Friday, April 7, 2023

Blogger database superpowers

A superman-style chest emblem, with a D instead of an S

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.

On Blogger, if you give a post a label, the post will automatically appear on a built-in search page for the label, along with others with that label.

You can tag posts with more than one label and put them on multiple search pages.

All blogging platforms do that. It is a defining characteristic that separates blogs from other websites, including most newsletter services and social-media platforms.

Label search

The basic form of a label search page is

myblog.blogspot.com/search/label/labelname

for instance, all my posts about feeds:

too-clever-by-half.blogspot.com​/search/label/feeds

Label search AND

To find all posts that have two (or more labels), and not just one of them, use the "+" operator in the url:

myblog.blogspot.com​/search/label/labelname1+lablename2

Example

too-clever-by-half.blogspot.com​/search/label/feeds+things that changed

Those are all the posts with both of the labels.

Image: Kismalac (public domain)
A AND B

So you get all posts about things that changed in relation to feeds.

You can have more than two search terms.

Once you construct the search URL, you can share it as a link. The posts that are included on that page will change as you assign and change labels.

Next: label search OR. This one is tricker.

Also

3 comments:

  1. This is great! I would also like to be able to to use the "NOT" operator, but I don't believe that's supported.

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