Blog – Page 7 of 10 – Blogger User

Post Summary – Read More Feature for Blogger !

Blogger’s Birthday has some very special gifts for Bloggers now. The “Read More” or say “Continue Reading” feature was really most requested and awaited feature of Bloggers. Many had applied this hack in their blog going through the entire long html editing process which was really complicated. Now Blogger as a part of its Blogger’s 10th happy birthday feature has announced the “Read more” feature with just simple steps, which it preferably calls the “Jump Breaks”. With this, you can now easily have the summary of the post with the “Read More” feature in your blog index pages.

You can activate this feature in couple of ways. If you have made “Blogger in Draft your default dashboard or just use it, you’ll see the “Insert jump break” icon in the editor’s toolbar. Alternatively you can also activate it from the Settings tab (Basic) of your respective Blog’s dashboard. See the Image below to get the idea of using the “Jump Break”.

One more thing, if you still find the old editor comfortable like I do, you can still use this feature. All you need to do is just add the code manually. In your “EDIT HTML” section of creating post, add the code <!– more –> where you want to use the Jump Break feature.

The default code will enable you to have the summary of the post with the “Read More >>” title at the break. If you need to change this to something else you can do it by editing the “Read more” text by clicking Layout and then Edit the Blog Posts widget.

For those who use custom templates, you may not be able to enjoy this feature. If you are using classic templates, blogger probably has some solution for you. Follow the instructions at the bottom of this help article of Blogger.
For more and detailed help of using this feature with customized templates, you can read the post of Bloggerbuster “Read More function to Customized Templates”
Oh yes, you Might as well jump! Like official blogger blog says while announcing this feature.

Blogger Help Blogger Tutorials September 12, 2009

Share Posts from your Blogger NavBar

I guess most of you have removed the NavBar from your Blogger Template if you are using some custom versions of the template for your blog. Well, its now time to get back the NavBar again in your template. But not really if you don’t like to use this new feature of Blogger, which allows you to share posts directly from the NavBar. NavBar of the Blogger starting from august 27, 09, includes a “SHARE” button. This button will help you to share posts to popular social networking sites and even e-mail them directly. Social Networking sites have been really popular and a lot many people use those medium to gain readers by sharing posts on such sites. Social Bookmarking widgets are really popular in the blogosphere and now it seems easier when the blogger itself comes with idea of including that in its NavBar. And I know many of you don’t like this blogger’s idea of feature being introduced in the NavBar. Anyway, you can learn how to use this feature and things you can do with it in this post.

To use this feature it’s essential that you have the NavBar in your Template. Don’t worry if you have removed the NavBar already but still interested in this feature, here is how you can add the NavBar again.

NavBar Restoring Instructions

1. From your Blogger Dashboard go to Layout > Edit HTML.
2. In most of your templates, the Blogger Navbar is not displayed just because it’s hidden. Now search for this code within your Template

#navbar-iframe {
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none;
}

3. Delete this code from your template and now Blogger NavBar should be appearing in your template.
OK if you now have the Blogger NavBar in your template, you can see the “Share” button yourself in your blog.
Now if you want to use this feature, you need to click on that “share Button”, a pop-up menu appears with links to popular networking (sharing) sites “Facebook” and “Twitter” and also the “Google Reader”. (see the Image Below). If you happen to use this feature on the item pages of your blog, you shall gain access to the “Email” feature too.

If you use this New feature of Blogger there’s a hack you can try. The blogger buzz notes the hack as
“Here’s a fun hack: each URL that gets shared has a specific parameter appended (?spref=nn, where fb=Facebook, tw=Twitter, and gr=Google Reader). If you’re using Google Analytics to measure traffic on your blog, you can search for those strings to see how much traffic you’re getting from each source.” Via Blogger Buzz

My comments:

This is one more feature announced from Blogger as a part of its 10th Birthday. It’s really good to see ongoing improvements in Blogger with often addition of new features. Frankly this feature is not great though. At least, not for users like us who choose to hide the Blog NavBar. But in case if this feature persuades you to keep the NavBar back, then its sure going to be of your benefit. Or for users who are displaying the NavBar, this is sure going to be an additional important feature for their blog.

You Say

Did you really find this feature useful? What could have been done to make it more useful? Or did this feature really persuade you to keep the NavBar back for your blog? Let us know by adding comments in the box below.

Blogger Help Blogger Tutorials August 30, 2009

Blogger has Label Clouds Now!

Blogger is releasing many features as a part of Blogger’s 10th happy birthday. Many bloggers (Blogger User) requested Blogger to change the label gadget or make it more flexible when the blogger team invited suggestions from them last April. And as of blogging groups wish, Blogger has made this feature available. It has now improved its “Label” element, thus making it more flexible and customizable according to blogger’s need and wish. With this improvement Blogger user can easily change the old format of Labels display to “Labels cloud”. You can also choose among your labels to display in the gadget. We shall be discussing two major changes from blogger in this Labels widget below.

Table of Contents

Label Clouds of Blogger

Labels in blogger were displayed as a long list with the numbers of post in the specified label previously. Though we could customize our widget to make changes according to our wish with the help of adding codes or using stuff such as javascript, it was bit tough. Now it’s relatively easier. You could just define what you need from the Blogger widget itself.
To add this feature you need to have already added the Labels page element to your template. If you haven’t added this widget, just go to PAGE ELEMENTS section under LAYOUT and “Add a Gadget” and choose “Labels“.
If you have already added the Labels Element in your blog, you can click on “EDIT” for the “Labels” widget.
See the Image below, you will get after you add or edit your “labels” widget.

Under the display option check that “Cloud” radio active button as shown in the image above. This will change your view of labels and you will get the new feature “Label cloud” in your blog.

Selected Labels to Display

Another Important change in the same “labels” gadget is the ability to choose the Labels to display. Previously, all Labels were displayed in the blog and this often limited to using labels if you have used the labels section for displaying the category one. Now you can select from the labels to display under the category widget (if you are using) or the same label widget.

As shown in the image below, you can edit the labels and choose by placing tick in the box adjacent to the specified labels you want to display. Deselect the labels you don’t want to display in your widget.

My comments:

I really like this feature of blogger and really appreciate it. However limitations such as actual differentiation among the “tags” and the “labels” remain even if we use under those topics.
This post is to make Blogger User aware of the new feature that is introduced lately. Blogger Buzz: Partly cloudy, chance of labels notes the feature “This is one of many features announced as part of Blogger’s 10th birthday. Happy Birthday!”
We wish to see more improvements soon as part of the tenth birthday of Blogger.

You Say

Let us know if you liked this new feature or any other opinions related to this by adding comments below.

Blogger Help Blogger Tutorials August 29, 2009

Wishing Blogger Happy 10th Birthday

I started using Blogger almost three years ago and Blogger really means a lot to me. I learnt how to write through blogger, I learnt how to share stories with blogger, discover people and friends with blogger and much more. Really blogger is an important part of my life that taught me how to publish my ideas and really inspired me to do so. I have developed lot skills using this platform and so blogger has been a lot beneficial for my educational and thus personal development. I am talking all these things today because Blogger has now become ten years old and I really want to Wish Blogger a Happy 10th Birthday.
I wish blogger gets improved day by day. Meanwhile Blogger also has promised the community to bring some changes the users have sought for. “Wait, what? What we could give you? That’s right. This is our birthday — but we’re celebrating your contributions over the years. …… As we turn ten, we wanted to give you some presents to commemorate this milestone and thank you for letting us be part of your story” writes blogger in its official buzz page (read the full story at Blogger Buzz). And blogger is already working on to release the changes which you can know through the Official Blogger Buzz.

Blogger News August 23, 2009