MamaBlogga

Okay, so here’s the deal: I think WordPress is a fantastic platform and I love it and I’d never go back to Blogger. BUT Blogger is a good platform and for many users, it’s a better fit than WordPress would be. When my sister wanted to start a craft blog this year, we went with Blogger because we all knew how to use it (and hence I’ve used Blogger more this year than I have since, oh, 2007).

However, if you’re looking to look “professional” or “branded,” I strongly recommend using Blogger’s Custom Domain feature (I know, I’ve been beating this drum for almost five years). This moves your blog from YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com to YOURBLOGNAME.com (or whatever address you can get). Setting this up required a little bit of technical know-how with the domain registrar (the company where you buy the domain name).

Until now. If the technical bits have kept you from your own domain, at least one registrar can help. Blogger Buzz announced last month that custom domains is simpler for GoDaddy customers now. GoDaddy has added a tool to update the settings on their side to get your blog onto its own domain with just one click. Nice!

If you register a domain, don’t forget about private registration!

All blogging platforms allow you to start working on a blog post and save it for later as a “draft.” However, not all blog platforms are created equal. If you’re using Blogger, your drafts might be messing up your readers’ experience.

If you are saving draft versions of posts in Blogger, Blogger may be publishing those posts to your RSS feed. I have seen this on a number of blogs for probably over a year. The problem appears to be intermittent, so it might not have affected you yet.

Why is this a problem? Well, for one, if your post isn’t finished (and that’s clue #1 for me when I see this in my feed reader), your readers are going to be a little confused. It’s less than impressive, you know?

Secondly, regardless of whether the post is finished and polished, your readers might want to click through to comment—but when they do, they’re taken to a page that says the page doesn’t exist. Can’t tell you how many times that’s happened to me :-\ .

Finally, when you publish the post later, it may not show up in feed readers again.

There’s a possibility that this has something to do with another factor, such as scheduling posts to appear in the future.

I can’t find any documentation on this issue from Blogger, but I’ve seen this happen with half a dozen different Blogger blogs. However, if you’ve had this problem on your blog (off the top of my head, affected blogs I’ve seen include edittorrent, The Blood-Red Pencil and ali cross), I recommend pointing this out to Blogger Help.

Bottom line: if you have a time-sensitive post (or just want be absolutely sure your readers see your post when it’s ready, and only then), try using a test blog to draft, then cut and paste to your main blog.

What do you think? Have you ever seen this problem?

I’ve long said full feeds are the best option for bloggers and readers. But for some posts, a full feed isn’t the best option—and now Blogger users have even more feed options with the addition of Jump Breaks in the feed.

Jump Breaks have been around since September 2009 (announced on 09/09/09). Up until a few days ago, you could use Jump Breaks on your blog to truncate posts displayed there. Write a long post, but don’t want it making your homepage load so long? Insert a Jump Break a few paragraphs in, and the main page of your blog will only display the post to that point, with a link to see the full version.

To insert a Jump Break, you can click on the Edit HTML tag and enter <!– more –> . Or, in the Compose tab, you can click on the Jump Break button:

Now you can use the same function in your feeds. To enable the Jump Breaks in your feed, go to Settings > Site Feed. By “Allow Blog Feeds,” select “Until Jump Break.”

You can even customize the “Read more” text. Go to Design > Page Elements. Under Blog Posts, click Edit.

Then just change the Post Page Link Text in the popup window:

Why would you want to use Jump Breaks?
There are a lot of reasons to use Jump Breaks in your feed and on your blog. For example:

• To cut off a long or image-heavy post that would take a long time to load.
• To customize when and where you publish a “snippet” or “preview” feed.
• To keep your homepage from getting too long.
• To display a larger variety or number of posts on your homepage.

On other blogging platforms
If you use WordPress, this all might look a little familiar: you can also split posts in WordPress with the <!– more –> tag. You can type that in the HTML version of a post, or just use the more button: in the Visual tab or the HTML tab . You can even customize the text of the link it inserts, if you’re feeling ambitious.

In TypePad, you can split posts if you’re a premium subscriber.

What do you think? Do you or would you ever use this function? Why or why not?

 Print This Post

While this post is intended for beginners, there may be something for all of us here. Did you know that Blogger now has “Pages”? This is a very cool, very important step for Blogger as a “full-featured” blogging platform. You don’t have to cobble together a menu bar or touch HTML or flood your feed as you create “About Me” and “Contact” pages. (Check out the fourth picture and description for more details.)

All right, so we’ve created a blog with Blogger and even made our first post. Now we’re ready to learn a little more about posting. When you log in to Blogger and go to your blog, click on the Posting tab. You’ll see you have four sub-options.

The first, rather obviously, creates a New Post. We already went over how to create a post, so today we’ll look at the Post Options below the post text box. Click on the triangle to open the Post Options:

Here, you can switch off comments on a case-by-case basis. (In a few weeks, we’ll find how to turn off all comments automatically.) Unless you want to code your posts in HTML, keep the Enter HTML Line Breaks set to Press “Enter for Line Breaks. And if you’re not entering any HTML (for example, the code for others to copy and paste to use a badge), don’t worry about the Compose Settings.

The Post Date and Time has two options: Automatic, meaning it sets the date and time of the post to whenever you hit Publish, or Scheduled, meaning you get to pick the date and time displayed on the post. You can pick a time in the past to post-date a post, or you can pick a date or time to schedule a post to go live in the future. (When you click the button by Scheduled, a box pops up for you to enter the date and time you want.)

Finally, note here the Labels. You can use these to assign your posts to categories, and organize them for you and your visitors. You can have many, many Labels on a post, using them as specific “tags” so you can keep track of all the topics you mention, or you can stick to 5-10 or so Labels total, and use them as broad categories to organize your blog into general topics.

The next option under the Posting Tab is the Edit Posts option. This lists all your posts and drafts—and this is where to go to finish working on a draft post.

You can select some or all of your posts to add labels (with the drop down menu at left). You can also filter the posts you see by when they are or will be published: drafts aren’t scheduled to be published, Scheduled posts have been assigned a date and time and “published,” but aren’t visible on the blog yet, and Imported posts came from another blog (we’ll look at how to do that another week).

Warning: If you are saving draft versions of posts in Blogger, you may be publishing those posts to your RSS feed. When you publish the post later, it may not show up in feed readers again. So if you have a time-sensitive post (or just want to make sure your readers see your post when it’s ready, and only then), try using a test blog to draft, then cut and paste to your main blog. (I can’t find any documentation on this issue from Blogger, but I’ve seen this happen with half a dozen different Blogger blogs.)

On the line with the post, you can see the Title and the date or time (if recent enough) it was either published or last edited. To the left of the title is a little triangle—you can click on the triangle to see the text of the post without leaving this page. If a post has been published, you have the option to View just left of that. And left of that, you click Edit to finish or fix a post.

At the top, you can search in your posts or create a new post. At the bottom, you can publish or delete any of the posts you’ve selected with the check boxes on their lines.

The next option under the Posting Tab is the Edit Pages option. Pages are not like posts. Posts are little bits of time. They have dates and times attached to them. They’re your weekly/daily/whateverly updates. Pages are for the information that’s almost always going to stay the same on your blog: who you are, how to contact you, etc. My pages are displayed in a line underneath my header. (Home, Blog Mentoring, About, Contact, etc.)

You can have the same layout easily with Blogger. (This used to be a lot of work!) Click on Edit Pages to view the page menu. Here, you have the option to create a new page. Below that, any existing pages are displayed. Click on New Page to create a new page.

The Create a New Page page looks just like the create a new post page. Enter your title and text here, and click Publish Page to make it live.

If this is your first Page, Blogger will ask you where you’d like the list of your pages to be displayed on your blog. I highly recommend the Blog tabs option.

When you visit your blog, you can see the Pages listed below the header:

The last option under the Posting tab is Comment Moderation. All this has is a link to the Settings page for Comment Moderation:

And we’ll talk about that with other settings!

There you go—now you can save drafts, create new posts and create pages for your Blogger blog.

Anything need to be clearer?

 Print This Post

We’re going back to the basics for this next blogging series: I’m going to alternate weeks on Blogger and WordPress.com, and go back all the way to the beginning. I imagine you probably already have a blog, and you’ve probably been through all these steps, but you may know someone who’s interested in getting started, but afraid to try. Fear not! It’s easy! And if you want someone to show you what to do, look no further, because here’s the Beginniners’ Guide to Blogger, part one: how to sign up and set up your blog the first time.

Go to http://www.blogger.com. Here’s what the screen looks like:

If you already have a Google account—such as for Gmail, Google Groups or Orkut—you can use that to sign in at the top. Otherwise, click the big orange button to create an account.

Account creation is easy. You do have to supply some personal details—but nothing more intimate than your email address. You also set a display name here, the name that appears at the bottom of your blog posts. If you don’t want to use your real name, be sure to set that to your pseudonym of choice.

If you already have a Google account, when you sign in, you’ll see this. Click the blue button to create your blog:

Whether you just created a new account or are using an existing account, the next step is the same (You can click to enlarge the picture below). You select a name for your blog (what will appear in big letters at the top of every page) as well as its address. Note that there are no @ signs in the name of your blog—@ signs are only used in email addresses! Your blog address will be whatever you choose (if it’s available), followed by .blogspot.com —in the example here, it’s http://thisisafakeoblogo.blogspot.com. Use the “check availability” link to make sure that address isn’t already taken.

Type in the spam-catcher letters and click the orange Continue button.

Next, you get to choose the template or layout and colors of your blog. There are several choices here, so scroll down to see them all and pick the one you like best. (Note: in an upcoming post, we’ll talk about how to get custom designs for your Blogger blog.)

Voila! Your blog has been created! You can hit the orange Continue button here to start posting, or look at the Advanced Setup Options.

The advanced options allow you to get your own domain for your Blogger blog—i.e., ThisIsAFakeoBlogo.com instead of thisisafakeoblogo.blogspot.com. (Purchasing a domain will cost money. Here’s some of my advice on buying your own domain.) The other advanced option is to import a blog you already have into your new one.

If you went with the orange Continue button, you’ll go right to the Write New Post page. Enter a title in the title box—the title of the post appears at the top of the post in big letters. (This post’s title, for example, is “Beginners’ Guide to Blogger: Sign Up.”)

In the larger box below, type the words you’d like to see in the content or body of your post. (I’m pretty sure we’ll also be talking about what all those buttons do soon, too.)

To save the draft to finish later, or to make sure you don’t lose your work should your computer or browser crash, click the Save Draft button. To publish it to your public blog, click the Publish Post button. Once you publish, you’ll see this:

Follow the View Blog link to see your blog and your first post live in the world:

Congratulations! You just started a blog on Blogger!

What blogging topics would you like covered for Blogger or WordPress?

A few months ago, we looked a how to sign up for and use Amazon Associates, an affiliate marketing program that gives you a small percentage of any sales you generate for Amazon. Now Blogger is making it even easier to use Amazon’s program—without ever leaving your post window.

You may have noticed the Monetize tab Blogger added back in April. Up until yesterday, only Google ads (AdSense) for your site and feed appeared here. Now you can also find your Amazon Associates information there, too.

To start, go to Monetize > Amazon Associates. Here you can either enter your Associates ID if you already have one, or start the sign up process (and again, we have a step-by-step walk-through on signing up for Amazon)

Once you’re finished with that step, you have the option to add the Amazon Product Finder to your Edit/Compose New Post page. I say go for it, and I’ll show you why.

The Product Finder is a widget that lives on the Compose New/Edit Post page. When you’re working on a post and you want to include a product link to Amazon, just type in part of the name or highlight the title in your post (you can also search by category with the pull-down menu where it says “Amazon.com”).

Once you find the product you want, you can choose the link type to insert into your post—text, image or both. In my example, I went for both:

There are lots of other ways to use Amazon on your blog—so get started!