Blogger Hacks, Categories, Tips & Tricks

Friday, August 18, 2006
Blogger Beta Update, Incl. Template News
The dust settles, some folks dig in & take a good look, and a 2nd round of reviews & user insights emerge.
  • Annie at BlogU made the switch, keeping the non-layouts "classic" template, and everything except Freshtags made the migration with her. We're investigating....
  • Aditya notes that few of the usual suspects have migrated. We haven't because we can't (team blog), but like many others I think we're waiting for the HTML template editor too, so that our widgets can come with us when we move! He's also opened a "peeking under the hood" thread, & promised to update frequently.... So send him the good stuff that you see.
  • Steve Rubel reports that the "public feeds on private blogs" bug that he exposed has now been resolved.
  • BlogHacker reports 8 new features and 8 new issues. To be fair, most of the issues will be resolved with time and the full rollout of Blogger beta features, but the post is a balanced look at the current state of play.
  • Turning up the geek factor to maximum, Bloggers Buzz points to the new Blogger API and suggests some of the promise thereof.
  • Instabloke counsels patience, testing, & waiting to play w/ the full suite of tools. Good call!
  • Avatar at Bloggeratto finds a good conspiracy theory in the phased rollout. Hmmmm! Elvis is alive and well and living in Mountain View.... right next to Han Solo frozen in Carbonite.
Plenty of discussion as this news has spread. Check out the T'rati graph of posts that contain the terms Blogger Beta over the last 7 days. The wave is growing, with more than 1000 posts Thursday & half that already today:

The critical next step would seem to be the introduction of the raw HTML edit window for layout-enabled templates. Blogger users will then be able to use the new labels but also add any additional widgets to their site. Blogger Buzz suggests that we can look for this in "days not weeks." Thanks, Jason!

As things stand now, you can either keep your template, in "classic" mode (dynamic serving but no layouts, and therefore no labels), you can use a new beta default template, or you can wait a while to migrate 'til the HTML editor goes live on the beta, & (hopefully) re-create your template as closely as possible w/ added "layouts". This will involve migrating individual customisations & widgets from current to beta... & testing each one to see whether they fall over. As Pete pointed out, though, there will be a "view classic template" option that will allow the cut & paste grabbing of the code you want to keep.

I'm optimistic that once the HTML editor goes live in beta, this will be a useful & interesting process, and that a second generation of mods will emerge that can live with (and even extend) the new platform.

Filed in:

See also:

Posted at 8:46 AM by John.
11 Comments:
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Blogger Aditya said...
Wow! Thats a lot of posts from all over the place! Thanks for all the links. Blogger has surely generated the buzz they were aiming to! :)

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Blogger Avatar X said...
John, what the hell are you talking about, i would prefer to be left off from the list if you are going to go overboard.

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Blogger Unknown said...
I have written about the easter eggs in Blogger Beta. Check this out:

http://hackosphere.blogspot.com/3006/08/blogger-beta-easter-eggs.html

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Blogger Unknown said...
I have written about the easter eggs in Blogger Beta. Check out my post from 3006!

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Blogger Unknown said...
There seems to be a major confusion with Blogger accounts migrated to Google accounts. In blogs that have not yet migrated (like yours), I cannot use my google account. So, I use my old Blogger account. But after posting a comment, if I try to delete it, it asks me to login using Google account (since I have migrated). OH my gosh!

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Blogger Avatar X said...
Still waiting for the edit john, and no, i will not let it go.

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Blogger Greg said...
@avatar: Just to be clear, am I right in thinking you object to your "release candidate hyopthesis" being characterised as a conspiracy theory?

@Ramani: Hadn't noticed the next/prev thing either ... throw in the way Beta handles archives and it's looking pretty good at the time dimension. If only labels were as accessible.

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Blogger John said...
Ramani

Good catches! The comments problem sounds like the reverse of the comments problem that is listed on the known issues page. As they have it,

"Users who have not switched to Blogger in beta will not be able to login to comment on blogs that have been switched. Commenting using the "anonymous" or "other" options will still work."

I guess that's true the other way around too, 'til everyone's migrated....

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Blogger Avatar X said...
@john:

I want to be REMOVED from this post and if you are unwilling to that, then we have a problem since i am actually asking you to do so.

If you don´t want to remove it, fine, but just tell me without fooling around.

@Greg: the thing that bothers me is how it is written and that it has two tasteless jokes in the post?

When have i made jokes from John in a POST?..never, THAT is what bothers me.

The conspiracy theory thing don´t bothers me that much becuase i know what i know from good source, and becuase every fucking time when i have made a post like that one i knew i was right.

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Anonymous Anonymous said...
number of posts on blogger.beta doesn't come as a surprise given the fact that blogspot bloggers were waiting for this update from LONG time.

I am glad that you are keeping good eye on all the things going around :)

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Blogger RPM said...
btw, one big problem after google switched to Google Accounts for blogger - I receive blog comments in email at a particular email address (user1@gmail.com) and my blogger user name (user2) is different from that email username. In fact, my blogger user name happens to be coincidentally a separate blogger email (user2@gmail.com) that I had created way back when!

So now, whenever I have comments to moderate and I try to publish them from my gmail account, blogger automaticaly signs me in as user1 google account and of course I don't have a blog in that name so I have so say sign in with a different user name and then sign in with user2.

But meanwhile, because I signed off from user1, when I get back to my gmail, I have been signed off!

$#$^%^!!!!


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