The Real Blogger Status

The new Blogger solution for auto summarised posts, also known as "Read More" or "Jump Break", is becoming increasingly popular in Blogger blogs, for several reasons. Auto Pagination resulted in display segmentation , caused by the perceived need to publish hundreds of posts on the main page. Desire to display a dynamic index of posts as the main page. Desire to simply make the main page and / or archive retrieval displays smaller. The "Jump Break" feature itself is reasonably easy to use , when you are using the New Post Editor, and with blogs that use a template released after Jump Break was released - apparently in September 2009. If your blog was created before then, you may need to add a critical bit of code to the post template .

For many months, bloggers have been asking for the ability to add static pages - pages that do not contain dated posts, and that do not show up in the archive index, or in the main page display - to their blog. Before this year, only the latter possibility existed - posts that would not show up on the main page could be created by publishing posts back dated to appear before the earliest post on the main page . This created "static" pages that still appeared in the archives index - a messy workaround. In January 2010, as a belated Christmas present , true static pages were added to the new post editor . In June 2010, the new post editor was moved into Production Blogger. It's not difficult to make a static page. In the Classic Blogger GUI, dynamic pages ( aka "posts" ) are accessible in the post editor under two tabs - "New Post" and "Edit Posts". Static pages are accessible under one tab - "Edit Pages". On "Edit Pag...

One problem which we seem to see, pretty consistently, in Blogger Help Forum , is where the posts and a sidebar end up in one long column, with one above the other. Reports like My posts have vanished! and My sidebar (my archives, my Followers, my profile gadget, ...) have dropped to the bottom of the page! are seen a lot in the forum. Generally, it's caused by trying to put too much in one place . Recently, though, a few bloggers report the dropped sidebar symptom, after they try the new post editor, and the Blogger "Read More" option (called by Blogger, "Jump Break").

Recently, we've seen an occasional question about mysteriously changed post editor selections. Where did my options toolbar go? or Why do I now see the new post editor? Right now, as part of the deployment of the new post editor , there are 3 selections, in Settings - Basic - Global Settings - Select post editor . Updated editor Old editor Hide compose mode If you make this change under one blog, you'll find it true for all of your blogs. I've also noted, under some circumstances, that when you accept membership in someone else's blog, and the other person was using a different post editor selection, the other person's selection will now be yours, globally. The next time that you accept membership in a blog, check your post editor setting. If the owner of the blog was using a different setting, your setting may have changed. >> Top

We've seen a few reports of problems uploading a video, since that option was added to Post Editor. Please contact Support, and include the following information: Blog Id:bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Video Id:vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv or possibly even Please contact Support, and include the following information: Blog Id:bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Video Id:FAILED Upon further investigation, sometimes by the blogger and other times by a helper in Blogger Help Forum , we may find that the video is too long (100M is the maximum length), the video is of the wrong format (only AVI, MPEG, QuickTime, Real and Windows Media are accepted), and in one case, the video was detected as copyrighted material and refused. Apparently, the video upload process doesn't provide a lot of diagnostic information. Maybe that's one reason why the new Post Editor didn't include video upload , for a long time. >> Top

Now that the new post editor is available in Production (Orange) Blogger, a few bloggers have already noticed a significant deficiency Where is my spellchecker? as if use of a spellchecker is essential to their blogging activities. It's possible that including a spell checker in post editor isn't a good strategic move for Blogger, in the long term. Blogger / Google is international, and multi-lingual. Every different culture, and language, has its own unique spelling and grammar. Even with single languages, blogging subjects require an almost infinite combination of individually permitted (designated "good" spelling), and individually prohibited (designated "bad" spelling) phrases and words. Every different blogger is unique, and likely has unique requirements. Many browsers, and other third party products, include spell checking, that's configurable to the needs of the individual users (of which blogging would be a small part only). So, instead of co...

Apparently as part of its 10 year anniversary celebration , Blogger has quietly released the (previously) Draft Post Editor into Production (Orange) Blogger. If you look at Global Settings under Settings - Basic, you'll see the (former) setting for "Compose Mode" now replaced by "Select post editor". Here, you can select "Updated editor", or view an overview . Or, you can leave "Old editor" (Compose mode enabled), or "Hide compose mode", selected - depending upon your current setting. Selecting "Updated editor" gives you the former Draft Blogger equivalent of Post Editor, now available for all Blogger blogs in Production Blogger. There are interesting changes in "Post Options". No "Backlinks" options. Real scheduled post settings ("Post date and time"). Edit HTML ("Convert line breaks" per post) settings. Display HTML settings. And two major omissions. Spell Checking is not inclu...

For a long time, blog owners have been asking for the ability to transfer blog contents - comments and posts - from blog to blog. Last week, Blogger announced that feature recently added to Production Blogger. Today’s release features a brand new graduate from the Blogger in Draft testing ground: Import and Export for Blogger blogs.

Several bloggers have reported inability to remove comments from their blogs, apparently when comments are enabled with "Pop-up window" selected, because they will lack a trash can - which is normally provided for each comment. The alternate selections, "Full page" and "Embedded below post", do not appear to be affected by this problem. If you use the "Edit Posts" menu , you'll have a list of all posts with comments. If you click on the appropriate "comment" link, you'll be temporarily put into single post mode, with the comments displayed below the post - and there will be a trash can available for each comment. If you find this inconvenient, you can permanently change the Comment Form Placement option, to show comments either as "Full page" or "Embedded below post". (Update 10/28 12:00): Blogger Support is aware of the problem. We'll keep working on this one. ... I'll check into this ASAP. >...

Recently, a few complaints have been seen about inability to leave comments on blogs, possibly in blogs using the newly provided Comment Form Placement, "Embedded below post". Having seen the announcement yesterday , I too, eagerly enabled the option in this blog. This post is the first which I have created, since doing so. So, let's see what happens now. I have gotten several comments today, to several of my earlier posts, which were written before enabling the option. If you wish to make a comment regarding this issue, and can't do so here, please do so using my general post, Leave Comments Here . But having eyeballed this post, and a couple earlier ones, I see the embedded comment form on all posts, when you are in post view ( not main page view ). In blogs which use a separate comment page ("Full page") or possibly a pop-up page ("Pop-up window"), you'll see the link caption at the bottom "Post a Comment", which will have a U...