The Real Blogger Status

When we use Blogger Following, we create a link to our profile, from each blog that we Follow. That's the primary purpose of Following - to see, and to be seen. We also create links from our Followers profile, to each Followed blog. That's the purpose of having a profile - to describe ourselves, by the blogs that interest us. Everybody does not want other people knowing about every blog that we Follow, though. To let us Follow blogs without being seen, we can Follow anonymously - or hide a blog, from our profile on other blogs.

We see regular queries about deleting a Blogger account, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . A Blogger account is simply a Google account, used to publish or read blogs. If you want to delete a Blogger account, you need to delete the Google account. If you are using your Google account for other services, maybe GMail, Google+, and / or YouTube, you won't want to delete your Google account. But you can make the Blogger portion of your Google account invisible, to the public.

Any time you have to research a blog access / control / ownership issue, knowing how to identify how you are currently logged in to Blogger is a very useful ability. If your blog has an "About Me" / "Profile" gadget, you can generally click on the gadget, and see the profile of the blog owner. But what if you are not sure why you don't seem to have ownership access for "your" blog? Either the blog in question is not on the dashboard - or it's there, but you only have author control .

When you have a Google+ profile, and you use it with your Blogger blog, it replaces your Blogger profile - and becomes the public part of your Blogger identity. Google+ displays your profile more transparently than Blogger displays your Blogger profile . Your Google+ profile is clearly and consistently linked to your Google+ comments and posts, for your readers to view - and it's part of the Google+ desktop, for you to view and to edit. And Google+ lets you display or hide sensitive portions of your profile, with more options than Blogger provides. As a Blogger blog owner, you can probably find your Google+ profile , as attached to your Blogger dashboard. All that aside, Google+ is not completely obvious, in letting you view and edit all profile content. One of the challenges of Google+, and showing and editing your profile, is that Google+ is being updated, right now - and there are now two Google+ desktops.

Your Blogger profile is the public part of your Blogger identity , that can be seen by others. You will want your profile to provide the best representation of you - but do not display too many details. Revealing account names and email addresses , for instance, can put your blogs at risk of theft.

Changing your Blogger account name is like changing your birth name - it can't be done, without legal complications. You can have a nickname - I have several, depending upon who's calling me. But when a cop stops you , you're going to need your government issued vehicle operator certificate - and there's no nickname there. Just your birth name. If you don't like your current Blogger account name, you transfer control of the blog - using two browsers - to an account that you like.

One of the easiest improvements, in a Blogger blog, is customising the "About Me" / "About Us" ("Contributors" / "Profile") gadget. The default gadget gets its content from the Blogger profile - and is edited, using the Blogger Profile Editor. With a team blog, the gadget changes to a list of team members - and this cannot be edited. But given 15 minutes, and some imagination, you can make your own Profile gadget.

When we read our blog, or somebody else's blog, we use a BlogSpot or domain URL, to identify the blog. Anytime we report a problem with our blogs, the most important question to answer, when we ask for help in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken , is What's the BlogSpot and / or domain URL? When we login to Blogger, and look at our dashboard, there's an equally essential detail involved here. That unique detail is called the "ProfileID" / "ProfileURL".

Occasionally, somebody in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? wonders Why don't I have a Layouts (or Template) link in my dashboard? or How do I setup additional team members, without the right link in Permissions? and the first question is Are you logged in as the blog administrator / owner ?