A Brief History of Blogger Time

Blogger Themes and Templates Throughout the Ages

Early Blogger themes lacked a sidebar and other features we take for granted today.

The customizable responsive themes that Google introduced in 2017 (Notable, Emporio, Contempo, Soho) are the latest family of Blogger offerings since Blogger's inception (pre-Google) in 1999.

The three most recent "generations" of themes, Designer (2010), Dynamic (2011), and Responsive (2017), are each still widely in use.

Are Blog Photos At Risk In New Policy?

No. (But.)

Google's announcement of new limits to Google Photos does not directly affect Blogger, for most people.

In particular, the new policy does not appear to touch free unlimited photos on Blogger.

But if you regularly insert images from Google Photos, there are a few things you should understand.

First Aid for Photos Placement

 Workarounds for inserting images, stat!

The new Blogger interface has broken some methods of inserting and managing images in blogs.

If you've relied on any of these, things are pretty messed up right now.

While I hope these features are restored, until they are, here are some ideas that may be helpful to those struggling to blog.

As a bonus, one of these is an actual solution, not a mere bandaid.

New Blogger: What Do We Know?

July has come and gone, and Google is still refining the new back end for Blogger.

We can still revert back to the "legacy" version, and the online Blogger Help Community is still rife with questions and complaints ranging from the concerned to the indignant.

So what do we know about things at this point?

"New Blogger": Google Replies

Since August 7, Marc Ridey from Google has been posting weekly reports on The New Blogger project in the Blogger Help Community.

These chatty and informative posts shine a light on what is going on behind the scenes with the Blogger developers.

Here are some highlights.

"New Blogger" Labels: Report from the Trenches

In a season of controversy over the new back end for Blogger, three issues have emerged on the help community as especially problematic: 

images, scrolling, and (read on) labels for posts.

Labels, and their ability to sort posts into pages by topic, are a central feature of blogging in general.  So, pretty important!

Google says feedback is helping

Legacy interface option to stay "for a while"

Google says it is listening to feedback as it continues to develop the next-generation Blogger interface.

In a post pinned to the top of Blogger's online help community yesterday, Googler Marc Ridey replies in part to "very helpful" feedback from users about the new responsive Blogger back-end, addressing some issues relating to importing images and video into blogs. 

"New Blogger" Scroll: Reports from the Trenches

In much the same spirit as my recent "photos" report, here is what Blogger users are saying about how the new Posts page lists posts.

The page scrolls all the way until the end, which can take a long time.

'New Blogger' Photos: Reports from the Trenches

The new, responsive user interface for Blogger's back end is due to become mandatory next month. 

Meanwhile, in Blogger's lively, if sometimes frustrating, help community, users are expressing a river of objections, frustrations, and problems.

The three most common pain points are in the new post editor.

Issues include photos, labels, and (for blogs with many posts) infinite scroll.

How to Leave Feedback for Google

"Feedback" is a specific communications channel from users to Google about Blogger.

Feedback is how to suggest new features or describe problems.

It has assumed an outsized importance as the Blogger development team finishes its work on the new Blogger user interface.

Tabbed menu smackdown: Link List versus Page List

Near the top of this blog is a row of navigational links formatted as tabs.

In the universal language of the web, you know how this works without thinking about it. Click a tab, and it comes to the front, bringing its content with it.

A tabbed menu is a tremendously useful convention, and Blogger makes it easy to adapt to your blog. But how? What is best, Link List or Pages (aka Page List)?

'New' Blogger: Gains and Losses

READY OR NOT, HERE IT COMES

That "new Blogger" invitation that users have seen on their dashboards since last year will become the only Blogger "by late July," according to a May 20 blog post from Google.

Although the change does provide a few new features, it is fundamentally a redesign of the dashboard and editor, with the same Blogger functions under the hood.

This project has shaped up a lot in the past few months, to the point where it is worth describing what it looks like we will be getting—and losing.

The case of the missing blog

A long time ago, my blog just vanished. In its place was a message that the blog "has been removed."

Nowadays the message would have been this one:

There are many different reasons why this can happen. I hope it never happens to you, but if it does, and you do not know why, here is a guide.

Your table is (almost) ready

There's a lot to dislike, at this date, about the new editing window in The New Blogger. (I expect things to improve.)

But one development I am completely celebrating is the new table tool. It is visible (in TNB only) on the editing toolbar if your screen is wide enough, and also on the drop-down tool menu that is included for tablets and phones.

Your Web Address

Need a web address for your new blog?

Blogger gives you a free subdomain on the blogspot.com domain.

You can have any subdomain you like as long as it

• is available
• consists only of legal characters
• does not begin or end with a hyphen or underscore

For Blogger, legal characters are letters and numbers, and also hyphens when inside the subdomain name (not at the very beginning or end).