My Blogger wish list for 2019

Dear Google,

CC BY 2.0 KITTY TERWOLBECK

I have been good this year! I've blogged regularly (not here, but on my main blog), and been helpful in the Blogger Help Forum.

I know Blogger from a user's perspective, and really like the platform. So, I have some ideas for how to make it better—not just for me, but for users generally.

Universal undo

CARELESSHX    

Users should be able to reverse any action on Blogger within a reasonable period of time.

A month, for instance, for deleted posts.

Consider perhaps a trash can for deleted items and versioning for drafts in progress.

A truly universal undo would extend to images deleted from the album archive and comments deleted from posts.

Inability to recover is a pain point in the help forum.

A letter of transit for Google+ refugees

OK, Blogger is not going to be the next social network, but it's a great place for the creative people on Google+ to park their content.

A migration tool deployed before the August 2019 shutdown of the network would be a win for everybody. (A positive announcement about that would be very welcome in early 2019.)

A new social layer

There's an important social element to Blogger, but today the platform teeters on isolation.

Google+ is on its way out. "Next blog" was put out of its misery. Google Friend Connect is long gone. Even following feels neglected.

These services boost, or boosted, interaction around blog posts. Interactions that energize and inspire and connect.

They help blogs to grow and bloggers to blog.

I'm not sure what a new social layer looks like. I'm not even sure that I care, as long as it helps me connect with people.

An all-purpose responsive theme

In 2017 you gave us four elegant new themes (what we used to call templates). They are marvelous.

But after putting them through their paces, I found they were not right for me. The themes are too specialized for the way I blog.

Even were I to change my blogging style the new themes would not be backwardly comparable to my old blog posts.

I've got a lot of old content that is still good, and I am not willing to write it off or reformat it to fit into the new paradigm.

I would also really miss the useful and time-tested tabbed navigation, which the new templates only kinda sorta have. More to the point, I think my readers would miss it too.

But I'd love to have a responsive version of a general template (with tabs!) that flows seamlessly from desktop to tablet to phone.

Judging by what some people are asking about in the forum, others would like that too.

Back me up!

I try to back up my blog regularly, but sometimes I forget.

If only someone would do it for me—securely—in the cloud—automatically.

But who is in a position to do that? (Hint, hint.)

Some new widgets

Google, you've been retiring things like mad. Including all the third-party widgets.

It's OK, I only shed a few tears.

But we are left with a serious deficit of sidebar bling.

There used to be hundreds of sidebar widgets. As of today there are 29.

Granted, gadget number 4 is the HTML/Javascript widget, with which an adept programer can whip up just about anything.

But not all of us are as technically buff as the folks you hang with. We need your help.

Do you want some ideas for new gadgets? Spend a little time in the help forum with the people who want to tweak the Archive gadget, or to sort posts hierarchically by label (with little flippy triangles) instead of by date.

My idea: a gadget that lists (1) all the posts in a label (2) sorted in any number of ways (3) each item listed as a link to the post.

People with travel blogs, among others, would flip for that.

Help people find my stuff

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK

I'm hoping, Google, that you can help me solve a growing problem.

On my other blog, I have so much evergreen content—posts that will never go out of date—that it is difficult for my readers to see what all the choices are.

And there's more every month.

Not a bad problem to have! but a tricky one.

I've added links and widgets to help people find what they are looking for. Now the whole thing is cluttered, which distracts and discourages readers.

Finding good ways to put my older content before my readers has become a big challenge!

I know I am not alone in this either. Can you help?

Dear Google, best wishes for 2019!