Domain Hosting Sale: Managing blogs

Showing posts with label Managing blogs. Show all posts

Friday, 18 May 2012

Planning how to use your blog VS your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, G+, etc: what is each one for?

This article describes working out how your blog relates to the other communication tools that you use (sometimes called your "social media strategy"), and how members of a community-group can work together to so that their blog, Facebook page are used well.

It includes a template that you can use to record your own group's decisions about how to use these tools, and a worked-example of such a template.

Your blog vs your email, facebook, twitter, photo albums

social media lifecycle - email message - internet - facebook - camera - picture

Recently, I used Blogger to make a new website for a community choir. It replaced an older website that was expensive to change.

As we talked about what the choir needed, one challenge was that some people thought that "put it on the website" or "put in on Facebook" was the answer to every issue that involved communicating with members: It took a lot to explain that Facebook and the website are not actually places where existing members look regularly. (Some members are older, and don't even have cellphones that receive SMS/text-messages, much less computers and broadband connections).

Also, people were talking about putting videos of our concerts onto YouTube, and I realised that we would need to work out ways of doing this so as to show us at our best, and not get us into trouble with copyright laws.

I didn't use this jargon when I was talking to them, but the idea I had to get across to the commiittee was

To get a message to people who aren't looking for it, use a "push" not a "pull" or "by the way" message. [tweet this quote]

How to make a Tweet-this-quote

That means to use email, text-message, phone call, face-to-face, rather than the website or Facebook page or wall.

I also had to get them to understand that we were not linking our blog and our website - but that the blog would be the website: it delivers all the features that we need, and most importantly is very easy to update.

Working with the committee to understand their goals and month-by-month activities, I developed this set of questions:

how do we communicate with people (email/txt, Facebook, website, pictures, local newspapers)?
who is the audience for each tools we use (members, potential members, audience, other choirs)?
what types of messages to do we send?
who is responsible for sending the messages?
how they know that it's time to send a message, and what it should say?
what can each committee-officer send without getting permission from the committee?
what needs to be checked by someone else (or maybe even the whole committee) first?

Showing this in a table helped people to understand the big picture, and the role of the website and the other things that we use.

Your blog & social networks
Downloadable template

It occurred to me that people doing the same thing for their own club, organisation, sports team, non-profit, or even small business, might also like this table.

So here is a blank version of my template (MS Word format) that you are welcome to download and adapt for your own situation.

What the template includes

Is this a social-media strategy for your blog?

The format above is good for helping a membership-organisation work out where their blog/website fits into their overall communications tookkit: social media are just one of the ways that clubs can give messages to people (members, friends etc) and get feedback from them.

But if your core product is your blog, and you want to use social-outposts to promote it, then a slightly different planning approach is needed. In this case you need to get messages to:

People who casually visit your blog (via search results, friends recommendations, backlinks), and whose preference for keeping up with what you do is via some other network, AND

People who hang out on the "other network" and might notice your content in the other place and then visit your blog as a result.

To meet these needs, you need to put links to all the material on your blog into the other social networks - as well as using whatever content promotion techniques work best on that network. You probably also want to put some follow-invitation links on your blog, too. This is unlike the "website as targeted communications tool" approach, where you only put certain, very specific content onto your blog/site.

I'm still working on the fundamental difference between the two approaches, and what sort of worksheets might help people to plan for the 2nd case. Any suggestions on what I need to cover?

Monday, 2 April 2012

Comment management policy and moderation principles

This article explains the policies that Blogger-HAT applies in accepting, moderating and responding to comments.

Comments are one of the ways we can let other people write on our blogs.

Blogger lets us choose whether or not to allow comments overall, and also on individual posts. And it provides options for Blogger administrators to choose whether comments are automatically published, or if they must be approved first. This approval process is called moderation.

The following sections describe the policies that I apply in moderating Blogger-HAT and Blogger-HAT-Lite.

You are welcome to use this as the basis of your own comment-management rules - but please make sure that consider each suggestion, to see how it applies your blog, and acknowledge Blogger-Hints-and-Tips as the original source by placing this line in the footer of your own posted policy

Modified from the comments-moderation policies applied by Blogger-Hints-and-Tips.

Comments Policy

Blogger-Hints-and-Tips welcomes genuine comments from readers.

This blog retains the no-follow option set by Blogger in most default templates. This means that web-addresses put into comments left here will not help to get your site indexed. But if you write interesting comments, I will probably look at your site, and may subscribe to your blog's RSS feed or share it on my Facebook page, which will give you some credit with most search engines.

All comments are moderated, using the moderation policies outlines below.

Blogger-HAT aims to review and act on all comments within 3 days: however there may be delays if time is needed to research issues.

Moderation principles

Only English-language comments are accepted. Others will be deleted, or marked as spam.

"+1", "me-too" and "thanks, that helps" comments may be published, provided the number of them does not detract from other visitors experience of the blog.

Comments that provide specific feedback about problems you have with the advice in an article - or about changes in Blogger etc since the article was written - are especially welcome.

All comments are published, or rejected, as is: I do not edit or alter your comments in any way. (See the section below about copyright for more information about this.)

Comments that are spam will not be published, and Blogger's spam-filters will be alerted.

Comments that do not relate to the article that they are left on will not be published: they will be deleted.

Comments that are "signed" with a blog or website URL/address will not be published, unless there is a direct link between the URL and the content of the article and the comment you left.

Comments that contain email addresses or other contact information (eg phone numbers) will not be published. (This is for your own protection - even if you think it's not necessary, I do not want to be responsible for you being harassed.)

Comments that include personal names will not be published, unless the name is common enough that you are not readily identifiable.

Comments that do not meet Blogger's publication standards (including racism, hate-speech, violence etc) will not be published, and maybe reported as spam at Blogger-HAT's sole discretion.

Comments that conflict with the terms and conditions of Blogger-HATs advertisers (including AdSense and other advertisers) will not be published.

Application of all these principles is at Blogger-HAT's discretion.

Help with your blog:

By Gnome-help-faq.svg: GNOME icon artists
Gnome-emblem-generic.svg:
GNOME icon artists derivative work:
Ower 89 (Gnome-help-faq.svg Gnome-emblem-generic.svg)
[GPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)],
via Wikimedia Commons

I do not provide advice about specific problems on individual blogs via comments on this site: if you need help with a specific blog problem, post a question on the Blogger Product Forum.
.
But comments that link to posts in the Blogger-Problem-forum are welcome, and I will try to assist you in the forum if you link to your query ina comment left here.

Why the difference? It's because advice I give in the forum is quality-assured by the other helpers who also read the posts there: If overlook something, one of the other helpers is likely to spot it. Similarly, if your problem needs knowledge that I don't have, someone else may be able to help. As Blogger grows more and more complex, solving problems needs a wider range of skills, and the chance of one person knowing everything gets even smaller.)

Copyright:

The content of all comments is owned by the person who left the comment.

By leaving a comment this blog, you are giving me the non-exclusive right to display your comment here, and to repeat it within blog-posts provided the source is acknowledged.

You also note that my blog has RSS-feeds for comments enabled, so you comment may be published elsewhere too.

Comments submitted to alternative channels:

Messages left on Blogger-HAT's Facebook page or Twitter stream or Google+ page will be responded to in those forums.

Comments sent by email via my personal Google+ Profile will generally not be responded to.

What else?

Are there other issues that you think a comments policy should cover? Please let me know if you think I've missed an important issue.

Friday, 13 January 2012

Giving another Google account control over your blog

This article is about changing the ownership of your Blogger blog. As well as looking at how to make the changes inside Blogger, it also looks at some other issues you may need to think about (eg comment moderation, items outside Blogger, advertising).

Blogs and Google Accounts

Each blog is "owned" by at least one Google account. This administrator account can do anything in the blog: write posts, set up new authors, change the template, add new formatting rules, delete posts - or the entire blog, moderate comments, etc etc etc.

Initially, the account that sets up the blog is the owner. But if the person using this account gives someone else administrator rights, then there are multiple owners.

And once there are multiple administrators, any one administrator can delete all the others, or just demote them down to being authors, thus making him or her self into the owner,

So this is the very minimum that you need to do to transfer blog ownership to another Google account:

Give the other Google account author rights, then once this is successful,
Give the other Google account administrator rights.

But, unless you have a very, very simple blog, you cannot stop there: you also need to think about other things that may have been set up, inside Blogger, and in any other tools that the blog uses.

Inside Blogger

Comments
You may want to change who is notified about any comments that are left on the blog. This is done on the Settings / Comments tab: there are separate sections for

Comment moderation (one email address)
Comment notification (a list of email addresses)

Email Notifications:
If the blog is set up to notify anyone when it is published, you may want to review this - any any related Google groups or forwarding addresses you may be using to make this work.

Mail2Post:
If the blog is set up to receive postings by email, you may want to change the secret words (so the old owner no longer knows them).   If there is an intermediate email-address used so that the owner can tell who made Mail2Posts, then the new owner should either take over this account, or set up and use a new one.
All set under (Settings / Email and Mobile /Posting Options)

Mobile Posting:
If the blog is set up to receive postings by SMS, you may want to change the device that is registered, so the old owner no longer has access. (Settings / Email and Mobile /Posting Options)

Custom URL:
If your blog has a custom domain, then you'll almost certainly want to transfer control of this.

If you purchased the domain inside Blogger, then you should have set up a domain-administrator account shortly after registering the domain-name. The easiest option is just to tell the new owner the login name and password for that account - and tell them how to access it.

If the new owner doesn't want to keep the Google (ie goDaddy or eNom) link, then they can log in to whatever domain registrar that they want to use, and request a transfer.   You will get an email and need to do some things in response to make the transfer successful. Make you you read it carefully, because each registrar is different.

But I'm not currently sure if there's any way for the new owner to keep the Google (goDaddy/eNom) link.

Items controlled outside Blogger

These days, most blogs include some items which are stored outside Blogger. If you transfer the ownership of a blog, you may also want to transfer these items, or at least make a plan for what will happen to them.

I've put notes about a few that I know about here - If you know about any others that are popular, please leave a comment below and I'll update the list.

RSS Feeds created in Feedburner
To transfer ownership of an RSS feed, log into Feedburner, click on the Feed that you want to transfer, and click on the Transfer Feed link.   You are prompted to enter an email address, and Feedburner say that they will contact that email to arrange the transfer within 72 hours.

Photos / Images
Any pictures that you upload via Blogger are stored in a Picasa web-album that belongs to the account that did the uploading. Unfortunately Google doesn't yet provide any way to transfer ownership of individual web-albums.    I don't (yet) know if the recently introduced collaboration features help here or not, but they may.

Also, pictures uploaded before Blogger started using Picasa-web-albums (possibly sometime in 2007 I think) cannot be transferred.

Calendars
???

Docs files
If your blog links to any files hosted in Google Docs or Sites file stores, then these are owned by the Google Account that created or uploaded them. Check with that site to see if it's possible to transfer.

Custom Maps
I don't think that there is any way to transfer ownership of these.

An option is for the old owner to provide the export file location (view the map, right click on "view in google earth" and choose copy URL), and the new owner could then create a new map (and put this into the blog) - however this will be a lot of work if may maps are used.

Custom-searches
I don't think that there is any way to transfer ownership of these.

Videos
(if you own them - not ones owned by others that you're just linked to)

Social Network sites
For example Facebook pages, Twitter accounts.   (These may not be inside the blog at all, but may be a key part of it's promotional tools - if you are taking over ownership of a blog, you will probably want to take over these too.)

For items that cannot be transferred, you need to transfer them manually (if this is possible), or to reach an agreement between the old account owner and the new account owner about what will happen to the items. For example, you may agree that the old account owner will not delete the web-albums for one month, and that they will download the photos and provide them on CD to the new account owner - who will then upload them, and change all the photo links in the blog to the new URLs.

If your blog has any advertising (eg AdSense, Amazon Associates, Chitika, or indeed any other advertiser) you may need to transfer the account that this is linked to.

For AdSense, if the advertising was set up through Blogger, you can change the account under the Monetize tab. However if any ads were put inside individual posts, these posts will all have to be edited, and ad-units for the new owner will need to be added. (I don't think you can just replace the Publisher-ID, because the ad-unit has and ID as well.

I'm not sure how sophisticated this is as yet: if you want to keep the advertising, rather than removing and then re-creating the advertising, it may be a good idea for the new account to set up advertising accounts for itself on another (test) blog first, and then switch it over in the blog that's being changed, so that the existing ads/ad-structures are kept.

An Alternative:

Depending on how many items-outside-Blogger that the current account owns, it may be better for the person who owns the current account to just give it to the new owner, and to get themselves a new account.

Even better: If there's a chance that the blog will ever change hands, set up a new account just it when you start the blog. I'm going to write a whole post about this one day soon - but for now I'm convinced that you really need to think about the future as soon as you start your blog.

Monday, 9 May 2011

Copying all the posts from one blog to another

This article is about how to copy all the posts from one blog to another, using Blogger. There is a separate article about copying individual posts, or pages, from one blog to another.

Overview:

New Holland tractor with NH 850TL front loader

To copy all the Posts from one blog to another, you need to export them from the first blog, and import the file that was created into the second file.

Any Pages (see The Difference between Posts and Pages) in the first blog, need to be moved individually, because pages aren't currently included in the export file.

If you want to totally replace the contents of the destination blog with the contents of the source blog, then you should delete the existing posts from the destination blog before you import the file. (Delete posts by going tothe Posting / Edit Posts screen, and pressing the Delete button that is beside the post. Don't delete the entire blog, or you will lose access to the URL).

Follow these steps to copy all posts from one blog to another:

1 Log in to Blogger.

2 Go to the export tab:
In the pre-Sept-2011 Blogger (ie the "old" interface) this is the Settings / Basics tab. OR
In the post-Sept-2011 Blogger (ie the "new" interface) this is the Settings / Other tab.

3 Click on Export Blog.

Export-blog window on the old Blogger interface:
the new interface looks a little different, but has the same links

3a If you are using the new interface, click Download Blog on the confirmation message window:

4 Your computer will download a file. For Windows users, it will probably be put in the My Documents / Downloads file. Or system may use another place, or may ask you where to put it. Whatever happens, you will need to know where this file is saved to.

5 Open the blog that you want to move the posts to
(You may need to log out and in again, or perhaps just switch to different browser or tab)

5 Delete (using Posting / Edit Posts) any Posts that are already there, but which you don't want in the refreshed blog.

6 Go to Settings > Basics (old interface) or Settings > Other (new interface) again. This time, click Import Blog. When the box opens, choose the exported file that you made earlier, and enter the security-text.

Import file selection screen in the new interface:
the old version of Blogger is very similar.

7 Choose whether or not to automatically publish all imported posts.
Only tick the box if you DO want the posts automatically imported. If you don't tick it, the posts will be loaded, but with have status of Draft, so won't be visible by readers until you publish them.

8 Click Import Blog.

9 Check that the import worked successfully, by looking at the blog, and also at the list of posts under Edit Posts: are the right number of posts there, do they have the right labels etc.

Results:

All the posts from the source blog will be copied to the destination blog.

Many of the post characteristics will be the same as in the original blog. This includes:

title
post contents
published-date and time
label(s)
post-author.

Any comments from the source blog will also be copied over - sometimes it takes a few hours for the links for them to be re-establshed properly.

The URL for each post will be based on the URL of the blog you have imported them into and the publication-date that the posts had in the source blog - for example:

www.YourNewBlogName.blogspot.com /2009/05/name-based-on-post-title.html

Any internal links in the blog will still point to the post in the old blog

For example this link points to a popular article in Blogger-HAT.

If I export-and-imported this post into a new blog, the link would still point to the same place, ie the post in Blogger-HAT - not to the post in the new blog.

Any pictures, videos etc in the old blog will still be in the same place that they were in (Picasa-web-albums, YouTube, Google Videos etc).

If you have imported more than the number of posts that Blogger allows per day (currently 50 I think) then to make any more posts today you will need to complete the captcha-test (ie entering the letters in the funny-shaped word). This will go away approximately 24 hours after you last enter more that the maximum-posts-per-day.

Importing to the same blog:

If you try to import posts into the same blog that you exported them from, Blogger will not import any posts, and give you an error message.

If you do want to do this (eg to create a duplicate set of posts), then do the export, change some small detail of the original posts title or date/time, and then do the import.

The Difference between Posts and Pages

Moving individual posts, or pages, from one blog to another

Converting Posts into Pages

Moving some posts form one blog to another

Deleting blogs and blog-posts

Monday, 25 April 2011

Copying a post from one blog to another

This article is about how to copy a post from one blog to another, using Blogger, while keeping all the formatting, pictures and layouts.

There is a separate article about copying all, or most, posts from one blog to another.

One way to move a post from one blog to another is by copying and pasting it into the post-editor in a new Post in the second blog.

However sometimes this doesn't work: formatting, picture positions or hyperlinks are lost.

But behind every Blogger post is just HTML: So, you can can copy content from one Post to another by copying the HTML, and pasting it to the destination blog as HTML.

This works even if the blogs belong to different Google accounts (although sometimes you may need to save the HTML in a text-editor (eg NotePad) while you log out and in again, or perhaps even email it (as a plain-text) message to someone else who has author rights in the second blog.

Follow these steps to move a post to another blog

1 Log in to Blogger, and Edit the post you want to move.

2 Click on HTML to see the code behind the post.

3 Copy all the code
(put the cursor in the code, ad press Ctrl / A to select it, then press Ctrl C to copy)

4 Open the blog that you want to move the post to
(You may need to log out and in again, or perhaps just switch to different browser or tab)

5 Create a New Post

6 Click on HTML, so you can see the space where the code goes

7 Paste all the code

8 If necessary, click on Post Options and make any changes you need there (eg viewing or not viewing comments or back-links)

9 Click Publish, and check that it looks ok

This an easy way to move an individual post (or part of a post) - there are other easier ways to move all posts between blogs, and move some posts between blogs.

Moving all the posts from one blog to another

Converting Posts into Pages

Understanding Google accounts

Options in Blogger's post editor

Monday, 4 April 2011

Dynamic views in Blogger: What are they? What should you do about them?

This article is an overview of Blogger's new "dynamic views", including advice about their immediate implications for our blogs.

Blogger and Dynamic Views:

In late April 2011, Blogger announced a new feature called Dynamic Views. There was a post about it in Blogger Buzz, Google's blog about Blogger.

As well, when people log into Blogger for the first time since the launch, they see an "over-the-top" window on the dashboard, placed so it has to be reacted to (either Dismiss or Learn more) before using most of the dashboard links.

If you have multiple Google accounts, you will be shown the pop-up the next time you log into each one of them.

For a while, the Learn More link wasn't working: it's been fixed now, but just in case, you can find the article for blog owners and authors here (at time of writing, anyway). It links to another article for blog-readers, which explains how they can view blogs using dynamic views, without going into technical details.

What are Dynamic Views:

Basically, they are a totally different type of blog-template, that display posts from your blog's Feed (ie not the blog itself) in some new ways. The designs look good - though most rely on your blog having an excellent picture for each post, and you can't (yet) control which picture is used.

Rather than trying to describe them, it's probably easiest if you take a look for yourself - these links take you to this blog (ie Blogger-HAT) in each of the templates:

What are the consequences of this change

In the short term, no one (except possibly Google) is sure of the implications of dynamic templates. You can't make them the default way to view your blog yet although for there is a simple way to give your readers the option to switch to a dynamic view.

But this comment, from the end of the Blogger Buzz announcement, is probably significant:

We’re previewing these templates early on so we can incorporate your feedback for a wider launch soon. At that time you’ll be able to customize these templates and select one for your blog. Please let us know what you think!

What we're seeing right now isn't the finished product. (Which is just as well, because I have a lot of issues with the templates as they stand. For starters: no statistics, no gadgets, search is limited to what's in your blog's feed, no comments, focus on pictures but no control over the main image for each post). I expect these to be fixed - although I'm concerned about why they're limiting the view of blog to what's in the feed, unless it's part of the long-term plans.

For now, though, all you can do is either accept that some viewers will look at your blog using dynamic views and that this may mean you statistics aren't correct - or switch the dynamic templates off for your blog.

Turning off dynamic views for your blog:

To start with, dynamic views are enabled for all blogs. But you can turn them off:

Go to Settings > Formatting
2/3 of the way down the page, there is an option for Enable Dynamic Views
Set it to Yes or No, depending on what you want to do.
Press Save at the bottom left corner of the page (you need to scroll down to it).

If you do this, then any visitor who trys to view your blog using a dynamic view is shown a message (complete with Blogger logo) saying:

Sorry, dynamic views aren't available for this blog.
You'll be redirected to the blog homepage [link to the home page] momentarily. Learn more

To turning off, or not?

Initially, I wasn't going to bother turning dynamic views off for my blogs, even ones where dynamic views don't make sense eg because the blog looks more like a regular website.

But a later announcement of the Chrome extension for Blogger says that:

will automatically detect [your reader is] viewing a Blogger blog, and then display a Blogger icon (the orange ‘B’!) in [their] address bar which lets [them] select and view the blog in one of the five new dynamic views.below.

In other words, this will tell people [who use it] that they are looking at a site made with Blogger, even if you have gone to a lot of trouble to hide the fact.

Given that, I will be busy for the next 15 minutes, changing the setting to "off" for all except two of my blogs.

Friday, 4 March 2011

AdSense and the "Request-URI Too Large" error message: sometimes a work-around is good enough.

This article is about an error message that I sometimes see when logging into AdSense - and a way of thinking about browser problems that you might have with Blogger.

What happens:

Every so often, when I'm logging in to AdSense, I get a screen like this

The error message is,

"Request-URI Too Large
The requested URL /accounts/SetSID... is too large to process."

And the window title is "414 Request-URI Too Large "

It doesn't happen every time, or even most times, and I cannot spot any trends (eg only when I first open the browser, only when I have seven tabs open, etc) - except perhaps that I've only seen it in Firefox. But Firefox is the browser I mainly use, so it may be coincidence.

My problem, or Google's?

I've searched for the error message: most of the results were for descriptions of cases when it happened every time someone tried to log in to a system. It appears there was even a case, a while ago, when this happened for Gmail in some situations.   But this isn't my scenario, though, because it doesn't happen all the time.

There are suggestions that it may be related to browser cookies settings.   I'm sure that is true, sometimes. But it's not 100% true for me: I can get the message once, try again immediately and not get it the next time - and there's no way I changed my cookie settings in between.

What to do about it:

I've found a very simple solution:   open another tab, and go to AdSense again.    Every time (so far ;-) ) AdSense has loaded correctly on the 2nd try.

If this didn't work, the next things I'd try would be (in roughly this order):

Clearing the cache and re-starting my browser
Trying to get into AdSense from a different browser
Restarting my computer
Checking that I was using the most-recent releases version of the browser (NB this is the supported, released version - not a Beta version that's being tested).

Why I'm posting this:

If you use Blogger or other Google products - or indeed any other internet-based publishing products - a lot, it's likely that you will run into situations like this.

Most probably, the underlying problem will be a bug in the software, or some subtle combination of security settings in your computer and/or browser software.

Tracking down what's happening can be difficult and time-consuming, and involve learning a lot about topics that you don't otherwise need to know. And knowing what's causing the problem doesn't always help: If only a few people are having the same problem, so Google probably won't be keen to fix it, even if something in their software caused the issue.

The key message of this post is that when you have a problem with Blogger (etc) doing strange things, you should firstly look for a good-enough way to work around the problem.

If you can't find a work-around (ie if nothing works, or if the time or effort required are too big for you to put up with), then you should look for a solution. The first step is always to see if other people are having the same problem - to do this you could either do a google-search for the error message, or post a question somewhere like the Blogger Help Forum.

And IMHO, you should only start in-depth investigation PC and browser security sessions if all else fails - or if the time/effort required to get around the original issue is greater than the time and effort needed to search for a solution.

Monday, 27 December 2010

Get your posts right before you publish them to your RSS feed

This article is about the relationship between your RSS feed and the Publish button, and ways of using Blogger to reduce the chances of readers seeing something that you didn't want to publish yet.

Your RSS feed and the Publish button

I've previously described why RSS is important for bloggers who care about building an audience.

But it's also important to realise that:

Some of your RSS subscribers only see the first version of each post that you publish, not the most recently edited one.

Even if you delete a post from your blog shortly after publishing it, the published version is still in your RSS feed and will be seen by people who read it.
(I've heard that some feed-aggregator / reader tools do delete items, however some eg Google Reader, don't.)

Personally, I took a long time to understand the consequences of this: When I started blogging, I Published early-and-often while I was writing each post, so I could see what it "felt" like. (The Preview button, because it shows you the "look" but not the latest content, and editing the content was important to me.) This meant that subscribers saw very early, drafty versions of my posts, so many of them decided to unsubscribe pretty quickly.

Even after I understood, I still occasionally hit Publish by accident. And my writing wasn't good, because I find it hard to proof-read properly in the post-editor.

So far I've found two ways of using Blogger that can address this problem.

Option 1: Turn the blog-feed off, except when you publish the final version

Posts are only sent out in your blog's feed if the feed is turned on. So every time you want to work on a post:

Turn the feed off (Settings > Site Feed > Allow Blog Feeds = None)
Work on your post, Publishing it as you like
Save the Post as Draft (so it's status is back to draft again)
Turn the feed on (Settings > Site Feed > Allow Blog Feeds = anything except None)

Or you could keep Allow Blog Feeds = None, turn it on every time you publish a post for the first time, and turn it off again afterwards.

This is particularly good approach if you have a lot of email subscribers via Feedburner - because that tool is currently (Dec 2010) sending out an update every time a post is published or updated, instead of just for every "new" publication (ie one that changes the post-status from Draft to Published).

However it's very manual, and there's always a risk that you might forget to turn the feed on or off at the right moment.

Option 2: Prepare posts in a separate blog

This is my preferred approach, and now there are at least three different "blogs" for each blog I that run:

The blog (what IT professionals call "production")
A documentation blog, where I keep my notes about how it's put together
A pre-publication blog, when I keep posts that are being worked on.

The blog itself is set to public (or restricted to a limited audience if that's appropriate). The others are set to:

Private (Settings > Permissions > Blog readers = Only Blog Authors)
Not listed (Settings > Basic > Add your blog to our listings = No)
Not indexed (Settings > Basic > Let search engines find your blog = No)
Not listed on my Blogger Profile (Dashboard > Edit Blogger Profile > Select blogs to display)

At various times, if I'm preparing for template changes or adding new features, I may also have test-blogs. These are always set to Private too.

When I'm preparing a post, I work on it in the "pre-production" blog, and can Publish it as many times as I like. Then when it's complete, I simply copy the post from the pre-prod blog to the real one, and publish it once.

A big benefit is that if I get an idea about a potential post, I can just go to the pre-publication blog and make a very quick note about it: the writing and research quality doesn't matter, because I'm the only person who sees it.

The one thing I need to do is to always check and re-check the blog I'm about to post in, every time I hit "Publish": the day after I first released this post was the first time in ages that I accidentally published a draft post to this blog (subscribers will have seen it come through the feel) .... very embarrassing indeed!

Have you found other ways to avoid problems like this?

I'd love to hear about what works for you.

Saturday, 13 November 2010

Deleting Blogs and Blog-Posts

This article is about the issues involved in deleting a Blogger blog.

Before you start:

If you need help with deleting a blog, make sure you understand the words that are used to describe things in Blogger (ref Blogger, Blogs and bloggers, Posts Pages and Screens: some basic definitions) - many people say "blog" when they really mean "post", and are then surprised when they follow some simple instructions and all their "blogs" (sic) disappear.

Also, make sure that you understand that your Blogger account is just a Google account (except for Blogger accounts created pre 2006). If you want to "delete" a Google account (not just a specific blog), think about whether you really need to delete it as opposed to just never logging in to it again.

Deleting a blog:

If you own the blog and know the password of the Google account

Log in to Blogger, using the owning account
In pre-Sept-11 Blogger: Choose Settings > Basic > Delete Blog.
In post-Sept-11 Blogger (aka the new interface):
Choose Settings from the drop-down main menu, then
Choose Other from the left-hand bar
In the Blog-tools row, click Delete Blog.

Only do this if you want to delete the URL (ie blog address) and not use it again.

If you want to keep the URL, then just delete all the posts (see the next sections). If you want to give the URL to someone else, delete the posts and then transfer the ownership.

If the blog has an pictures stored in Picasa-web-albums, then they will not be deleted. If you want to delete them, you need either manage them from Picasa-web-albums directly, or delete all the posts individually (not using the bulk-selection method) before you delete the blog.

If you don't know the password

The first step, if you don't know the password is to use the the Forgotten Password screen, which asks for the blog's URL or the email address that you used to identify the Google account.

If that doesn't work, Google have some more suggestions for you.

The very last option, if nothing else works, is to take Google's Account Recovery Exam. This attempts to re-connect you with the account using the email account that you had listed with it and/or any other security information that you (or Google) provided in the past.

You will need to convince Google that you really did make the blog: this could be difficult if you don't have access to the email address that you originally associated with the Blogger account, but it may not be impossible if you can answer some other security questions correctly. There may be cases where this seems harsh or unfair, but it's necessary so that Google doesn't start deleting blogs based on malicious requests from people who don't own them at all.

If your blog was created before 2006, you may not have converted your original Blogger account into a Google account. In this case, use the Legacy claim form.

If the blog belongs to someone else

You cannot generally get blogs that don't belong to you deleted, unless the person who published it is willing to delete it themselves - the first step is to try asking them.

There are some exceptions, including:

Taking action against a blogger who has used copyright material without permission, and
Dealing with someone who is impersonating you or breaking Blogger's terms and conditions in some other way - in which case you need to use this workflow.

If the blog belongs to someone who has died

In this case, Google have a special procedure which lets the person who is legally responsible for the blog-owner's affairs get access to their Gmail account: once they have access to the Gmail account, they will also have access to the blog via www.blogger.com, so they can delete it as described above.

Note that this procedure requires the legal representative to:

Have an email account themselves, and
Have received a email message from the deceased person, and
Send in a copy of the full message header from this email message.

So, thinking ahead, if you want someone to be able to access your blog(s) after you have died, it's a good idea to make sure that you've emailed them from the Google account associated with the blog - or give them some other way to access your password(s).

Deleting blog-post(s), without deleting the blog:

To delete one blog post:

Log into the dashboard
In the list of Posts for the blog, hover the mouse over the title for the post: this lets you see links just underneath it for Edit, View and Delete: click the Delete link..
You will be shown a summary of the post and asked to confirm the delete.

If the post contains any photos that are stored in Picasa-web-albums, you will be asked if you want to delete them as well. If you do want to delete them, tick the check-box. It's not automatic because these photos may be used in other blogs or posts as well.

To delete many (or all) blog posts, but not the Blog/URL:

Log into the dashboard
In the pre-Sept-11 blogger inteface:Choose Posts > Edit posts,
Use the tick-box at the left of the post titles to select all the posts you want to delete
Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click Delete
In the Sept-11 Blogger interface:In the list of Posts for the blog, use the tick-box at the left of the post titles to select the posts you want to delete. (There are links in the top row for selecting All, Published, etc)
Click the trash-can icon at the very top of the list, just beside Revert to Draft..

The number of posts per screen is limited by a drop-down arrow at the top right, and defaults to (I think) 50: if your blog has more posts than you are displaying (some of mine have several hundred posts), then you may need to do this several times.

Removing a blog from your Profile:

If you have a blog that you don't want to delete, but which you do want to delete from your Blogger profile, then:

Log on to Blogger
In pre-Sept-2011 Blogger: From the Dashboard choose Edit Profile > Select blogs
In post-Sept-2011 Blogger, from the drop down menu beside your email address in the top right hand corner of the dashboard, choose Blogger Profile
Un-tick the blogs that you don't want to show
Press Save Settings at the bottom of the page)

Deleting a Google account:

Make sure that you are certain you need to delete the Google account: in many cases, it may be safer to leave it in place, even though you never use it again.

To delete your Google Account, follow the instructions on this page.

The page doesn't say what will happen to your any Blogger blog(s) that you Google account owns. However at the moment it looks like the blog(s) are not deleted. If you want to delete the blogs, you must do this separately (see above), before you delete the account.

If the blogs contain pictures from Picasa-web-albums, these pictures may be deleted.

And if the blogs contain items from other Google-hosted products (eg Docs, custom-maps), then it's likely that these items will also be deleted.

Monday, 9 August 2010

Planning changes to your blog - in private

This article is about how to make major changes to your blog with a minimum of disruption for your readers.

If you are making big changes to your blog (eg switching to a Designer template), then there is likely be to a time-period when your blog looks strange: some of the changes will be done, some won't, and maybe some key features won't look right.

Many people look for a way to re-direct their blog or to display a temporary vacation-notice ("closed for maintenance, come back soon") while they make the changes.

However the only option that Blogger has is making the entire blog private (Settings > Permissions > Blog-authors-only). This isn't really suitable, though, because it just shows prospective readers a standard message saying that the blog cannot be accessed, without explaining why. It may even harm your blog's reputation, if someone influential happens to look at it just at the wrong moment.

Since there is no other work around (except for blogs with a custom-domain - see the last section of this post), Blogger administrators have to plan their changes carefully, and put them in place quickly.

Plan carefully, and make the changes quickly

If you blog has a .blogspot URL, or if you don't like the alternative suggested below, then the only option is to plan your changes very thoroughly so you can minimise the time that your blog is in transition.

The first step in planning is to make a private testing blog that's like the real blog (except perhaps it only has 2-3 dummy posts instead of your real conent).

Work out exactly what changes you need to make, and the exactly details of how to make them. Use the test blog, not your real one, to do all your research, experiments etc.

Keep a list

So you know exactly what changes need to be made.
When I did this recently, I used Excel because I'd used it to find the difference between two template files. But there are many other suitable tools, ranging from the back of an envelope on your desk to a draft post in your blog, or even a full-blown change management system.

Prioritize

Sort the list so that the changes that must happen first are at the top,and the things that aren't so important are at the bottom.

What's important to you may be different from what's important to your readers: when I did changes to my local site, re-installing Google Analytics was the first thing to do after changing the template, because collecting statistics is very important to ME. But if I'd been totally reader-focussed, I'd have done things last, and done all the things that readers see first.

Combine things:

Consider whether some items on the list can be done at almost the same time

Eg if you need to customise the template for several items on the list (eg center the heading, hide the navBar), and all the customisation can be done by entering new CSS rules then these can all be done at the same time.

(These two steps may give conflicting results: but if you prioritise first you'll be able to make good decisions about what's most important.)

Choose a time of day

Choose the best time to make the changes. This could be when your blog has a relatively low number of visitors, or you may use some other criteria.

For a blog that's used by people in my city, I chose 12-midnight when very few people are interested in the topic. But for Blogger-hints-and-tips I chose 9am (local-time for me is Western European time) because most readers are 4-8 hours behind my time zone.

Warn your readers

Some people recommend making a temporary post telling readers that you're making changes and apologising for things looking strange. There are cases when this would be a good idea, but overall I'm not convinced: most of your readers probably won't visit while you're making the changes - except that a post like this going out on your RSS feed might just encourage them to visit now to see the new look. And readers who get to your blog via search and go straight to an older post may not see the post anyway.

Do the changes, quickly

Work fast, but be careful and methodical too: work through your list, and tick off items as you go. If you have an brilliant ideas about what else you could do, resist them at least until you've got your core blog features working correctly with the new look.

An alternative for custom-domain blogs

If your blog is published to a custom domain, you could:

Prepare a temporary "come back tomorrow" message using another tool (eg Google Sites - or even just another blog with only one post)

Switch your main blog back to published on Blog*Spot
(Setting > Publishing > Switch to Blog*spot)

Re-direct your temporary message (site/blog etc) to use the custom domain

Do the changes to your blog

Undo the redirect for your temporary message

Re-publish your blog to the custom domai

Of course this won't work for people who navigate directly to one of your posts instead of going to the blog and itself (eg to http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/07/coverting-ms-word-documents-to-blogger.html instead of http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/) - if you get a lot of visitors from Search, then they probably enter your blog this way.

Also, if things go wrong during the re-direct processes it could take a bit longer than you planned to resolve the registry entry problems. (Things don't usually go wrong, but it may not be worth the risk.)

Switching your blog to use a new Designer template

Making a private blog for testing template changes

Comparing two template files, using Excel

Wednesday, 7 July 2010

Seven simple steps to a snazzy new-look blog: preparing to change template in Blogger

This article is about making a plan to change your Blogger template if your existing blog-template has been customised: it covers how to make a list of the changes that have been made to your template, and using this as the basis of a list of changes to re-apply when you change templates.

Changing your template in Blogger is easy: you just go to the Template tab, choose another template, click Apply to Blog and the changes are applied.

But if you have ever customised your template using the Edit HTML feature, then all the customisations are lost when you change templates. This is fine for some things (eg hiding features you didn't like in a particular template), but it means you lose changes that you may want to keep, eg a favicon, meta-tags, Google Analytics or Webmaster verification, Amazon Product Preview, etc - in short anything that you want to keep, no matter how your template looks.

If you're worried about the consequences of changing templates, you have a basic choice to make:

1 Remember what you did:
Try to remember what you've set up on your blog, and think about which of these things you want to apply in your blog-with-a-new-template.

2 Code comparison:
Compare the layout-template code for your blog with the same code from another blog that has the same template and widgets as your blog, but not the HTML customisations. From this comparison, make a list of what customisations you need to re-apply after you change templates.

The first option is quicker and a lot easier - but you might miss something important. Personally it's not an option I'd like to use for any blog that has "weight".

Unfortunately the second option doesn't give a 100% correct list of customisations, unless you kept a copy of your current template at it was at the time when you first applied it to your blog. This is because Google may have upgraded their copy of the standard version of your template, but not been able to upgrade your customised version. (See Advantages and Disadvantages of Editing Your Blogger Template for more about this). However the list that you can make may be close enough - and I used it myself to make sure I didn't miss any details in migrating the blog you are reading now.

This article is about the second option, and how to use the results of the comparison to make a detailed plan for moving your blog from one template to another.

How do to a code-comparison

Follow these steps to compare the template from your blog with another un-customised version of the template:

1 Make a test-blog which is like your Real-blog, except it doesn't have the layout-template customisations. See Making a test-blog for more details about this: it's NOT as simple as just copying the template over.

IMPORTANT: If you do have a backup copy of your template from immediately after you last applied a new template to, then apply it to your test blog before giving it any widgets. (Doing this will give you the chance of making a 100% correct list.)

2 Working line-by-line, compare the template code in your test and main blogs.

For each difference, work out whether it's due to a customisation that you want to keep when you "migrate" your main blog to a new template, or something that you can leave behind.

To do the comparison:

Get the template code for your test-blog by choosing Template > Backup / Restore > Download Full Template. Save the downloaded file somewhere with a name like testBlog-Template.xml

Get the template code for your main blog the same way Save the downloaded file with a name like realBlog-Template.xml

Use a text-file comparison tool to find the differences between the two files.
Comparing two text files using Excel discusses this in more detail, and links to a tool that makes this process (a little) easier.

Note that there may be some differences which aren't explained by modifications that you made to the template: these will be due to improvements that Google have made to the template file. You need to decide how much time to spend investigating each difference, based on how likely it is that you made it.

3 From the list of differences, write a plan of the existing customisations you want to apply to your new template, and also of any new changes that you want to make at the same time. Put it in order of most-to-least important (eg I usually put "load Google Analytics code" just after "apply template, because the statistics are very important to me).

3.5 (optional) Decide which new template to use, and practise the upgrade:
Use the test-version of your existing blog (the one you made in step 1), and give it the new template. Apply the extra customisations from your list. Possibly even copy in some posts from your main blog into it. Test how well it works, and tweak your list of the changes that need to be made when you migrate your real blog.

4 Back up the current template of your blog.

5 Apply the new template you've selected to your blog.

5.5 (Optional) make another back-up of your template - before you re-apply any of the customisations. This will be the basic version that you compare against if you ever need to do this exercise again, so save it somewhere safe.

6 Make the other changes from your plan.

7 Test your blog to see that all is well.

That sounds easy enough. Seven simple steps to a snazzy new-look blog.

Comparing two text files using Excel

Making a test-blog

Advantages and Disadvantages of Editing Your Blogger Template

Adding a footer section to your Layout Template blog

Making a shadow-blog for testing with

Copying all your existing posts into a new blog

Copying some posts between blogs.

Thursday, 22 April 2010

Tools for measuring and managing your blog-site's progress

This article lists tools and suggestions that I want to remember for promoting and measuring the "success" of blogs and blogsites ("real" web-sites made with blogging tools).

Measurement Tools and Techniques

Website Grader by HubSpot
Free. Gives you a mark out of 100, and a report with suggestions for improvements. You need to give them an email address, but the report is provided on-line.

Blog-grader by HubSpot
Free. Gives you a mark, but it's not quite clear what it's out off. Ranks based on how often you post, and how many words per post. Includes a table of number of posts by week-day and time-of-day.

Promotional Ideas

Link your blog and the social networks

Write about local businesses that don't have websites of their own

Submit listings to search engines:

Submit listings to directories:

The Yahoo! Directory

Monday, 29 March 2010

Creating a Shadow Blog

This article is about how to make a "shadow blog" - one that has the same structure as our real one, but less content, and which used only for testing.

Overview

By Jérôme from Rouen, FRANCE
(5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12)
[CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes, before you make a major change to a blog (or even a minor change to a popular one), you will want to test it before applying it to your blog.

You may even want to go one step further than getting your posts right before you publish them, and actually test the "look" of posts before you put them into your main blog. (After you have got your post complete in your shadow-blog, you can copy the HTML from the shadow to the main blog, so that the formatting etc is all carried over: See How to copy an individual post for details)

A shadow blog has is a place where you can do this. It has

The same structure as your real one, and
Just enough content so that you can do some changes and test if they're working properly: generally two or three more posts than the maximum you show on any on a screen is enough.

To make a shadow blog, you need to

Create a new, private, blog with the same base template as your existing blog
Copy your existing template into it, and
Copy some of your existing posts into it.

Detailed Instructions:

1 Make a blog to work with:

Find out what template your existing blog is using

In your existing blog, download a copy of your template. (See the first part of Editing your template, if you're unsure how to do this.)

Save the downloaded file somwhere (remember where, you'll need it below).

Go to the Dashboard, and click Create a Blog. Give it a name and URL like "testing-YOURBLOGNAME"

When Blogger asks which template to use, choose your current template, (if it's on the list shown), or just any template.

After the blog has been created, press Start Blogging, and then go to the Settings / Basic tab: Set "Add your blog to our listings?" and "Let search engines find your blog?" to No (since this blog is just for your testing).

Go to Layout / Pick New Template (or to Layout / Designer Template if your existing blog has a designer template), and choose the same template that your existing blog has.

Go to the Templates tab, and choose Backup/Restore.

Click Choose File, and navigate to the downloaded template that you made earlier.

2 Get some posts to test with:

Choose whether to import all your existing posts into the testing blog, or just copy some individual posts.

Any links in your posts won't be re-directed, so when you are testing, you will find that clicking any internal links in your posts will take you back to your main blog. If you are moving all posts, you could avoid this by opening the export file with a text-editor, and doing a fine/replace to change the main blog's URL to the testing blog's URL in any links.