The latest tips and news from the Blogger team
Important Note to FTP Users
January 22, 2010
Last May,
we discussed a number of challenges facing
Blogger users who relied on FTP to publish their blogs. FTP remains a significant drain on our ability to improve Blogger:
only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP
— yet the percentage of our engineering resources devoted to supporting FTP vastly exceeds that. On top of this, critical infrastructure that our FTP support relies on at Google will soon become unavailable, which would require that we completely rewrite the code that handles our FTP processing.
Three years ago we
launched Custom Domains
to give users the simplicity of Blogger, the scalability of Google hosting, and the flexibility of hosting your blog at your own URL. Last year's post
discussed the advantages of custom domains over FTP
and addressed a number of reasons users have continued to use FTP publishing. (If you're interested in reading more about Custom Domains, our Help Center has a
good overview
of how to use them on your blog.) In evaluating the investment needed to continue supporting FTP, we have decided that we could not justify diverting further engineering resources away from building new features for all users.
For that reason,
we are announcing today that we will no longer support FTP publishing in Blogger after March 26, 2010
. We realize that this will not necessarily be welcome news for some users, and we are committed to making the transition as seamless as possible. To that end:
We are building a migration tool
that will walk users through a migration from their current URL to a Blogger-managed URL (either a Custom Domain or a Blogspot URL)
that will be available to all users the week of February 22
. This tool will handle redirecting traffic from the old URL to the new URL, and will handle the vast majority of situations.
We will be providing a
dedicated blog
and help documentation
to provide as much information as possible to help guide users through the migration off of FTP.
Blogger team members will also be available to answer questions on the forum, comments on the blog, and in a few scheduled conference calls once the tool is released
.
We have a number of big releases planned in 2010. While we recognize that this decision will frustrate some users, we look forward to showing you the many great things on the way. Thanks for using Blogger.
Support Haiti Disaster Relief
January 13, 2010
Like many of you, we watched in horror as
news emerged from Haiti
about yesterday's disastrous earthquake. For those of you who publish your blog with Blogger, we built a couple of widgets that make it easy to invite your readers to contribute money to the Red Cross's international disaster relief effort. Pick a size that best fits your sidebar:
After clicking the appropriate button, select which of your blogs you want to add the widget to, then click "Add widget". The Red Cross assures us that 100% of the money raised is going to disaster relief efforts in Haiti — we and they thank you for your support!
Not on Blogger? Be sure to
visit the Red Cross's Haiti banners page
with banners that you can add manually, or
visit Google's page
containing information about relief organizations, news and contact info relating to the earthquake.
Blogger integrates with Amazon Associates
December 16, 2009
Earlier this year we simplified the process for monetizing your blog by
adding a “Monetize” tab
in the Blogger app. We started with AdSense, which allows you to add contextual advertising to your pages; more recently we
added AdSense for Feeds
to help you generate revenue from the distribution of your blog via RSS and Atom. Today we launched a third option: direct integration with Amazon Associates to search Amazon’s product catalog and add links to products that earn you commissions when your readers buy products you recommend.
With this feature, you can search Amazon directly from the Blogger editor and add pictures and links to Amazon products right into your posts. Your readers will earn you commissions whenever they buy the products you recommend, and if you don’t already have an Amazon Associates account, you can sign up for one for free without leaving Blogger.
If you’ve ever written a blog post about a book, recommended a gadget, or reviewed a toy you bought for your kids, you’ve likely gone through the process of drafting the post, opening up a separate window to go to find a site that sells the product, then going back to Blogger to paste the link to the product into the post editor.
Starting today, you can search the Amazon product catalog without leaving the Blogger interface and insert links to the products you find into your posts. Not only is the process of linking to products more efficient, but Amazon makes it easy for you to earn money whenever your readers actually buy the products you write about. This is known as an “affiliate program”, and it’s designed to let you recommend products you like to your audience — if they buy the product, you’ll earn a commission on that purchase. (For more on affiliate programs in general,
here is a good overview
at ProBlogger from this summer, and Darren’s “
11 Lessons Learned
” post about Amazon Associates is a good review of how to get the most out of the program.)
To get started, click on the Monetize tab for your blog and click “Amazon Associates”. Walk through the setup wizard, and add the Product Finder once you’re done.
Now for the fun part: when you are writing a post on Blogger, you’ll see an Amazon gadget to the right of your post editor (the “Product Finder”). You can search the Amazon product catalog from within Blogger — type in the name of the product you are writing about, and insert a link to the product, an image of the product, or an iframe containing the image, price details and a “buy it now” button. Every link that’s created contains your unique Associates ID, ensuring that Amazon will credit you for any purchases that result from readers clicking the link on your blog.
If you’re an existing Amazon Associate, completing this setup simply makes the Product Finder available on Blogger for you — you continue to earn the same referral rate from Amazon. New Associates receive the same referral rate from Amazon that they would have received if they signed up directly. If you’re not interested in earning a referral, you can still install the Product Finder: from the “Amazon Associates” page under the Monetize tab, click “I'll do this later — show me more Amazon options” and then click “Add the Product Finder” button.
A quick note about trust: affiliate programs work well when readers trust you. You should avoid promoting products simply because of the referral fee you might earn — readers may lose some of that trust if they sense your posts exist solely to make you money. You may also want to disclose to your readers that you will earn a commission on their purchase — some readers even prefer knowing that you benefit from their business.
There’s more information about this integration at
Amazon.com
, and
the Amazon Associates blog
has some more details. This integration is the result of months of collaboration between the engineers at both companies, and we’re very excited to share the results of this collaboration with you. Happy blogging!
Coming up Next...
November 10, 2009
by Helen Kang, Software Engineer, Blogger
Some of you must have wondered what the Next Blog link on the NavBar does, and clicked on the link once or twice. Next Blog used to take you to a random blog, written by a random blogger. Your fellow blogger could have been writing her blog in a language that you don't know how to read. Or you might be someone who likes to read about food and restaurants in Germany, but your randomly chosen next blog could have been focused on sports, and written in Tagalog.
We've made the Next Blog link more useful, by taking you to a blog that you might like. The new and improved Next Blog link will now take you to a blog with similar content, in a language that you understand. If you are reading a Spanish blog about food, the Next Blog link will likely take you to another blog about food. In Spanish!
You might discover a cool blogger who has hobbies similar to yours, has similar taste in electronic gadgets, likes sports that you're into, or has similar curiosities and interests. We will finish rolling out the new and improved Next Blog link over the next week and hope that you will enjoy discovering blogs that are likely to interest you.
This has been a fun, collaborative effort on the Blogger team and we've enjoyed the support we received from other Google teams. We really hope you enjoy the new, more relevant Next Blog as much as we do.
Blogger in Your Own Words
November 06, 2009
Last week we asked you for a few words to describe both the Blogger of the present and the Blogger you'd like to see in the future. You responded overwhelmingly, and now as promised we'd like to share the unedited results with you:
Blogger Today
(click for large version)
Blogger in the Future
(click for large version)
Thanks to everyone who pitched in their two cents; we're very excited to take your words and start writing the next chapter of Blogger.
(And of course thanks to
Wordle
for the awesome word clouds!)
Improving Our Communication of Blogger Service Interruptions
November 04, 2009
By Eddie Kessler, Blogger Engineering Manager
After a recent service interruption, we started talking about how we could improve our communications about these (hopefully infrequent) issues. Going forward, in the case of significant service interruptions, we plan to publish a post mortem on the
Blogger Status blog
within 3 business days to provide details about what went wrong and what we're doing to help prevent similar problems in the future.
During any outage, we try to keep the
Blogger Status blog
updated once we know about an issue. Of course sometimes — as was the case on Saturday — affected users who cannot reach Blogger cannot reach the Status blog either. In such cases, we will try to post updates on the
Blogger account on Twitter
to keep users apprised of what we know and when we expect a resolution.
We don't like it when our users experience problems like what we saw on Saturday, but we hope the combination of transparency around these issues and our commitment to learn from our mistakes will help assure you that we're doing everything we can to keep Blogger a robust and reliable service for you. As always, thank you for using Blogger.
New Transparent Navbar Styles
October 30, 2009
by Talin, Software Engineer, Blogger
As a blog author, you've probably spent more than a little time getting exactly the right "look" for your blog. A blog is an outlet for creative expression, and how your blog looks says as much about you as what is written on it. And we at Blogger are committed to giving you the tools to make a great-looking blog.
The Blog*Spot navigation bar ("navbar") is one area where we realized that there was some room for improvement. Our four traditional color scheme choices — Blue, Black, Tan, and Silver — are somewhat limited, especially if your blog's background color is
lime green
or
hot pink
.
That's why we have added two new color schemes — "Transparent Light" and "Transparent Dark." These new color schemes take advantage of the ability of modern browsers to render transparency (a technique known to web designers as "alpha blending"). This allows the navbar background to blend together with your blog's background color and pattern. The "Transparent Light" color scheme has a semi-transparent white background, producing subtle pastel colors, while the background of "Transparent Dark" is a semi-transparent black that produces a shaded look.
In addition, we've simplified and slimmed down the look of all the navbars, so that they will be more likely to harmonize with the aesthetics of your blog.
To enable the
Transparent Light
or the
Transparent Dark
navbar, go to
Layout | Page Elements
, then click
Edit
next to the navbar widget:
We had a lot of fun adding this feature and hope you like it too. Try it out!
The Next Chapter
October 23, 2009
As we close the chapter on the first ten years over here on Blogger, the team couldn't be more excited about the possibilities that lie ahead over the next ten. And while we've got some great things planned already, we know that the ideas and passion of the Blogger community will inspire us further. So in that spirit, we're going to once again ask for some help writing out the next chapter of Blogger. Only this time, we mean it quite literally :-)
We'd like you to take a second to think about where Blogger is today, and then where you'd like to see it in the future. What are some words that come to mind? How would you describe it?
Specifically, we're looking for six adjectives—three to describe the present, and three to describe hopes for the future. And when you've come up with them, please take a second to
let us know what you are thinking
. Once we've heard what everyone has to say, we'll follow-up here to share the results.
Once again, we really do appreciate your words!
Blog Action Day 2009
October 13, 2009
Guest post by Robin Beck,
Blog Action Day
This is Robin Beck here from Blog Action Day central, and I want to thank Rick and the Blogger team for helping support Blog Action Day 2009.
For those of you who don’t know, Blog Action Day is an annual event held every
October 15th
where bloggers across the world unite to write about a single issue on a single day. We like to think of it as one big blogfest for good, and our goal is to spark conversation on an issue of importance across the web.
This year’s topic is climate change, and we’ve thus far had more than
4,000 bloggers
from
123 countries
register, including many of the world’s largest blogs.
Our aim is to make Blog Action Day 2009 the largest social change event on the web as a demonstration of global concern about the climate crisis. To achieve this, we want to invite the entire Blogger community to get involved and commit to writing a single post about climate change on your blog on October 15th.
You can register your blog
here
.
In addition to joining thousands of other bloggers, you’ll also be supporting the work of the dozens of leading nonprofits who are also participating – including Oxfam, 350.org, The Nature Conservancy, Greenpeace, The United Nations Foundation, and more than forty organizations affiliated with the
TckTckTck
campaign.
You can learn more about the issue of climate change and see sample topics you might write about at
www.blogactionday.org
. There you can also find additional ways to get involved by taking action with leading nonprofits and posting a snazzy widget to your blog.
Thanks so much for your support – we hope to have you all as part of the event!
Keeping Your Blog Secure
October 09, 2009
While October is to many a month of candy and costumes, it also happens to be
National Cyber Security Awareness Month
in the U.S. In that spirit, we thought we'd take a minute to look at a few different things you can do to make sure both your content and account are secure on Blogger.
Third Party Code
Adding site counters, templates, and other third-party code to your blog can be a great way to add some flare to your content, but can also leave your blog vulnerable to malicious activity if you aren't familiar with its source.
Over the years we've seen a number of third party scripts disguise themselves as helpful add-ons, when in fact they are performing a malicious operation behind the scenes. For example, a site counter widget may indeed be providing your blog with helpful tracking data, but at the same time may also be discreetly sending that information to advertisers for the purpose of collecting the online habits of your readers. A blog template you downloaded from a third party site might include pop-up ads or links to dangerous sites that install malware on visitor's computers.
The good news though is that most of the add-ons you will run across are perfectly legitimate. To protect yourself from the small minority of add-ons that are nefarious, we've put together a few tips to keep in mind when adding third party code to your blog:
Take a moment to review the code and look for anything that seems out of place.
For example, if you are adding a weather gadget to your blog and notice in the code that there are links pointing to unrelated sites, take that as a red flag and keep searching for another weather gadget. There is no reason that a weather gadget should include a snippet like
<a href="http://completelyfreemoney.com">Make Money Online!</a>
Before saving new template code, always preview first.
Malicious template designers may sometimes include pop-ups or other unexpected ads in the template code, which will usually be revealed with a quick preview. If anything unexpected shows up in the preview, go ahead and discard the new code by clicking
Clear Edits
.
Backup your template!
Whenever making significant changes to your blog's template, it's always a good idea to backup your content beforehand just in case you need to reverse changes.
You can easily do this from the
Layout | Edit HTML
tab by clicking the
Download Full Template
link and saving the .XML file to your hard drive. You'll then be able to revert back to this downloaded version by clicking the
Upload
button, also right under the
Layout | Edit HTML
tab.
Look first to 'trusted' code repositories for a new template or widget.
There are probably thousands of places across the web where you can find widget and template code, but it may be helpful to first check out some of the more widely known and trusted sources.
For templates, we've actually done a bit of scouting work already and collected a handful of great resources laid out
in this Buzz post
from earlier in the year. That collection comes from a number of well-established designers, and should provide plenty of secure template options to dig though.
For widgets and other scripts, there are a handful of places worth your time.
Mashable's 50 Great Widgets for Your Blog
is a very nice compilation that covers a broad range of categories.
Widgetbox
is another great portal to countless widget creations, all organized into easily browseable categories. Finally, Blogger's own Gadget Directory has hundreds of gadgets to look through. Simply click the
Add a Gadget
link under the
Layout | Page Elements
tab to access them all.
Permissions
Finally we thought it's worth touching on another security area which has proven problematic for some bloggers in the past, and that is your blog's
Permissions
settings.
Almost every day our support team receives reports from users who've been locked out of their own blog, the result of giving admin privileges to an unfamiliar blogger. Remember, you can always add more authors to your blog, but only extend admin privileges if you absolutely trust the person.
For more information about National Cyber Security Awareness Month, please check the
StaySafeOnline.org
page as well as the security series on the
Official Google blog
.
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