here. Now, let's throw in a quote. And now, look at the vertical spacing. It's fine now, until after the unsorted list below. Nice one, Paul. So, how did this work? Well, in the above example in my previous post , I have <blockquote>Now, let's throw in a quote.</blockquote> and in this post I have <span style="line-height: 1.2;"><blockquote>Now, let's throw in a quote.</blockquote></spa...

(Note 11/25): The below content is informational only. The problem in question is not demonstrated, because of the workaround currently in place . A new post starts out with wide vertical spacing. Look at what we have here, from line to line. Nice and wide vertical spacing. Clean and easy to read. The perfect look for a blog, right? Now, let's throw in a quote. And now, look at the vertical spacing. With enough lines in here, you can see a change in post layout. The vertical spacing becomes much tighter. This looks sloppy. I've also seen this happen when you include <ol> and <ul> post elements. It appears to happen with any indentation element. But let's try a test, per advice outlined below . Testing. Look at my other posts, for instance. Enough! I Want To Go Back! and Beta Blogs: My 3 Week Evaluation both exhibit this behaviour. Other folks who have observed this. Problem with the line space of the posts. Observed 10/17. problem with block quot...

New Blogger - what I will call here "New Blogger 2006" - has been with us now for one year , give or take a few months. This time last year, I had just previously written about the impending migration to Blogger Beta (aka "New Blogger 2006"). Now, we are completing the migration. I say "completing the migration" because there are, currently, folks seeking guidance on how to complete the migration of their blogs. All blogs are now under New Blogger - that's not the issue - Old Blogger was laid to rest some months ago. Not all blogs are using Layouts templates, however. Some blogs, which are published using FTP to external servers, will always be using Classic templates. Yet there are some blogs which can be migrated to Layouts, that haven't. Anybody who has been posting, or helping, in any of the Blogger Help Group forums has seen this query. I just finished entering a post into my blog. I previewed it - and it looked fine. Then I publishe...

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.

If you're going to setup a Google Custom Domain, you have to start with DNS properly setup . In most cases, you will want the "www" alias, as well as the rest of the domain, to refer to Google. This requires you to properly use the setup procedures provided by your DNS Host, as a complement to the facilities provided by Google. NOTE: This case study shows how a Custom Domain was setup, in the early days. A much more comprehensive tutorial can be found in Your Blog, Custom Domains, And Righteous Solutions . You may examine the illustrations below, for background, but the correct configuration is described in the latter article. This case study uses my church website, martinezumc.org, with DNS service provided by GoDaddy . So, I logged in to the GoDaddy control panel, and followed the Google GoDaddy instructions (instructions for other hosting services are also in that document). Steps 1 - 4 were on target. So, I document below Steps 5 - 7 of the instructions, whic...

With New Blogger, Google lets you use your Google account to access your blog, and your friends blogs. They do this for your convenience . Not everybody wants convenience. Some folks see using their email account for Blogging as an invasion of privacy . Others are afraid of losing their email account, and losing Blogger access at the same time. The good news is that Google accounts are free, and you can set up another, or as many as you like. And, you can use either an existing or new email address, GMail or other, as you like. Go to your GMail main window. In the lower left of the window, find "Invite a friend". Enter your email address (yes, the address displayed). When you get the invitation from yourself, open and accept it. Choose any new Google address that pleases you (and that's available). Log out of your current GMail account, and into your new account. Transfer your blogs to your new Google account. If you're going to use one GMail account for your ema...

One of the long awaited features in New Blogger (2006) was the ability to restrict access to your blog. Designating your blog as private, to be read by authorised parties only, was a much requested feature. Blogger uses your Google account to identify you, and verify that you are authorised to view any blog (including yours). And that causes occasional concern - fortunately unnecessary, in this case. Seeing your Google account, which coincidentally may be the same as your email address, as you peruse your blog, is a bit scary.

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...

As I wrote so long ago, Labels are one of the most significant features of New (pka Beta) Blogger . But everything good has its limits . If you use Labels enthusiastically, as I have, you will discover them (they will find you) periodically.

Along with Labels, the Layouts template editing ability is probably the neatest feature in New Blogger. The GUI Page Layout editor is totally kewl. Not too many folks realise though that you can edit page elements from other than Page Layout editor mode. When we're logged in as an administrator, we can make changes to the individual page elements, just as we can edit posts. Similar to the "Edit Posts" pencil at the bottom of each post, you'll find the QuickEdit widget at the bottom right of every page element. And here's some confusion. How in the world do I get rid of the cute little dragonflies that seem to be a part of the template that I have?? I do not know enough about the HTML to find them or what they might be called. Well, I've been studying the HTML / XML , but I don't know the name myself. It does sort of look like a dragonfly, though. It's just another thing that got put, into Blogger Beta, without a name. Another violation of ...

Google Custom Domains are a simple solution for providing non-Blog*Spot URLs for blogs published on Blogger servers. But as simple as they are, they aren't universally useful. If you just can't use a custom domain , don't despair. Go to Settings - Publishing, and select Switch to: • blogspot.com Then, refresh browser cache . >> Top

Google Custom Domains are a simple solution for providing non-Blog*Spot URLs for blogs published on Blogger servers. They are very elegant in their design, which uses nothing special, just industry standard DNS referrals ("CNAME") to a load balancing DNS server . Neither the "CNAME" entry (on the server provided by the DNS registrar), nor the load balancing ("ghs.google.com") are anything innovative. And that's what makes them so elegant. But, there's a downside - they don't work, consistently. And the cases where they don't work are inconsistently similar to those cases where they do work. The DNS provider is one major weakness which is not, totally, Google's fault. Not all DNS registrars support "CNAME" referrals - some only support "A" referrals, and many bloggers have trouble understanding the distinction between the two . Not all support staff, working for the DNS Hosting companies, consistently know how to i...

The Google Custom Domains, and the possibility of having a non-Blog*Spot address without the lack of functionality from setting up an external published blog, are a major improvement over plain old Blog*Spot to some folks. But be aware - some technical expertise is required . Setting up a DNS entry is not a normal task for Bloggers. The draw of Blogger One Button Publishing is that you Choose a Blog*Spot address. Choose a template. Post and publish (and for New Blogger, forget the "publish" too). So what's up with setting up DNS? There's some occasional confusion in the forums . The site says to create a CNAME for example.com.. CNAMES are not for DOMAIN NAMES, they are for subdomains.. i.e, www, pages, users. DOMAIN NAMES use A records to point to an IP address. But the difference between an A record, and a CNAME record, is pretty simple . An A DNS record directly equates a hostname to an IP address. A CNAME DNS record does not directly resolve to an IP address. ...

Layouts template Blogger blog posts are sequenced as Classic Blogger blog posts are - by date, in reversed sequence. This means, again, that the newest post will fall at the top - and every time that you make a new post, it will be visible above any previous posts. Just like a Classic blog, you can make the posts display in any order that you like - just change the date of each post. This is called a work around. With a blog of any size, and activity, and lots of posts to change dates on repeatedly, you'll find it to be a very painful workaround, too.

Of the confusion surrounding definition of Google Custom Domains in DNS, second only to the confusion about the DNS Referral definition , is the DNS Server definition. Google does not provide the name servers needed for Google Custom Domains to work - the name servers must be provided by your registrar. The name servers are indicated by "NS" records, pointing to 2 - 8 servers owned by the registrar. You do not change the "NS" records. The "NS" records point to the DNS servers provided by your DNS hosting company. You pay for the DNS hosting service, and the DNS hosting company sets up the "NS" records, on your behalf. The name servers, provided by your registrar, are where the domain definition records , such as "A" (Address), "CNAME" (Canonical Name), and "MX" (Mail Exchange), among others, are stored. You have to provide a "CNAME" record on those servers , with that "CNAME" record pointing ...

Of all of the instructions in the process of setting up a Google Custom Domain for your Blogger blog, none seems to generate so much confusion as setting up the DNS Referral. The actual procedure is simple enough . So what's the procedure? Note: In the examples below, I'm using the "ping" command to verify the state of my domain. In each example, I refer to my fictitious domain, mydomain.com . Please substitute the name of your domain, when appropriate. Add a "CNAME" record. Point "www.mydomain.com" (or whatever address that you wish the readers to use for your blog) to "ghs.google.com". And leave the "NS" records to be maintained by your DNS provider. www.mydomain.com. CNAME ghs.google.com. That's what the necessary "CNAME" referral record looks like. You'll have to work with a wizard provided by your DNS host , and you'll have to learn the rules of the wizard, to produce that "CNAME" refe...