Blogs Disappear

Like Socks In The Dryer?

Come Back, Black Sheep! One of the silliest and yet one of the most efficient ways of "losing track of a blog post" happens when one is not quite paying attention. It has happened to me three or four times now and even now that I know to suspect it, it still mostly catches me by surprise. What It Is, Is Butterfingers, Bubba! Sometimes as I “publish” and exit the program, my fingers slip and seem to stumble and slide over an extra key. I’m never sure what I did! But when I “view” my blog, today's post isn’t there. Whatever happened, I have since learned the end result; today's post date has changed! I’ve learned to use the Search feature and hunt the title down. Sure enough, it turns up easily enough, except that instead of being at the top of the blog, the date has changed and now it’s on the page for some previous month, possibly even for some previous year. The post that doesn’t exist! That post is pretty thoroughly hidden, if you don’t know to look there for it! The Simple Fix So I edit the post again and correct the date. When I Publish this time, I’m more careful with my butterfingers. There’s today's post at the top of the blog, right where it’s supposed to be. You don’t have to be a genius to solve the Disappearing Blog Act, you just have to remember that the trick exists and how it works!

Where To Find 3 or 4 Column Templates

If You Want More Than 1 Sidebar!
This is just a place-holder for me for now in case I someday have something to say about the damn three and four column templates. At present, I haven't even read all of the posts that our friend Peter has written about it, listed below in these template posts by Peter.

Screenshot of Settings

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

Speaking To A Newbie About Blogger Support

Don't take it seriously. I took that tone (in Blogger Help Group) because so many who have done it in the past (written multiple copies of a single post, filling every category) turned out to be monsters of ego who always felt personally slighted by the lack of help. There are still some, I imagine. Others, like me, have grown weary of the Newbies who have great outrage at Blogger's lack of support. I've watched Blogger be outrageous and blog owners be furious (about being left dangling) for over five years and both are tiring. Maybe I should go be a farmer. If you're sorry about anything, you would sound like a human, not a monster of Ego, and that's a good thing. Sorry I can't give you pertinent info this time; not everything about Blogger is known to all. If it were, you'd know it already! If there were any way to write the book that I can't write, I could unquestionably fill a book with all the Blogger topics that I don't know much about!

Have Two or More Blogger Profiles

Make Your Own

Placing direct information and a photo into the sidebar to replace the Blogger "About Me" Profile OR because you want more or different info/pictures in your profile! You may desire to put hyperlinks or other items there which you cannot place in the official Profile. For different reasons, some people even want to be able to have a different Profile on different blogs on the same account. This is a workaround to achieve that goal. By placing the code for an image and your own personal info directly into the sidebar or page element, AND by suppressing the Blogger Profile, you can work around the problem. You'd have to eliminate the Blogger Profile entirely (mark it as NOT to be shared, either in Edit Profile or in the Profile page element). [Remember, these profile substitutes will only appear on your blog while the original official Profile will still be what's available to persons where you leave comments on other blogs!]

Also see Profile Visits.

[More below, with screenshot...]

First thing is to find a photo. My Blogger Profile pic is 88x68 pixels, but of course that's only how it shows in the sidebar. The photo size I submitted was 320x240 pixels. I don't currently know how much larger you can go, but I've seen some that were very large in other Profiles. Obviously, what we'll need in the sidebar is one of those pics such as Blogger pics turn out that are shown larger when clicked on.

For the test photo I use further down the page, I started with a medium photo in a photo program where I could copy it and resize the copy. Thus I had a thumbnail and a larger pic, as so many of us are used to.

My thumbnail here is larger (123x92)than the profile photo I actually use, but it fits in the sidebar, and that was my only goal. So I took the two photos and fitted them into the formula as below.

Once the images are hosted online, you can copy the code and place it in the sidebar, probably looking something like this:

<a href="PhotoUrl"> <img src="smallPhotoUrl" />
</a>

Below is the actual code for the fabricated Profile I made up in a practice blog (shown further down the page). The code should be entered in an html/javascript page element in New Blogger or in the sidebar section of the template if you are still using a Classic template.

<center><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_AVxLoZ0mR_0/Rc6Xl8IUJzI/AAAAAAAAALA/
BwKtMwuI4ek/s1600-h/Picture+17.jpg"> <img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtEqSABK9qbnoWe85CNI7_3Tmm2W03LckaXYS5Y25AX-gvh-gxWVfwBjvhSKRKxuyoMnyBrTipOk6t6lfFPbLU-iEIBtgn65v8u6lQGoLgT3QNw9wroOXqamloC-HoMbY1s29V/s1600/picture17-small.jpg"/> </a>
<br/>
<b>Clower McFlowers, <br/>
Chigger, Texas, USA <br/><br/></b></center>

Clower is a mean bastard, but he's our mean bastard! I can put whatever other info I want to include here. Might even insist that my name is Mortimer Snerd. Can't never tell. I was born in Montana. On horseback. In the rain. Yeah, that's it. And I'm a negro, too.

Below is the screen shot.

Can I Print My Blog To Paper?

You can print your entire blog, including posts and comments, to paper if you wish. I never have done it and have no familiarity, so I'm sending you to NITECRUZR, my next-door Expert.

Can I Save My Blog?

The Export/Import Feature

You can save all, including photos, comments and posts, but excluding the template or Gadgets, by Exporting. This could also be viewed as a different form of BACKUP. I've only done this export/import 4 times so far, but it seemed pretty easy by just following the instructions under Settings --> Blog Tools. The shorter blogs copied very quickly, though the long one (more than 1800 posts) seemed to take a long time, then I decided it was hung up on a screen that showed a motion that meant the blog was still copying. I finally killed it, but then it turned out that the blog had fully copied--for all I know, it was possibly almost as quick as the short ones (180 posts) had been! NOTE: In one case, I Exported twice by accident and ended up with two copies of every post on that Destination Blog. I therefore conclude that the Export does not Overwrite what's already there. So if we make 3 or 4 "backups" over a period of time to the same Destination Blog, we'll have 2, 3, or even 4 copies of the various posts, depending on how long they've been on the original blog. This is neither harmful nor desirable; if it happens, just be aware that you'll just have to do some housekeeping some day in the future if you decide to use that Destination Blog. This is supposed to work between Blogger and these other platforms--export and import blog content between Blogger, LiveJournal, MovableType, and WordPress. I used the option that allowed all the posts to be published as they're copied, but apparently you can also NOT do that and later publish them selectively (one by one?).

CLICK HERE FOR SCREENSHOT YOU'D SEE AFTER CLICKING THE "EXPORT" BUTTON.

Just remember that the idea is to

Open the source blog and go to Settings --> Blog Tools --> Export Blog. You will export the blog posts that you wish to copy to another location such as your own hard-drive, not to a second blog (yet). Now open the destination blog, which may be empty or not. Go to Settings --> Blog Tools --> Import Blog of the destination blog. You will now use Blog Tools to finally Import the posts that were copied above. More carefully-considered detail can be found at this informative post by Roberto.

ALSO SEE BLOGGER'S ARTICLE.

[More below...screenshot of Blog Tools]

Body (Or Background) Color

The background color for your blog is not located with the other color changes in "Fonts and Colors". Oddly enough, to change the blog's background color requires going into the template--you'd think it would be among the other clickable changes. Some new bloggers may not like the idea of revising the template code, but eventually you will want something bad enough to dare! When the time comes for this change, look for a section resembling this below (from one of my other blogs):

[More below...]

body {
background:oldlace; url("http://www.blogblog.com/harbor/rocks.jpg") no-repeat right bottom;
background-attachment:fixed;
margin:0;
padding:0;
font:x-small Georgia, Serif;
color:$textcolor;
font-size/* */:/**/small;
font-size: /**/small;
}

or, similarly, this (from the code for this blog):

body {
background:#123;
margin:0;
text-align:center;
line-height: 1.5em;
font: x-small Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Sans-serif;
color:$mainTextColor;
font-size/* */:/**/small;
font-size: /**/small;
}

It's the "body" where you want to make the change or else create the color. Find or alter the color statement--whether you use a number or name doesn't matter. If you have to add the "background: color;", just be sure it's inside the brackets like you see in the two examples above.

See also my post about Fonts And Colors

END.

Blogger Has N0 Email or Phone Support!

WELL, DON'T GET BROKE UP ABOUT IT!

Blogger does not provide email-based support beyond the automated messages or give out telephone numbers. Not at Blogger Help Group (BHG) or much of anywhere else. [There is a fax number at Google's page about digital copyright and infringement. I assume if you fax them about off-subject concerns that those faxes may end up in the trash.] BHG is almost exclusively a forum where people ask questions about Blogger--then other, more experienced, "amateurs" try to answer them. Though a Blogger Employee may join the forum from time to time, it is not their 24-7 job to answer questions at BHG! Like you, I wish it was, but it isn't that way. Documents and other written help already exist at Blogger Help Group, so that's in addition to asking a question and hopefully getting answers from more experienced Bloggers. But that's it, as of this date. [More below...] I won't pretend that I can make it make sense to you. The bottom line is that IT IS THEIR FOOTBALL and if we don't like it, we can leave. They are never that rude when they make statements about their policies, but that's what it boils down to. They've obviously got the money, but they don't have enough time to piddle with each and every individual blogger. On this page of Blogger Help, it says: Need to contact our support team? We provide email support for the issues listed below. While we do read each email, you'll only hear from us (generally within three business days) if we need more information to resolve your issue. The following articles will help you determine if you need to contact us: Login and Access Issues Report Abuse Bugs For all other issues, please search the Help Center or ask for help in the Help Forum. As you see, they think they DO provide email support, but since they generally won't answer your damn email, I would still say that they DO NOT. You can read another post about Blogger's support system at Nitecruzr's post on the subject

Search for Blog Topics In Your Own Language

How can users of NEXT BLOG solve the language problem? Many people only speak their own language and, while that is unfortunate, Next Blog is just wasting our time if it keeps sending us to what amounts to "foreign" language blogs to us! We should use the Google Blog Search for exploration instead of Next Blog. At the top of the page is the "Search" box. To the far right of "Search", you'll find "Advanced Blog Search Preferences". Click on "Advanced" and a menu will pop up. Go nearly to the bottom of the new menu and locate "Language". Click the drop-down menu and select your language. If you have now chosen a topic, Go back to the top, on the far right, and click on the Search button.