Dummies Guide to Blogger

How to change URL of your blog

2014-10-15T21:16:00.000+08:00

(See IMPORTANT NOTE below) Steps to change a blog's URL (web address) in Blogger: 1. log into Dashboard 2. click on the relevant blog 3. click SETTINGS tab 4. click PUBLISHING 5. edit url (see screenshot above. Place where you type the new URL is indicated by cursor (arrow) and also "Type new URL here" in redRemember to save settings. Your success will depend on whether the URL has already

What is Label and How to use it

2014-10-15T13:08:00.002+08:00

Label is what some would also call category Eg you have a blog about food Then you label for example posts about appetizer with the label (category) Appetizer Posts about main courses with label Main course Posts about desserts with the label Desserts Posts about vegetarian food with the label Vegetarian etc etc Then you go to Layout and add a Label gadget and put it in the sidebar or

How to create a new blog

2014-07-19T00:07:00.002+08:00

There had been a few askers at the Blogger Help Forum who don't know how to create a blog, with some thinking they have to type in their email address etc. This post is to help clarify matters. To start a new blog, after signing into www.blogger.com (Dashboard), click the NEW BLOG tab. A pop-up will appear requesting you to enter the blog title and the blog address (url): The title is not so

Blogger Post Editor HTML mode and COMPOSE mode

2014-03-29T10:26:00.004+08:00

To write a post and upload photos etc., first sign into www.blogger.com (Dashboard). Then either click the orange quick edit pencil icon to open the Blogger post editor. The Blogger post editor has 2 mode, the HTML mode or the COMPOSE (WYSIWYG) mode. Below is a screenshot of the post editor in the HTML mode: If you click [COMPOSE], it will then change to the COMPOSE (What You See Is What You

Publishing HTML special characters the easy way

2013-05-16T21:44:00.002+08:00

If you want to write a post displaying HTML tags, you cannot write them in the post editor as is direct. If you do, after publishing, those HTML tags will be interpreted as HTML codes and the HTML tags will not be displayed as is. To display HTML tags after publishing you will have to encode/convert them as explained at How to post special characters. An easier method is to use HTML encoder/

How to leave Google Group

2013-05-10T09:00:00.000+08:00

Blogger which is owned by Google do not have direct support for users. This is also true for the majority of other Google's products. User support is provided via public forums using Google Groups where volunteer Google Top Contributors assisted by Google Employees help out. For Blogger, the public forum is at Blogger Help Forum. It would be wise to become member of this forum and if you have

Custom domain advice: save blogspot URL (address)

2013-04-22T15:57:00.000+08:00

Have you registered your own domain and converted your blogspot blog to custom domain? If so, I highly advise you to record the original blogspot URL (address) in some place safe and easily retrievable. Reason: if ever your blog is wrongly identified as a spam blog or for TOS violation, the original blogspot URL will come in handy because you cannot use the custom domain URL to request for

How to post special characters

2013-03-01T20:06:00.000+08:00

This is how to post special characters like † ‰ ♠ ♣ ♥ 1. sign into Dashboard 2. refer to LIST or to this LIST2 or for HTML entities refer to LIST3 3. type the codes for the characters where you want them. 4. click Preview to make sure the characters appear as you want them to be 5. if so, save. For example, if you want to display A, you will have to type the following into your

Solution: Text jumbled up in one big paragraph

2013-02-21T08:34:00.001+08:00

The default of previous versions of Blogger is for every depression of the ENTER key to result in a line break in the post editor. This is good as it is instinctive to most people. However, in the latest version of Blogger, Google has for its own reasons changed the default where you need to type the HTML line break tag
in order to make a line break. Many who just started with Blogger (and

How to convert blogspot blog to dot com custom domain

2012-04-23T07:31:00.000+08:00

Blogger has given bloggers the choice of converting their blogspot.com blog to a .com, .net, .org, .co.uk etc with a custom domain. It will only cost $10 per year for the domain registration and Blogger will host it for you free. To convert to custom domain, sign into www.blogger.com (Dashboard), click on the drop-down arrow and select SETTINGS/BASIC Then in the PUBLISHING section, click ADD A

Export Blogger posts to Wordpress

2012-04-20T18:50:00.000+08:00

I would hate to see you go, but if you must leave Blogger for Wordpress and want to export your Blogger blog posts to your new Wordpress blog, refer toNew Wordpress import from Blogger (Update: In the new Blogger Interface, what was formerly named as EXPORT is now replaced by a BACKUP/RESTORE tab in the TEMPLATE section of SETTINGS/TEMPLATE In the new Blogger User Interface, the steps to sign

HOW TO BLOG FOR INTERNATIONAL AUDIENCES

2012-03-08T10:22:00.002+08:00

HOW TO BLOG FOR INTERNATIONAL AUDIENCES If there is one word which perfectly suits the adjective “global” well, that is definitely “internet”. Nothing is more widespread than the web, Coca Cola excluded, probably. But unlike a drink, which can be sold and consumed anywhere in the world without any problem, a web site needs to deliver a content, hence it needs to be understood. And here comes

How to revert to old Blogger UI

2012-02-19T22:20:00.005+08:00

Update: Blogger has disabled the old UI and there is no way now to revert to old UI. Blogger has "upgraded" its UI (User Interface) to the Blogger new UI but lots of bloggers are not happy and want to revert to the old UI. To do that is pretty simple provided you know what to look for. Go to the DASHBOARD. Look for the gear like icon at the top right of the page as show below:

Cannot access Blogger account - what to do

2011-05-24T17:15:00.007+08:00

If for whatever reasons you cannot access your Blogger account, go to Blogger.com and click the "Cannot access your account?" linkand you will be presented with 2 choices:1. Lookup blogspot URL (input the URL of your blogspot.com blog)or2. Lookup email (enter your email address if your blog is not hosted on Blogspot (custom domain) or can't remember blog URL or don't

Easily publish tables with Windows Live Writer

2011-01-06T07:54:00.003+08:00

Wish to draw attention of readers of Blogger for Dummies about a very well received recent post in Blogger Tips and Tricks, namely Easily create tables with Windows Live Writerand also this comment by this commentator Laronski:Windows Live Writer is a fantastic offline blogging tool with a WYSIWYG editor. It interfaces with just about any blog service [Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress,

Tabs - differences between new xml LAYOUT template and old classic template

2010-11-07T22:28:00.005+08:00

For a blog reader whose POSTING tabs have only NEW POST an EDIT POSTS sub-tabs with no EDIT PAGES sub-tabs, his blog probably is still using the old classic template and not the new xml LAYOUT (now called DESIGN) template. If so, you can see from the DASHBOARD that the DESIGN tab will be missing and in its place will be the TEMPLATE tab highlighted in red (see screenshot below):Those with

Map showing location of visitors - How

2010-10-14T13:57:00.000+08:00

A blog reader wants a map in his blog sidebar to show locations of visitors to his blog like the one you see at the bottom of the first left sidebar of Career and you (note: that blog is a demo blog with not many visitors so you may not see many dots on the map, but will be different if your blog has lots of visitors). To install a similar gadget for your blog, an easy option will be to go to

Easily make HTML sitemap for your blog using Javascript

2010-08-13T05:33:00.004+08:00

Note: HTML sitemap to facilate vistior (human) navigation only. If you are looking for a sitemap to submit to Webmaster, you will need an XML sitemap or a Google Sitemap.A commentator at Blogger Tips and Tricks (HTML) Sitemap (Table of Content) said: "Hi Peter, This sitemap is really good and helpful. I would like to add a sitemap like this one to my blogger blogs. Can you please give me a

Fixed width versus fluid width templates

2010-06-06T15:04:00.000+08:00

The very first task after settling on a URL of a blogger would be to select a template. Initially you can select any as they can be easily changed. However, eventually you will have to select the final template for the blog and that can either be a fixed width layout or a fluid (liquid) width layout. Definition: Fixed layouts are layouts that start with a specific width for the main column and

How to create composite image of 2 photos side-by-side

2010-05-27T21:13:00.013+08:00

I have shown how to display 2 images side by side using the HTML table tag but because a blogger asked to display a particular pair of photos side by side which actually turned out to be a single composite picture of 2 photos side by side, I am going to illustrate how this alternative method do displaying 2 photos side-by-side using my favorite free Irfanview photo editor.First I

Sticky post question and answers (plural)

2010-05-01T00:16:00.003+08:00

This is a very frequent question and often answered by using editing the post date (newest) so that it always remain at the top. Previously we could postdate it to the future which is no longer possible because Blogger now will schedule the post to be published in the future instead of publishing it with the postdated date. Thus the post can at most post to current date and each time a new post

Spam blogs deletion & Custom Domain. Immune to deletion?

2010-03-07T11:11:00.003+08:00

If your blog has been deleted, refer to How to restore blog deleted as splog or TOS violation. This post was inspired by 2 emails, one regarding the widespread deletion of blogspot.com blogs and one regarding web hosting. I myself have had 3 blogs related of which one probably was because it was a song, music and video blog which had many embedded Youtube videos. From a quick reading of Blogger

Problem when copy-pasting from WORD to Blogger post editor

2009-12-21T23:33:00.001+08:00

A blogger asked in the comments at Change blog background color and others: " I can't keep my font consistent throughout my posts...." I suspect he is copy-pasting from MS WORD or some other word processor. When you prepare a document in WORD, it adds a lot of invisible formatting tags to the text that you type and when you copy-paste from WORD to the Blogger post editor, these formatting tags

Blogger for Dummies sitemap

2009-09-02T21:18:00.000+08:00

Google Blogger begins monetization

2009-07-21T13:33:00.003+08:00

For years I am amazed at the generosity of Google Blogger in offering millions of bloggers this free blogging platform without asking for or expecting anything in return (other than the requirement to display the navbar which is never enforced). You can do many things with Blogger including putting not only Google Adsense ads in your free blog, you can even add competing ads like Yahoo