Your Blogger Blog

Following feature

2008-08-31T14:04:00.000-07:00

Blogger announced that they have a new feature called Following that allows you to show who are following your blog as well as the blogs you are following. Your Dashboard will you how many followers each of your blogs has. With a click on the Followers icon, you can browse your followers, see what blogs they write, and read the other blogs they’re following.

To adding the Followers gadget to your blog’s sidebar, log in to http://draft.blogger.com/ and go to your Layout | Page Elements tab, click “Add a Gadget” and select “Followers” from the gadgets list. The Followers gadget shows the profile pictures of your followers and gives your readers a “Follow This Blog” link to join up, too.

Your followers can stay updated with your blog with the Reading List that we’ve added to the Blogger Dashboard. The Blogs I’m Following tab automatically shows the latest posts from all the blogs you follow. You can follow any blog from your reading list, even blogs that haven’t added the Followers widget or aren’t hosted on Blogger. Just click the “Add” button and type in the blog’s URL.

If you’re a Google Reader user, you’ll now see a special folder in Reader called “Blogs I’m Following,” full of the subscriptions for all of the blogs you follow. You can follow blogs you’ve subscribed to in Reader, too: From the Reading List on your Blogger Dashboard, click “Add,” then “Import from Google Reader.”

Next up for Google will be the integration of Google Friend Connect. The Following feature will be rolled out to all over the next few weeks, so if you don’t see it right away, don’t worry. It’s coming soon.

New feature: Reactions

2008-08-18T13:09:00.000-07:00

After star ratings, Blogger now adds a new feature as a quick user poll widget: Reactions, which lets you define a set of attributes like “funny”, “interesting”, “cool”, or anything else. Then, your readers can upvote each of these attributes for each of your posts using a button. With this new Reactions feature, you can get one-click feedback from your readers.

To enable Reactions, log in to http://draft.blogger.com/ and go to your Layouts page. From there, click the “Edit” link for the Blog Posts gadget and then check the “Reactions” checkbox. You can edit the Reactions buttons by clicking "Edit" or clicking the buttons themselves, as shown.

You can customize the location of the Reactions within the post by dragging the preview around in the “Arrange Items” box. We’ve found that it looks best when it’s on its own line, but your mileage may vary.

Additional Notes from Blogger in Draft team:

This is a Layouts-only feature. If you’re using a Classic template you’ll need to upgrade to Layouts to add Reactions.
The buttons should blend seamlessly with most blog backgrounds. Button backgrounds are a mostly transparent grey which should, we hope, coordinate with everything. The text and button highlight colors for the ratings are taken from the following skin variables:
- Foreground: textcolor, textColor, mainTextColor
- Highlight: linkcolor, linkColor, mainLinkColor
If you have customized your blog widget’s template you may not see the reactions. You will need to either reset your blog widget’s template or copy the Reactions code from a fresh template. Search for “reactions-buttons” to find the appropriate block of code.
A known issue: if you choose short words/phrases, it’s possible to enter enough options that the line of buttons will wrap (and not look very good). If this happens to you, you'll need to shorten your options or reduce their number.

Also, among other updates, Google changed the dashboard layout lately. If you have multiple blogs you can now click a “Hide” link for blogs you may want to access more rarely (a “Show all” link lets you view all blogs again, and allows you to toggle back the Hide settings if needed).

New Features for Blogger in Draft

2008-07-16T13:41:00.000-07:00

There alot of cool features for Blogger blog that you might interest:

Webmaster Tools Verification. Turn this on to automatically add and verify all your blogs on Google’s Webmaster Tools.
Star ratings. Add a 0–5 star rating control to the bottom of your posts so that your readers can rate them.
Import / export of blogs. Back up all of your posts and comments to one Atom XML file on your computer, and import your posts from one blog to another.
Embedded comment form. By incredibly popular demand, Blogger brought the comment form to your blog’s post pages, with support for Google Account and OpenID authentication.
New post editor. Blogger has completely revised the post editor, bringing in drag-and-drop image placement and better HTML handling.

As always, these features are on Blogger in draft so you need to login with your account there to try these features out. Please read the posts for each of the features before trying them so that you know what’s working and what isn’t.

Show off your favorite blogs with a Blog List

2008-06-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

Blogger now released a new page element for Layouts blogs: Blog List that we had noiticed in "Add a Blogroll to Blogger". The Blog List improves on our Link List page element by using blogs’ RSS and Atom feeds to show update times, post titles, and snippets.

Use a Blog List to put a blogroll in your sidebar, or make a few to categorize the blogs you read. The Blog List works well for any page that has an RSS or Atom feed, so you can get creative: link to news sites, podcasts, Twitter streams, search results, or anything else with a feed.

Here’s a quick summary of the features that a Blog List gives you:

Link to blogs, web pages, and feeds from your blog’s sidebar, with an optional favicon
For pages with RSS and Atom feeds, Blog List can show last updated time, post title, and a snippet of the latest post
Sort links alphabetically or by last update time
Show all links, or hide some behind a “show all” link
Import subscriptions from Google Reader
Blog List links are visible to search engine crawlers, so your blog’s PageRank and reputation flow to those you link to

Here's a help video from Blogger Help Team to help you adding and configuring a Blog List:

Posting through iGoogle

2008-06-06T13:34:00.000-07:00

Blogger in Draft annouced that they launching a draft version of the Blogger Posting Gadget for iGoogle. With this gadget, you can write, save, and publish posts to any of your Blogger blogs directly from iGoogle.

Interested? Try it now:

Make sure you’re signed in with the same Google account you use on Blogger in order to start posting.

Currently, the gadget supports the following:

Editing the HTML of title, body and labels
A drop-down menu to select from multiple blogs (if you have them)
The ability to publish a post immediately, or save it back to Blogger as a draft post

Tip: If you start writing a post in HTML and decide that you want image uploading or other rich text features, just click “Save Draft.” The gadget will save the post, then give you a link to directly edit the post in Blogger.

Some compatibility notes Blogger in Draft:

The Blogger posting gadget will only work in iGoogle, not in other gadget containers, because it requires authenticating with your google.com cookie. We hope to remove this restriction in the future.
Since this gadget uses the JavaScript Google Data API for Blogger, it does not work in Apple’s Safari browser. We hope to fix this in the future as well.
We’re also hearing reports that the gadget is not working correctly in Internet Explorer. We’re looking into this.

New Dashboard in Blogger blog

2008-06-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

To see this feauture, just login with your account at Blogger in draft.

"The new dashboard contains all of the same information that the old one did, but rearranged to emphasize the most important content and changes (and with a little more room for future goodness). By default, only some of your blogs are shown in the dashboard, although there’s a link you can click to display all of them. The blogs we show by default include the two blogs you most recently published to, as well as any with unmoderated comments or ToS/spam warnings." Blogger in Draft

Unlink - A three-column template without images

2008-05-18T11:24:00.000-07:00

Unlink - A nice three-column template without images designed by Free CSS Templates.
Blog to preview Daily Celebrity Pics.
Download: Unlink.xml

How to show AdSense between your posts?

2008-05-13T13:25:00.000-07:00

To show ads between your posts first go to your Template | Page Elements tab. Then, in the "Blog Posts" section, click on "Edit". A pop-up window will appear with options to configure your blog posts. Check the box next to "Show Ads Between Posts". (Note: You must be signed up for AdSense before you can check this box.)
Show Ads Between Posts

Once you check this box you'll see the configuration options for your ads. You can then select how often you would like ads to be shown after your posts.
Show after every x posts

For example, if you want ads to be displayed after every post, select "1" from the drop-down menu. (Please note that AdSense policies limits you to a total of 3 ad units per page and Blogger will automatically prevent you from going over this limit.) You can then select your ad format and colors. Once you have finished configuring your ads, click on the orange "Save Changes" button in the bottom right corner.

Magazine Style Drop Caps

2008-05-10T12:06:00.000-07:00

Dropcaps like in a fancy magazine is what you see in this post. If you like this tip, just follow this guide step by step.

Login to your Dashboard | Layout then choose Edit HTML and paste the code below to your CSS-definitions between the HEAD tag.

Now in every of your posts, you need to put the fisrt letter between the tag SPAN like this: <span class="dropcaps">D</span> The result is very nice: a large capital that stretches over 5 lines.

Remember that you can change the font size bigger or smaller or setting the color in different if you want.

Hacks from Beautiful Beta via Mandarin Design

How to put AdSense on your Blogger blog

2008-05-05T13:13:00.000-07:00

Easy AdSense for Your Blog

Blogger provides a simple way for you to make money with your blog. AdSense is Google's content-targeted advertising program. This means that you do not select keywords or categories for your ads. Instead, Google's servers determine what your posts are about and display the most relevant ads to your readers. So, if you blog about baseball, there might be ads for Major League Baseball memorabilia next to your post. If you blog about painting, there might be ads for art supplies.

Putting AdSense on Your Blog

This integration between AdSense and Blogger is intended to make it easier for you to get up and running with AdSense on your blog. To place AdSense on your blog quickly and easily, please follow the guide from Blogger Help here:

First of all, choose the blog that you want to put AdSense on, and go to the Template | Page Elements tab. You can get there by clicking the "Layout" link on the dashboard, or clicking the "Template" tab from the posting or settings page of the blog.

Once you're there, click on one of the "Add a Page Element" links. Choose the one that corresponds to the area of the page that you want to contain your AdSense ads. The "Choose a New Page Element" window comes up, from which you can select the AdSense option.

The next page you see will have an AdSense sign up page. If you're new to AdSense, go ahead and fill it out to create an account. If you already have an AdSense account, click the "sign in" link instead so you don't accidentally make an extra account.

Once you've signed in or created or account, you'll get the configuration screen. Use the menus to select a format, and one of our preset color templates. If you want more control, you can also enter colors of your own choosing by typing the hex codes in the spaces provided.

If for any reason you need to switch to using a different AdSense account, click on the "Switch to a different publisher ID" link at the bottom.

When you have things the way you want them, just save your changes and go see how it looks on your blog. Come back to tinker with the settings any time by clicking the "edit" link for the AdSense unit on the Page Elements tab.

Blogger now schedules future-dated posts

2008-05-02T14:04:00.000-07:00

Blogger now schedules future-dated posts as they announced on Blogger Buzz.

Scheduled post publishing, which we talked about testing on Blogger in draft last month, is now live for everyone. If you set a post’s date into the future, Blogger will wait to publish until that time comes.

Have you ever wanted to announce something on a certain date but knew you wouldn’t be at a computer to make a post? Or you wanted to keep posting regularly but knew you’d be on vacation for a few weeks? Scheduled post publishing is here to help you out.

Scheduling a post is easy to do: on the post editor page, click the “Post Options” toggle to show the “Post date and time” fields. Then, type a post date and time that’s in the future. When you click the “Publish” button, your post will become “scheduled.” When the date and time of the post arrive, it will be automatically published to your blog.

“Scheduled” posts appear in your Edit Posts list alongside your drafts and published posts. To un-schedule a post, simply save it as a draft any time before it gets published.

One quick note: If you want to give a post a date in the future but have it appear on your blog now, you’ll need to add in an extra step. First, publish your post with the current date and time. This will make it appear on your blog. Then, edit the post to change the date into the future and publish it again.

Blogger desn’t re-schedule posts that are already published, so the post will stay on your blog but sort to the very top. The same is true of future dated posts you’ve already made, so there’s no need to worry about your existing posts disappearing, or having your blog assaulted by unplanned entries in, say, 2027.

Add "Recent Comments" to your Blogger blog

2008-04-19T14:04:00.000-07:00

Here's a simple tip that tells you how to Add "Recent Comments" element to the side-bar of your Blogger blog.

First of all, you must login to your Dashboard | Layout. In Page Elements section, click on Add a Page Element link on the section or the side-bar that you want to add the "Recent Comments" element then click on Add To Blog on Feed, fill out your address http://YourBloggerBlog.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default to Feed URL box.

Now your can show up to 5 Recent Comments on your blog by Item dates or Item sources/authors or both.

Comment Notification Email

2008-04-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

Here's a tip that helps you receive a notification email from Blogger when someone leaves a comment on your blog.

First, you must login to your Blogger account then go to your Dashboard | Settings. In Comments section, scroll down to the bottom of the page and enter your email to Comment Notification Email box to get notification emails. Remember that you can enter up to ten email addresses, separated by commas.

Email notifications for Blogger comments

2008-04-17T13:28:00.000-07:00

Here's a good tip for those who leave comments on an old post from a Blogger blog: now you can get email notifications if someone posts a new comment. Just check "Email follow-up comments to my Google account address".

Blogger Gadgets and Page Elements now all in one

2008-04-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

Google today annouced on Blogger in Draft blog that they unified the gadgets and page elements directories all in one a Gadget on Blogger in draft. To preview this Gadget, you must log in to http://draft.blogger.com/ then go to your Dashboard | Layout and click on the “Add Gadget” link. This new look will help you adding stuff to your blog easier.

How to add an image to your Blogger blog's header

2008-04-02T12:41:00.000-07:00

There's an easy way to add an image to your blog's header. First of all, you must login to your Dashboard | Layout. In Page Elements section, please chose Edit from Header to setting.

A pop-up window will appear for you to chose an image From your computer or From the web to upload to your blog's header like the image below

There are also two options in Placement for your choice: Behind title and description or Instead of title and description. And the last option here will let you shrink your imge by clicking on Shrink to fit.

How to remove Blogger Navbar in your Blogger blog

2008-03-18T12:53:00.000-07:00

First, log into your Dashboard, go to Layout | Edit HTML. Just add the following lines anywhere in your Blogger template (enclosed by <style> tags)

#navbar-iframe {
           height:0px;
           visibility:hidden;
           display:none;
     }

Preview the template. You will notice that the Navbar is no longer displayed.

Blogger Help YouTube Channel

2008-03-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

The new Blogger Help YouTube Channel for everyone who wants to add features to your blog, but don't have the patience to browse Blogger's help articles. There you can find videos that show you step by step how to use Blogger features.

There are only a few videos at the moment just start with the basics:

"In the coming months we'll be adding more videos. If you have a suggestion for a video you'd like to see, let us know by posting in our Help Group. In addition, you can give us feedback on each video's comment form. We're always trying to find new and better ways to help you use Blogger and we appreciate the feedback - thanks!" Google announced on Blogger Buzz.

Minyx 3 column template for Blogger

2008-03-11T14:52:00.000-07:00

Download: minyx.xml

How to edit Fonts and Colors in your Blogger blog

2008-03-10T13:58:00.000-07:00

In the Layout | Fonts and Colors tab, you can easily edit and customize the fonts and colors of your blog without any knowledge of HTML or CSS. (Note: Certain templates allow you to edit more elements of your blog than others.)

How to edit the colors in your Blogger blog?

First choose the element you would like to change the color of:

Then choose the color you would like that element to be. You can either click on the color you want or enter the color hex code:

When you change your blog colors, you can view your changes in the blog preview beneath the color panel. Make sure you save your changes after you have finished selecting the colors for your blog. If you're feeling adventurous you can click "Shuffle blog colors" to randomly shuffle all of the colors already in your blog. If you don't like your changes, you can revert back to your default colors by clicking "Revert to template default."

How to edit the Fonts in your Blogger blog?

First choose the element you would like to change the font of:

Then choose the font you would like that element to be by clicking the radio button next to your font of choice. You can also change the font style to bold and/or italic by checking the box next to the style you want and you can make the font size larger or smaller by clicking "larger" or "smaller."

When you change your blog's fonts, you can view your changes in the blog preview at the bottom half of the screen. Make sure you save your changes after you have finished selecting the fonts for your blog.

Layout Guide

2008-03-10T13:24:00.000-07:00

Blogger's Layout feature is an easy-to-use template editing feature that will allow you to edit and customize your Blogger template without any knowledge of HTML or CSS. You can now easily edit and customize the colors, fonts, header and sidebar of your blog with a few clicks of the mouse. To customize your blog's layout, go to the Layout | Page Elements tab in Blogger.

If you are using a classic template and would like to use the Layout feature, see here for instructions on how to switch.

Moving elements in your template

How to arrange elements in your template
You can arrange the elements in your template the way you want them displayed. Simply click on the element you would like to move and drag and drop the element where you want it to be. You can move your page elements to the bottom of the page, anywhere in your sidebar, or below or above your blog posts. (Note: you can move all elements except your navbar, blog posts and header in some templates.)

Editing elements in your template

How to edit your navbar
Clicking "Edit" in your Navbar section will allow you to select the color you would like your Navbar to be.

How to edit your header
Clicking "Edit" in your header section will allow you to add or edit the header of your blog, which includes your blog title and blog description.

How to edit your blog posts
Clicking "Edit" in your blog posts section will allow you to choose the number of posts you would like to display on your main page. You can choose either the number of days with posts to display or the total number of posts on the main page. You also have the option to show email post links that let your visitors easily email posts from your blog to their friends.

How to edit your profile
Clicking "Edit" in your profile section will allow you to edit/add your profile title, "About Me" description, and location.

How to edit your blog archive
Clicking "Edit" in your blog archive section will allow you to edit/add your blog archive title, select your display style (hierarchy, flat list or dropdown menu), choose to display post titles, choose to display oldest posts first, choose your archive frequency (monthly, weekly or daily) and choose your date format.

How to add a page element
You can add several page elements to your blog page or sidebar by clicking on "Add a Page Element". This will open a pop-up window that will allow you to add the following elements to your blog by clicking "Add to Blog" in the desired element section:

List
You can add a list to your blog with the ability to add a title, select the number of items to display, sort your list alphabetically and add links to your list elements.

Link List
You can add a link list to your blog with the ability to add a link list title, select the number of items to display and sort your link list alphabetically.

Labels
This will add a list of all the labels you've used on your posts. Clicking each one will take you to a page showing all the posts with that label. You can change the title of the list, and sort it alphabetically or by frequency of use.

Picture
You can add a picture from your computer or the web to your blog. You can also add a title and caption to your picture and shrink the picture to fit into your blog perfectly.

Text
You can add some text to your blog (such as a welcome message or footnote) with our rich text editor.

HTML/JavaScript
You can add third-party functionality or other HTML/JavaScript code to your blog.

Feed
You can add content from a site feed to your blog by first entering the feed URL and clicking "Continue." You will then be able to add a title, select the number of items to show (up to 5 max.) and display the item dates and/or authors by selecting the appropriate check boxes.

Logo
You can add one of stylish Blogger logos to your blog.

How to change your Classic template to new Layouts template

2008-03-09T12:58:00.000-07:00

- On the Layouts tab, you can customize page elements, fonts and colors, HTML, and templates.
- All newly created blogs automatically have Layouts enabled.
- Old blogs with the Template tab can be upgraded from your dashboard.

Are you tired of dealing with HTML and CSS every time you want to change the look of your blog? Well, it turns out that there's an easier way. With the Layouts feature, you can drag-and-drop to move parts of your page around, and choose new fonts and colors with easy mouse clicks. Newly created blogs will work this way automatically, but for blogs without this feature, you'll need to upgrade your template. Here's how.

1) Find the name of your blog on your dashboard, and click the Template link next to it. If this link says Layout instead, then it's already upgraded and you can skip the rest of these steps.

2) On the Template page you should see the standard window of HTML code. Now look in the navigation links for the tab that says Customize Your Design and click it.

3) You'll get a message explaining that Blogger will make a backup of your current template and replace it with an upgraded one. The backup will be made available indefinitely, so you can revert back to it later if you need to. Click the Upgrade Your Template button to continue.

4) Choose one of our default template designs. You'll be able to modify it all you want, once you pick one of these as the starting point. Click Save Template when you've made your choice.

Now you're all set. You'll end up on the new "Page Elements" tab, where you can start arranging things however you like.

Add Google Search Box to your Blogger easily

2008-03-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

The Search Box page element is available in draft.blogger.com only. You’ll need to type it in directly then go to your Dashboard | Layout | Page Elements tab, in the "Add a Page Element" popup, choose the The Search Box page element to add to your Blogger.

It uses Google's Custom Search Engine to dynamically search over your blog's content, as well as anything you've linked to in your blog posts, and even your sidebar-based link lists and blogrolls.

Integral Template for Blogger

2008-03-06T11:37:00.000-08:00

Download: Integral.xml

Add a Blogroll to Blogger

2008-03-05T13:42:00.000-08:00

Bloggers often feature a list of their favorite blogs, called a “blogroll,” in the sidebar of their own blog. Blogger in Draft (a pre-release version of Blogger) added an interesting widget that lets you display the latest posts from your favorite blogs. It's an enhanced blogroll that displays the recently updated blogs and snippets from the most recent posts.

At its most basic, Blog List displays a list of links to your favorite blogs, with an optional icon. If you link to a blog with an Atom or RSS feed, however, the Blog List can show the date of the blog’s last update or even the title and snippet of its most recent post.

You can set the number of blogs to show in the list and whether they should be sorted by update time or alphabetically by blog title.

You add blogs to your Blog List by entering blog or feed URLs directly, or by importing subscriptions from Google Reader. When you add by URL, Blogger will attempt to detect an Atom or RSS feed for it in order to show post and update information. If none is found, the blog will still be added to the Blog List, just as a simple link.

Remember: Like all features mentioned on this blog, you must log in to http://draft.blogger.com/ to add a Blog List.

Additional Notes

The Blog List writes all links out in HTML so that, unlike JavaScript-based blogrolls, you pass PageRank goodness on to the blogs you link to.
The icon next to a feed is taken from the favicon.ico file in the blog’s home directory. We currently do not support the “shortcut icon” link tag.
Some blogs don’t link to their Atom and RSS feeds in a way that we can detect. In these cases, add the feed URL to the Blog List for best results.
Only the blog admin who added the Blog List may edit and configure it.