Automated lists by topic

image: mohamed hassan

Tag your posts with labels, and you'll be able to create dynamic lists of links to all the posts with a label.

"Dynamic" means the list revises itself automatically whenever you add or subtract a label from a post.

Welcome to Blogger

New here?

Maybe you know exactly where you are going with your new blog. If so, don't let me slow you down.

For my part, when I was getting started, I was uncertain about the right way to do things. 

I'm writing this for newcomers, though old hands may find a few tidbits of interest too.

Set the table for blogging

Photo: Hopefulromntic21 (CC BY-SA 4.0)

At the end of the setup process for a new blog, you'll find yourself at your blog's dashboard: the private back end of the blog where you can write, edit, format, and run your blog.

To get your blog started, you can click the New Post button at top right on your dashboard.

It's not a bad idea to try this out. You can always edit or delete a practice post later.

But one dashboard section that deserves your early attention is the Settings page, full of controls and options. 

Database filtering blog posts with logical NOT

Adapted from Steve Jurvetson (CC BY 2.0)

Attentive reader Peggy K wishes for a way to make such complex blog searches as "all my posts about Twitter that are NOT about Elon Musk."

(My hypothetical example, not hers.)

Seek no further.

Blogger's database power of OR

Photo: Jason Mrachina (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Blogger is a database that lets you shuffle and filter posts in different ways.

Today we take that to the next level, with logical OR searches on labels A or B (posts with any of the labels).

Blogger database superpowers

Blogger is a database that lets you shuffle and filter posts in different ways.

Today we take that to the next level, with logical AND and OR searches on labels.

That is, making a single page of all posts with (1) labels A and B, or (2) A or B.

Old wiring

photo: yung chang

Increasingly over the past two years, bloggers in the help community say they can't

• sign in from their blog—from the public "front end" of the blog at blogspot.com, connecting to the back end at blogger.com
• leave comments on blogs—even their own!—from their Google accounts
• find the quick-edit tools
• managing comments on their blogs, or delete comments they made on other blogs

These problems (often) have the same cause: Blogger's outdated dependence on tracking cookies.