Posts
Today we’re previewing five new dynamic templates in Blogger that you’ll soon be able to customize and use for your blog. These new views use the latest in web technology, including AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3, to deliver a host of benefits to you and your readers:
Infinite scrolling: read more posts without having to reload or click to a second page
New layouts: different views suited to different types of blogs
Speed: download images as you view them, not all at once in advance
Interactivity: there are now more ways to experience and engage with blog content
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!
Blog This!
Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager
One of the things I often hear is how challenging it can be to generate ideas for topics to write about. This may be especially true for popular blogs when you feel as though your followers are eagerly awaiting your next post. Sitting down and staring at your computer with the hope of feeling inspired can result in disappointment.
On my blog for example, I have a mix of posts that were authored be me, and articles that I've discovered elsewhere that I think may be of interest to others. Like many of you, there are times when I have things that I’m eager to write about, and other times when I just want to share something.
If this sounds familiar, you may find the “Blog This!” Chrome Extension of interest. It enables you post to your blog from any web page with just one click. The Extension is available on the Chrome Web Store under the “Blogging” category.
When you install the extension, a button will appear on your browser toolbar. Simply click the button to open Blogger in a new application window.
The new post is pre-populated with a link to the web page you're on, as well as any text you've highlighted on that page. Edit the post to your liking and post it instantly to your blog.
Announcing Blogger Mobile Templates
Posted by Jiho Han, Software Engineer
A few months ago we introduced mobile templates to Blogger in Draft. Today, we’re excited to announce that not only will these templates be available to everyone, we’ll be supporting all 27 Template Designer templates. We invite you to make your blog smartphone-friendly by going to the Dashboard > Settings > Email & Mobile tab and enabling the mobile template option.
Blogger mobile templates are mobile-optimized versions of our Template Designer templates. If you are using one of these templates, when you enable the mobile template option your blog will begin rendering using the mobile version of the same variant. Even if you are not using a Template Designer template, or using a heavily-customized version of one, you can still enable this feature to have your blog start rendering in a generic default mobile template that we have created.
Some of our feature highlights:
We hope you enjoy the mobile templates. As always, we would love to hear from you so please let us know what you think through our feedback form, and stay tuned for future improvements.
A few months ago we introduced mobile templates to Blogger in Draft. Today, we’re excited to announce that not only will these templates be available to everyone, we’ll be supporting all 27 Template Designer templates. We invite you to make your blog smartphone-friendly by going to the Dashboard > Settings > Email & Mobile tab and enabling the mobile template option.
Blogger mobile templates are mobile-optimized versions of our Template Designer templates. If you are using one of these templates, when you enable the mobile template option your blog will begin rendering using the mobile version of the same variant. Even if you are not using a Template Designer template, or using a heavily-customized version of one, you can still enable this feature to have your blog start rendering in a generic default mobile template that we have created.
Some of our feature highlights:
- Preview: Get a glimpse of how your blog will be displayed by clicking on the Mobile Preview button. You can also see it on your smartphone by scanning the QR-code.
- Automatic redirection: Viewers will see the mobile version of your blog when accessing from smartphones*.
- Template support: We are now supporting all 27 templates. Some gadgets are also supported**.
- Mobile ads: Mobile AdSense ads will be displayed at the top of the post pages and at the bottom of the index page if the blog has an AdSense gadget or in-line blog ads.
- Comments and videos: Viewers on smartphone devices will be able to make comments and watch videos.
We hope you enjoy the mobile templates. As always, we would love to hear from you so please let us know what you think through our feedback form, and stay tuned for future improvements.
Add the +1 Button to Your Blog
Posted by Marcos Almeida, Software Engineer
“+1” is often used as a digital shorthand for “this is pretty cool.” It’s also a way for friends, contacts, and the rest of the world to find great things on Google search. Google launched the +1 button back in March as a way to help share web content and make search more personal and relevant. For more information about the +1 button, you can watch this short video:
“+1” is often used as a digital shorthand for “this is pretty cool.” It’s also a way for friends, contacts, and the rest of the world to find great things on Google search. Google launched the +1 button back in March as a way to help share web content and make search more personal and relevant. For more information about the +1 button, you can watch this short video:
Since Google made this feature available, web publishers and bloggers have been asking us how they can add the +1 button to their sites, including Blogger blogs. Today, we’re excited to let you know that you can add the +1 button to Blogger blogs with just a few clicks.
To add the +1 button to your blog, you’ll need to enable Share buttons on Blogger. To do this, go to Design > Page Elements on your Blogger dashboard, find the Blog posts area, click on Edit, and select the “Show Share Buttons” option. If you are already using Share buttons, the +1 button will automatically show up as a new share option.
By adding the +1 button to your blog, you’re providing an easy way for your visitors to recommend your posts to their friends right from your blog. Here’s how it works: Let’s say you blog about biking. One of your readers, Tom, finds your recent post about mountain biking interesting, and clicks on the +1 button. Now, when Tom’s friends and contacts search for biking or mountain bikes and your post appears in Google search results, they might see an annotation showing that Tom +1’d your post, helping your content stand out.
We hope +1’s will help your blog stand out better in search results, which could increase both the quality and quantity of traffic to your blog. Now, that’s indeed a big +1, isn’t it?
Updates and Fixes, May 5th
Posted by Brett Wiltshire, Product Operations
April showers bring May flowers, and updates to Blogger! Here's the run down of the latest changes available to everyone right now:
Add location info to your posts with geotagging
Geotagging has been available for a while on Blogger in Draft, but is now available to all users with today’s release. To add location information to your blog posts, simply click the Add Locationbutton in the bottom right of the new post editor. This will bring up a new window that displays the familiar Google Maps interface and you can search, drag, zoom, and drop markers for the location of your choice.
Once you’ve settled on the location you want to add to the blog post, just click Save and the information will automatically be added to the footer section of your published post (if you don't see it, you'll probably have to enable the Location option in the Blog Post widget which is normally defaulted to 'on'.)
April showers bring May flowers, and updates to Blogger! Here's the run down of the latest changes available to everyone right now:
Add location info to your posts with geotagging
Geotagging has been available for a while on Blogger in Draft, but is now available to all users with today’s release. To add location information to your blog posts, simply click the Add Locationbutton in the bottom right of the new post editor. This will bring up a new window that displays the familiar Google Maps interface and you can search, drag, zoom, and drop markers for the location of your choice.
Once you’ve settled on the location you want to add to the blog post, just click Save and the information will automatically be added to the footer section of your published post (if you don't see it, you'll probably have to enable the Location option in the Blog Post widget which is normally defaulted to 'on'.)
We’ve made a few small updates and bug fixes since the original Draft release, most notably the ability to remove location information after publishing and the addition of a placemarker for pinpointing location info.
Refreshed interface for image and video upload
Clicking the “photo” or “video” upload buttons will now display a sleeker, updated picker. We’ve also made it draggable so you can look back at the post editor if you need to.
Clicking the “photo” or “video” upload buttons will now display a sleeker, updated picker. We’ve also made it draggable so you can look back at the post editor if you need to.
YouTube Us!
f it’s been a while since you’ve checked out the Blogger YouTube channel, you may want to head over and have a look around as we’ve given the whole site a facelift. Beyond our shiny new theme and graphics, we’ve added thirteen hot-off-the-press videos that cover a wide range of feature walk-throughs, handy tips, and other fun stuff that the team has come up with. And this is just the beginning!
We had so much fun putting these videos together that you can be sure to see a lot more uploads in the future, as we want this channel to be an ever-evolving source of Blogger information.
The Blogger team would love to hear your feedback on the new YouTube page, and we’ve created a form where you can pass along your ideas for further videos and other ways we can improve our channel. Of course, you can always send us a quick tweet or drop us a line in the Feedback section of our Help Forum as well.
Either way, we hope you enjoy our revamped channel and we look forward to expanding it over time.
Dynamic Views, the Chrome Extension
Posted by Mike Lawther, Chrome Engineer
Last week we announced five exciting new ways to view your blog content, which take advantage of the latest web technologies to provide a richer experience for your readers. You can already see these views in action by appending /view to the end of any Blogger URL, but today we’re happy to announce another way to experience these views via the Blogger Dynamic Views Chrome extension.
Once installed, the extension will automatically detect when you are viewing a Blogger blog, and then display a Blogger icon (the orange ‘B’!) in your address bar which lets you select and view the blog in one of the five new dynamic views. It’s that simple.
Of course, you can always disable the extension whenever you want from the Extensions section of the Tools menu. Try it out today, and please feel free to leave a rating or review on the extension page.
Engage your audience with Follow by Email
Posted by Ben Eitzen, Software Engineer
Fresh content is the fuel that drives the blogosphere; it keeps readers coming back to your blog. Our team is always thinking of new ways to connect users with the freshest content across Blogger, and today we’re happy to offer a new, powerful way to do just that with Follow by Email.
The Follow by Email gadget provides blog authors a simple way for their readers to subscribe to the latest hot-off-the-press updates, which are delivered directly to the reader’s inbox. When new blog content is published, all subscribed readers will receive a daily email notification of the new published posts, which includes a copy of the new content as well as links back to the actual posts.
To enable Follow by Email, click the Add a Gadget link from the Design | Page Elements tab, and then select the Follow by Email gadget which should be at the top of the list. Once you add the gadget, readers visiting your blog can then just enter their email address and click Submit.
Taking advantage of Feedburner technology, Follow by Email will also track your subscription information, such as the number of subscribers and daily views. To view these stats, log into Feedburner.com, and select the appropriate blog feed from your list.
What’s New With Blogger
Posted by Chang Kim, Product Manager
2010 was a big year for Blogger. We cemented ourselves as one of the largest blogging platforms and the sixth largest website in the world, according to Alexa. Blogger users published more than half a billion blog posts, which were read by more than 400 million active readers across the globe. We introduced template designer, real-time stats, comments spam filtering, mobile templates, web fonts, and more. And to top it all off, we were dubbed the most reliable blogging service around.
2011 promises to be another exciting year.
To start, we’re kicking things off at SXSW by giving folks a sneak peek at our next-generation user interface. The new design is not only cleaner and more modern, but it also uses Google Web Toolkit, delivering the latest in web technology.
These are just a couple of new features we want to share with you. We look forward to unveiling more throughout 2011!
If you’re in Austin for SXSW, be sure to visit us at the Google booth—or come by and enjoy a drink with us tonight at our annual Blogger bash.
