How to re-direct an old custom domain - and all its posts - to a new one

This article describes options for making link to a blog's old URL automatically point to the blog's new URL after a custom domain change.

If you have a blog made with Blogger which has a custom domain, then it's easy enough to switch this blog to use a different domain. Doing this moves both the content (posts and pages) and template (layout, structure, colour-scheme).

Often when people make this type of change, they want to set up re-directs so that if anyone clicks an external link to the old custom domain, they are re-directed to the same content on the new domain.
For example, www.old-domain.com/current-Page.html should redirect to www.new-domain.com/current-page.html.)

With many other website building tools, the .htaccess file for the site lets you set up re-directs like this. But things are little different when you use Blogger.

Your Blogspot address VS your custom domain

Your blog always has a blogspot addresss - let's call it: www.yourBlog.blogspot.com

When you publish to a custom domain, Blogger automatically handles the re-direction from www.yourBlog.blogspot.com to www.yourCustomdomain.com for you. This works at all levels, so the home page and every individual post/page are all redirected correctly.

To move your blog from from www.yourCustomDomain.com to www.newCustomDomain.com, you simply tell Blogger to

1. Stop publishing your blog to www.oldCustomDomain.com and then to
2. Start publishing it to www.newCustomDomain.com

(See Switching your blog to a different custom domain for more information about this.)

Once you have done this (and afer a little bit of transition time), Blogger handles the re-direction from www.yourBlog.blogspot.com to www.newCustomdomain.com for you - as before, this works at all levels, so the home page and every individual post/page are redirected correctly.

One point that many people mis-understand, is that after you have done this, there is no connection between Blogger and your old custom domain. You have various options (listed below) for what to do with www.oldCustomDomain.com - and you aren't limited to the features that Blogger offers. The only limits are based on what your domain registrar allows, and what tools you can (learn to) use.

Options for re-directing your old custom domain

Option 1: Registrar re-direction

Once you have stopped publishing your blog to www.yourCustomDomain.com, Blogger has no connection with it at all.

How you manage re-directions from it is totally up to the tools provided by the domain registrar. The simplest approach is to set up a "301 redirect" on the domain, which simply sends all traffic to it to another domain of your choice.

The method for setting this up depends on the tools used by your domain registrar - search their help files for terms like "301 redirect" to find out what is possible with tools.

See Using a custom domain for something other than your blog for advice about accessing your domain registrar account for the domain.

Advantages

• This is the easiest approach, and doesn't require you to make a website of any type.
• Visitors are automatically re-directed.

Disadvantages

• Depending on how the registrar's tools work, visitors may be automatically redirected to your new home page, not the the post that they specifically followed a link to.

Option 2: Another website tool

If you know how to use another website development tool that does provide access to the .htaccess file for the site, then you could make a "site" that just contains page-and-post level redirections for all your existing posts and pages.

Advantages

• This approach sends people to the exact content that they followed a link to.

Disadvantages

• It could be tedious setting this up for every post and page, if you have a lot of them at the time when you change domains.
• You need to choose and learn a very different type of website building tool to do this.

Option 3: use Blogger to make a site-level re-direction message

Make a totally new blog (eg    www.myBlogHasMoved.blogspot.com),

Publish it to your old custom domain

Give it one post that says

"www.oldCustomDomain.com has moved to www.newCustomDomain.com please update your links"

Use the Settings > Search preferences > Errors and redirections > Custom Redirect Custom Page Not Found  option to explain that your blog has moved, and send any traffic to that one post.

Advantages

• This is a simple approach, using tools that you already know.
• It will work forever (because blogspot domains don't expire).

Disadvantages

• Visitors will not be automatically redirected: the best you can do is show a link which goes to a selected post or page in your blog, which the visitor needs to click to go to the blog.
• The re-direction link is only to one specific page, not to the exact content that was linked to iniitially.  This is quite different from what many people want to achieve - blogger simply does not have that functionality.

A non-option: Blogger's custom redirect tool

Blogger has a function under Settings > Search preferences > Errors and redirections > Custom Redirects  that lets you set up custom redirects for individual pages.

However this isn't suitable when you change your custom-domain totally, because it only supports re-direction within the same blog, not to an external URL.

(And anyway, if you have a significant number of posts, it would not be practical.)

Other options?

Have you found any other ways around this? Or any good tool for setting up .htaccess redirects on a domain that you used to use for a blog?  Share your experience in the comments area below.

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Related Articles:

Using a custom domain for something other than your blog

Linking your blog and your website.

How to make a real website using Blogger

Switching your blog to a different custom domain

SEO Basics for Bloggers

What "Another blog or Google Site is already using this address" really means

This article explains what "Another blog or Google Site is already using this address" means when you see it while setting up a custom domain for your blog - and what you can do to fix it.

What is a custom domain

A custom domain is a "real" website address, instead of the free one that you get when you first set up a blog using Blogger.   It's one of he essential steps if you want to use Blogger to make a "real" website.   For example:

• You initially set up    www.yourBusiness.blogspot.com
• Then you hear that people will treat you with more respect if you have www.yourBusiness.com  or www.yourBusiness.co.uk. 

In this case, www.yourBusiness.com  and   www.yourBusiness.co.uk   are both "custom domains", ie web-addressed without "blogspot.com" or "wordpress.com" at the end of the address.

To use www.yourBusiness.com, you need to either use Blogger's custom domain wizard - available under Settings > Basic > Publshing +Buy a custom domain.

To use www.yourBusiness.co.uk   (or any other type of URL that Blogger doesn't offer), you need to firstly buy the URL from another domain registrar, and then use a similar procedure to use that URL for your blog.

Sometimes things go wrong

If you're lucky - and most people are - then setting up your blog to use your custom domain is a smooth process:   there are a few minutes where your new address doesn't quite work for you, and a few hours while it doesn't work for people around the works.   But the computers all catch up with each other fairly quickly and within 24-72 hours it's working perfectly.

But sometimes things go wrong - and that is when you see this message in one of Blogger's screens:

Another blog or Google Site is already using this address

Mostly (pretty much always, in fact), this doesn't mean that another blog is using the address that you just paid $10 for.

What it means is that something has gone wrong with the process of setting up the domain for your blog.   Nothing more, and nothing less.

You can check this by looking at what happens when you try to navigate to the address.   Most probably you will see something like this:

That's what I see using Google Chrome - other browsers will display it a little differently, and Google may change the picture from time to tile.   But the key part is the "404" error code, which says that there is no website currently using the address.

How to fix it

The Masterclass:

Chuck from Nitecruzr.net has recently published a comprehensive article about the various sources of this message, and how to fix it.    As he explains, it's not so much an error message as a symptom.   Basically, it's Blogger's way of saying "there's a problem with your URL setup".

His post may look daunting at first; there's a lot of technical language, and you need to delve into all sorts of places you may not have looked before, including setting up an administrator account for your domain in the registrar. And just to make it more complicated, Google changed they way that they offer domains (by removing free single-user accounts in Google Apps) in January 2013, so now it also depends on when you purchased the domain, too.   But it's worth trying to work out the problem, and its solution yourself, before asking for help (see below). You will learn about how Blogger works with custom domains, and it stops the help-forum people being overloaded with questions.

Methods that used to work

When I've had this problem in the past, the first thing I did was to check that Google Sites was disabled on my Apps account. This was easy, and often effective, but I suspect it's not so relevant any more.

Another older approach was to enter the custom-domain into the Magical Custom Domain Form, and wait 48 hours to see if Google have fixed it. In the background, the Google staff would check domain settings and fix up problems if they could. However it looks like that process isn't supported any more: clicking the link now brings up a message

We're sorry.The form at this URL could not be found. Make sure that you have the right URL and that the owner of the form hasn't deleted it. 

Asking for help

If you really cannot work out a solution, then post a question in the Blogger Product Forum - I usually use the "How do I" category.    Include:

• Your blog's URL     (eg   yourBusiness.blogspot.com)
• The URL you are trying to use   (eg yourBusiness.com or yourBusiness.co.uk)
• Whether you bought the URL thru Blogger, or from another domain registrar
• Details of all error messages you are seeing

Post the details into a new question (use the big red "Post a Question")button - don't try to hijack someone else's question, because their problem and solution will probably be different, for this particular error message.

Make sure your question has a meaningful title   (eg  "Custom domain - another blog or site is hosted"):   many helpers don't read questions with generic titles like "help" which don't give any clues about what skills are needed to answer the question.

If your question doesn't get answered in a day or two, post an update in the same thread - even something as simple as the word "bump" will take your question up to the top of the pile again, and tell the helpers that you are actively looking for help with the problem.

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Related Articles:

Using Blogger to make a proper website

Using a website address from another domain registrar for your blog

Setting up an administrator for a custom domain purchased through Blogger

Blog home-pages and mobile-templates: Do they work together?

This article discusses the issues of giving your blog a home page, and how this works for people using mobile devices.

Previously I've described the options for giving your blog a "home page", and also how and why to enable a mobile template for your blog.

The home page (aka landing page) issue was a challenge with no good solution for a long time - until someone cleverer than me spotted the potential offered by the custom-redirect feature.   With this, you can put the content for a "home page" into a post or page, and then redirect your blog's "landing page URL" (www.yourBlog.blogspot.com) to it.

However, I have found that if you have enabled a mobile template for your blog, then this approach does not work for visitors using mobile devices.

Instead of the home page that non-mobile visitors see, mobile-using visitors are shown a mobile-specific page with:

• Your header,
• The page gadget (if you've used one - it's not used in this example) as a drop-down list
• A list of tiles - one post each (more about these below)
• An older posts / home / newer posts navigation tool
• A link to view the web-version
• A mobile attribution gadget (unless you've removed it)
• An AdSense ad-unit, if you have put AdSense into your blog using the AdSense gadget(*).

There may be some different things too, if you have chosen the "custom" mobile template option and added other gadgets to be shown on mobile.

But a key point is that any home-page custom-redirect that you have set up does not work - even though other custom-redirects (ie not involving your home page) do work.



(*) The rules for whether this is shown or not are actually a little more complex - but that's a topic for another day!

What do mobile users see on their post-tiles.

The landing page for a mobile user includes a vertical "tiled" list of posts.

 In this, each tile has:

• The date and post title,
• The post-thumbnail photo and
• The first few words for the post (less than the whole snippet though) for a post.

They are sorted by descending-date - meaning that your most recent post is at the top of the list.

The applies if  you are using a standard (ie designer) or custom mobile template.

The recently-introduced dynamic mobile template is different again - in it, the tiled post looks more like the "before the jump" summary shown on your regular blog - but even so, it is still a list of posts sorted in reverse-date order, not a custom home-page.

What this means for bloggers who care about their home page

There are main things that you need to think about:

• Using a mobile template gives you far less control over your mobile landing page - although it can be set up to work well if you understand how it operates, and if you don't mind your blog looking like a blog, not a webpage..

• If you have a mobile template enabled, and you want mobile visitors to your blog to always see one post first, then you need to make sure that this post always has the most recent post-date.

• With a non-dynamic mobile template enabled, visitors won't see whole posts or before the jump post-summaries initially: instead they see even more abbreviated summary tiles.

• With a dynamic mobile template enabled, visitors will see post-tiles that are more like the post-summary from the main blog (even if it's using a non-dynamic template) - but they still won't see your custom landing page.

If you are not happy with mobile visitors to your blog being shown a tiled-list of posts, then you should not enable a mobile template - and you should disable it if you've already enabled one

This will mean that people using a mobile device to look at your blog will see a full-featured version, that they will most likely have to scroll around to view, ie they won't see the whole screen at one glance.   Though this sounds painful, in two of my blogs, I've decided that this is actually the best approach.

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Related Articles:

Enabling a mobile template for Blogger

Deleting "Powered by Blogger" from mobile-template blogs

Making one post always come up first

How to give your blog a fixed landing page

Understanding post.thumbnail and post.snippet

Using Blogger to build a "real" website

Using an URL from domainDiscount24 for a blog

This article shows Blogger users, who have purchased a domain through Google Apps using domainDiscount24 (dd24.com), how to set up the 2nd CNAME statement that is needed by  Blogger's custom-domain verification step. 

Most of the information also applies to any who purchased a domain from Key Systems / DomainDiscount24 / dd24 and wants to use it for a Blogger blog.

Why buy a custom domain from Google Apps

A while ago, I noted that Google Apps now provide the ability to buy a range of domains not available via Blogger - for example co.nz (New Zealand), .com.es (Spain), .in (India), .de (Germany) -and many more.

Although they advertising that pricing is "from $US8", when I finally used Apps to buy my co.nz domain, the actual cost was $US20. C'est la vie.   And besides, anything to make the setup-process easier is welcome - and this is a feature of domains purchased using Google Apps.

One good thing that I noticed about buying a domain via Apps is that you set up a domain-administrator account as part of the process.  Though it's a bit more "technical" than many Bloggers are used to, it's better to have the admin account set up to start with, instead of having to try to find it when you want to check the settings, access the email that comes with your domain, or use the URL for some other type of website.

Also, after the domain administrator account was set up, the details for logging on to my registrar account were emailed to me.   This is a nice touch - it's possible to get the details from the domain-administrator account, but having them at hand during the setup process was handy.

What happens when you buy a domain through Google Apps for your blog

Google are partnering with several domain registrars for domains registered via Apps, and my one came from domainDiscount24 (dd24.com) - which is actually the brand-name of a German company called Key Systems.   I was a little concerned at first, about whether this would work with Blogger - but my fears were soon put to rest.

Once you have purchased a domain through Google Apps, the domain settings that are automatically configured for you are aimed at having the domain used with Google Sites.
(Does anyone actually build websites using Sites? I'm reluctant to, out of concern that Google are going to "spring clean" it out of existence!)

This isn't exactly what you need, but it's a good start:

• The CNAME for the www "sub-domain" was pointed to  ghs.google.com - which is what Blogger needs.
• The ANAME records that were set up had the correct values, as per Blogger's requirements.

So the only challenge is setting up the second CNAME record that is now part of the security verification for switching to a custom domain.

How to set up a 2nd CNAME record for a domain from domainDiscount24

In domainDicsount24 term, this is done by creating another sub-domain that is named after the host-value from Blogger's instrutions, and giving it a txt record with the 2nd value.  
(NB  I think that technically  you are not actually creating a "real" subdomain - but that's the phrase that DD24 used to describe what needs to be done.)

Follow these steps

1   Log on to the dd24.com website with the account information (get this from the Google Apps> Domains> Advanced Settings tab - or from the email that they sent you after you set up the administrator account.)


2  Click on the domain name


3  In the upper right is a drop down menu where you can access and create all sub-domains for your domain name (I was using a netbook so had to scroll to see it)


4  Choose Create New Subdomain from this menu,


5  Enter the "Name, Label or Host" field value from Blogger.  
(See Using a domain purchased from another registrar if you're unsure where to get this information from Blogger - remember that it's specific to your blog, and each pair of values is valid for around 24 hours.)


6  Click Create Subdomain.


7  In the window that opens, specify the settings:

• Put the "Destination, Target or Point to" value from Blogger into the field called CName.
• Under DNS settings, leave Source set to "Not in use"
• Under Mail settings, leave Source set to "Not in use"

8  Save the dns settings, by clicking Verify Changes.


Job done - at this point, your second CNAME has been created, and you can log out from the domainDiscount24 site and go back to Blogger to continue he custom domain setup there, as described in Using a domain purchased from another registrar.

domainDiscount24 warn that, as always, may take several hours until DNS changes take effect - however recently I was able to re-direct my blog to the custom domain within Blogger almost immediately.

The only additional step that I needed to do was use the Apps dashboard to make the web-address work without having www at the front (Blogger has this option to tick, but it appeared not to be working.)

And I was pleased to notice that, after the domain purchase had verified properly, I did not have to enable  accounts from my custom domain to use Blogger - it was turned on by default.   (This didn't happen immediately, there was a time delay while the Google Apps purchase was verified.   But it did work eventually).

About domainDiscount24

Of course I didn't work this out myself - I had to get help from domainDiscount24 to figure out how to do the 2nd CNAME record, since the word "cname" wasn't on the front of the domain management tool for my domain.

They don't seem to have on-line help articles.

But when I clicked their Help button:

• I was sent to a nice web-form where I could submit my question. 
• An answer arrived within 3-4 hours (even though I'd sent my query at 1am, German time).
• The answer was correct - and it showed that they clearly understood the question, had checked what was set up so far.

So overall, I'm a happy customer, and now I just need to work on building my new site.

And I think I'll keep domainDiscount24 in mind if I'm looking to buy more domains in the future, including some of the ones that Google Apps doesn't provide access to as yet.

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Related Articles:

Google Apps now provide the ability to buy a range of domains not available via Blogger

Using a domain from another registrar for your blog

Making custom domains work without having www at the front

Allowing custom domain users to access Google's Blogger - the website making tool for the rest of us

Changing the author for a published blog-post

This article explains how to change the author of a post that has already been published in Blogger.

Blogger posts and changing post-authors

When you Publish a post in Blogger, a number of features are set up for the post, as well as the contents.  These include:

• The URL / web-addresss where the post can be found
• The post date/time when it was published
• The post-author (which is now set the first time that the post is Saved, ie even before it is published.)
• The labels that apply to it.

Some of these can be changed by editing the published post.

But there are some features that cannot be altered after they are set.

In particular, Author is not changed even if a different Google account is used to edit the post - or if the original author has their permission to write to the blog removed.

This can lead to interesting situations on multi-author blogs, especially when one writer leaves the team and perhaps even deletes their Google account.   Because of this, some blog owners choose to not show the "Posted-by" - but even if it's not displayed it is handy for the administrator if they can see the correct owner for individual posts.

When someone asks how to change the posted-by (ie author) value, the simple, and correct, answer is "You can't."

But there is a way to make it look like the author has been changed, so that only the most eagle-eyed readers will be able to tell the difference.

How to change the author of an existing blog-post

In short, you need to make a new post with the same contents, and then use a custom-redirect so that anyone who tries to look at the old post (eg by following a link to it) is automatically taken to the new post.

Follow these steps:

You need to take note of several values during this procedure, which are used later on. It may good to open a text-editor (eg Notepad) before you start.


1   Look at the URL of the existing post, and note the part that is fro the single-slash after your blog's name,  For example in

http://www.Example.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-post-title   

the part you are looking for is the bold part, ie "/2012/06/my-post-title" - including the single slash a the start.



2    Edit the existing post, go to the HTML tab and

• Copy the contents (like you would if you were copying a post from one blog to another). 
• Note the value under Options > Line Break, which is either use <br> tag or Pressenter for a new line.

3    Log in to Blogger with the account that you want to use as the new post author-name.


4    Create a new post, and make sure you have the same setting under Options > Line breaks, to be sure that you get the spacing right.


5   Edit the post to be just like the old one:

• Put the HTML that you copied into in the HTML view of the new post.
• Apply any Labels or Location values that applied to the old post.
• Make the title the same as it was in the old post.
• Change the date to the same as the old post.

6   Make the URL of the new post similar but not quite the same:

• Put the value you found in 1 step into the custom-permalink field. 
• Add some text to it so that it is not the same as the original value,
  eg make "my-post-title" into "my-post-title1"

7   Publish the post and  note the part of  the post-URL from the single-slash after your blog's name


8   Set up a re-direct from the old post to the new post:

• Go to Settings > Search Preferences
• Edit the Custom Redirects
• Add a new redirection (only needed if you already have some)
• Enter the value from step 1 into From
• Enter the value from step 7 into To
• Tick Permanent
• Click the save link for this particular re-direction, and then the Save Changes button.

9   Check your blog, to make sure that the re-direction is working correctly.


10  Once you are happy that the re-direction is working correctly, delete the old post.
You will need either the existing author account, or a Google account with administrator rights, to do this.   If SEO matters for your blog, then it is good to do it as soon as you can, so you are not penalized for having duplicate content.

What your readers will see

Everyone who is subscribed to your blog's RSS-feed or follow-by-email gadget will see a new post.
(I you don't want this, turn your feed off before you start - but don't forget to turn on again when you are finished!)

Visitors who browse your blog posts will see the "old" post, with the new author, in the original place.

Visitors who try to go directly to the old post via an existing link or from search-engine results will automatically be re-directed to the "new" version of the post. Very observant ones may notice that the URL is slightly different from the original. Most won't.

A quicker way: get control of the original Author account

The method described is fiddly and tedious - especially if you want to change the author of many posts.

The only alternative that I can think of is to ask the original author if they still want the Google account  that they used to make the posts. If you are lucky they

• Don't want it, and 
• Are willing to hand the password over to you. 

In this case, you could

1. Quickly change the password (before they change their mind!), and
2. Edit their profile to the new author name that you would like to have displayed. You may also want to change some other details - and if they are using a Google+ profile and you already have one, then you should probably delete this.

This isn't a total solution, of course: no matter how you edit their profile, it will still be different to your own profile. But it may be better than nothing.

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Related Articles:

How to edit a post that has already been published

Understanding Google accounts

Copying a post from one blog to another

Giving someone permission to author posts

Changing the publication date for a blogger post

Setting the URL for Blogger posts

Why SEO doesn't matter for some blogs

Stop spammy links from hurting your blog

This article describes the Disavow tool, which you can use to ask Google to stop taking notice of links to your website that you consider to be bad.

Google's Webmaster tools now include a way of telling Google to ignore certain links when it is deciding what reputation your website or blog should have.

This can be important if SEO is important to you, ie if your blog relies on Search to get visitors, because your "reputation" helps Google to decide where to list your site in the search results. And there is plenty of evidence that the higher your listing, the more "clicks" you will get.

Sometimes you can get links to your blog removed by simply by asking the person who made the link in the first place. Maybe they made a mistake, maybe they've reconsidered their own linking strategy, etc.   To ask them, you need to find them.  Options for this include:

• Looking at their website to find contact details
• Finding them on Google+ or via their Blogger profile
• Tracing them on other tools like Facebook or LinkedIn. 

Worst case, your only option may be to leave a comment on their blog, and hope they're still looking at new comments.

But often enough, you won't be able to get "bad" links removed: the person who made them can't be contacted, or won't co-operate. Worst case, they may be a competitor who is trying to make Google think that your site is "bad" by doing "negative SEO", ie creating lots of spam-links to it.

Telling Google about bad links

The Disavow tool is WebMasterTools new approach to dealing with problems like this.

It lets you tell Google that you think they should ignore certain links. To do this, make a text file (using NotePad, etc).    The file should have

• One line for each link that you want to fix.
• The phrase "domain:" at the start of lines listing websites that you don't want any links from
• A hash (# - AKA a pound-sign in the USA) at the start of any lines containing comments (eg your own notes about what's happened) that you want the Disavow tool to ignore.

An example file might look like:

# Left comment on SammySpammy's blog on 4/5/2012. Asked him to
# remove links, but he said "No"
# Fred from BuildYourBlogNetwork.com removed most links, but missed these
http://www.BuildYourBlogNetwork.com/firstPageTheyMissed.html
http://www.BuildYourBlogNetwork.com/another-page-they-missed.html
http://www.BuildYourBlogNetwork.com/and_Another.html

Once you have made your file, go to the Webmaster Tools Disavow page, choose the correct blog from the list (if you have several), and then upload the file.

Note: you need to be verified in WebMaster tools as the owner of your bog to access it on that page.   Blogger-administrators are "supposed" to be automatically verified, but sometimes this has not happened - if this has happened to you, then your blog won't be in the drop-down list. If necessary, you may need to manually verify your ownership by adding a meta-tag to your blog. LINK (Webmaster tools will give you the tag to add.)

Also, notice the warning that they give:

This is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site's performance in Google's search results. We recommend that you only disavow backlinks if you believe you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, and if you are confident that the links are causing issues for you.

What they are saying is that if you ask them not to take notice of a link which isn't bad, they might well do so - and this could have quite a bad affect on your search results.   In short, if you are going to disclaim all knowledge and validity of a link, be absolutely certain that this is the right thing to do.

What does the Disavow-links action do?  And how fast does it happen?

Effectively, the disavow file lets you suggest that Google should ignore the links you have listed. If Google accepts your suggestions (there are no promises), they will be applied the next time that Google re-indexes the site(s) that you have suggested.

This can take weeks to happen - because if they really are spammy sites, then Google probably isn't that keen on them anyway! So you won't see an immediate effect. But over time, they should improve your standing in Google's eyes if the links really were causing a problem.

The FAQs in Google's announcement of this tool say that it's really aimed at people who know they have done silly things in their own link-building, and who want to fix the problems they have caused - and which Google have told them about. Specifically, they say "If you haven’t gotten [notification of a manual spam action based on “unnatural links” pointing to your site], this tool generally isn’t something you need to worry about".

But my guess is that this approach will be interesting to many blog owners who do worry about inwards links that they aren't happy to be associated with anyway. It won't remove the links from the internet totally (only the other site owner can do that), but it will stop Google from penalizing you because of them when it decides how to show search results.

What your readers see

Visitors to your blog see absolutely nothing different - using this tool has no immediate effect on your layout or content.

But if your suggestions have an impact on how Google ranks your site, they will hopefully see your site at an earlier position in their search-results pages in future.

---

Related Articles:

5 reasons why SEO doesn't matter for your blog

Adding a meta-tag to your blog

Taking action when someone has used your copyright material without permission

How to remove or change the Newer Post and Older Posts links

This article explains how to hide or change the format of the "Older Posts" and "Newer Post" and "Home" links that are shown at the bottom of Blogger blogs with Layout or Designer templates.

Why are the older and newer posts links used

Most designer and layout templates have links at the bottom of your page of blog posts which let readers navigate back and forward among the list of posts.

This is basic to how a blog is intended to work:  you post regularly, and give people a way to get back to previous posts.

The pager-links are particularly important on pages that are reached using the Label or Archive gadgets, which may show more posts than you normally have on your home page, or displaying in your blog.

But some people want to remove them - and this is fine provided readers have other ways of navigating around the blog.

How to remove "Newer Posts" and "Older Posts" from your blog:

To totally remove these items, you just add some new CSS rules to your template in the usual way.

To remove "Older Posts" add:

#blog-pager-older-link {
float: right;
}

To remove "Newer Posts" add:

#blog-pager-older-link {
float: right;
}

Or to remove both of them and the "Home" link that appears in between them, add:

#blog-pager {
display: none;
}

How to format the "Newer Posts" and "Older Posts"

Changing the way that these links look is very similar, you just add the same codes, except instead of 

display: none;

use the CSS element for the effect you want.   For example, to make the text bigger and bold, you might use rules like

font-size: 150%;
font-weight: bold;

You need to put these commands inside the curly brackets, where the display: none; is now - make sure that each component has a semi-colon at the end of it.   It makes the code easier to read if each component is on a new line, but this isn't necessary.

Another option is to swap the "float" commands around to put "older posts" on the left and "newer posts" on the right (I've never quite understood why they were the other way around).

You can also use background images and colours, with elements like:

background-image:url('URL OF YOUR IMAGE');

background-color:#cccccc;

How to change the "Newer Posts" and "Older Posts" text

If you want to change the text values - either to different words, or by replacing them totally with pictures, you need to accept the disadvantages of editing your template.   If this is ok, and you you want to proceed then:

1  Edit your template in the usual way

2  Turn the Expand Widgets checkbox to ON (ie ticked)

3  Replace the existing links:

• To replace the "newer posts" link, find <data:newerPageTitle/>  in your template, and replace it with whatever text you want.   
• To replace the "older posts" link, find <data:olderPageTitle/>  in your template, and replace it with whatever text you want.   
• To replace the "home" link, find <data:homeMsg/>  in your template, and replace it with whatever text you want.   

In each case, the code you are replacing will be inside some other code, like this:

  <span id='blog-pager-newer-link'>
      <a class='blog-pager-newer-link' expr:href='data:newerPageUrl' expr:id='data:widget.instanceId + &quot;_blog-pager-newer-link&quot;' expr:title='data:newerPageTitle'><data:newerPageTitle/></a>
      </span>

Make sure that you only replace exactly the code listed above, including the < and >'s.   The other code around sets up the links to the actual older or newer posts, and you don't want to change this.

Also, if you want to use a picture instead, replace it with <img alt='...' border='0' src='THE URL OF YOUR PICTURE'/> - of course with the right picture URL put in.

Do make sure that the meaning of your pictures is obvious though - what may look like a cute "newer posts" symbol to you may look just like a pretty picture to someone else.

---

Related Articles: 

How to add a CSS rule to your template

How to edit your blogger template

Understand the advantages and disadvantages of template editing

Finding the URL of a picture in Picasa-web-albums

Understanding designer and layout templates

Google Groups now has a "My Discussions" view

This Quick-Tip is about how to see the posts you made in Google Groups - in particular in the Blogger Product Forum.

I used to be quite active in the previous Blogger Help Forum.   But since they switched to the new Google Groups based Blogger Product Forum, I've been less enthusiastic:

• The design doesn't work as well on the netbook that I use a lot of the time
• It wasn't easy to look up questions that I'd answered previously to see whether the answer was helpful.   

The old system used to tell me that there were new posts in topics that I'd posted in, so it was very easy to go back and either give more help (kind of "after sales service") or hear from people who I'd been able to help (good motivation for helping other people.).

Today I noticed that a feature which is almost as good has been introduced to Google Groups.

The left-hand navigation area now has an entry for "My Discussions".  Choosing it shows all posts with author:me. 

This is a list of posts, not a list of questions, and the ones with new posts since I last logged in are not in bold.   So it's not quite as good as the previous approach.   But it's close enough for me to take more interest in questions that I contributed to previously, which is good for both me and (I hope!) the person who asked the question.

How to put pictures into unusual shapes, using PowerPoint

This article explains how to put a picture that is one shape (a "square peg") inside an image of another shape (a "round hole" - or star, elipse, octagon, etc) - using Microsoft PowerPoint.

Original title:   How to put a square peg into a round hole - in pictures

Recently, I've been using PowerPoint to make the thumbnail image for my posts. This means that I own the copyright of the pictures, so can share them without worrying about copyright issues.

One approach I've used is to find an interesting copyright-free picture that is related to the theme of the post, and then put it inside a shape that adds some visual interest or has some words along side it.  Another thing that I'm going to try is using multiple pictures in this way to make a more-interesting-than-usual collage.

How to put a picture inside a shape

NB PowerPoint commands are based on Office 2007 and 2010 - but the same principles most-likely apply in other versions where the commands may be slightly different.

1   Get your image file, and save it somewhere on your computer.

A wide range of picture-file formats are supported by PowerPoint:  in the 2007 version this includes as shown in this list:

2     In PowerPoint, make a blank side (Home > Layout > Blank)

3     Then add a shape (Insert > Shapes, click on the shape you want)

Intially, the shape with have the fill-colour and border that are the current default values. But you can change this, which is what we are going to do.


4    Right-click on the shape, and choose Format Shape from the pop-up menu

5    In the Fill tab, choose Picture or Texture Fill, then click the File button and navigate to the image file you got in step 1, and click OK.

6   Make sure that the portion of the picture that you want to show is in the picture:  to start with the shape is centered on the middle of the picture.

Change this using the Offsets to move the shape to the left or right over the image.   You can make the offsets positive or negative as shown.

You can monitor the results of different settings in PowerPoints slide thumbnails (on the left hand side, if you have it showing), or by dragging the pop-up menu to a different place in the screen so that you can see the shape itself.

Job Done - at this point, you have an image that is cropped to the shape that you chose - now you just have to put it into your blog.

Using the picture

There are (at least) three ways to get the shape-cropped-picture from PowerPoint into your blog.

I usually copy the item from PowerPoint, and then paste it into a picture editor (Paintbrush etc), manually.   This is an old-fashioned approacb - but it lets me adjust the size and position of the image, and save it (usually a .png) with a file-name that describes the image really well which is good for mating the blog come up in search results (SEO).   The this picture can be inserted into a post just like any other picture.

Another option is to choose File > Save As from Powerpoint, and choose to save the slides in an image format, eg JPEG which can also be inserted into a post in the usual way.  You are likely to be asked whether to put all the slides in one image, or to make one image per slide. Usually, it would be best to make one image per slide - but I don't use this method because the image that is created is the size of the whole slide, rather than just the pictures on it.

A third option is to display the PowerPoint file as a slideshow. This isn't something that I'd do for only one shaped image, but may be relevant in some situations.

Adjusting the size and quality of the picture

One thing that you don't have any control of inside PowerPoint is the zoom level of the inserted picture.

If you make the shape larger, it doesn't show a larger proportion of the picture. Instead, it just shows the existing picture in a larger size, as you can see in the slides shown here.

I suspect that if you want to zoom in to a particular area of the image file, the only approach is to edit the picture in another tool, crop out the bit that you do not want to show, and only keep the part that you want to include inside your shape.

However PowerPoint does have some limited control over the contrast and brightness of the picture, from the Picture tab of the Format Shape window.

Can you do this in other tools?  Why PowerPoint?

Yes, you can.

Photoshop, and similar commercial tools almost certainly have features like this, and I'm certain that GIMP (like a public-domain, less powerful version of Photoshop) and Inkscape (another public-domain image program which is more focussed on scalable-vector-graphics and objects than on pixels) also have these features.

So why use PowerPoint?   In short, its (relatively) cheap and many people have access to it already.   It's also very easy to learn, compared to the other packages, and what you learn is likely to apply to lots of tasks and not just in making pictures for your blog.

---

Related Articles:

Putting a picture into a blog-post

Post.thumbnail and post.summary - ways of describing blog posts

Showing a PowerPoint slideshow in Blogger

Copyright, blogs and Blogger/Google

Using a domain purchased from another domain registrar or blogging-platform for your Blogger blog

This article is about how to use a domain (URL) that was purchased outside of Blogger / Google as the custom-domain for your blog.
 
Blogger and custom domains

The easiest way to give your Blogger blog a custom domain is to pick an URL that is currently available and purchase it through the Settings > Publishing  tab.   If that is s successful, all you need to do is set up an administrator account for your domain.   (Sept 2012:  this option is currently unavailable - hopefully it will be back soon.)

But sometimes the URL you want will not be available through Google / Blogger:

• Maybe it's owned by someone else
• Maybe you own it  already, because you purchased it through another domain registrar.  
• Maybe you don't have a credit-card so cannot purchase through  Google.  
• Maybe it's for a country that Blogger doesn't sell domains for (eg Ireland).

In these cases, you can't use Blogger to manage the domain.  Instead, you need to buy it another way - or get control of it if someone else already owns it.

Then after you own the domain, you need to set it up with the correct settings to work with Blogger.   To do this, you need to use the settings information that Blogger provides and the domain management tools (usually a control panel, aka CPanel) provided by your domain registrar.

If you are buying a domain from a registrar

If you need to (or already have) obtained them domain name through a domain registrar, you need to  purchase both:

• Name registration, and 
• DNS Hosting

You do not need to purchase file-hosting from them, because Blogger provides this for our blogs.

There are some registrars that don't offer domain hosting separately from other hosting packages.   In this case, it's your choice whether to use this company or to use another one.   There is no harm in purchasing file hosting that you are are not going to use - except that it's a waste of money.

If you find that your registrar doesn't offer DNS Hosting at all (unlikely) or that you don't want to pay the fee that the charge (which may be quite high if they only sell it with file hosting), then you need to transfer the domain to another registrar (which does offer DNS hosting) before you can use it for your blog.



Setting up a domain for your blog

Once you have control of the URL, follow these steps to set up your blog on it:


Go into www.Blogger.com and using the now-standard (ie post Sept 2011) interface.  


In  Settings > Basic >  Publishing > + Add a custom domain >  Switch to Custom Domain > 

1. Fill in your domain name, then
2. Click Settings instructions
3. If you are told "You have unsaved changes that will be lost.   Leave this page anyway"  (or similar) - choose OK / Leave this page.

This opens a page of instructions which contains the values you need to use in the next step.


At the top of the page, you are asked the following question.

Where would you like to host your blog?

•  On a top-level domain (www.example.com).

•  On a subdomain (foo.example.com).

If you don't understand this, just click on the top-level-domain option.   (If you do understand it, you don't need me to tell you which option to choose!)



2)    In the domain-management tool for your domain, set up the DNS records (ie CNAME and AName records), using the values from the page that is opened.

The way of setting up the domain records is different for every registrar.  You may need to read the help file, or ask the domain registrar's customer services department for help.   Or, if your domain registrar is GoDaddy, then this tool makes it especially easy.  (That said - at the moment it is not setting up the 2nd CNAME record for you - still need to do it yourself.)

You need to setup up two CNAME records.

• The first CNAME record should have your domain URL and ghs.google.com
• The values for the second CNAME record are buried in the text of the instructions page - I've underlined them in the following picture to help you find them.   (Hopefully Blogger will make this easier to read soon.)

You also need to set up four ANAME records - see further down in Google's instructions page for the values to use for these.


Wait an hour, and then go into www.Blogger.com again   (NB  you may not need to wait the full hour, but it's safer).  
NB   If you wait too long, then the 2nd CNAME combination that Google gave you will have expired, and you will have to do that step again,    So I'd suggest waiting an hour, and no more.


In Blogger, go to  Settings > Basic > Publishing > + Add a custom domain >  Switch to Custom Domain > 

• Fill in your domain name (yes, again).
• Click Save (just under the pane)

If get a message

We have not been able to verify your authority to this domain. Error 32. Please follow the settings instructions.

then you did not get the set-up in correct in your domain-registrar (or maybe you haven't waited long enough - or waited too long!)


If you do not see that message, then your re-direction was successful.   However you may need to allow a bit of time (maybe a few minutes, maybe as long as three days) for the changes to take effect.

Test whether they have been applied by typing your custom-domain into a web-browser:  you should be taken to your Blogger blog.

Ask for help if you need it:

There are many things that can go wrong when you are setting up a custom domain, and error messages like "Another blog is already hosted at this address" are quite common.

If the process described above doesn't work after three days (72 hours), or if you get an error message other than "site not found" before that,  the post a new question in the Blogger Product Forum:  Include these details:

• Your custom-domain name / URL, 
• Your blogsplot URL 
• The date andtime that you made the change (don't forget to include your timezone)
• A description of what's happening.

Some of the helpers in BPF are expert at diagnosing what's wrong and telling you how to fix the domain, and very happy to help provide you give them the information that the need to work out what's wrong. 

What if someone else owns the domain

Before you start, you need to own, or at least control, the domain.

If someone else currently owns a URL that you want to use, you need to:

• Negotiate with them, and get them to agree to transfer the domain to you
• Set up an account with a domain registrar
  (GoDaddy are the registrars that Google currently uses for Blogger users:  if you use them, you can be certain that the domain-management tools provided will do everything Blogger needs you to do.
  GoDaddy also have a tool that makes it extra easy to use one of their domains for Blogger - log in to your GoDaddy account, and go here to access it).
• Using that domain-registrar account, request that the domain is transferred to you
• Do anything else (eg make a payment) that you told the current owner that you would do (eg make a payment)
• Make sure that the current owner does whatever is needed to transfer the account to you.

Even though Blogger provides some "nice" tools that make URL management easier for "first time buyers" of custom domains, they are not a domain registrar themselves.  This means you cannot transfer a domain that was purchased through another domain registrar to Blogger / Google.   Instead, you need to follow the steps below to use the domain-name for your blog.



A note about Google Apps and Sites domains:
If you purchased a domain through Google Apps or Google Sites, then you already have control over it.

But you may need to disable sites in the account management screen before you can use the domain for your blog.

And after you have done this, you can go straight to Step 3 of the next section, because the CName and AName records are (already set up to use Google's servers.

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Related Articles:

Setting up an administrator account for your new custom domain.

Switching your blog from one custom domain to another.

Using a custom domain that you own for something other than Blogger

Why RSS / Subscribe to Posts matters for your blog.

Putting a custom search engine on your blog

Stop malicious use of your AdSense account ID.

How to link posts together in Blogger

This article shows how to link from a new blog post to one that you have already written. It is part of the Blogger-Basics series.

Sometimes, when you're writing a blog-post, you want to refer to a post you wrote before.

• It means that you don't have to repeat information, and can focus on writing it really well in just one place.
• It encourages visitors to read more than one post, and doesn't bore people who already know the related information..
• It's good for SEO (encouraging search-engines to give your blog a good place in their result lists)

For example, many of the posts here on Blogger-Hints-and-Tips are about how to get other tools (eg Facebook, Feedburner, AdSense) to work with Blogger:  in general these posts describe how to get some HTML code from the "other" site, and then how to install it into your blog. Originally, I repeated the "how to install" instructions in every post - but when Blogger changed how this was done, this meant I had to update dozens of posts.  To make this simpler the next time, I just wrote one post about installing third-party code into Blogger.

Follow these steps to link two posts together

1   Write the first post (the one you want to link to), and publish it. (You cannot link to it until after you have published it.)


2  Copy the URL / web-address of the first post.
The URL will start with https:// and then have your blog's url and the post information, like this:

http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/04/adding-separator-line-between-your.html

You can see the URL at the top of the browser in the address bar, when you choose to View the post from the list of posts in the Dashboaurd. Or you could right click on the View link and choose "copy target".

3  Edit the second post, ie the one where you want to put the link.


4  Find the text that you want to put the link on, and select it.

• This is called the "anchor text", because you attach your link to it.
• It's best if you use descriptive text like "worn with a formal dress" rather than words like "click here", because they help visitors and search engines know what the other article is about).

5  Click the Link icon in the toolbar: it's the one with the word  "link" on it - or in older versions of the Blogger software, it had a pictures that looked like a chain.   It also shows the word "link" if you hover the mouse over it.

6  In the window that opens, paste the address of the other post into the Web-address field.

7  At this point you can also choose whether clicking on the link shows the other post in the same window, or in a new one, using the "open in a new window" checkbox.
(Some people think it would be good to always open linked posts in a new window - but it can be very annoying for a user if they end up with a lot of open windows. Personally, I usually make links to my own site open in the same window, and links to other sites open in a new window.)


8  Click ok

What your readers will see

When someone reads the post that you put the link into, they will see your post in the normal way. The anchor-text (ie the linking-words that you chose) will be formatted in the same way that other links in your blog are formatted.

This is true for readers who are looking at your blog through a web-browser, and for ones who subscribe to your blog by email or who read it in a feed-reader.

When they click on the link, it will be opened in the way that you said - either in the same browser or in a new window.

Linking to or from other things?

In this article, we've talked about linking from one post to another post, using text.

You can also go back and re-edit your first post, and put a link to the second one in it - in exactly the same way as described above. (If you look at some more Blogger-Hints-and-Tips posts, you will see that I use lots of an lots of links to all sorts of posts.)

Or you could put the link onto a picture instead of onto text.

Or you might want to link to an email address, so that people can easily send you a message.

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Related Articles:

Getting started with blogger

How to edit a post that you have already published in Blogger

The follow-by-email gadget: a quick way to offer email subscriptions to your blog

Why do some blog-visitors use feed-reader software

Using a picture as the link-anchor in Blogger

How to show a working email address in your blog