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The Official Buzz from Blogger at Google

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Show off your favorite blogs with a Blog List

Today we’re releasing a new page element for Layouts blogs: Blog List. The Blog List improves on our Link List page element by using blogs’ RSS and Atom feeds to show update times, post titles, and snippets.

Use a Blog List to put a blogroll in your sidebar, or make a few to categorize the blogs you read. The Blog List works well for any page that has an RSS or Atom feed, so you can get creative: link to news sites, podcasts, Twitter streams, search results, or anything else with a feed.

Here’s a quick summary of the features that a Blog List gives you:
  • Link to blogs, web pages, and feeds from your blog’s sidebar, with an optional favicon
  • For pages with RSS and Atom feeds, Blog List can show last updated time, post title, and a snippet of the latest post
  • Sort links alphabetically or by last update time
  • Show all links, or hide some behind a “show all” link
  • Import subscriptions from Google Reader
  • Blog List links are visible to search engine crawlers, so your blog’s PageRank and reputation flow to those you link to
Want to see it in action? We made a help video to walk you through adding and configuring a Blog List:



Thanks go out to everyone who chimed in on the Blogger in draft blog while this feature was being developed. You helped us a lot!

Tip: Want to show more posts from a single blog? Use the Feed page element to put any RSS or Atom feed in your blog’s sidebar.

Google: Blogger Buzz

Updates and Bug Fixes for June 5th

Today’s release brings a handful of tweaks and fixes, as well as the new Blog List page element. Here’s some of what we fixed:
  • If you delete a post or make a typo in a post URL, the resulting 404 page now says “page not found” instead of the incorrect “blog not found.”
  • <blockquote> tags no longer break the line height of later paragraphs in the Minima, Scribe, Harbor, Dots, 867/565, Moto, and Thisaway templates. If you’ve edited your CSS or blog widget template, you may not get this fix, or, worse, you’ll lose line spacing in your posts. For a fix, see the known issue on this bug. (We apologize for this one-time disruption.)
  • OpenID logins for comments now work when the OpenID URL redirects to another page.
  • Layouts blogs will now display on Blog*Spot even when the template has invalid data: tags, rather than showing a bX code page.
  • Performance improvements across Blogger.com and Blog*Spot.
Enjoy! We’ll have a bit more to say about Blog List later today, as well as some new fixes and features on Blogger in draft.

Google: Blogger Buzz

Updates and Bug Fixes for May 9th

Here’s a quick summary of recent fixes and changes we’ve made to Blogger:
  • Layouts now has a blog.pageName datum that gives the name of the current page without the “[Blog Name]: ” prefix that blog.pageTitle adds.
  • Picture page element can now optionally link the picture to a URL.
  • Warnings and better handling of interrupted video uploads.
  • Pictures shot in burst mode on Sony Ericsson phones are now rotated correctly.
  • Blog URL now updates correctly when switching between Blog*Spot and FTP hosting.
  • Usability improvements to photo deletion workflow on the delete post page.
  • “Cancel” button on delete post page no longer has unnecessary quotation marks.
  • Miscellaneous translation improvements.
  • Profile URLs and threading data are now available via Atom feed.
  • Reliability and feature improvements to the Blog List and gadget directory on Blogger in draft.
Also, in case you missed the announcement, last week we started scheduling posts dated in the future.

Apologies again for the unexpected appearance of star ratings. Look for this feature soon (opt-in only!) on Blogger in draft.

Google: Blogger Buzz

Multiple-size Embedded Presentations from Google Docs

Google Docs has just updated their embedded presentation feature to support multiple sizes, so now presentations can look even better in blog posts. To add a presentation to your blog, create it in Google Docs and copy the “Mini Presentation Module” HTML into a blog post. (See: Embedding Presentations in a Web Site)

For an example, take a look at this small-sized presentation:

You can include YouTube videos, images, and text captions into slides to condense and display a “deck” of graphical content in a concise format in your posts.

Google Docs is a free, web-based word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application. Try it now.

Google: Blogger Buzz

Blogger now schedules future-dated posts

Scheduled post publishing, which we talked about testing on Blogger in draft last month, is now live for everyone. If you set a post’s date into the future, Blogger will wait to publish until that time comes.

Have you ever wanted to announce something on a certain date but knew you wouldn’t be at a computer to make a post? Or you wanted to keep posting regularly but knew you’d be on vacation for a few weeks? Scheduled post publishing is here to help you out.

Scheduling a post is easy to do: on the post editor page, click the “Post Options” toggle to show the “Post date and time” fields. Then, type a post date and time that’s in the future. When you click the “Publish” button, your post will become “scheduled.” When the date and time of the post arrive, it will be automatically published to your blog.


“Scheduled” posts appear in your Edit Posts list alongside your drafts and published posts. To un-schedule a post, simply save it as a draft any time before it gets published.

One quick note: If you want to give a post a date in the future but have it appear on your blog now, you’ll need to add in an extra step. First, publish your post with the current date and time. This will make it appear on your blog. Then, edit the post to change the date into the future and publish it again.

We don’t re-schedule posts that are already published, so the post will stay on your blog but sort to the very top. The same is true of future dated posts you’ve already made, so there’s no need to worry about your existing posts disappearing, or having your blog assaulted by unplanned entries in, say, 2027.

P.S.: Thanks to everyone who tested this out on Blogger in draft and posted comments! We appreciate your time and effort.

Google: Blogger Buzz

Updates and Bug Fixes for April 18th

We haven’t made one of these posts for a while, so here’s a quick summary of some of the changes and fixes we’ve made today and in the past few weeks.

Today’s Fixes
  • The “Add another image” link in the image upload box now works even if you haven’t filled in a URL.
  • The labels field in the post editor autocompletes more predictably when one label starts with the same words as another.
  • URLs in the Name / URL part of the comment form are now validated.
  • Header fixes for the 897 and 565 templates.
  • The draft / published / scheduled filters on the Edit Posts list now work reliably in Internet Explorer.
  • Videos uploaded through Sony Ericsson phones now appear as enclosures in the blog’s Atom and RSS feeds, so they can be retrieved with a video podcast client.
  • Miscellaneous typos and translations corrected.
Other Recent Changes:
  • New blogs have OpenID commenting enabled by default.
  • XFN rel="me" links between blogs and profiles.
  • Adding more than 5 poll choices now works in Internet Explorer.
  • The search box on the Edit Posts page is now available in all supported languages.
  • The “www” redirect option is now available for custom domains that end in “.co.uk.”
  • New “Related Resources” box on the Dashboard links to AdSense, Google Reader, and Picasa Web Albums.

Google: Blogger Buzz

So long, and thanks for all the zen!

We’re bidding farewell today to Eric Case. Eric joined Google five years ago so that he could do something — anything — for Blogger. Since then, he’s answered support tickets, launched blogs, designed features, hung out with MC Hammer, eaten very slowly without drinking, and, for the past year, been our product manager, with all that that entails.

We’ll miss you, Eric! You made Blogger better. Good luck with your next endeavors, and we’ll be reading your blog.

— Pete, and the rest of the Blogger team

Google: Blogger Buzz

Blog List, Scheduled Post Publishing on Blogger in draft

Have you tried out Blogger in draft, Blogger’s experimental features site, recently? Blogger in draft is a version of Blogger with features we’re trying out before we “publish” them to everybody on the main site. (See our original announcement: “Blogger... in draft.”)

If you’re feeling adventurous, all you need to do to try it out is log in to draft.blogger.com instead of www.blogger.com. If you see the blueprint logo then you’re in the right place.

Our two latest features, which you can try out now on draft.blogger.com, are:
  • Scheduled Post Publishing If you write a post on Blogger in draft and set the post’s date and time to some time in the future, we’ll schedule the post to appear on your blog at that time, and not before.
  • Blog List Add a blogroll to your blog’s sidebar. The Blog List is powered by Google Reader, so it can show when each blog was last updated and even include post titles and snippets.
Keep in mind these features are still being worked on, and let us know if you find any problems.

We have other page elements on draft, too:
  • Help your readers subscribe to your blog in their favorite feed reader with the Feed Subscription page element.
  • Add any of the thousands of Google Gadgets to your blog’s sidebar with our Google Gadget support.
  • Search over your blog, your Link Lists, or all the pages you’ve ever linked to with the Search Box.
We post the latest news about Blogger in draft to the Blogger in draft blog. Stop by often and write comments about how the draft features are working for you.

Google: Blogger Buzz

Announcing Google Weblogs (beta)

Update: This was an April Fools Day post. :)
Today we’d like to offer you a sneak peek at an exciting new product we’ve been working on: Google Weblogs.

Since Google bought Pyra Labs in 2002, we’ve been dreaming, planning, and implementing the next revolution in personal publishing: Google Weblogs.

Google Weblogs, or “GWeblogs,” or “Gblogs,” which will launch later this year in a public beta, is the next revolution in personal publishing. Here’s what you can expect:
  • Don’t limit yourself to “reverse chronological” publishing. Our advanced Google algorithms put your best content at the top of your blog. Even if your later work goes downhill your previous posts will still shine.
  • No more template languages to mess with or sidebars to get right. Our advanced Google algorithms automatically populate your blog’s sidebar with the most relevant possible content.
  • Stop worrying about your PageRank or your search engine optimization. Post directly into Google search results for maximum visibility.
  • Save your readers time and effort. We’ll automatically extract the most relevant sentence from your post for the index page, along with any necessary ellipsis. We'll also put some words in bold!
  • Your blog’s header will stay fresh with new images from our team of artists, each and every anniversary of a scientific achievement.
  • Unsure of what to post about? Just click “I’m Feeling Lucky” and we’ll “take care” of the rest!
Excited? So are we! Take a look at this sneak peek of Blogger Buzz, powered by Google Weblogs.

We’ve put together a quick video tour to take you through the highlights of Google Weblogs. Check it out!

Google: Blogger Buzz

Blogger Help Videos

For all you visual learners who want to add features to your blog, but don't have the patience to browse our help articles, we've created the new Blogger Help YouTube Channel. There you can find videos that show you step by step how to use Blogger features.




There are only a few videos at the moment, and we've decided to start with the basics:

In the coming months we'll be adding more videos. If you have a suggestion for a video you'd like to see, let us know by posting in our Help Group. In addition, you can give us feedback on each video's comment form. We're always trying to find new and better ways to help you use Blogger and we appreciate the feedback - thanks!

Google: Blogger Buzz

Blogger Party at SXSW: Sunday, 9:30–2:00 at Club de Ville

Going to be in Austin for this year’s South by Southwest festival? That makes several of us!

Blogger is once again rocking it out at Club de Ville [map] with delicious snacks, an open bar, Blogger Play, and our SXSW staple: climate-inappropriate schwag.

The party starts at 9:30PM this Sunday and goes until 2AM on Monday.

You’ll need an invitation to get in the door. Members of the Blogger team will be at the Interactive conference, so just stop anyone you see wearing a Blogger logo and ask. If it’s one of us, you’ll get an invitation. If it’s someone else, you’ll still make a new Blogger-loving friend.

Want more drinking on Google’s dime? Come to these parties:

Google Party
Light Bar [map]
Saturday, 6PM–8PM
(This would be a pretty sure place to find invitations to the Blogger party as well.)

OpenSocial OpenBar
McCormick & Schmick’s (back room) [map]
Monday, 6PM–8PM

See you there!

Google: Blogger Buzz

GrandCentral: receive calls and post voicemail with your blog

With GrandCentral, a free service from Google, you can receive phone calls and post voicemails right on your blog. Though GrandCentral is currently in a private beta test, bloggers can skip the wait and get a free account immediately. Sign up now

WebCall Button
When you add GrandCentral’s WebCall button to your blog, your readers can easily call your phone or leave voicemails without ever seeing your telephone number.

You can screen calls, either accepting them or sending them to voicemail, and you can even block unwanted callers altogether. Learn how to add a WebCall button to your blog, and try it out for yourself below:


Voicemail Inbox


Your voicemail is all kept in a visual online inbox that is easy to manage. Store as many as you like for as long as you like, or post them to your blog so anyone can hear them. Here’s what it looks like to put a voicemail on your blog:


Sign Up Now
Ready to get started? Follow these links:
  1. Sign up for GrandCentral for free
  2. Add a WebCall button to your sidebar
  3. Post your voicemails to your blog

Google: Blogger Buzz

So long, and thanks for all the Help!

I'm saddened to have to do this yet again, but today we're saying our collective goodbyes to Graham Waldon, one of the longest-serving members of the Blogger team at Google. I was fortunate enough to have interviewed Graham before he joined us back in 2003, and after a few minutes of chatting I immediately knew he was our guy.

Over the years Graham’s provided amazingly patient and exemplary service to Blogger’s users, and set an impossibly high bar with his work — from constantly improving Blogger’s Help site, to personally answering countless help emails, to digging up fantastic Blogs of Note, to training new members of the Support team. He’s even moonlighted a bit, helping the Reader team with their support efforts!

Best of luck, Graham — it looks like you’ll be keeping plenty busy during the coming months, but be sure to swing by for lunch every now and then. ;)

- Eric and the rest of the Blogger team

Google: Blogger Buzz

Blogger now in Filipino

This is a quick post to announce that, in addition to Blogger’s recent improvements and fixes, we are now available in Filipino.

There is already a very strong blogging community in the Philippines, and we’re very happy to support that and be a part of it. Want a taste? Start with our friend Aileen and keep clicking!

Google: Blogger Buzz

Updates and Bug Fixes for February 12th

Today’s release brings a number of updates to Blogger:
  • Clearer identity options on the comment form, which now highlights some of the more popular OpenID providers more obviously.
  • Transliteration is now available in Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu as well as Hindi
  • Posts with more than 200 comments have them split across multiple pages.
  • Layouts blogs now have a “Layouts” tab instead of “Template.”
We also made fixes to address bugs and other problems, including:
  • Better Persian translations and other BiDi layout fixes
  • A fix to the long-standing incorrect label counts bug
  • Safari 3 support for the Layouts template editor pages
  • Faster loading times for the post editor
  • Improved international support in the post editor’s date and time fields
  • Compatibility fixes for Picasa’s BlogThis! button
Nevertheless, there are two new issues that you should know about:
(Curious about other problems? Browse and vote at the Known Issues blog.)

Update, 8:30PM: Added new transliteration languages to features list
Update, 12:30PM: Fixed embarrassing typo in this post’s title. (Thx, Kamilia!)

Google: Blogger Buzz

Updates and Bug Fixes for Feburary 12th

Today’s release brings a number of updates to Blogger:
  • Clearer identity options on the comment form, which now highlights some of the more popular OpenID providers more obviously.
  • Transliteration is now available in Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu as well as Hindi
  • Posts with more than 200 comments have them split across multiple pages.
  • Layouts blogs now have a “Layouts” tab instead of “Template.”
We also made fixes to address bugs and other problems, including:
  • Better Persian translations and other BiDi layout fixes
  • A fix to the long-standing incorrect label counts bug
  • Safari 3 support for the Layouts template editor pages
  • Faster loading times for the post editor
  • Improved international support in the post editor’s date and time fields
  • Compatibility fixes for Picasa’s BlogThis! button
Nevertheless, there are two new issues that you should know about:
(Curious about other problems? Browse and vote at the Known Issues blog.)

Update, 8:30PM: Added new transliteration languages to features list

Google: Blogger Buzz

Three new languages and a whole new direction for Blogger

We are excited to announce that Blogger is now available in three more languages: Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian!

Blogger in Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian
Supporting these languages is a huge milestone for us because — unlike the other 37 languages Blogger is translated into — Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew are written from right to left. As you can see from the above screenshot, we had to flip the whole interface around.

Besides localizing the Blogger interface into these three languages, we have right-to-left templates and have added new toolbar buttons for bi-directional text editing in the post editor.

The effort was worth it, however, and we’re tremendously happy to be a part of the growing Arabic-, Hebrew-, and Persian-language blogging communities.

Changing your language preferences and settings
To see the Blogger interface in one of these languages, just use the menu on your Dashboard. You can also choose your language on Blogger’s homepage and via the “Language” link in the footer of most pages.

From then on, all new blogs you create will default to using your new language choice.

If you need to change the language of an existing blog, just go to Settings > Formatting and select a new language there. Your blog language affects date formatting and other blog text, and, with today’s release of Blogger, your blog’s comments form as well.

Right-to-left templates
For Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew blogs, we will also rearrange your template to read more logically from right to left. So, a blog that once looked like this:


will now look like this:


Please note that your template won’t change if you’ve customized it with Edit HTML; we wouldn’t dare muck with your data! Also, if you’re still using a Classic template you will have to upgrade to Layouts in order to take advantage of bidirectional language templates. Learn how.

Bidirectional text editing
We’ve also added right-to-left and left-to-right buttons to Blogger’s post editor. They’ll appear if your Dashboard language or your blog’s language setting is for a right-to-left language.
Clicking on these buttons will set the paragraph you are currently editing to either right-to-left or left-to-right mode. This way you can write truly bidirectional posts.

Happy rtl-blogging!

Google: Blogger Buzz

2007 Roundup

2007 has been Blogger's most amazing year yet! As you'll remember, we began it just after we had taken the new version of Blogger out of beta. Here's a quick run-down of many of the fun things we did since then:
If you're not using any of these on your blog, click through to the various Buzz posts and Help articles that explain them, and check them out — they're really nifty. And many thanks for sticking with Blogger through the transition to the new version earlier this year — it's a powerful and scalable platform on which we'll be building lots of exciting new features in 2008!

Google: Blogger Buzz

You Blog, We Listen

Two fixes just went live, before we sign off for a brief holiday break:
  • Unregistered commenters can once again provide an auto-linked URL [Help Group Thread]
  • Images in the Header page element will no longer be cropped vertically [Help Group thread]
We apologize for having broken these features for you. Your blogs and Help Group posts showed us the true extent to which you used and cared about these features, so please let us know if they're still being problematic.

Thanks for your patience!

Google: Blogger Buzz

OpenID Commenting

After just two short weeks of testing on Blogger in draft, OpenID commenting is now available for all Blogger blogs. This means that your friends and readers can leave authenticated comments on your blog using their blog URLs from OpenID-enabled services such as WordPress.com, LiveJournal, and AOL Journals, or with their AOL/AIM accounts.


We've chosen a few popular OpenID providers to highlight on the comments form, but OpenID is, well, "open"! You can use any OpenID service to post a comment by choosing "Any OpenID" and filling in your OpenID URL.

You'll see the OpenID icon (OpenID icon) next to the names of commenters who posted with their OpenID. This icon assures you that the person who posted the comment is the same person blogging at the URL their name links to. Say goodbye to comment spoofing!

Turning on OpenID commenting on your blog

If you've set your "Who Can Comment?" setting to "Anyone," OpenID will be enabled on your comments pages right now! To change your comments settings, go to your blog's Settings | Comments tab in Blogger, and select "Registered Users" or "Anyone" in the Who Can Comment setting:


Getting an OpenID URL for your site

Blogger provides helpful shortcuts to WordPress.com, LiveJournal, TypeKey, and AOL, but you can use any URL that you control as your OpenID URL by using delegation.

For example, say you have a LiveJournal account with the username "brad." This gives you an OpenID URL at http://www.livejournal.com/users/brad/. You could comment with this URL, but you'd rather have your comments link to your homepage at http://bradfitz.com/.

By copying two lines of HTML into the <head> tag of http://bradfitz.com/, you can turn it into an OpenID URL. Then, you can use http://bradfitz.com/ to sign your comments, while logging in to LiveJournal when you do so.

Delegation gives you complete control over what URL you use to represent yourself online, and complete control over what service you want to use to login with. Sam Ruby wrote a great article about OpenID delegation that we recommend if you're interested.

LiveJournal, AOL, WordPress.com, and TypeKey aren't the only OpenID providers out there. If you need an OpenID account, you can also get one from myOpenID, Verisign, or any other service that implements OpenID.

The "Other" URL field

Right now, the only way to add a URL to your name when commenting is to sign your comment with OpenID. We apologize for removing the URL field from the comments form prematurely two weeks ago. That was a mistake on our part that came from launching OpenID support on Blogger in draft.

Ironically, our testing of OpenID, a feature that lets you use accounts from all over the web to comment on Blogger, made it appear that we were trying to force you into getting a Google Account. We regret this appearance, since we're strong supporters of OpenID and open web standards in general.

If you haven't set up OpenID, you can still link to your blog — or any webpage, for that matter — by using the standard <a> tag inside the comment form.

Google: Blogger Buzz

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