Especially, if you are new to blogging and using Blogger as your blogging medium then you should be aware of this limit in Blogger blog. You can only upload up to 1 GB of photos in total for your blog. Blogger uses the Picasa Web Album to store the photos that you upload for your blog posts. The maximum size limit is 1GB for free account. So if you post high-resolution photos from the beginning indiscriminately for your blogspot blog posts, you will run out of space in the long run. Then you have to buy extra space to accomodate your new pictures or you have to delete pictures from your old blog posts.
So obviously you will try to make your blog look good and attractive by showing pictures. But if you intend to use the blogspot blog for long time & don’t intend to pay at all, use your space cautiously.
1 GB is quite a large space at least for pictures 
I don’t know how many of you noticed it. Google has recently introduced its own url-shortening service. But it is not a standalone service right now. You can use it only from Google Toolbar & more importantly we, bloggers can use it in FeedBurner service. So I was checking what functionality has been added to my FeedBurner account. And I just saw Google has added option to socialize your feed automatically with Twitter with the new url shortening service. From your FeedBurner dashboard go to your feed & then click “Publicize” tab. There you will find “Socialize” option. Add your Twitter account there giving your Twitter usename & password. Change options to set what part of your feed that you want to show in your Twitter upadates like blog post title only, post body only or both title and post body.
It is similar to free services like TwitterFeed that I am currently using. But then you don’t have to rely on third-party url shortening services like tiniURL, bit.ly etc. You can manage whole thing from one single Google FeedBurner account. Besides, one main feature of Google’s own url shortening service is to enhance security. So, as in Google web search, if Google finds out that your http://goo.gl url is redirecting to a malicious url that can harm a computer it will show warning to the user. That means new users will have less fear clicking on the feed link in Twitter. So it may be easier to attract some new clicks.
I am thinking of moving to FeedBurner automatic Twitter update service for my blog. But I am having trouble accessing my TwitterFeed account using my OpenId. I will have to contact them & turn the feed off for Twitter there. Can’t serve double Twitter updates for a single blog post update
For a long time I have seen people crying fouls over Blogger navbar. There are mainly two reasons for these objections. Bloggers don’t want to show Google branding on their blog. They want to show it more like a standalone blog to give it a more professional look. And the second thing, the colour scheme consisted of only four default colours namely Blue, Black, Tan, and Silver. It often became a mismatch to a Blogger template especially if you have a custom Blogger template.
Personally I never have had any problem with the blogspot navigation bar when I used to blog on Blogger. My idea was if I am using a Blogger blog, then why not show it. It is like a mark that distinguishes your blog from other blog platforms. And I used to like default blue navbar as it was prominent yet soothing to the eye.
But it is at least good to see that Google have listened to the bloggers demand. End of the last month they have added two new color schemes that are transparent. And so the navbar will blend with the background color & pattern of your blog template. The “Transparent Light” colour has a semi-transparent white background giving away subtle pastel colours.
And the Transparent Dark” colour has a semi-transparent black background giving it a shaded look.
If you were always complaining about the navbar, the time has come to try this new option
To choose a new colour scheme for Blogger navbar, go to Layout> Page Elements from Blogger dashboard & click Edit next to navbar widget.
Let me clear one thing first. I am not going into the battle which is better, Blogger or Wordpress. I am just talking about two most popular free blog hosting services, Blogger.com & Wordpress.com. If you want to create a blog for free, it is most likely that you will choose any one of them. But before choosing Wordpress.com hosting or blogspot hosting, I just want to remind you of two important things that may vote for Blogger.
As a newbie when we start a blog, most of us have one single aim. And that is earning some quick bucks. But Wordpress.com doesn’t allow you to put any kind of ads like Adsense, Adbrite or Chitika in you free blog. They will even ban you if they find paid reviews on your blog from pay per post networks like PayPerPost, Smorty or ReviewMe. Moreover you can’t even place any referral links to services like ClickBank or UserCash to earn money. Commercial use is strictly prohibited there for free blogs.
But Blogger is very liberal there. They let you put your own ads as you wish. They even support Adsense widgets for seamless integration & management of Adsense ads from one Google account.
Next big thing is having your own domain name. Whenever you get a little exposure at first, you will look to buy a top level domain for your blog to give it a professional look. Google supports custom domain option for free, meaning you can use your new TLD for your existing blogspot blog & you will get option that will automatically redirect old blog post urls to new urls seamlessly. But for the same service Wordpress.com will charge you around $10 per year. See, you have to pay more for domain mapping than for buying a real domain for one year
By the way, if you have Blogger blog on your own domain, it is not that difficult to migrate your blog to self-hosted Wordpress. So, if you don’t have money to spend online or don’t want to pay online at first, remember these two important factors & then take a decision according to your goal. It will help you in the long run.
In late February, I wrote a post about Bloggerforum suspending its forum activity due to too much spam attack. Though I am not a big fan of this forum, sill I used to regularly check back to see what had happened to it. Several months have passed. And now it is the end of July. And when I checked back a few days ago I saw an update. It is getting reopened soon. Though it has not given any specific date, at least there is some big progress. It says that it will be now more effective in spam handling. I hope they will be strict enough this time to prevent those worthless posts that you could find in plenty in the previous forum. So if you were a fan of this popular forum, keep your fingers crossed.
Your FeedBurner Feed emails use to have your blog title as the email subject. That is not a thing that many of us like too much. It is hardly attractive & after all, when a user checks mailbox after sometime, he will find same heading for new subscribed emails. Do you know you can change it? You can use your latest blog post title as subject of emails while sending them to your FeedBurner Email Subscribers. It can be quite helpful to catch the eye of the readers. Use Email Branding feature of FeedBurner. Then you can choose your own message or use a bit of code to give it a dynamic look. You just have to add
${latestItemTitle}
to Email Subject/Title box to use your latest post title as email subject. By the way, it will be used as both email subject & body title.
Go to your particular feed in Feedburner account. Then click Publicize> Email Subscriptions> Email Branding. Give your feed update mails a more interactive look.
You just have to remove a few “nofollow” tags from Blogger template. You should have no problem with this easy method. From Blogger Dashboard go to Layout> Edit HTML. Then check the box beside “Expand Widget Templates”. Now search for the below line of code
<a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl' rel='nofollow'>
Remove rel='nofollow' from it. Save your template.
To remove nofollow attribute from pingback/trackback urls find the line
<a expr:href='data:backlink.url' rel='nofollow'>
& remove the nofollow tag just like before.
Now your Blogger blog has become dofollow.
By the way do a backup of your template before modifying it. It’s always safe. Enjoy your dofollow blogspot blog.
Perhaps many of you have seen unusual increase in FeedBurber subscribers count lately. That may have happened because you have a decent number of followers in FriendFeed. FeedBurner has started adding FriendFeed count to your blog subscribers. So it’s time to rejoice for old FriendFeed users.
But personally I don’t like the idea. That is not because I don’t have an account there. It is because all your FriendFeed subscribers are not your blog readers. Only a small portion may follow your blog. Others in general are interested in more social aspects of you. So your FeedBurner count is going to get inaccurate. You can increase some numbers by just following for the sake of following with each other, as you can do with Twitter. But it will never reflect true data.
By the way to view FriendFeed data in your FeedBurner account look for “friendfeedagg” in Feed Stats> Subscribers:
Sometime ago I have written a post about removing Blogger Navbar. Many bloggers like to remove it. But it is not legal for all blogspot blogs. You are permitted to remove it only if you self-host your Blogger blog i.e. publish it via FTP. And I doubt if anyone of you do that. It’s certainly not a great idea when you have Wordpress to use. Here is what Blogger support has to say about the removal:
Unless you publish your blog via FTP, the Navbar cannot be disabled.
So before you do it, remember it.
Do you know where to suggest new ideas and features to Google Blogger team? There is a separate page to do so. Go there & you can suggest a new feature, a new blog for note or a new gadget. You can vote for other people’s ideas if you like them. If you don’t like a suggestion you can cast negative votes too.
There are currently 1,625 ideas listed. The current series will end on 14th May, 2009. A week is left to show your thoughts on the current questions. Then a new set of questions will start. So you better hurry to cast your votes.
