How the data in Blogger blogs is organised

This article explains the building-blocks that Blogger uses to make your blog's web pages.  It explains which ones you can and cannot control, and links to other articles with more details about this.



Overview

Previously (Blogs, Blogger, bloggers, Posts, Pages and Screens), I've explained that Blogger is a software program that lets you make blog-style websites.

Each type of blogging software (Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, etc) works in a different way.  And each one uses different "pieces" of data to put a blog together.   This diagram describes the components ("pieces") that Blogger uses:

Components in Blogger:

Posts and Pages:
These are where you enter most of the "content" of your blog.  They are edited from Post Editor or Page Editor, which is on the Posting tab.   Pages are supposed to be for static content that doesn't change often, but these days many bloggers put Posts into their Pages anyway.

Comments:
Comments are where other people have responded to the content of your blog.  They are created in the Comments window which is underneath Posts when someone is viewing your blog, provided you have opted to display Posts.   Your administrators can leave comments too - in exactly the same way.

The Posting / Comments moderation tab lets administrators (and authors?  I'm not sure) either Publish or Reject comments.  Apart from that, there is no way to edit them.

Content which is "linked to" from your Blog:
There are some items which feel like they are part of your blog, but which aren't actually stored in the blog.   For example, a picture that's in the middle of a post is stored in Picasa Web Albums:  your  post simply has some code which says where to find the picture and how to display it.

This content can be edited in where-ever it is, and the next time someone looks at your blog they will see the updated content.  For example, one of my blogs shows a lot of Google Custom Maps:  if I edit a map in the Maps application, the changed version is in my blog.

However this does depend on whether the place that your data is stored lets you edit it without changing the URL (ie address) of the file:  if it changes (as it sometimes does if you try to edit from Picasa-web-albums), then your blog-posts that point to it will have a broken-link.


Blog Template
Your blog template says how screens in your blog should be drawn.

Many of the options in the Template designer tab (especially Fonts & Colors) let you use point-and-click screens to edit values that are stored in your template.   And in many cases you can directly edit the template yourself, if you are brave enough.

Post Template
The Post Template is a separate piece of code that controls how your Posts and Pages are displayed.   You cannot see it, and the only way that you can control it is from the options in the Layout > Blog Posts tab and the Settings > Posts and Comments tab.

Sometimes Post Templates become corrupt:  the main symptom of this is that no matter what settings you choose, the items that are shown for each post (lables, author, date/time) don't change.   A solution is described in this article.

Widget Settings
Widgets (also called gadgets and page-elements) are the "things" that are put onto your blog.   Adding a new widget is very easy - depending on what gadget you use, you can enter a range of information about it, things like the title to give it, how to structure what it displays (eg should the archive be flat or hierarchical).

Some of the widget settings are is stored in the Blog template, but not all of them.  The only way to edit widget settings that are not in the Layout template is through the Layout  > Page Elements options (Design > Page Elements in the old blogger interface).

Other Settings
Blogger stores a number of other settings about your blog.  For example, if the readership is limited (and who to), who should be notified when new comments are left, the re-direct address for the feed of Posts, etc, etc, etc.

The only way to edit these settings is through the relevant tab:  there is no other way (inside Blogger) to view or change them.


Components outside Blogger:

As well as the data-items that Blogger directly uses, blogs have some data that is stored right outside Blogger.   Examples include

• The RSS feed details that have been set in Feedburner (or similar)
• Facebook account links
• Lists of email subscribers,
• etc.

I have not considered them because they are so wide-ranging - and because they're right outside Blogger's main functions.

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Related Articles: 



Types of Blogger Template

Blogs, Blogger, bloggers, Posts, Pages and Screens

Resetting your Post Template (external link)

Putting posts into your blog's pages

What template does your Blog use: the quick way to find out

This article is about the fast way to find out what style of template (eg Minima, Tekka, Simple, etc) your blog uses.  It's a support-article for a series about Preparing to Change Your Template.

Why you need to know what template you're using:

Previously I've described how to find out what type of template your blog has (ie is it Classic, Layout, Designer or Dynamic).

But sometimes (eg when you are preparing to change templates, or when you need prepare to ask a support question) you need to know which specific one of the Layout or Designer templates you're using.

How to find out:


The hard way:
These days, you need to work through the options to work out what type of template your blog has, and the name will be apparent from the screens you end up on.


The easy way:


1  View your blog.

2  Press the key or menu item that shows the source-code for the page you're looking at.
(In Firefox, it's Ctrl/U.    In Chrome version 16 and above, choose Tools from the spanner-menu at the top-right, and then choose View source fromthe sub-menu.)

3  At the top of the source code that is displayed, there is some code like this (and a few more similar lines):

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html dir='ltr' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml' xmlns:b='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/b' xmlns:data='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/data' xmlns:expr='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/expr'>
<head>
<META content='e20505dd1f20eff9' name='y_key'>
</META>
<meta content='text/html; charset=UTF-8' http-equiv='Content-Type'/>
<script type="text/javascript">(function() { var a=window;function c(b){this.t={};this.tick=function(d,i,e){e=e?e:(new Date).getTime();this.t[d]=[e,i]};this.tick("start",null,b)}var f=new c;a.jstiming={Timer:c,load:f};try{var g=null;if(a.chrome&&a.chrome.csi)g=Math.floor(a.chrome.csi().pageT);if(g==null)if(a.gtbExternal)g=a.gtbExternal.pageT();if(g==null)if(a.external)g=a.external.pageT;if(g)a.jstiming.pt=g}catch(h){};a.tickAboveFold=function(b){b=b;var d=0;if(b.offsetParent){do d+=b.offsetTop;while(b=b.offsetParent)}b=d;b<=750&&a.jstiming.load.tick("aft")};var j=false;function k(){if(!j){j=true;a.jstiming.load.tick("firstScrollTime")}}a.addEventListener?a.addEventListener("scroll",k,false):a.attachEvent("onscroll",k);
 })();</script>
<meta content='true' name='MSSmartTagsPreventParsing'/>
<meta content='blogger' name='generator'/>

Underneath that, though, are some comments, usually followed by a Variable Declaration section.   It's very likely that the template name and the name of the company that produced it, will be in these comments.

For example, Blogger-Hints-and-Tips used to use a template called Tekka - I know that, because the code used to say:

/*
* Tekka
* style modified from glish: http://www.glish.com/css/
*
* Updated by Blogger Team
*/
/* Variable definitions
<Variable name="mainBgColor" description="Page Background Color"
type="color" default="#f5f5f5">
<Variable name="mainTextColor"  description="Text Color"
type="color" default="#000000">

Now it says

-----------------------------------------------Blogger Template StyleName: SimpleDesigner: Josh PetersonURL: www.noaesthetic.com----------------------------------------------- *//* Variable definitions====================

so I know that the template name is Simple.


Note:  it seems that this approach does not work for blogs with Dynamic-view templates - so you'll have to use the hard way for them.

---

Related Articles: 



Types of Blogger template

Asking Blogger support questions

Introducing Dynamic View templates

Making a test-blog for template changes

This article is one of a series about preparing to change the template in Blogger.  It looks at how to make a template-test blog.  

Other articles in the series - coming soon - tell you how to use this template to plan your template change so that you don't lose any key features that you've installed before.


Steps to make a template-test blog:

1  Check your blog's post-template

Go into Design > Page Elements > Blog Posts (edit), and change one of the ticked items (just temporarily).    For example, show reactions or un-show an item that is currently shown.   Save this change, and check that it appears on your blog.

If the change is ok, then you can un-do it, and move directly to the next step.

But if they change doesn't show up, then you have a corrupt post-template.   You may want to re-set the post template and be sure that your blog is showing the items you want before moving on.


2  Create a new blog to work with:

Find out what template your existing blog has.

Go to the Dashboard, and click Create a Blog.  Give it a name and URL like "testing-YOURBLOGNAME"

When Blogger asks which starter template to use, choose your current template, (if it's on the list shown), or just any template.

After the blog has been created, press Start Blogging,

Go to the Settings / Basic tab and set

• "Add your blog to our listings?" = No
• "Let search engines find your blog?" = No  

 
3  Give it the same settings as your real blog:

In this step, you need to make your test blog have the same structure as your current blog.   This doesn't mean the same contents, just the same widgets and other background settings that affect how the blog looks.   The particular things you need to check include:

• In the Settings / Basic tab, set all the other options (except the ones at the end of the last section) to exactly the same settings as your real blog has.

• In the Settings > Formatting tab, do the same thing.

• In the Settings > Comments tab, do the same thing.

• Go to Design > Template Designer and choose the SAME template that your existing blog has.

• Go to Design / Page Elements / Blog Posting, and give your test blog exactly the same settings as your main one:  this includes their position on the page, as well as whether or not they're displayed.

• Go to Design > Page Elements, and use the Add a Gadget function to give your test blog EXACTLY the same gadgets that your main blog has. 
  
  This step is tedious if you have  a lot of gadgets.  But there are no shortcuts:  uploading the downloaded template would apply the template customisations as well as the gadgets, which defeats the purpose!   And even though it's a lot of work, it's worth it if your blog has a lot of "weight" (visitors, authority etc) an so you don't want to risk having it fail.

If you have done any structural change to your template (eg I added a footer sectionto the Blogger-Hints-and-Tips blog), then you will need to do the same structural change to your test-blog as well.   This is ok, because you most probably will not be needing the same structural change in your new template. 

If there are any gadgets on your main blog that you've been planning to delete anyway, it would be good to do this now - it saves having to re-create them in your test blog

Technically you should apply any header images and the same fonts and colours too: I chose not to do this when I was preparing to move BHAT, because I didn't want to accidentally make an update to the test-blog which should have one to the real blog - having the colours and header look different reduced the chance that I would make this sort of mistake.


3  Get some posts to test with:

Choose whether to import all your existing posts into the testing blog, or just copy some individual posts. Or you may choose not to test with any at all (at this stage).

Note:  Any links in your posts WON'T be re-directed, so when you are testing, you will find that clicking any internal links in your posts will take you back to your main blog. If you are moving all posts, you could avoid this by opening the export file with a text-editor, and doing a fine/replace to change the main blog's URL to the testing blog's URL in any links.

Depending on what kind of tests you want to do, you may not need many posts.   Personally, when I was preparing to move BHAT I just did two.

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Related Articles: 



Adding a footer section to your Layout Template blog
 
Making a shadow-blog  for testing with

Copying all your existing posts into a new blog

Copying some posts.

Writing posts for Blogger in MS Word (etc)

This article is about how you can write the content of your blog posts when you are not connected to the internet, and actually post them later when you are connected again.

Why write off-line?

Some people like to prepare their posts while they are off-line:  This may be because their internet connection costs are very high, eg on a cruise ship as a passenger or as crew, or because their internet connection in unreliable. Some people just find that they can be more creative when they're not connected and being interrupted by chat and emails. Others may have documents that they wrote before they knew that Blogger (or even the internet) existed, that they now want to put onto a blog.

If you copy-and-paste from MS Word (and other Microsoft programs too, eg Excel, PowerPoint), then a lot of extra codes are added to your text.  These characters can have all sorts of effects, eg I've seen a help-forum post about a page element in the sidebar changing colour unexpectedly which was finally tracked down to a copy-and-paste from Word.

So, to be safe, the advice is DON'T copy and paste from Microsoft directly to your blog.

Which leaves people asking, how can I:

• Write the contents of  blog posts when I'm not connected to the internet?
• Convert existing word-processor documents into to Blogger posts?
• Load content from another tool into your blog?

Some options:

Use a text editor:
The simplest approach is to write your document contents in a text-editor (eg Notepad) without any formatting.   You can copy-and-paste from there into Blogger when you are ready, and then you apply formatting after the text is put in the blogger editor.


Double copy-and-paste:
Another approach is to write in MS Word (etc).  When you're ready to post, copy the text into a text-editor (eg Notepad) first, and then copy it again from there before you past it into the blogger editor.   You will lose any formatting (bold, italics, indents etc) that you did in Word:  they will need to be re-done once your post is in the Blogger editor.

Write externally and link to the file:
You may decide not to load the document contents into Blogger at all.  Instead, load it to a file host (see File-hosting options), and link to it from your blog post with some anchor text.  

Anchor-text is the set of words that are used to link to something - for example, in the last sentence, "file-host options" is the anchor text, and "http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/01/file-sharing-hosts.html" is the link

If you do this you want to be sure that the people who will looking at the file will have software that can read it.   One good option can by to save it as a PDF file - if you use some file hosts, you can even get the HTML to display the PDF embedded in your blog (using option two from Putting external HTML into your blog).


Use a Blog-friendly editor:
One tool that you can use for off-line work is Windows Live Writer.  I haven't tried it myself (yet), but this article about it is from a person who generally gives very good advice.   That said, if you're going to use WLW, you need to keep using it, because there are some issues with switching back to the regular Blogger editor later on.

Another possible tool is MS Word version 10.   This has an option to publish blog posts.   It may not work in all situation - eg in some companies, the network may be set up so that you cannot make the necessary connection between Word and Blogger.  Also, I'm fairly sure that it will use the Live-Writer approach, so it's likely that posts originally written in Word 10 (and higher) may not be easily edited in Blogger.

A similar approach is to use a Blogger-friendly converter, ie a piece of software that takes a Word (etc) document and turns it into the type of HTML that Blogger can handle.   Google Docs is one option - there's a separate article for this approach, because it's so new and has so many potential options and challenges.  But so far, the feedback is that this works well.

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Related Articles: 



File-hosting options.

Using Windows Live Writer (external link).

Converting Word documents to Blogger via Google Docs

Showing a PowerPoint presentation in your blog

Putting external HTML into your blog

Getting Started with Blogger

This post is about things you need to think about when you're getting started with Blogger.  It's not about blogging in general, just about tool-specific issues for Blogger, Google's free blogging tool.

First things:

1  Understand the basic concepts


Every computer tool has its own way of organising things.   When you think about how to write your blog, it's helpful if you start with an understanding of Blogger, blogs and bloggers, Posts, Pages and screens.

2  Decide which account to use

If you are writing a personal diary, travel-blog or similar, it's fine to use your personal Google account.

But if you are creating a blog for a club, or organsation or business (even your own small business that you might want to sell one day), or a blog that you might want to hand over to someone else one day, then you should think very carefully about what Google account to use.   In fact, I recommend creating a separate account (done by setting up a Gmail account) just for the blog.

If you're not convinced, read this article about transferring blog ownership, especially the parts that cannot be transferred as yet.


3  Control who can see the blog

Most blogs are open so that anyone can find them, and read them.

But if you want to stop a blog being found by search engines, or by random people looking at Google's list of blogs, then the best time to set this up is before you've written any posts.   You set it up in the Settings tab inside Blogger.

For even more control, you can make the blog Private, and choose to only invite specific people to read it.  Do this in the Settings tab, too.   But note that:

• You can only send 100 invitations 100:  they may change this in the future, but that's the limit for now.
• There are some cases when restricting your blog's  readership may not be as secure as you'd expect.

4  Help the search engines


There are lots of books, articles and websites about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

If you want search-engines (Google etc) to bring readers to your blog, then you may want to investigate some of these later on.   But there are two simple things that you should do to start with.

1. When you are trying out the various templates and formats, make sure the at the option to display titles is ON, and that you give you posts good titles.In the pre-Sept 2011 interface:Settings > Formatting > Show Title Field.
   - it's always on in the post-Sept 2011 interface
   .
2. When you start to write posts, put good keywords into the title field, and into the post contents.   

Good keywords for your blog are the ones that people will search for when they should find your blog.  They're usually quite specific - but no so specific that potential readers might miss your blog because they search for a more general term.


4  Get a template to match your blog

Each Blogger blog has a formatting-template that controls how it looks.

After you have written 2-3 posts, try using a changing to use a different template so that your blog's design matches your goals.

To change the template:

• Go to Design > Customize , and choose one, OR
• Log in to Blogger-in-Draft, and go Design..   

I don't usually recommend Blogger-in-Draft for people getting started, because it's not as stable as Blogger.  But the templates there are so much more flexible that you might want to try them anyway.

You could spend a long time "tweaking" your template to make the blog look "just right".   If this is important to you, then do it!  But most readers are more interested in the content, so you need decide how much time to spend doing this vs writing new posts.


What next?

There's no "right way" to use Blogger or make a blog:  the next steps are up to you.

Look around.   Experiment.

Keep an eye on Blogger Buzz (where Google announce new features), and on the Blogger help forums (where you can ask for help when you get stuck).  

Have fun!

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Related Articles: 



Assessing an idea for a new Blog

Changing colours in your Blog

Linking your Blog to the Social Networks

Transferring blog ownership

Managing Pictures

Restricting your blog's  readership may not be as secure as you'd expect.