Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with blog and blogger

My Wife Hates Movable Type!

smithmac_99 — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:58:51 -0800

Can you import a MT Blog into blogger?

What to do with a spare blog?

gonzo_ID — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 04:15:37 -0800

I've got a spare blogger blog ('domainname'.blogspot.com) with the same name as a wordpress blog('samedomainname'.com).... what could i do with it? bonus points for income generation. I bought a domain and slapped wordpress onto it where I shall be posting an inspirational image of a document (say... a book cover) per day.
i got a gmail account to work as a spam filter for the domain email and, obviously, i get a free blogger account to go with it.

what can i do with this blogger account that could be linked / unlinked with this main blog? devblog? best of blog? something else? could I make money from this second blog? should i just not use it?

How can I upload MY OWN MP3s to my Blogger Blog?

paulyballs — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:18:38 -0800

How can I upload MY OWN MP3s to my Blogger Blog? I want to be able to put my own MP3 into a music player that will play when people go to my blog. Anyone know of a place I can store my music and then use a player to play it online?

Blogger/Google Hit Counter?

anastasiav — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 07:45:14 -0800

StupidQuestionFilter: I have a small-time blogger blog, but I can't seem to find a tool that will give me the most simple thing: a hit count for it. Blogger is a Google tool, so you'd think that under Webmaster Tools there would be some kind of hit stats, but there don't seem to be. Feedburner used to provide me with this basic info, but that vanished when Google bought them and now Feedburner only tracks who has my feed. What embarrassingly simple thing am I missing? Or do I need to install some third party tool?

Hey, mp3 bloggers, what do you wish you'd known when you started out?

mds35 — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:04:26 -0800

Hey, mp3 bloggers, what do you wish you'd known when you started out? I'm close to launching an mp3 blog. What pitfalls have you encountered? What mistakes have you made along the way? What unexepected successes have you had? What do you wish you'd known before launching?

I'm looking for anecdotal advice of the technical, legal, and monetary varieties.

My blog will focus on obscure-ish music. I'm using WordPress on my own domain, hosted at Dreamhost.

Birthday gift for a blogger

telsa — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:25:50 -0800

Looking for a birthday gift for a blogger friend. Female friend's birthday is coming up and she has a passion for writing/blogging. I'm looking for a gift that is special and will stand out and won't be the type that everyone else will get. As for pricing, anything around $150 seems reasonable.

Also, she already has a personal domain.

Please Help me with my Blogger Blog and Custom Domain

andoatnp — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 13:26:09 -0800

Why might my Blogger blog not be working with my custom domain and how do I fix it? Four days ago, I set up a blog at CUSTOMDOMAIN.blogspot.com and I own the url CUSTOMDOMAIN.com from GoDaddy. I followed the instructions here from Blogger so that people who visit the Custom Domain would see me Blogger blog. When I visit CUSTOMDOMAIN.com it just shows the godaddy.com parking page without the content from my blogspot blog.

In order to set up the domain I own with the blog I created a CNAME record for the domain (screenshot here, does this look right?) and changed the setting in my blogger setting panel to indicate that it is a custom url that I am using. I'm reasonably certain that I did everything in the blogger side ok, because when I visit CUSTOMDOMAIN.blogspot.com it redirects to CUSTOMDOMAIN.com, but with just the empty godaddy parking page.

Is there something I did wrong or something that I can fix so that my godaddy.com domain works with my blog?

Also, is it possible to set up a Google Apps account and then transfer this domain that I have purchased to that account so that blogger is handling both the domain and the blog? I see where I can purchase a new domain with Google Apps, but can I transfer one that I already own?

Also, I emailed godaddy tech support, and they sent a reply saying that it didn't look like a problem on there end.

float, padding, margins, wrappers, %0px1.2em!11!! oh my!

iamkimiam — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:03:55 -0800

I'm going crazy trying to adjust my blog template. It seems that when I change the browser window size, the body, sidebar, and header all move independently. If I make the window wider, the right edges of the sidebar and header do not align. If I make the window less wide, the whole sidebar crunches into body text (fine) and eventually gets kicked off the side by the body (not fine). Ideally, I'd like them all to line up, move/scale together side-to-side, and not get kicked around. I know this has to do with adjusting float, padding, margins, wrappers, percentages, and pixels. I've been tweaking with the variables, hitting preview, observing changes, for way too long. If somebody could please help me fix this, or point me towards an easy tutorial that won't take up too much of my time to decipher, I'd be forever grateful. Thanks!

Blog is in my profile, but I would be really appreciative if it were NOT linked to in this thread. Thanks!

How to get my posts from Wordpress.com to Blogger?

reenum — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:07:18 -0800

I want to migrate entries from Wordpress.com to Blogger. Is there any easy way to do this? I made the Blogger to Wordpress.com switch a few years ago, but love the new Blogger interface. I find that being able to label posts is a lot less restrictive than Wordpress's categories.

Migrating to Wordpress was a flash. But, going the other way seems to be a problem.

I've tried to Google this, and most of the info out there seems to say that at the moment, this is impossible to do. I've found a couple of tools like blog2blog, but none have worked this far.

Oh technically inclined MeFites, please help.

P.S. I'm not technically inclined, so I really don't have a way to write a program or anything to do this.

Is there a blog host that won't bogart my Amazon links?

RogerB — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:21:24 -0800

Book-blog hosting: Is there a free and easy blog host that allows me to use my own Amazon affiliate links? I am thinking of starting a personal book and movie blog. It should make it easy to add books (ideally with a cover image and an Amazon link) to my posts – I'm quite enamored of Vox's super-easy interface for this, but they use their own Amazon affiliate links and forbid you to substitute your own. It seems like all the big free blog hosts do this, in fact (or at least Blogger, Wordpress, and Vox), unless I'm missing something.

I would really rather not have to host my own blog, or use a paid blog host like Typepad, just to avoid giving away the three to five bucks a year my blog will probably make off Amazon referrals. Is there a free blog host or social networking site, or whatever else, out there that will do this?

Is there a way to show all my blog posts?

jejune — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:46:42 -0800

Is there a script that will show summaries of every post from my blog, using a feed from a Blogger blog? I use this widget to display the first 100 or so characters from each post from a feed of my blog. When you copy & paste the code from that webpage into a Blogger blog post, it displays headings from your blog posts along with a summary for each one.

But the problem is that there's a limit: it only displays your 25 most recent posts. Is there any kind of widget that will show all the posts, with no limit?

It would be sufficient if there were a script that would let me specify: "Display posts #1-25," then separately, "Display #26-50," etc. That way, I could just combine them.

Shhh!

Anonymous — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 21:03:53 -0800

How anonymous is my anonymous blog? What steps would someone have to take to figure out that I am the person publishing my anonymous blog? Right now I use blogger. Would I be less anonymous if I had my own domain name? I'm thinking of using adsense - in which case Blogger would know that I am associated with my blog. How concerned should I be that someone else can track that connection? (I'm not blogging about anything illegal, I just really want to stay anon). Also, if its not obvious, I am tech-stupid, so please speak slowly in a loud, clear voice when answering my question.

Time to Pimp My Blog

davidstandaford — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:23:33 -0800

Suggestions for what additions, widgets, extensions, interactive doodads to include on a blogger/blogspot blog. Looking for input from both blog writers and readers. As a side project, I've been keeping a blog where I post one YouTube video per day on a narrow theme. I was wondering if there is anything I should add to the blog (hosted on blogger) that will either be a help to me or that my readers would appreciate.

Currently I have: Contact information, a blogroll, categories for the posts, the blog archive, adsense, and subscription/RSS information.

Things I'm considering: "claiming" the blog on technorati and integrating with that service, setting up a mybloglog account to track my visitors, and a shoutbox that people could leave sitewide comments on.

Is there anything else I'm forgetting/missing? Should I try to find a way to make it easy for people to delicious/digg/reddit my posts or the blog?

What are the little extra features on a blog that you really like to see included?

Daily Blogger Post of All my Twitters

davidstandaford — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:36:33 -0800

Is there a way to automate a daily post to a blogger blog with all my twitter posts of the last 24 hours? I have searched and found a bunch of ways to install a widget/badge to my blogspot blog that will be constantly updated with all of my daily twitters, but that is not what I am looking for.

I would also like there to be an automatic post to the blog itself each day that includes all of the twitters. Can blogger do this in any sort of automated fashion?

It seems there are plenty of solutions on wordpress, but none for blogger. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Can't modify - or even find - my Blogger blog.

gottabefunky — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:32:36 -0800

I have a Blogger blog that I set up a while ago but never put anything on. Now I can't modify it at all, even though the URL is "taken" - by me. I set up a blog (juliansmith.blogspot.com) a while ago but never
posted anything to it.

Now I can't do anything to it. I type in that URL and just get the
blogspot top bar ("next blog," "dashboard," etc.) above a blank white screen.

The blog doesn't show up on my dashboard, but when I try to create it, it says "that name is taken." Of course it is - by me! But how do I get to it to modify it?

Blogger without a blog service

jejune — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:31:20 -0800

Is there a blog service that has all the features I need? I've tried Blogger, Livejournal, and Wordpress.com, but none of them seems like quite the ticket. See inside for the 3 features I'm looking for. I'm trying to start a blog. It seems like every service I try is about 90% of what I need, but missing some key feature.

Here are the features I'm looking for:

1. The ability to have a private blog with well over 100 readers. I could see myself picking up a bunch of readers from my list of Facebook friends, and on top of that I'd like to feel comfortable mentioning the blog to people I meet in the future and casually inviting them to read it without worrying about exceeding the limit. (I'm not willing to have a public blog because I'm paranoid about a prospective employer googling my name one day and being offended by something I say about a controversial issue.)

2. A blogroll that allows well over 50 links. I have over 50 links to put in various categories of my blogroll (not just blogs but also individual articles, favorite Metafilter posts, etc.), and I want to be able to add more as I come across them.

3. Easily customizable templates, or at least a very tasteful default template. I care a lot about the appearance of the blog, and I'd like to have a distinctive combination of greys, blues, and a bit of purple. I don't have programming skills beyond some basic HTML, so I can't create a template from scratch. (I want something sleek and minimal but also with a bit of color and character. Most templates I've seen are either minimal to the point of looking like something from the '90s, or overloaded with color and graphics in a way that seems geared toward 16-year-olds.)

Here's what I've gathered based on trying 3 different services:

- Blogger has nicely customizable templates and plenty of blogroll capacity ... but is limited to 100 private readers.

- Livejournal lets you have 1000 private readers (or more with a paid account) and has so many templates that I can find a palatable one if I really try ... but limits you to 30 with a free account or 50 with a paid account. (I've tried this del.icio.us tool and it doesn't seem to work on LJ)

- Wordpress.com lets you have unlimited private readers for $30 (which I'd gladly pay for), and seems to have good blogroll capabilities ... but there are just a few boringly tasteful templates, they can't be customized at all (nor can you import one from a third party), and the main column is too wide anyway.

I'm willing to pay a reasonable amount of money, but free would be ideal, needless to say.

I've looked through AskMe tags, tried Googling for feature comparisons, and looked at help/FAQ pages from Blogger, Livejournal, and Wordpress. Of course, this turns up tons of information about different features offered by different services, but I'm not seeing a big-picture solution to my problem. (And I'm suspicious of the blog services' official help pages because they seem to try to conceal their limitations.)

Am I missing some way to have everything I want, or is this just not available? If not, then what do you think would be the least-bad option? I realize that the answer might simply be that I'm right -- none of the services work for the above reasons. But I wanted to run this by the hive mind to see if there's either some workaround for the above problems or some other service that offers what I want. I'm honestly on the verge of giving up blogging because there doesn't seem to be a viable service out there.

Can a blogger ID specific readers by IP address?

Locative — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:50:32 -0800

Can a blogger tell that I am reading their blog by my IP address? I read a Blogger/Blogspot blog in my Google Reader feed. Can the owner of the blog tell that I am reading it by my IP address?

A while ago, I subscribed to the blog of an eccentric friend of a friend for the lulz. This blogger just fired off a post saying that she knows who is reading it because of the IP addresses, and called out all unauthorized readers as "stalkers." I'm a little creeped out, since I didn't really want this blogger to know I was reading her posts and want to avoid any drama. Is it actually possible for a blogger to ID specific readers by IP address?

Apologies for my ignorance, but my understanding of how IP addresses work is that (unless you are mathowie caliber) a person can only find out a region and city from an IP address, but not a specific name. Wouldn't someone have to petition a ISP to find out a person's name?

Thanks in advance, and further apologies for a question that I'm sure is quite basic.

How can I get rid of a Blogspot spam blog?

Locative — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:05:15 -0800

How can I get rid of a Blogspot spam blog? A year ago, I had a blog related to my professional interests set up on on Blogger. I posted a while, but eventually deleted it. It was not at all popular and used a very obscure address (i.e. obscureblogname.blogspot.com). A few months ago, I Googled myself and in the results found an old link to my blog from a prominent blogger in my field (from when the blog was still active). Since the link was dead, I didn't care -- until I realized that the same URL is now being used for one of Blogger's many spam blogs.

Essentially, I don't want people (especially prospective employers) Googling me and finding a link to a blog full of debt consolidation crap. I tried asking the prominent blogger to take down the link, but he never replied. I have flagged the blog, but it remains up months later. Is there anything I can do to expedite the removal of this blog from the site? Thank you!

Splitting posts

lilkeith07 — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 11:43:52 -0800

I have a blog and using blogger but the blog is hosted on my own site. I'm having a problem splitting up posts. The problem I'm having is that I'm using:

Here is the beginning of my post.
span class="fullpost"
And here is the rest of it.
/span
(with <> arrows around the span sections)

to break up long posts into separate pages. Its fine at working the only problem that I'm having is that the "hit the jump" link that brings you to the next page is at the bottom of the post under all the labels and hard to find. Is there a way I can move the "hit the jump" to right under the post and above the labels? I looked at the template but I can't figure out where it would be in there. Heres a link to my blog so you can see what I mean.

How do I create a page full of feeds?

joshnunn — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:22:19 -0800

Are there any simple sites that will help me combine a bunch of (RSS) feeds into a new page? I'm gonna be teaching my mother (and eventually other teachers) how they can blog and use wikis etc. I'll also be teaching her how quickly share links with others using del.icio.us or Google Notebook, and share interesting items from Google Reader/Bloglines. The problem is that all these things produce different feeds, and it'd be nice if she could have a page that she can set up that combines all the feeds into a single dynamic page that's constantly updating as she tags new stuff. All the different tools are useful in their own way - a blog for her own thoughts/opinions, Notebook for sharing pages and snippets, Reader for sharing other blog posts, but none have a simple way to combine together to form a 'super-feed'.

I realise there are many many ways to do this:
yahoo pipes
feeddigest
simplepie

But I need something with the simplicity of all the other tools I've mentioned. There has to be no setup, it's got to be free, and hosted. I thought I might be able to use Google Pages, or blogger, but neither let you pull in a feed and combine it with other feeds as new content.

I look forward to hearing if anyone has found something like this - I don't even know what phrases to Google with.

Blogger -> Tumblr?

roofus — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 09:40:52 -0800

I need advice about how not to screw up switching my blog from blogger to tumblr. My blog has been with blogger for four years, hosted at my own domain name by godaddy.com (e.g. not blogspot). I am thinking of switching over to tumblr, and am 99% sure I will screw it up. My questions in approximate order of importance:
1. Do I need to do something fancy with DNS? Would it be easier to use a subdomain?
2. What happens to my feed? Am I going to instantly lose all my subscribers unless they subscribe to a new feed?
3. What should I do about the archives, including the archived comments (Haloscan for the last 2 years or so)? If possible I'd like to maintain deep access to my archives by the Googlebots. Do I have to accept a sort of rift in the archives and the formatting between old blog and new blog?

Now where did that link go?

Solomon — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 05:34:03 -0800

What HTML code do I need to add to my Blogger blog template to automatically underline all the links I make in a blog posting? I can get the links to show up in the correct colour, but that colour is quite close to black, so I'd like the text to be highlighted another way, one that is expected when linking. I do not want to change the colours. I'm pretty thick when it comes to HTML, so I'd really appreciate it if you were quite explicit when saying where it has to be. The blog is linked to in my profile, if you need to see the page source.

How do I automatically create a new window, blog stylee?

Rabulah — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 11:48:05 -0800

Blogger.com template query - I'm using the Minima Ochre template. What HTML can I add to the template to make all links open in a new window? I love linking to interesting things I find as I trot round the web on my blog. However, I'd also like those interesting things to open in a new window/tab when the user clicks on the link.

I know I can add 'target="_blank" ' to the HTML of every link I make, but I don't want to have to do this for every link I create. I'd like to have some HTML in the template that will automatically create a "new window link" for me.

Is this possible? If so, how?

Woops, wrong blog...

Solomon — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 14:53:50 -0800

I have several Blogger blogs. They get arranged in order of "last post created". I'd like to have them arranged in a specific order. Currently, the top blog is the blog that had a post created soonest. I post to each blog once a day in the morning, but for a few of them, I go back later on in the day and edit the posting. Being a not-morning person, I sometimes forget to add the morning posting to the blog in the correct order, which means later on in the day, I add to the wrong blog.

I have an order that I like the blogs to be listed in. I'm looking for perhaps a Greasemonkey script, or Firefox extension to put the blogs in that order automatically.

Does such a thing exist?