The Real Blogger Status

Some blogs can't be easily upgraded, from a Classic to Layouts / Designer template. The Classic to Layouts / Designer upgrade can't process all classic templates. Some HTML tweaks, made by the blog owners, just can't be easily translated into CSS / HTML / XML, in the Layout / Designer templates. Remember that before Layouts templates, all accessories and decorations were installed by editing the template. It's likely that some people created some tricky code, to provide interesting features - and some of the tweaks, that are known by the owners, may cause the delay in upgrading.

For Christmas (End Of Year) 2009, I went back to Virginia again, for a brief visit. What I found, besides the snow (and there was too much of that) were some positive notes. The State Of Virginia USA really is moving into the future . For us Californians (Yes, I consider myself a Californian) they now have a Frys Electronics, a Trader Joes (2 of them in the Richmond area!), and an In-N-Out Burger (No, they don't have that yet!). OK, I'll settle for 2 out of 3. The point is, Virginia really is moving ahead, into the future. And this month, some bloggers are feeling the need to do that. Two changes in Blogger - Auto Pagination , and the approaching end to FTP Publishing , will both hasten the end to classic templates, and make the move to layout templates more natural. Owners of blogs with classic templates have, for a long time, been asking about how to get "Newer Posts" / "Older Posts" links for their blogs. That's not a feature that can be provid...

Not everybody who like Layouts templates, and their flexibility, likes the "Newer Posts" / "Older Posts" links. Some people are content to just remove them , but others would like to change the captions. The latter task isn't terribly difficult. As always, backup your template before and after making these changes.

Every week, we see questions I have friends posting in my blog, so it looks like a team blog. But it's my blog, and I want to show only my profile. or I want to list a friends profile, even though she's not technically a blog member. or maybe I want to add my birthdate (my city, the colour of my hair, whatever...) to my profile. How do I make it look good? and questions about tweaking the blog template, to accomplish this need, abound.

Every week or so, someone writes I do not understand why Blogger tells me that I cannot change my layout using the GUI template wizard (add gadgets, use Labels fully, have the "Next Post" / "Previous Post" links, restrict blog access, ...), simply because my blog is not hosted on a Google server. Why do FTP published blogs get second class treatment? with the implication being that Blogger is shortchanging FTP published blogs , to coerce their owners into publishing on a Google server, either to Blog*Spot, or to a Custom Domain. The answer here is a bit simpler. You can't use a Layouts template, or the GUI features, because a Layouts template is written in dynamic HTML. Dynamic HTML requires that the server with the blog content (ie Blogger) be accessed by the blog reader, as the blog is being read. When you publish by FTP, to a server distant from Blogger, you are publishing statically. The publishing process sets up the blog on the distant server once,...