Blogger is a wonderful free blogging platform, maybe the best one of the freebies out there, but it is still trailing from other, mostly when it’s faced against those which can be installed on propietary servers. In this case we’re talking about WordPress, which is the reference CMS that comes to mind when we can have access to a server.
Pitting it against WordPress.com doesn’t have much sense because its free version limitations leave it far behind Blogger.com. We also need to say that the fact we have WordPress on a proprietary server gives it a lot of space ahead Google’s service, however I think that most of the things Blogger does not have (yet?) can be implemented with a little more effort on the developer’s team.
The features and functionalities I think Blogger needs to have to be like WordPress are:
1. File hosting.
As we speak, CSS and Javascript need to be placed into the template itself which makes the loading process a bit slow, or hosted on a third-party service, which most of the time have a bandwith limit.
2. Developer Community
Even though it is one of the most used blogging platforms in the world, Blogger lacks a developer community around it, the few improvements come from the official developer team and this makes a much slower evolution compared to WordPress.
3. Efficient Valid Code.
I’ve said this a lot of times before, Blogger’s code is very inefficient. I can understand that it is a lot stronger because of the template system they use, but a lot of their elements are loaded in some not-so-useful or plain useless code and validating it is a nearly impossible task.
4. Categories and labels.
Blogger’s current label system only uses one-level tags, which means, sub-tags cannot be created to at least simulate WordPress’ sub-categories. Having more than one classification method comes really handy as the blog grows, as for the user as for the blogger.
5. Comment moderation.
It is true that Blogger made a great step ahead by adding the comment-form to the post page, by this time it doesn’t always work as it should. Comment management is completely manual, so you need to visit every post with new comments in order to read and reply. Also, there isn’t access to some of the commenter’s information like e-mail and IP address. And going a bit further, support to external services like gravatar.
6. Pages.
In WordPress it is clear the differences to the uses of "Pages" and "Posts", the posts are the daily news, dynamic and the pages are for static contents like "About…", Contact, Advertising, Privacy policy, etc. These are exactly the kind of pages that do not exist on Blogger, we have to make a post with an old date or look for help on an external service.
7. Custom fields.
Even though it is not so common on WordPress, these are magnificent tools to power a blog and it is missing on Blogger. With these you can create some more complex stuff quicker, a showcase or a "Read More" or a summary with examples.
8. Documentation.
In the counterpart of WordPress, Blogger’s documentation is poor and rarely updated, added the fact the user community doesn’t produce too much information, it is logical the difficulty which represents this platform to someone who has quite some time using it and wants to customize it.
9. Image Management.
Gallery creation, image administration from the Blogger’s control panel (right now only available by Picasa), multiupload and an improved image uploader.
10. Trackbacks.
Theoretically, Blogger has built in a trackbacks system, but is nearly impossible to trackback a blog made on Blogger.
Conclusions
These 10 features are in my opinion the ones with the highest priority to be included on Blogger so they can be closer to WordPress, but there are many other details in which WordPress claims the lead, we have to admit Blogger has some great things over WordPress, a few, but there.
What is striking is that these 10 points are really very basic things, any actual WordPress user thinks of this as a problem from the past, but it is exactly what’s in front of Blogger users.
What do you readers think? Can Blogger catch up on the other platforms? Why do you think Blogger is getting left far behind considering the other Google services?
By default, every post we publish on Blogger has a link with the number of comments (if it’s enabled, of course), and it says something like "0 Comments", and this isn’t the best presentation. Another problem comes when the post has just one comment, and the link shows "1 Comments", which is not logical at all. Finally, when the post has more than one comment, the link get a little bit of sense. But don’t worry about it, cause now we’re gonna teach you how to fix it.
1. Go to the “Layout” tab, also called “Design” from the desktop, and then go to “Edit HTML”. After this, check the “Expand widgets template” box.
Dashboard → Layout → Edit HTML → Expand widgets template
2. Search for the following code:
<b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'>
<a class='comment-link' expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 1'>
1 <data:top.commentLabel/>
<b:else/>
<data:post.numComments/> <data:top.commentLabelPlural/>
</b:if>
</a>
</b:if>And replace it with the following:
<b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'> <a class='comment-link' expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'> <b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 0'> Leave your comment </b:if> <b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 1'> 1 Comment </b:if> <b:if cond='data:post.numComments > 1'> <data:post.numComments/> Comments </b:if> </a> </b:if>3. Now search for the following code:
<b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'>
<h4>
<b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 1'>
1 <data:commentLabel/>:
<b:else/>
<data:post.numComments/> <data:commentLabelPlural/>:
</b:if>
</h4>And replace it with this:
<b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'> <h4> <b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 0'> Leave your comment </b:if> <b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 1'> 1 Comment: </b:if> <b:if cond='data:post.numComments > 1'> <data:post.numComments/> Comments: </b:if> </h4>Both of the replacements are because of the link will show up twice: on main page and on each post’s page. The bold text can be changed for anythig you want tho show.
Vía: blogandweb.com
Most of us, when we start a blog we do it with Blogger, a simple interface and it is very easy to start a new blog, but trouble starts to appear once we try to manipulate the blog’s layout, CSS and XML of the template might seem a bit complex right from the start, however, they aren’t that much after fighting a bit with it and looking at the general structure. And precisely as a helping hand to understand the Blogger templates’ general structure, we’ve created a Blogger Cheat Sheet specially focused on classes and identifiers that most of blogger templates use.
What’s the point?
Essentially this:
- Change elements in an existent template.
- Adequate a layout from another platform.
- Create a new Blogger layout.
Download
How to use it?
Using this guide requires at least basic knowledge on CSS and according to it you’ll be able to modify certain things.
Changing elements.
You just need to look for the class or ID in the cheat sheet related to the part we wish to modify and change the CSS attributes on the template.
Example: Change the blog’s title color.
Looking up in the cheat sheet, the class related to the blog’s title is h1.title, look for the class in the CSS code, if it does exist just modify the color code, otherwise add a new class:
h1.title {
color:#000;
/* other attributes */
}Adequate a layout from another platform.
Here the cheat sheet helps us finding the Blogger equivalent for each element. Example: In a WordPress theme the entry title has a class called .tit, just copy the class and attributes and rename in Blogger as .post-title.
This is a very basic example, obviously adapting a whole template requires a bit more knowledge on CSS, because not always you do have an equivalent and the structure has to be changed.
Create a new layout.
Based on this cheat sheet you might create a CSS and HTML structure which allows to code without working directly on Blogger, or maybe just the CSS structure and doing the work online.
Help and corrections
This cheat sheet is basic, and because of that we think it might be very useful for a lot of people, if you think so we will be really thankful if you help us spreading it, on your blog, digg or anyway you can think of. And in case you have corrections to make or just an opinion, then have your say on the comments.
Tag Clouds arrive native on Blogger, in other words, now you can create your tag clouds without any external script or template modifications.
To generate a Tag Cloud just look for a normal label gadget, but now you can choose between two ways to show it: as a List, which is the traditional way in which they are shown and Cloud which is the new option to show labels hierarchically by the amount of posts in which they are present.
Another interesting feature is that you can also pick the tags you want to be shown in the cloud, so you can prioritize it.
There’s one thing that is not possible to do from the panel: choose size of the typography of the smallest and largest tag, it has some CSS applied by default which are defined by percentage so they can fit the optimal way toy your layout. However, by doing some CSS modifications you can customize the size of each cloud element, which is based on using a different class per tag level, the default values are as follows:
/* Label size on the tag cloud */
.label-size-1 {
font-size:80%;
opacity:0.8;
}
.label-size-2 {
font-size:90%;
opacity:0.9;
}
.label-size-3 {
font-size:100%;
}
.label-size-4 {
font-size:120%;
}
.label-size-5 {
font-size:160%;
}
/* General features in the tag cloud */
.cloud-label-widget-content {
text-align:justify;
}All these size values can be added to the template’s CSS code and customize them. For example, you can change the color of the largest class "label-size-5" to red, and diminish the color intensity in the others, or you can do the same using the opacity.
This feature was announced on Blogger’s tenth anniversary, so you can use it now normally.
The templates were born as a way to make good design (and not very good) available, either to users with experience in design, and those that just want a nice place to communicate without worring too much about web development, and this article is for those users.
Almost every template has an element that, if changed, can modify the way it looks: images. We can find as headers, backgrounds, margins, icons, text, and so on. And can be added to the template in two different ways:
- As a background: at present time, it’s the most common way to add any image to a template, and it’s usually located in a section or file named CSS.
- Direct: the image is added directly in the code of the template.
So, the easiest way to modify a template is changing these images, and is not difficult at all.
- The old image.
First of all, you have to know the name of the image you have to change. To do this, you can save the image, or you can, in firefox, make right-click and go to "See Image", or "See Background Image", where you’ll have the full address, and the name of the image.
Something else, you need to know the size of the image in pixels, so you have to right-click on the image and go to "Element Properties", where you can see the image’s size.
- The new image.
The only requirement for the new image is that it should be the same size as the original. You can create a new one if you know how to use some image editing program, make changes to the original as a single change of tones or use the cutting of a picture that you already have.
- Host the new image.
If you have a hosting account, upload the image. If you use a free service (blogger, wordpress) you can use a free hosting like imageshack.us o photobucket.com. In both cases you will need the direct link to the image.
- Replace the code.
For systems where the css is with the rest of the code of the template, like Blogger, look for the image’s addres from the old name and replace with the new direction of the image.
For systems where the css code is in an external file (like wordpress), go to this file (ends with .css) and make the replacement. If you can’t find the old image’s address, maybe it’s in another css file.
Usually, by changing the background image, and the header is enough to make a big difference, and set the personal touch you wanna give to your blog.
