1-2-3 the simplest way to push weird stuff into Blogger.com

Sorry for that sensational post title. But I just tried to paste a simple CSS code into Blogger.com and i always returned HTML errors and didn't want to publish the post, even when I selected the post option to "interpret HTM literally".

So I googled quite a bit, tried a couple of tricks, but none seemed to work and i begin to think it might be a bug. Google is changing a lot of it's services recently, so maybe it's temporarily.

I remembered an old trick: when the web based editors don't seem to work, try emailing the stuff. And bingo, I wrote the post in Gmail and sent it to the email-post addresses defined in the Settings - Email & Mobile:

And bingo. Email to Blogger is a simple and effective parser. Now that Gmail has these nice media features, I guess that Gmail will become my future Blogger Editor. And that also allows me easily cross-post the same article on different blogs. 

One item on my todo list: check, if tags (or labels as Google calls them), can be defined in an email.

Oh and dear Google, will you bring back the "publish to blog" feature in Google Documents? Please.

1-2-3 the simplest way to turn Blogger.com into a normal Website CMS

Go to your blogger.com dashboard and  click on "design" below your blog.

1. Design Section - Page Elements: get rid of all typical blog gadgets, like "followers", "About Me" etc (in the right column for most blog templates)
2. Design Section - Page Elements: unselect all typical blog feature when editing the "Blog Posts" section 
3. Design Section - Template Designer - Advanced - Add CSS: insert the following code...

.navbar {display: none;}

.Attribution {display:none;}

.blog-pager {display:none;}

.blog-feeds {display:none;}

.post-footer {display:none;}

Et voilà. If you then create the page gadget below your title header, you'll have a horizontal navigation menu.  regarding the .Attribution, we recommend to add a text gadget as footer and include the copyright and also mention what template you are using and maybe your modifications. We often do it with an archived post, to which we link fron the footer. ie

CC 2006-2010 qompute.net | Impressum & Disclaimer | Attributions

Of course it is always useful to get a backup XML when you have configured and finalised your template-designer modifications by downloading the entire code (Design Section - Edit HTML).

Here is a recent example of a site I did for a friend http://www.exbuero.com. The site is published, but will probably change a lot over time.

have fun

This is a cross-post with qompute.net

1-2-3 | Google Analytics for Blogger.com (via blog.dirkeinecke.de)

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important UPDATE

Since Spring 2010 Blogger has introduced "Stats" on the Admin interface for blogs. Google Analytics of course offers far more data and in-depth analysis, but for most users, the basic "Stats" information may be sufficient. The nice workaround by Dirk Einecke though is still working if you want to paste the Google Analytics code into you websites HTML...

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via blog.dirkeinecke.de

Best practice for Bloggers to paste the Google Analytics Code into your blogspot site.

1. Open the blogger admin 
2. got to Layout - Site Elements 
3. Create a new gadget, best at the bottom of the site elements 
4. Select HTML/Javascript as the type of widget 
5. DO NOT give a title because then visitors will see nothing of your gadget containing your Google Analytics code. Repeat, leave the title EMPTY!

That should be it, Google usually takes a bit of time to start tracking. Wait a day or so.
Happy go lucky.

Posted via web from BloggerCMS