Hidden gems of Blogger

Hidden in Blogger's labyrinthine user interface are a few interesting, and even useful, features.

Who follows you?

Follow a blog and you will see recent posts on your blogspot.com Reading List.

But how do you see who is following you?

Answer: Click "followers" on the Stats page.

That will bring you to "Manage followers."

As a bonus, click any of the followers listed there to see all the blogs they follow publicly. (Oddly, there are no links to their Blogger profiles or their blogs.)

The only "management" you can do of those followers is to block (or unblock) them.

Not shown: Anyone following you privately.

Follow a website

Speaking of following: You can follow public blogs, and many websites, from your Reading List, even if they do not have a "Follow" widget enabled.

From your Reading List page, the Manage link brings you to a page that lists all the blogs you follow.

Here you can visit the blogs, remove them, or switch between public and anonymous following.

At the top of this page is an Add link, which will bring you to "Add Blogs to Follow."

Follow websites as well as blogs.

You can use this to follow any website that has a feed. Just enter the website's URL.

Set contact info

• If something goes wrong with your blogging account, 
• if your account is compromised, 
• if you lose track of your account credentials, 

it will be critical that your contact information is up to date.

Specify and revise this information in the Personal info page of Google settings.

Google. This is not on Blogger at all.

Regardless of the history of your blog, your blogging account today is a Google account. 

There are no non-Google blogs on Blogger. Google bought Blogger in 2003!

This account needs contact information:

Be safe

Account security is a huge topic, but here are a few key points.

The contact information is private unless you choose to share it.

The recovery email is the critical one. That is where Google will send notices, and a verification email if your account gets locked.

It's best that your recovery email be other than your account gmail, if you have one. If you are shut out of your account, you do not want to be shut out of any recovery communications.

Google assumes your phone can accept texts. They won't call you.

If your phone can accept texts, it is a good practice to provide both a number and an email address.

If you ever need this, you will be glad you kept this information up to date.

Blue crystals courtesy of Only-shot/Pixabay