How to Blog?

So, once upon a time, a really long while ago, I tried to customise and recreate a Blogger template which is not available anymore, but there's one thing I remember about it. I had a jQuery code written to make all the external links open in new tab. I also thought, it's about time I revive that idea and write a more intact code and here we go.  So, there are two things to do.  Add Javascript code that detects external links and opens them in new tab. Add a CSS code to let users know that a particular link is going to be opened in new tab. Adding a javascript code Please follow the instructions below, Go to https://blogger.com  dashboard Navigate to Themes > click the down arrow near "Customize" and then click on Edit HTML. Now scroll to the very end and paste the following code just before </body> tag. <script type='text/javascript'> document.body.addEventListener(&quot;mousedown&quot;,function(event){       if(event.target.ta...

 So, there was a report in Blogger Help Community which is what made me write this down.  This is in correlation with Blogger & Facebook OG Object debugger . The report was that Blogger blogs doesn't show preview in Twitter card validator . So, I went ahead and tried previewing one of my blog posts and I got the following, Therefore, I tweeted the same link which is here and it didn't show any preview.  Hence, I concluded not just the validator, the whole twitter stopped scraping my open graph information. Therefore, I made a small research and added a tag in my template. Please follow instructions below, Go to  https://blogger.com  > Themes Click on the three dot menu near "My Themes" and choose Edit HTML In the appearing page, press Ctrl + F and find the below code, <b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/> Right after that code, paste the following code, <meta name="twitter:card" content="summ...

In the Blogger community forum, I happened to help a user who was not able to publish their blogspot address to their custom domain. After doing all the debugging, there was no option left out but to contact Google and finally we have known what the problem is. The problem was that the URL was not available for use in blogger.  Here on, before spending money on buying a domain, please ensure blogger allows it. Why isn't the custom domain available to buy but not available to use on Blogger? That'd be the first question every user would ask or think to ask. Unfortunately reason is un-disclosed by Blogger themselves.  So how do we know if a domain is available at Blogger or not? Earlier, there used to be no way we could do this as Blogger would throw a more generic error like below, Now, we get a more customised error for this particular case alone like below, So, here on, before spending money on buying a domain, please try publishing your blog in the domain name you are planni...

In BHF, there was a recent issue related to cloudflare where the browser screams the site is a phishing site. So I thought of writing up how does a service like cloudflare affect your blogger blog. What is Cloudflare? Well we have that written all over Wikipedia: Cloudflare . Let's go on with why Blogger users look for Cloudflare. Anciently Blogger users used Cloudflare for one simple reason. HTTPS for custom domains. So what happens when you introduce Cloudflare into your domain? DNS Redirect. Your custom domain will be configured with the proxy info provided by Cloudflare and when the request is hit, DNS redirect happens. DNS redirect is bad for the site's health. A number of reasons, but the most important is that some browsers, when it detects a DNS redirection, it thinks that it is a phishing site. What is a DNS redirect? I am trying to explain this in easy terms. I'll try not to be too technical. When a custom domain URL is hit, usually the domain reques...

An interesting query from one of the Blogger user whose Navbar has a different language than expected. We earlier discussed that, it's the blog owner's choice to show what language they wish to see in Blogger blog. Read below, How to Blog?: Blogger Language Confusions However there's one more small confusion right there. What if the blog you are visiting has the old theme which has Navbar on the top like below? Could you see the "More" button near the search box in the Navbar? This button is in English while the blog is in a different language. Now, how can that happen? Here's the confusion. Navbar although incorporated inside a blog, it is a part of Google products and not the blog. To confirm this, I went ahead and changed my Google account language. How did I do that? Go to https://myaccount.google.com Navigate to Data & Personalisation > Scroll down to "General preferences for the web" Click on "Language"...

It's been long time that I wrote something here. Interestingly there seems to be a new update in Blogger in Draft ( https://draft.blogger.com ). Try the new Blogger! - at the bottom right Clicking on it, Blogger shows a popup stating, Blogger is gradually introducing some fresh pages that work well on mobile. Keep an eye in the coming months as these are rolled out. To start, check out Stats, Comments, and Theme You click on Continue and it redirects. After redirect you get the all new UI. However the point to notice is, it lands in the Stats page. Stats section - New UI So, what's new about this UI? Just a couple of re-alignments, I thought. And then I happened to notice the hamburger icon on the top left near Blogger logo. Clicking on it, the menu got hidden and then it occurred to me that there's really more to look into. So I made a resize to mobile width to see this, Responsive UI of Stats section Menu in Mobile view MOBILE FRIENDLY, RES...