The Real Blogger Status

Everybody who uses a computer - and expects to use their computer for any amount of time - has one or more protective products on their computer. Anybody who publishes a blog, with an audience that has any need for security , is going to receive occasional reports from would be readers. I can't read your blog! My computer displays an "Unsafe website!" warning! All computer security products, unfortunately, will occasionally generate false positives. Analysing false positive malware reports is as much a part of every security product, as identifying the actual malware.

Some blog owners don't care much for the mobile template. A few blog owners simply think that the mobile template is just too plain looking. Where are all of the gadgets? These blog owners express a concern which is not too hard to resolve. If you want gadgets to be visible on a mobile display, make the gadgets visible. Of course, it's up to you, to not add too many gadgets, and make your blog impossible to read.

With Following becoming increasingly important in many blogs, as part of creating an exciting and ongoing community, many blog owners are using improved versions of the Followers gadget. Repositioning the Followers gadget, outside the sidebar, will let you show more Followers - or you can show the same amount of icons, but larger ones, in a gadget with the same height. If you want to encourage more Followers, using larger icons wouldn't hurt. All that you need to do is publish the Followers gadget as a static page, using the Pages Editor, in "Edit HTML" mode. You can display Followers in a separate page, without having to edit the template . Or, you can use an HTML / JavaScript gadget, instead of the default Followers gadget.

Recently, we have seen a few reports from bloggers who have a blog with a "Cutest Blog" template, who are mystified by the PhotoBucket icon This image or video has been moved or deleted and discussions such as Have a photobucket icon appearing in the middle of my blog that says a picture has been deleted. are common in BHF: Something Is Broken .

The Designer templates have been part of production Blogger for since 2010 , now. Occasionally, we see odd queries about loss of gadgets, and visitor counts. Where did my (custom accessory) go? and My SiteMeter counts dropped to zero. In many cases, the problem here comes from not planning and watching the template move closely enough.

With New Blogger 2006, Blogger added another layer of simplicity in web site development. They redesigned their templates, using Dynamic HTML , and XML , for more flexibility and options. And they added two key improvements. Template objects (aka "Page Elements", which are now called "gadgets" ). A GUI Page Elements editor , to setup, position, and maintain the template objects. The Page Elements wizard lets you add and re locate objects on the blog page, and maintains the blog template . This is Page Elements, in the Classic GUI. This is the Layout page, 2016. This is more of the Layout page, 2016. The Page Elements wizard is reached from the Design link in the dashboard or navbar (when you use the Classic GUI) - or from the Layout menu entry (when you use the New GUI (2011)). If the blog is setup to use a dynamic template, "Page Elements" won't apply - and "Layout" won't even be part of the New GUI menu. The B...

Most of us, when we setup a blog, we just write the posts, and maybe add an Archives Index gadget in the sidebar. If we want to get fancy, we can use labels, and have a Labels Index in the sidebar. You may want to make your blog look like a web site , with the new Blogger static pages editor , and an index at the top of the blog. That's not a difficult thing to do, it just takes ingenuity. Note as in many of my posts, all example code here is presented with lots of gratuitous line breaks .

With all of the predefined page elements that Layouts Blogger provides, that fulfill maybe 90% of the need for you to edit the template, there will be the 10% that they don't provide. Services provided by third parties - like guest books , or news feeds , or even visitor meters - won't be provided by Blogger, to everybody's liking. In some cases, Blogger / Google will provide one version of a given service - like Blogger Comments, Blogger Feeds, and Google Analytics - but their versions aren't the most popular in many cases. And some blog owners will develop their own simple applets, like the Cumulus / Google Translation Bar . Bloggers are like any people in any walk of life - they all want something different - better - or new.

Third party accessories are a big part of many blogs. As Blogger proceeds to command a larger and larger share of the free online web site market, they encourage (directly or indirectly) the development of third party templates, and accessories. This lets us make our blogs more personal to our desires, and shinier to our egos. Layouts Blogger is more mature, and commands an ever growing share of Blogger. And so, the the selection of Layouts compatible templates and accessories, again provided by third parties, will grow. And as the selection grows, so does the possible risk, from installing what's available on our blogs. As I wrote long ago, what better way to hack somebody's blog (or computer) than by conning the victim into installing the hack , on his own?

Back when the Internet was started, having a web page of your own was a tremendous accomplishment. You had to Setup a web server (or find one with available space). Write content to go on the web page. Format the content. Load the formatted content to the web server. Look at the web page, and how plain it was. Add more formatting, maybe decorations. And that was just one web page. Then you'd add a second web page. Write content to go on the second web page. Format the content, and add links to the first web page. Add links from the first web page to the second. Load the formatted content (first and second web pages) to the web server. Look at the two web pages, and how they didn't work together. Redesign the web pages, to work better. And that was just two web pages. Add a third, and still more details to deal with. Pretty soon, you were spending all of your time formatting the web pages. Not writing content, not making it pretty. Ugh. If you want an int...