The Real Blogger Status

I recently updated an old post, to add a link to a newly published post - and experienced panic. Adding a link to an old post, Deleted / Locked Blogs Have Several Causes , I discovered an oddity which caused extreme heartburn for several hours. Maybe you have experienced this, also. Editing my post, and adding a simple single sentence, with embedded link, at the end of the post, I refreshed the display (always test your changes - no matter how minor!), and watched as the paragraphing scrambled itself.

One source of occasional confusion, seen in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , is about Google+ and the lack of control. We have discussed the lack of commenting moderation options - but that's just a small part of what you don't get. Under Settings, then Posts and comments, I don't have the same choices as shown. This blog owner is used to the array of comment settings, that seem natural, to somebody using Blogger comments.

This week, we have a number of reports , in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , from blog owners who like to monitor the Google+ +1 counts, for their posts, using the dashboard Posts list. The ability to observe, at a glance, the +1 count for any given group of posts is useful - and popular with some folks. I use it, myself, with newer posts in this blog. Unfortunately, my Posts list shows no +1 counts for recent posts, for some Posts lists.

One very useful Blogger feature is the option to bypass the Blogger dashboard - to edit the various gadgets, and existing blog posts. The feature, termed "Quick Edit", provides two different icons, generally visible to the proper recipients, with the option enabled, on the published blog. The "Quick Edit" "pencil" is visible to administrators and authors, in the posts toolbar, to the right of the "Email Post" icon. This will generally be in one of the post footer lines. The gadget "screwdriver / wrench" icon is visible to administrators, to the lower right of each template gadget (except for "Blog Posts"). Though the "screwdriver / wrench" icon is more visible, that icon has no name, and no selection option in the Blogger dashboard. And, there are more mysteries.

The recently redesigned Pages gadget and wizard has been with us for just over 3 months. We are occasionally seeing some confusion from people who can't add a dynamic page link to their blog - even when they manage to find the redesigned Pages gadget. I added a dynamic page, linking from "mymainblog.blogspot.com" to "mysecondblog.blogspot.com". Imagine my dismay, when the new page link goes to "mymainblog.blogspot.com/mysecondblog.blogspot.com", instead of to my actual target "mysecondblog.blogspot.com"! Here is a blog owner who is not aware of the unforgiving syntax of the "New Page › Web Address" wizard, and the "Web address (URL)" entry.

The custom domain publishing form, in the dashboard Publishing wizard, causes confusion. Occasionally, we see evidence of the confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken . I need to cancel my domain - but Blogger won't let me! or I clicked on my dashboard, and now my blog isn't published to my domain! These blog owners, and more, are perplexed by the Publishing overlay form, displayed for a blog published to a custom domain. The custom domain overlay, in the dashboard Basic - Publishing wizard, is very elegant. The overlay design is similar to forms used by Blogger and Google+, to display photos. The "overlay" form is appropriately designed, for its use. The form follows the function - and reflects the status of the blog. For all that, it's diabolically subtle.

We get occasional reports , in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , about a broken Pages gadget. I created a new page - but when you click on the link, you get bounced back to the Home page! When you look at the blog with the problem, it's easy enough to verify the report - just look at the URL behind the link , for the most recent page created. Indeed, it points straight to the Home page (base URL for the blog). When this happens, there is a very simple workaround. Just create another page, identical to the problem entry.

Occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , we see a curious question, which is repeated. My blog Stats display is missing a complete year. The problem is actually right there, in front of all of us - if we look. We showed this last year - for 2010 .

Occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , we see a curious question. My blog Stats display is missing a complete year. The problem is actually right there, in front of all of us - if we look.

If you are going to use Following effectively, you have to manage the blogs that you Follow , as well as managing the people who Follow your blogs . Managing the blogs that you Follow should be fairly simple - just click on the blue "Manage" button at the bottom of the dashboard. Some blog owners won't be able to do this, though - and for an apparently irrelevant reason. Following profiles that are associated with non shared Blogger profiles can't be managed using the "Manage" button. What now? Why can't I Manage my Followed blogs? Another problem that may result from a non shared Blogger profile would be a Follower icon with no profile link, or a link leading to the above display - if, of course, you are Following a given blog using your Blogger profile . You can show the contents of your Blogger profile, a list of your own blogs, and a list of your Followed blogs - and still not allow access to your Blogger profile - if you de select the opt...

One of the neatest ways to theme decorate a website is by adding a relevant font. There are music fonts, which look good on musical websites. And classical fonts which look good on classical and literary websites. And everybody knows "technological / computer style" fonts, which can decorate computer / Internet relevant websites. You can change the font for your blog, using the Template Designer "Advanced" submenu , which will let you choose from a dozen or so commonly installed fonts. Special fonts work best for specialised websites, where the majority of the readers are expected to have installed the fonts in question on their computers. Fonts are essentially code, which transforms numbers and letters coded in ASCII, in your blog, into pixels on the computer screens used by your readers. There are thousands of different fonts, available all over the Internet - and not one computer will have all fonts installed.

Long ago, before my previous blog improvement , I would include a link to the top of the displayed page, at the end of my posts. Before I added my "Top Of Page" button , I would compose my posts in "Edit HTML" mode, and at the end of each post, I would add >> Top <a href="#Top">&gt;&gt; Top</a> That gave me a link to the top of the page, since I included an anchor link "Top" inside an HTML gadget, at the top of the page. <a name="Top"></a> That's simple enough , once you get used to adding the code. There's a caveat here, though.

Recently, a couple bloggers have reported a mysterious glyph, in their blog page. Please, I've been trying to remove the --> at the top of my blog forever. I can't find in the templates where this is coming from. If anyone can help me please respond. Its driving me crazy. The mysterious glyph.

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...

A table is a great way to organise content in your blog. With related data positioned above or next to each other, and still allowed to flow from line to line, as a display coded in HTML is designed to do, you can show the various relationships easier. But use tables carefully - they are syntactically sensitive. The problem is easy to show, by example. Here's a very simple table - 1 row, 2 cells. Make this line Appear above this line And make this line Appear just above this line <span style="text-align:center;"><table align="center" border=1><tr><td><table align="center" border=1 cellpadding="20"><tr><td>Make this line<br>Appear above this line</td></tr></table></td><tr><td>And make this line<br>Appear just above this line</td></tr></table></td></tr></table></span> Add gratuitous line breaks, which makes it ea...

Occasionally, you see a very odd, cryptic complaint I just added a link in my blog, but the link vanished! No, it wasn't your imagination.

Displaying code for complex objects - multimedia (audio / video) , and also photographs (thumbnail / full-size) - takes a lot of browser window space. Generally, more than a single line of text is required. Some browsers can't make line breaks on their own, and if I display a single, unbroken line of code, the code will run off the end of the post column, through the sidebar, into the background margin of the blog, and off the end of the screen. This creates two problems. It makes the code hard to read, with some code not at all visible. With some browsers, it can even cause the post column, or the sidebar column, to end up at the bottom of the page . No good for anybody, that. Whenever I display such code in my blogs, I take care to insert lots of extra line breaks. Adding line breaks makes the code easier to read, which is good. But it creates another problem. If you copy the code from the browser window, you'll copy a lot of extra line breaks, and the code won't al...

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.