NEW Undelete Button on Dashboard!

Getcher Blog Back!--Maybe

There has been an astonishing development in Blogger--it is, to me, at any rate! Until recently, there was no official feature with which to retrieve or recover a deleted blog. Now we can undelete those blogs that we accidentally deleted! Someone is always having that problem for all kinds of reasons, some of which are pathetic and some of which are our own fault, but FINALLY Blogger has a feature that will let us push a button and Undelete our mistake! At present, I know that it worked on a very small blog that I'd deleted only a few minutes before, but that's a start. It may do just as well on larger blogs or on blogs deleted last month--it's just too new for me to know yet all of how it works! My understanding is that the "delete" has to have taken place within the last 90 days. Go to your Dashboard. Scroll to the bottom and click on "Show All" if need be. You should then see the name of the blog you deleted at the bottom. In the Dashboard list, you'll see "Undelete this blog" to the right of where the deleted blog is named in a ghostly grey print. Click on "Undelete". Blogger will inform you (immediately) of the success (or lack of it?).

Below is the screenshot of the bottom of my Dashboard AFTER I clicked on "Show All". You can see that the bottom blog, "Spitting Out The Seeds Of Regret" (which I had deleted only a little earlier this same day) now shows in a ghostly print and has the "Undelete this blog" link out to the right side of it.



Screenshot of Dashboard list AFTER undeleting the bottom post shown above--of course, in my case, I had to click "Show All" yet one more time because it had reverted to the shorter list I usually keep visible:



After this stage, the blog that had been deleted HAD been successfully Undeleted and ALL of it was intact, including the four posts that had been there. This is how it's supposed to work, but I repeat that I have not yet had the experience of undeleting either a VERY LARGE blog or one that was deleted six months ago.

Where's My Questions in Blogger Help Group?

Is There A List of Questions?

How do I find ALL the questions I have asked in BHG? Right up there where you just asked that question (when we're in one of Blogger Help Group's conversation "threads"): There's your Forum "name" and to the right of it is a link, "View profile", which will show some biographical info from your BHG Profile and it includes "Recent Activity", which will list every thread (whether 2 or 2000 of them) where you left a question or answer in the past. It is not ideal, but it is complete, and you can slowly go back through them. This may be stating the obvious, but if you're new and feel like you don't have a starting place for this, ask a new question or make a remark and after you publish, you'll be right there to click on "View Profile"!

[More below...screenshots, etc.]

There are other ways to search, with Google or other search engines, but the method described first up above is the "official" way of locating and reviewing all your old threads.

Also see this post about Gold Stars in BHG.

Screenshot of BHG question-and-answer:
Screenshot of "View Profile":

Screenshot of Settings

This is the screen you see after you click "Settings" from the Dashboard.

Move Items Above Or Below Post

Go to Layout page. Click on the "Edit" in the lower right hand corner of "Blog Posts". A window will open. Go down to the lower part of it that says "Arrange Items". See if you can "drag and drop" the items into new locations. If they stay in place, "Save" the change in the lower right corner. That IS how it's supposed to work, though I have occasionally not been able to get it to work very well for me.

[More below...screenshots of the "Configure Blog Posts" page.]

Click each screenshot for larger image!

TOS Violation Page

Where to go to report the troublemakers, including a screenshot of the report page:



Contact this page and report any of these items at:

Terms of Service Violations.

Be sure to click in the most appropriate of the circles, then click "Continue".

ALSO SEE: Reconsideration Request

Dashboard Example

These are some old instructions and I'll update it when I feel like it. The screen has changed. Sorry.

Above screenshot shows several blogs on the left, the Edit Profile section on the right, and the Language drop-down menu below that.

Edit Profile, to state the obvious, is where you go to paste the url for your Profile Photo.

Having Your Titles Show In Archive

If you want your Archive to show your own post titles (as opposed to all dates), set your "Configure Blog Archive" page element like this screenshot. Make sure that "Hierarchy" and "Show Post Titles" are both marked.

[click image to enlarge]

If your Archive list is not seen in the sidebar, check the page elements in the Layout page and see if it has been deactivated. If not turned on, you should add it. Look carefully at its settings, then save them.

END.

Manage Posts -- Screenshot

AKA "EDIT POSTS", depending on which menu you follow to get to this screen.

DELETE or PUBLISH multiple posts!
Not shown, but at the bottom of the above page, there's buttons to click for "Publish Selected" or "Delete Selected". If you click on each of the boxes in front of the posts you'd like to delete or publish all at once, then you can click those Selection buttons. This is the only place you can delete multiple posts at once!

Delete A Post Or Draft

To delete either a Published or a Draft Post
1. From the Dashboard, Click on Manage: Posts for the appropriate blog. 2. Click the box to the left of the appropriate post. That will highlight the whole line with yellow. 3. Keeping track of the yellow highlight, move to the far right so that you can click Delete there. You will be asked if you are sure you want to delete it. Click on the "Delete It" to confirm it.

Below is the screenshot to illustrate the above. The sixth line, "Am I Beta Yet", is highlighted with pale yellow because the "delete" box has been checked for it:

Note: when "delete" doesn't work as it should, one temporary fix would be to try the "save as draft" option which has the effect of "un-publishing" the post. It will still be on your Edit Posts list, but your visitors won't see it any more.

END.

Compose Mode Or Edit Html Mode?

Does your Blogger editing screen look "odd" or wrong?

Is it possible that your screen mode toggled from one to another, either Edit Html or Compose modes? That sometimes happens and people who have never selected the OTHER mode can't recognize what they're seeing. If so, the Blogger edit box has the two choices beside each other in the upper right corner (see screen shot below).

In Compose you can see the photos. You can relocate the image by dragging and dropping it. In Edit Html you will see the code for the photos and will have to use Preview (or switch to the Compose mode) to see images. You can move it by using Cut and Paste on the code.

Is your "Compose Mode" turned on?
1. First go to Dashboard 2. Go to Manage: Settings. 3. Scroll down the page 4. look for "Show Compose Mode for all your blogs?" 5. Activate it by answering Yes. Be sure to click on the big orange Save Settings a little bit further toward the bottom of the page.

Screenshots In Blogger

How Screenshots Are Done

I used to back away from screenshots in Blogger, though I was not uncomfortable with adding photos the regular way. Now I don't run away like that! If you've never done one, this is how:

Go to the page you want to photograph. Make sure you have all of the important part in the screen. Press Prt Scr (Print-Screen) on your keyboard. That will save the image in the monitor at the time. Go to a image/photo program of your choice and paste the saved screenshot into that program and save it as a familiar jpg or gif file. Then you click on Blogger's image icon and browse for the picture. When you've uploaded the image to one of your blogs, you'll have a url (web address) for the image.

END.

Page Elements Screen

This post was written before several of the new categories, such as the Blog List, Slideshow, or Video or Poll, so that the screenshot below will not quite match what you would currently see. Sorry, someday I'll catch up.

Some people still complain they can't see this item. Sometimes it helps to use Refresh (F5 or Ctrl-F5) or to clear your cache and cookies (in Internet Options-Tools). At times, you might even have to do it twice.

Here is a partial screen shot of the Page Elements list. Others listed below my screen shot are "Logo, Profile, Blog Archive, and Page Header". It is easy to select one and add it.

Click on page-element in the Label box below for other posts on this topic.



See also: Text and Html/javascript page elements

END.

Reverting to Classic From Layout

1. Go into Dashboard. 2. Click on Layout. 3. Click on Edit HTML. 4. At the far left bottom under the template, 5. Click where it says, "Revert to Classic Template." 6. There is also the option below it to "View Classic Template".

[Screenshot of template page below.]


See also Peter's post on reverting or Chuck's post on it.

CAUTION: You will probably lose your page elements if you revert to the Classic template. Although it's possible to then "upgrade" to the Layout template again, you won't get your page elements back. What's lost will probably stay lost.

See the post concerning this hazard at When Reverting to Classic Template Was A Big Mistake"

An associated topic is at Revert To Never Never Land.

Am I Beta (Layout Template) Yet?

If you think your blogs might have changed from Classic template to Beta (aka New Blogger or Layout), but you aren't sure that it happened, consider this:

If your blogs have been migrated to Beta (Layout), then you'd have "Customize" in the Navbar above your Title or "Layout" instead of "Template" in your dashboard. Click on either and it'll offer to upgrade your template. If Customize and Layout aren't there, your blogs haven't been fully converted to Beta. If they are there, click on them so that you can Upgrade your template to Beta. You can also check beneath the Template tab for "Customize Design" and click on that to Upgrade your template.

[Screenshot below shows above references.]


END.

Reverse Order Of Archive

You can change the dates by using post options. The posts will then be "reversed" as you desire and in apparent order, though an eagle eye will see that your post dates are going backwards.

For people wanting to see first posts at top and most-recent posts at the bottom, reversing the post dates (under the Blogger editor, click "Post Options") is the only real solution at present. Change every single post date in Post Options.

Above is the usual correct answer, but be careful about choosing it. It works, but you'll never stop working at it. I'd rather not live my life in reverse. If I had a 100 post diary or story to tell, that would be fine, but some blogs go on for hundreds or thousands of posts, and that's a long commitment to reverse order!

FOR CLASSIC BLOGGER:

See the Blogger Help File below:

How do I change the order of my archive links?


FOR NEW BLOGGER:

It is now possible to reverse, at least with some degree of satisfaction, the order of the posts in your blog. I have only done limited testing of it so far, but I was trying hard! Read further, then check it out yourself and make up your own mind.

1. If you are logged in, go to the "crossed tools" under the Archives section.
2. Click on tools.
3. Click on Daily in the Archive Frequency list.
4. In Options, click on Show Oldest Posts First.
5. In Style, click on Flat List, Dropdown Menu, or Hierarchy. (I have listed them in the order which got the best results for full reverse listing. Flat List was best.)
6. Click on Save Changes.

In the best choice, Flat List and Daily, you'll get a list of the individual dates that are reversed, but you have to click on them one at a time. You click on it, go to the post and read it, then return to the Archives to click the next post. It's all in the reverse order, but you have to click a lot (I thought) rather than just sit and read some sensible number of posts before having to click further. Might be all right for book chapters, but for short blogs, it would be obnoxious. So, I thought it was faulty.

After all this, you still have the problem of the front page, which appears to display in the normal order, not reversed order. So, you could leave only the most recent post on the front page (select 1 in Settings-Archive). Or you could select 0 and have none on the front page, just the Archive! Either way, you might put a page element at the top of the front page that spells out your Archive order and how to use it.

Maybe someone else can make it work better! Anyway, below is a screenshot of what I found to be the most correct settings. (Be sure to enlarge.)

Click for further screenshots of One Post and of No Post on front page.