Dummies Guide to Google Blogger Beta

Ever since Beta Blogger debuted last year and then gradually shed off the beta tag, new features have quietly been intruding into the Blogger interface and making their presence felt.


After Google took over Feedburner it was only a matter of time before it connected to Blogger and now you can redirect your Blogger feeds there. Then there is the new Autosave feature below the post editor, the introduction of new widgets, the sitemap in a robots.txt file, a Twitter badge and now a Comment policy declaration at the top of your Comment Editor..........

TWITTER BADGE

Twitter is the new micro blogging tool by which you can keep all your friends anywhere abreast of exactly what you are doing at the moment.


Now you can add a Twitter badge to your blog sidebar. Get the code from http://twitter.com/badges/blogger. This will display your Twitter updates in the blog sidebar.

BLOGGER IN DRAFT

Blogger In Draft is not exactly an add-on to Blogger. Instead it is a place for Blogger aficionados to try out the new features in Blogger before they are released fully.



You can try out the video upload function which will soon be introduced as a button in the post editor. Also check out the Blogger In Draft blog.

REDIRECT FEED AND INCREASE SUBSCRIBERS OVERNIGHT

Here is an easy way to almost double your feed subscribers overnight. Hope you have already burned your feed at Feedburner and put a subscriber count chicklet in the sidebar.


Now go to Settings----->Site Feed in your blog and type in the Post Feed Redirect URL box your Feedburner feed address. For this blog it is :

http://feeds.feedburner.com/DummiesGuideToGoogleBloggerBeta

Now all my post feed traffic will be directed to the above address. Hence readers subscribing directly to :

http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

OR TO

http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full

will also be counted. The change in your chicklet number will be evident after 24-48 hours so don't do an immediate check. Another advantage is for users migrating from another blogging platform like Wordpress can redirect their old subscribers to their new feed.

THE POLL WIDGET

New widgets have steadily been added by Blogger to the in-house stable. The latest to be added is the poll widget. Now you do not have to rely on third party sites to add a poll widget to your blog. Add one yourself and introduce interactivity with your readers.
Check out the poll widgets at the end of my posts column and right column.


Before this Blogger had introduced the Newsreel Widget to automatically add current headlines from Google News to your blog and the Video Bar widget to display clips from YouTube and Google Video for your readers to watch without leaving the page.

COMMENTS POLICY DECLARATION

Using this latest addition you can now declare your comments policy to anyone who wishes to comment on your blog. When a reader clicks on the 'Comments' link at the bottom of your posts he/she will see this declaration just above the comments editor : See picture below :


To write one for your blog go to Settings----->Comments------>Comment Form Message---->Type policy in the box and Save Settings. You can add hyperlinks in this box. . Click on 'Comments' link below this post to see my comment policy where I have added a link to my profile.

ROBOTS.TXT and SITEMAP LINK

Blogspot blogs do not have facility for you to upload a robots.txt file to the root directory. Hence we have to add a Robots Metatag so that the search spiders know which pages to index in your blog. Google Webmasters Sitemaps has added a robots.txt file in the root of each blog. To see it go to Google Webmasters Sitemaps. Before doing this add your site to Google and verify it with a metatag.



Then go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools------>Dashboard------>Diagnostic tab------->Sidebar------->Tools------->robots.txt analysis. You will see the text in the robots file :

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search
Sitemap: http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated

At the moment you are not allowed to edit it but I expect this facility to be introduced soon. The Disallow: /search option is to reduce the amount of duplicate content in the blog by refusing the spiders to index the Labels pages. Now you can add as many labels below your posts as you want without worrying about duplicate content.


The sitemap option points the spiders to the feed of that blog which contains the latest posts and updates.

IMAGE IN HEADER

You can now upload an image in your header directly instead of adding an image element to the header or adding it in the CSS. To center this image make sure to upload an image with the same width as that of the header-wrapper in your template.

AUTOSAVE POSTS

Below the post editor (Login to Dashboard------>Click +New Post) there is a blue autosave button which saves as you type. After saving it turns grey and waits for you to type more or edit previous entries. If you are editing a previously published post then instead there is a Save as draft button in it's place. For more info. see Blogger Buzz: Auto-savory Blogger Posting