New Blogger Templates

I finally took the plunge and have converted two more blogs to the new templates...
Three of my 'blogspot' hosted blogs are now using the new templates. I have taken the "if it ain't broken..." approach, and as 'munny4hunny' is the blog I do the most work on, I have left the design side of it alone..for now...

I have given a facelift to the following sites:

Beckham News - in time for the start of the new MLS season
The Credit Cruncher
Travel Blog

I have been inspired to put up some new posts too, so the whole exercise has worked out quite well. There is another blog that could do with some new content and a facelift too, but it is quite tricky to keep five blogs updated on anything other than a very sporadic basis.
I have found that the new templates are not always directly compatible, so some widgets may need to be rearranged, but on the whole the experience has been smooth and very effective. Making design changes is much easier and the scope of elements that can be incoporated into the design is considerably expanded.
There is still the danger that your blog may look very similar to someone elses, but with a bit of work, you can still exercise your own creative flair - and the combinations are certainly more varied than before. Thumbs up to blogger (still going to seriously explore WP one day though!)

Blogging pains

I got a bit of a shock the other day when one of my blogs suddenly stopped being displayed. I don't know what the problem was, but it seems that it's back up again now - but I took some drastic action and exported the whole thing into a new site....
I figured it would be possible to export the blog and sure enough there is an export function in the settings. It downloaded an XML file to my PC. I started a new blogger blog and uploaded the XML file - all my posts were live and intact. I copied over some of the sidebar content and activated one of those new blogger templates that have been around for a little while now.
I am VERY pleased with the way it turned out. In the settings, I simply entered the 'dot com' domain that I wanted this blog to use, and because the domain was already 'pointing' at the blogspot servers, it instantly identified the new site.
I have always been in the habit of hacking some of the template settings, and I have yet to see what changes I need to make in the HTML editor, but my overall first impression of the new blogger templates has been very pleasant. They are quick and easy to edit, apply themselves very quickly and give very pleasing results. If you want to see the facelifted blog, feel free to visit my 'reallytraveling' travel website.

New Blogger templates

Log into Blogger in Draft to get access to some exciting new customisable blogger templates, bringing blogger blogs out of the dark ages of design.
To be honest, this is a develpment that is long overdue, Wordpress have been ahead of the game in blog design for years, it's about time that Blogger made an attempt to catch up.
A word of caution though, make sure you save your existing template, especially if you have been tinkering with it (as I tend to with my blogs), as I assume defaut settings, such as 'no follow' will be re-set.

You can read more about the new designs and how to access them on the 'blogger in draft' blog, I look forward to seeing some of the effects of this new feature - I am sure I will be trying this out for myself on at least one blog.

My navigation buttons

One thing I tend to look for on a site whether it be a blog or a standard website, is the navigation. Of course, a blogspot 'blog' does not have 'pages' in the sense that a standard website has, so there are no navigation buttons provided in the templates. So how and why have I included them on my blog. Let's start with the 'why'... You can quickly direct your visitors towards the answers to the questions that they may first have when they arrive at your blog. These are some of the things you should consider providing for your visitors:
'About' - an introduction to you and your blog.
'Contact' - a way for your visitor to send you a direct message.
Some sort of link to your 'best posts' - admittedly I have not done this yet...
'Home' - for easy navigation for those unfamiliar with blogs (regular bloggers know you can just click on the banner).
If you think of each post as a page with a unique URL, make posts to fulfill your requirements and publish them (I posted mine as 1st January 2007, so that they would not appear in the regular posts - there may be a way of posting them without dates, but I have not been diligent enough to research it...) - See 'post options' in the create post window for making posts appear on different dates.

And now the 'How....'
It's embarrassingly simple really, webmasters even at a low level will easily figure it out, but sometimes even the simplest solutions may help someone when clearly explained.
In short, we are going to use Dashboard/layout/elements/add a page element/HTML-javascript. And simply add HTML navigation exactly as you would in a standard website. The HTML for a navigation button requires a destination URL, a source for the graphic and may carry extra tags such as 'alt' and 'title':

Depending on the in which space you are placing the code, you may place all your navigation into one element, or separate them out. In order to save valuable space, mine are all placed in the same element.
Naturally you will need to be able to create the buttons in graphical software, I use 'Fireworks', but you could use 'Photoshop' or 'Gimp' or any other half-decent software to get nice results.
The graphic elements were designed to fit in with the colours and styles I was already using. Arguably, a better example of design to fit a theme can be seen here:


These designs can then be simply uploaded to a website somewhere and linked into the HTML as the source. If you don't have any spare web space, you could upload them into a post in blogger and then view the properties to see where blogger has stored them - however blogger has a nasty habit of compressing image files.... If you don't want the post with the images to be seen, you could then edit the post and 'save as draft'. (I have not tried this method of storing graphics, but I think it should work...)
For navigation within a website, there is no need to open in a new window, so a straight link will be fine.

Editing the blogger HTML

Admittedly I was initially reluctant to do this, but found that unless I wanted a site that was identical to everyone else’s (or switched to Word-press) I was going to have to dive in there…

First off, you are offered the chance to download your template before you start messing around with it – this is a good idea.. click on the 'save template' button and then 'download full template' every time that you make a successful change, so that you can always take a step back and reverse a mistake by uploading a working template that you previously saved.
Try it and make sure it works…Once you have saved your template you can start experimenting to see what parameters can be changed, safe in the knowledge that you can always upload a default template.

Here goes then:
Log into Blogger dashboard/layout/edit HTML - Click on ‘download full template’ to save a copy of the HTML on your own hard-drive.
If you want to put your ‘description’ and keyword tags in, search for the 'head' tag and place them after this along with the other meta tags (NB the ‘title’ tag uses the variable: ‘data:blog.pageTitle’ – this is presumably linked to the entry that you make in the ‘title’ field in ‘Settings/Basic’) I suppose you could overwrite this, but I haven’t done(yet…)

I started by changing the pixel-width of my sidebar – I searched the term sidebar and changed width values until it looked how wanted it, then I decided that I didn’t like the dotted line… I noticed that the term ‘dotted’ in the code and simply took a guess that changing ‘dotted’ to ‘none’ would do the trick, and hey presto – line gone!

Your header can easily be changed in the dashboard, and I have used ‘layout/page elements/add a page element’ to include some HTML for navigation buttons which are very simple – I was pleased that some people have commented on the buttons so I may post about how I did them, but really they are very, very simple to do.

The DOT COM experience

Having the Dot Com has concentrated my mind on trying to get the best I can out of this blog and consequently I have instigated some subtle design changes to reflect the new attitude I have towards the blog. If you choose to use your own domain within 'blogger' there is a warning that tells you that will need to be using a standard template. I must have made some changes to my header that did not conform to this standard template, and it took a lot of work to restore the header and it still isn't how I would want it - I have also noted that other 'edits' I have done to the template are now gone, so some 'fiddling' will be required. If I really want to take this any further and regain control over the blog, my next logical step would have to be to take the blog onto a wordpress platform.
To be honest I am not ready to move the whole platform, so I am going to tinker with the blogger site until I can get it as near to how I want it to be. If anyone else is thinking of going Dot Com, then I would urge you do do it now especially if you have dropped PR recently as I think this might be a good way of responding to the 'Google slap' and it's possible that the new domain might not attract the same negative response as the old one did.
With this in mind, it is pretty imperative that I spend some time 'weeding out' references to paid posts and sponsored posts and the like... so that this new domain has the best chance of being given a PageRank as possible. I am happy with the layout for now, so will concentrate on cleaning up the blog in an attempt to comply with new Google PR criteria as far as I can guess what it might be.
As far as the Go-Daddy hosting is concerned (thanks to the Hot Dog Man for the heads up on Go-Daddy), they offer a free holding page edit program and an advanced 'Website tonight' feature which is basically a free 5-page website hosting included with your domain - what a great way to start on the internet, a whole 5 page website for the cost of a domain - $7...
Having this feature has enabled me to make a page that redirects any visitors to 'http://munny4hunny.com' straight to 'http://WWW.munny4hunny.com' using a javascript redirect. NB. blogger doesn't allow you to point both versions of the URL at your blog and the received wisdom is that you should use the 'www' version on your blog and use a redirect on the version without the 'www'.
I now feel more inclined to post at least four or five times a week if not daily, and may even go as far as having regular features... all this fresh attitude inspired by having the dot com is the perfect antidote to losing the Pagerank - It's time to fight back....

Blogger scam!

I had one of those scam emails today, you know a bit like the ones that say they are from your bank, but somehow they don’t seem to have put your name on the email? They want you to log-in to your account right now via the bogus hyperlink that they have helpfully supplied.

This time though it wasn’t from a bogus bank or even bogus Paypal, but from bogus Blogger. Supposedly there is a problem with the database and I need to log in to correct it…

Here’s the thing…. Google Blogger admin know my name… and my email address that I use to log in to blogger, so why didn’t they use my name, the name of my blogger account or my email address? (the email came into an unconnected email account). A scam, of course designed to lift important information from your Google account, maybe use your Google mail account or even substitute your adsense code for theirs… change the account details for where the adsense is paid or lift such banking information as is available.

If you have seen this email, [mine had a logo similar to the one shown in this post] and Heaven forbid, clicked on a link… change your log-on password right now, and go through all your Google account details to find out if you have been a victim of identity theft…

Helpful Blogger!

I noticed a little while ago, that there was a new option in Blogger layout 'add a new page element' which interested me, and today I tried it out. The new page element offers to list your post labels so that your readers can navigate to posts with a topic that interests them. The downside is that is lists ALL your labels (in my case, it looks like about 250 different tags...which has added two hundred and fifty lines to my sidebar!). I even had to change my settings... I now list 24 posts on a page so that the posting side and the side bar are still in some sort of balance (I don't like to see blogs where the sidebars are empty half-way down, it's a waste of free cyberspace...).
Then I thought of a fix.... If you can't define, say your twelve top labels, you CAN go back and remove the pesky single-use labels or swap them for your more popular ones... I like the way that Blogger have offered something that I not only want to use, but has actually made me think more about how I am going to blog in the future. My blog will be tidier because rogue labels will have been removed (when I get round to it), and in the future, I will just use previously existing labels except in special circumstances.
Of course if you use Wordpress, you can get plug-ins for 'categories' which is nice, I am glad that Blogger are now in a position to offer something similar and no doubt there is plenty more stuff in the pipeline??

Tips for Bloggers

I am adding a new 'quick search' category today under the title 'Blogging Tips', clicking on this link will short-list all my posts that contain hints and tips for new bloggers. Today's useful tip is to utilise the 'blogger' facility that can send you an email when someone leaves a comment againat one of your posts - this has three-fold benefits:

1. No more trawling for comments


2. Enables quick responses to comments


3. Can let you know even if a really old post has been commented on

Now, I'm sure many bloggers are already using this facility, but I admit that I have only started using this in the last few months and I have found it to be particularly useful - so just in case you haven't enabled this feature, do it now!!