Official Blogger Blog: June 2011

The latest tips and news from the Blogger team

Getting to know the Blogger Community

June 30, 2011

A revolving showcase of funny, interesting, beautifully designed, creative, and just plain awesome blogs.

Guest posts from other successful Blogger users.

Re-shares of interesting posts from your blogs.

Personal posts from members of the Blogger Team, so you can get to know us better.

Blog This!

June 15, 2011

Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager

One of the things I often hear is how challenging it can be to generate ideas for topics to write about. This may be especially true for popular blogs when you feel as though your followers are eagerly awaiting your next post. Sitting down and staring at your computer with the hope of feeling inspired can result in disappointment.

On my blog for example, I have a mix of posts that were authored be me, and articles that I've discovered elsewhere that I think may be of interest to others. Like many of you, there are times when I have things that I’m eager to write about, and other times when I just want to share something.

If this sounds familiar, you may find the “Blog This!” Chrome Extension of interest. It enables you post to your blog from any web page with just one click. The Extension is available on the Chrome Web Store under the “Blogging” category.

When you install the extension, a button will appear on your browser toolbar. Simply click the button to open Blogger in a new application window.

The new post is pre-populated with a link to the web page you're on, as well as any text you've highlighted on that page. Edit the post to your liking and post it instantly to your blog.

Happy blogging!

Announcing Blogger Mobile Templates

June 08, 2011

Posted by Jiho Han, Software Engineer

A few months ago we introduced mobile templates to Blogger in Draft. Today, we’re excited to announce that not only will these templates be available to everyone, we’ll be supporting all 27 Template Designer templates. We invite you to make your blog smartphone-friendly by going to the Dashboard > Settings > Email & Mobile tab and enabling the mobile template option.

Blogger mobile templates are mobile-optimized versions of our Template Designer templates. If you are using one of these templates, when you enable the mobile template option your blog will begin rendering using the mobile version of the same variant. Even if you are not using a Template Designer template, or using a heavily-customized version of one, you can still enable this feature to have your blog start rendering in a generic default mobile template that we have created.

Some of our feature highlights:

Preview: Get a glimpse of how your blog will be displayed by clicking on the Mobile Preview button. You can also see it on your smartphone by scanning the QR-code.
Automatic redirection: Viewers will see the mobile version of your blog when accessing from smartphones*.
Template support: We are now supporting all 27 templates. Some gadgets are also supported**.
Mobile ads: Mobile AdSense ads will be displayed at the top of the post pages and at the bottom of the index page if the blog has an AdSense gadget or in-line blog ads.
Comments and videos: Viewers on smartphone devices will be able to make comments and watch videos.

We hope you enjoy the mobile templates. As always, we would love to hear from you so please let us know what you think through our feedback form, and stay tuned for future improvements.

*WebKit-based mobile browsers are supported for this launch.
**Supported gadgets/elements in this launch: Header, Blog, Profile, AdSense, Attribution.