Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with blogger

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.

A world made by hand, or a proprietary solution?

Bora Horza Gobuchul — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 11:49:30 -0800

Blogging software vs. roll-your-own? I have begun to experiment with a personal portfolio / travel website that will likely include some kind of blog. As a web developer, I would like the site to be something of an experimental testbed, so I plan to use CSS2 and 3, as it becomes better supported.

I have looked at a few blogging systems - MoveableType, WordPress, etc - but they appear to be "all in one" systems that impose their own template language and themes (although some give options for customising the latter). I am comfortable enough in my XHTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL and JavaScript skills that I can create my own back-end for dated blog entries, search functions, RSS feeds and the like, and I'd enjoy doing so. Is there something I'm not seeing in the blogging systems: some technical advantage or difficult-to-code feature that would make Blogger or one of its competitors a better choice than building a solution by hand?

Many thanks in advance for your answers!

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?

Dividers between same-day Blogger posts

electric water kettle — Sun, 18 May 2008 19:00:55 -0800

I'm using Blogger. I'd like to have some kind of divider in between posts I make on the same day, but I don't want this divider to appear anywhere else, like between one day's posts and another. Is there a simple way to do this?

Group blog - how to get individual post count?

TheTelf — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:50:37 -0800

If I've got a Blogger-hosted blog with multiple contributors, is there any way to easily see how many posts each person has submitted, short of counting them all manually?

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!

Weather on blogger page?

cahlers — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 16:45:20 -0800

How can I place the current weather on my blogger page? I've also seen a "right now"-style posting somewhere, not sure where. A badge that allows me to specify weather in a city or zip code to place on blogger would be great.

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.

Label problem in Blogger

GaelFC — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:33:42 -0800

How do I get Blogger to show more than 20 posts with the same label? I suspect this is a simple question, but I searched through Blogger Help and couldn't figure it out.

I have a family recipe blog that uses Blogger. I've set it up to show all the labels automatically on the front page. It automatically tells me how many recipes (posts) I've tagged with each label, for example: "Chocolate: 10."

But for the labels that are used more than 20 times, I run into trouble. The automatic list says, for example, "Main courses: 36." But when I click on that label, only 20 are shown.

Is there any way to get it to show all 36? Or a workaround? I've tried tagging my newest posts all with "new," but that's not really what I want.

I thought I read somewhere that this was a known bug that would be fixed, but I'm sure that was over a year ago.

Thanks for any help.

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!

Favicons for xml/rss feeds

zadcat — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:25:44 -0800

How do I attach a favicon to an rss (xml) feed, specifically from Blogger, although if you have more generic information I'll have a look at that too? No more inside – that's the entire question.

How can I make both the headline, and not just an entry, wrap around an image in a WordPress post?

Unsomnambulist — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:14:22 -0800

How can I make both the headline, and not just an entry, wrap around an image in a WordPress post? Using align="right" or similar in Moveable Type, Blogger, WordPress, and other blogs, anyone can format a post so that text wraps around an image. However, this always comes after the post title.

Is there a plugin or another way to force the image to wrap around a post title along with the entry? This would have be doable from within a post page, and only available as an option.

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.

Why has Photoshop forsaken me?

Andy Harwood — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 08:29:07 -0800

When i try to upload images I made in Photoshop to Blogger the colours get screwed up. It seems like all the yellow gets removed or something. Also, Photoshop won't let me save anything as a png. it just doesn't show up in the format box. Any ideas?

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?

Blogger, please leave my HTML alone...

Solomon — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 04:12:13 -0800

Is there any way of forcing Blogger to recognise the ( and ) symbols? I have an affiliate link on my blog, which is in the format of http://blah.affiliatewebsite.com/click=p(12345)a(12345). When I add that text to the HTML page on Blogger, it gets changed to http://blah.affiliatewebsite.com/click=p%2812345%29a%2812345%29, which prevents the link from working correctly.

I figured I could use the html code for (, but Blogger still changes it to %28. Is there anything I can do to make Blogger leave the HTML alone and not mess with it?

This problem happens on all browsers, so I know it's not a Firefox specific issue. Changing the affiliate link isn't an issue, unfortunately.

If you need to see the blog, my email address is in my profile. I ask a lot of questions about my blog here, and I don't want people thinking that I'm trying to advertise.

Stop the repetition!

serazin — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 09:42:01 -0800

My blog seems to be 'reposting' its feed regularly. Why, and how do I stop it? I read a number of blogs through Live Journal's syndication mechanism and periodically, they seem to 'resyndicate' a million posts from a particular blog. That is, I see a dozen old posts all at once as if they were brand new. I've always assumed that this happens if the blog owner somehow edits old posts, and although I know that can happen (I check my own blog through the LJ syndication, and have seen specific individual old posts reappear if I edit them), yesterday my entire blog 'reposted', and I hadn't changed anything at all. My blog is hosted by blogger.

I use LJ as a feed reader because it gives me access to some real-life friend's 'locked' private entries.

There is nothing on the help pages of either Blogger or LiveJournal that explains this issue.

My questions:
1) Why is this happening?
2) Does this problem happen with other feed-readers?
3) How can I stop this from happening?
4) Or, at the least, is the problem located with my blog (on blogger) or with the LJ's syndication function?

Thanks!

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.

Quick Post to Blogger from Safari 3

daviss — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 02:44:24 -0800

I recently switched from Firefox to Safari 3, and now I'm looking for an easy way to post to Blogger. I had been using the Google Toolbar in Firefox to do this. It had a nice feature where, if you selected some text, right clicked, and choose Send to Blogger, it would format it nicely with a link, the quote, and you could input your own title. Is there a way to do this with Safari?

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?