Friday, December 20, 2013

Backwards runs the blog

Why is your blog backwards?

Blogger, like other blogging platforms, standardly shows your posts in reverse chronological order.

Older posts spill down the page and onto archive pages.

To read your story from the beginning you must go to the end.

This does not work for everyone (and there are workarounds). But for most of us, most of the time, it is a good thing.

Monday, December 16, 2013

My top blogging tip: Just blog

You never really know what you think until someone shoves a video camera in your face and says, Quick! What's your number one blogging tip?

This happened to me recently at a conference about Google products. I was randomly ambushed by a team collecting advice about all of these (not just Blogger, but YouTube, Search, etc.).

As the camera rolled my blogging life flashed before my eyes. Many tips, but which which is primary?

Think fast! (Wikimedia photo/Creative Commons license 2.0)
Labels? Feeds? SEO? Best fonts? Facebook integration? Google+?

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Take your blog off the web

Suppose Blogger made all of its blogs invisible except to other bloggers.

Imagine that Google rolls out a new version of Gmail, better in every way except it can only send and receive email from other Gmail accounts.

Or maybe you can send email to anyone, but non-account holders must open a Gmail account to reply.

The web is about being connected. Is a private email platform even email any more? Or just an oxymoron?

None of this is happening. Google isn't crazy. But something very similar is in the offing with the optional new commenting system for Blogger.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Identity crisis

Forgetting the password to an old Blogger blog (really, to its Google account) is not necessarily a big deal. Google's account-recovery tool can email you a reset.

Things get sticky, though, if you no longer have access to the email address associated with the account.

Not all is lost, however. Here is how I regained access to an old account of mine.