Linking to a Google Doc From Blogger

If you make a file in Google Docs and Spreadsheets, this is how to link to it from Blogger If you've created one document and saved it already, locate the url (web address) in the window above on your screen and copy it. Use the right-click button on your mouse and then the Copy on the small menu so that you don't make a typo. Then go back into the post or sidebar where you intend to keep the link and produce this: <a href="http:...documentLink">DocumentName</a> Paste the url that you already Copied into the above code, replacing everything between the quotation marks with the url. Keep the quotation marks, of course. The "DocumentName" is whatever name you choose to call it, whether a title or description. If you can succeed with one link, you can make a list of them, maybe using the ul or ol list or create a LinkList type Gadget. Neither one is very hard, though anything can be intimidating the first time you try (remember bicycles?). Unordered & Ordered Lists

Remove a Message from Blogger Help Group?

Yes, But Not Completely

Sometimes you may "think better" and want to take your words back. Or maybe you solved it two seconds later and can't bear for the world to know how stupid you were. For any reason, good or bad, you can remove it. It is worth noting that those persons who have their membership options set to receive every message reply by email will still have gotten their copy and you can't call those back. Therefore, your message is hidden only from those who were not emailed and who read the messages on the Web. To remove your message from the Blogger Help Group, click on "More Options" above the message then select "remove". Be sure you click in the circle for "Yes, remove it" then click the "Confirm" button. That's all!

Profile Views And "Real" Counters

At present, a portion of the Blogger users are complaining that their "profile" numbers are not increasing or that they barely are. Blogger said that they changed it all due to problems such as hackers giving themselves all kinds of extra clicks. Anytway, the system was getting overloaded in some fashion. Evidently, it may now register numbers by larger increments, not one at a time. Whether or when Blogger may make a better "improvement" than that is unknown so far. Get a real counter like Site Meter or Statcounter. The "hits" on your Profile are like how many people saw your business card, but a real counter would track how many people visited your actual "store" (blog)! It's the store visits that count, isn't it? Counting Profile Views is of a much lower order of importance. It's a shame that Blogger left it vague enough that some people never thought about the relative lack of meaning in the Profile numbers. It's too late to correct that damage, but I advise that people shrug it off and get one of the real counters Many are free.

GATSBY'S EXPLANATION

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":

Text Indenting in Paragraphs

See the post after this about Blogs Disappear to see more results of using the text-indent.

Step One Occurs In The Template

Every once in a while, someone asks how to indent a paragraph and overcome the habit HTML has of not recognizing more than one space in a row! In your template's CSS, place this line: .p2 p {text-indent: 25px;} Don't ignore the "." in front of p2 above; it's only needed that once. The "p2" is an arbitrary name. You could name yours "piddle" or "Ralph". That instruction is telling the p2 style that an opening paragraph tag should have that much of an indentation. You could increase or decrease the number. Save your template so that it'll have this new instruction at hand. Only this paragraph of this post is indented. When you next write a post, every "paragraph" should have the paragraph start tag! As far as I know, it's the only way for the system to know that it's supposed to be a paragraph. Once it knows that fact, it knows to follow the style instruction and make a text indentation of that specified (25px) width.

Step Two Occurs In Every Post
The instruction that tells your blog to apply that rule is when you surround your post with an open and close "div" tag like so: <div class=p2> text </div>

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!