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.targe...

 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...

As a part of contributions to NCSAM, I am writing this article down on what all should we be aware of with respect to Google's security aspect and how to make sure your blog stays yours forever. What is NCSAM? It's National Cyber Security Awareness Month which is observed during the month of October every year in America. However, we all know cyber security is a world topic and is not limited to just the USA. So let me give some tips with respect to keeping the Google account safe and Blogger blogs safe from hackers. As I secure my account, I hope you people catch up too. In this blog post, I am going to tell about the following, Securing your Google account. Securing your Blogger blog. Securing your Google account Since Blogger is also part of your Google account, let's first see what all we need to do to keep our Google account safe. Don't share your password to anyone. Keep changing your password every 60 - 90 days. Make sure your password is str...

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...

Since Google has closed it's social networking service called the Google+ for consumers, few products has some effect on it. One of them is our very own blogger. We could see that update notification in our blogger dashboard as below, Besides from the things gone as mentioned in Blogger's official blog post here ->  An update on Google+ and Blogger , we have a confusion on profile that needs to be clarified. That is the reason why I am writing this down. There are now two profiles, Blogger profile Google profile Blogger profile -  Where does this appear? This appears in all of your blogs if you have your profile gadget added. You can see that on this blog in the top right, How do I update this profile? Go to https://blogger.com Navigate to Settings > Scroll all the way down to General section. Click on User profile  in this section You'll be navigated to  https://www.blogger.com/edit-profile.g where you can edit your profile that appea...

Blogger, like the language confusions have one more confusion with respect to Blog description. We have two descriptions setup in Blogger. Blog display description. Blog search description. Display Description is the description that appears when you visit your blog in the header under your blog title. For example, you could see the description of my blog,

Let me start by a warning, This blogpost has nothing to do with  howtoblog  and is a story of a spammer. Years ago we had to face a spammer in the forum(Probably during Pistachio?) who was very persistent. He was a link dropping spammer who kept sharing his blog URL under every reply in the forum and somewhere to his blogposts which merely had instructions from Blogger Help Centre . It went as, Thanks and Regards, HIS NAME HIS BLOG URL Probably it was so difficult for TCs to make him go away as I happened to see him for months, spamming in the forum and one fine day he disappeared and never returned. I happened to find him and interview him which I am writing down here,

The Blogger help community, recently had an issue where there was a great confusion on Blogger Platform language and Blogger Blog language . So I decided to go ahead and write in detail about it. There are two important terms here to begin with, Blogger Platform Blogger Blog Blogger Platform is what you see when you go to Blogger platform. The operating system that helps you write and manage your blogs on Blogger.  That is what I see when I go to my Blogger Platform, Blogger Blog is what you see when you go to the URL of the blog you created and is managing at Blogger Platform . My Blogger Blog URL is https://howtoblog.krishnainfotron.com which will show me my blog as below, That said, let's discuss about the language confusions. Blogger Platform language is the language you would see when you go to https://blogger.com . This language earlier was preferable specifically for blogger. (i.e) You can have a separate language chosen for Blogger platform irrespecti...

Enhancing the Related Posts code, we will now move on with Loops on multiple labels. It's advised to read Related posts with multiple conditions and then continue to read this post to understand things better.

We already saw the common issues when custom domain is involved where we saw a tool called DWI - Dig Web Interface which will help us get DNS records of a particular domain. Today while coming across a forum thread , got to notice a strange thing ever. It's not the first time however. If you refer the article about corrupted DNS , the blog URL used had similar issue. It is normally recommended to use "Authoritative" under Name servers when digging a domain. However this doesn't always workout. Let us consider the following URL in issue. newsblok.com www.newsblok.com The actual authoritative Dig Log gives us the following results, newsblok.com@dns1.name-services.com.: /usr/bin/dig: couldn't get address for 'dns1.name-services.com.': failure newsblok.com@dns2.name-services.com.: /usr/bin/dig: couldn't get address for 'dns2.name-services.com.': failure newsblok.com@dns3.name-services.com.: /usr/bin/dig: couldn't get address...

We had a query in the forum on how to make a gadget appear only on mobile home page. So thought of sharing it. ( Note - This post is for Blogger's first generation classic themes and not applicable if you are on a new generation responsive templates) Also Read: How to make a gadget appear only in Home page or the page you wish? Sign in to blogger . First Backup your blogger template . Go to Layout. Add a HTML/Java Script gadget that you want to make appear only in homepage of your blog and title it as homeonly (for qucik reference) Go to Dashboard > Template > Edit HTML. Press Ctrl + F and find homeonly . You will see a code as follows. <b:section class='main' id='main' preferred='no'> <b:widget id='HTML1' locked='false' title='homeonly' type='HTML'> <b:includable id='main'> <!-- only display title if it's non-empty --> <b:if cond='data:title != &quot;&q...

In BHF, one of the common issues we face is setting up custom domain. We already have a lot of information on how to setup a custom domain. So I am going to go ahead and write on the troubleshooting tips for custom domain. This article is dedicated to Chuck Croll who has been/is a great mentor to me since the beginning. So let's start with the first and foremost golden rule of Custom domain troubleshooting. Any issue where you have custom domains involved, first check if the custom domain is setup properly. Some common issues where custom domain  are involved and you'll not know DNS was causing the trouble are, You'll be able to see the custom domain while some of your friends/users will not be able to. In this case, you shall use DWI to see if the DNS addresses are righteous. Cannot get thumbnail on Facebook. What can I do? So what? Use Facebook OG Object Debugger is what most people think. There comes the case, Inspite of using Facebook OG Object Debugger,...

As far as custom domain troubleshooting is concerned, it's not always there'll be issues with, DNS Records Who Is Issues like  Domain expiration clientHold There is a case where the DNS could be corrupted. In that matter we need to know two important things. How do I know my DNS is corrupt? Where do I report about my corrupt  DNS? How do I know my DNS is corrupt? The diagnosis on a custom domain issue with DWI will tell you there could be an issue in DNS while WhoIs Lookup will confirm. I had to face one such thread whose diagnosis steps are shown below, The above is the dig log of the custom URL which gave me very weird results. I went ahead and checked for expiration/non registered URL/clientHold at Who Is Lookup , Registry Domain ID: 1619884945_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.enom.com Registrar URL: www.enom.com Updated Date: 2016-10-12T03:07:49.00Z Creation Date: 2010-10-11...