New: Blogger contact form gadget

Blogger has recently added a third party CONTACT FORM gadget to its lists of gadgets. The contact form is fluid with width conforming to the width of the section to which it had been added so you don't need to worry over how wide your contact form should be:



There are only 3 fields (boxes) - Name, Email and Message.

To add a contact form, sign into Blogger (Dashboard), click the down arrow of the drop down menu on the extreme right side, select LAYOUT as shown in the screenshot below:



At the popup, click MORE GADGETS on the left side, then select CONTACT FORM.



Now whenever anyone submits the contact form, you will receive a message in your email INBOX (the email which you used as a username for your Blogger account).

If you find the Contact Form gadget too basic, there are other alternatives such as:

1. create a contact form using Google Drive (Google Docs) then use the embed code to embed it into your blog.
2. KontactR
3. eMail Contact Form Part 2

Google Reader retired - alternatives

Well, Google Reader loved by many bloggers, a content application and RSS platform, an aggregator of content served by web feeds will be retired July 1, 2013. You can read more about it at A second spring of cleaning.

Don't worry, there are plenty of alternatives and here are some of them (updated):

1. Feedly
2. Bloglines
3. The Old Reader
4. Feed Booster
5. netwipes Social Media Monitoring
6. NewsBlur
7. Bloglovin
8. Protopage
9. iGoogle

Recent comments widget for Blogger

Adding RECENT COMMENTS to a Blogger blog may be done in more than one ways such as:

Using the FEED URL
Editing the template

Recent comments using blog feed

Recent comments widget can be added to a Blogger blog using the feed URL as a work around for the lack of a recent comments widget by Blogger. The way to add is is to go your your Dashboard, click LAYOUT, then ADD A GADGET in the place you want it such as the sidebar. Then type in your blog feed URL such as http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com making sure to replace YOURBLOG with the actual URL of your own blog as shown in the screenshot below:



Then click CONTINUE and you will be presented with a CONFIGURE FEED popup. Then type in the title "Recent Comments" or any other title as you wish and tick the options you want as shown in the screenshot below:



Click SAVE and you are done.

If you have a custom domain for your blog, you may also use the alternative feed URL such as http://www.YOURBLOG.com replacing YOURBLOG with the actual URL of your custom domain blog.

Recent comments by editing template

If you are comfortable with editing your blog template, you may also add this code to your template:

<MainPage> <h2 class="sidebar-title">Recent Comments</h2> <ul> <Blogger> <BlogItemCommentsEnabled> <BlogItemComments> <li><$BlogCommentAuthor$> // <a href="<$BlogCommentPermalinkURL$>"> <$BlogCommentDateTime$></a></li> </BlogItemComments> </BlogItemCommentsEnabled> </Blogger> </ul> </MainPage>

For more details, see Blogger: Recent comments in the sidebar

Credits:
Template blog: Show recent comments on Blogger

ADVICE: Custom domains - ensure you record blogspot URL

If you have converted your blogspot blog to Custom Domain, you are highly advised to save the blogspot URL (address) in case your blog ever get wrongly identified as a spam blog or for TOS (Terms Of Service) violation especially if for some reasons Google/Blogger had chosen to not give you the option of requesting for review by clicking the link to review in the Dashboard. (Do not assume that custom domain blogs are immune to deletion?).

In this case, your only option will be to request for review via the Blogger Help Forum. You cannot give the custom domain URL for review. Only the blogspot URL will help you.

If you do not have your blogspot URL saved somewhere safe and easily retrievable, I would advise you to refer to How to revert custom domain to blogspot if only temporarily, then revert back to custom domain once you have the blogspot URL recorded. Don't take chances if you don't want to run into difficulties when requesting for blog deletion review.

Blogger Help Forums in various languages

For English, below is the link to the help forum

Blogger Help Forum - English

Here are the links to non-English help forums:

Spanish Blogger Help Forum (Español)

Portuguese Blogger Help Forum (Português)

French Blogger Help Forum (Français)

Italian Blogger Help Forum (Italiano)

German Blogger Help Forum (Deutsch)

Russian Blogger Help Forum (русский)

Dutch Blogger Help Forum (Nederlands)

Japanese Blogger Help Forum (日本語)

Polish Blogger Help Forum (Polski)

Turkish Blogger Help Forum (Türkçe)

Arabic Blogger Help Forum (العربية)

HTML 101 for bloggers - simple HTML to improve your blog

You don't have to be a computer geek to be able to use some simple HTML to improve your blog by leaps and bounds. Don't be put off by the technical jargon but let me show you some example how you will become a better blogger just by learning minimal HTML and improving on the codes generated while using the
COMPOSE mode.

Update: Please note that Blogger has improved and now if you use the COMPOSE mode, at the bottom of the uploaded picture will be a link to add alt text and title text.

I have already made a post on Anchor text and how to make hyperlink open in new window or tab which has very clear explanation on hyperlinks and how you can easily make them open in new windows and if you have to read that post, you should and it should confirm that you too can easily master the essentials of HTML and how it can help you become a better blogger.

Let us take uploading of a picture as the next example. Many bloggers uses the COMPOSE (VISUAL or WYSIWYG -What You See Is What You Get) mode when uploading which will result in actually being able to see the actual picture in the post editor, but not the codes behind it. Below is an uploaded image:



Using the HTML mode on the other hand will result in a mass of codes which may be incomprehensible to some. However, all you need to do is to concentrate on this little HTML image tag - <img> and ignore the rest for the time being. On changing from COMPOSE mode to the EDIT HTML mode will result the display of the picture changing to this bunch of codes (just concentrate on img and the closing bracket /> in red):

<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OJtx2nQ8qB4/UJoup7_n2vI/AAAAAAAAEMg/HBFYXdxFtss/s1600/Compose%2Band%2BEdit%2BHTML%2Bmode%2Btags.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="28" width="136" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OJtx2nQ8qB4/UJoup7_n2vI/AAAAAAAAEMg/HBFYXdxFtss/s200/Compose%2Band%2BEdit%2BHTML%2Bmode%2Btags.jpg" /></a>

Now if for some reason a visitor to your blog is unable to see the picture, what he may see is just an empty box. On the other hand, if you had just added a simple attribute alt="some text" where alt is short for alternate and the text should be descriptive of the picture, the visitor will see that text instead of an empty box so will not be left in puzzlement.

Also, a blind or visually impaired visitor who can't see images but using a screen reader will hear the alt text read out and thus not be left in the dark.

Another advantage of adding the alt attribute is to help search engines understand what the picture is all about and this will improve the SEO (search engine optimization) of your post or blog, will improve SEO and will probably help bring more traffic to your blog via the image search.

So on adding the alt="text descriptive of picture" we will get the audited codes as follows:

<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OJtx2nQ8qB4/UJoup7_n2vI/AAAAAAAAEMg/HBFYXdxFtss/s1600/Compose%2Band%2BEdit%2BHTML%2Bmode%2Btags.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="28" width="136" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OJtx2nQ8qB4/UJoup7_n2vI/AAAAAAAAEMg/HBFYXdxFtss/s200/Compose%2Band%2BEdit%2BHTML%2Bmode%2Btags.jpg" alt="text descriptive of picture" /></a>

So not too difficult after all if one just concentrate on the basic.

How to change maximum number of posts in Blogger label page

Blogger has set a default maximum 20 blog posts in its label page (category page). This may or may not suit your preference or your purpose in setting up the label page. You may want to decrease it to increase download time. Alternatively, you may want to increase the maximum number of posts to show all posts with the same label (category).

If you want to change this default maximum number of post, you will have to edit the template. First, backup your blog template (Dashboard > Template > Backup (at the top right corner) > Download full template > All files)

Now you got to open the template editor (Dashboard > Template > Edit HTML). Tick [ ] Expand Widget Templates

Now use ctrl+F to help you find the following codes:

expr:href='data:label.url'

Replace the above with the following (I used the number 150 because I want all posts to be displayed in the label page. You may use other numbers in place of 150):

expr:href='data:label.url + "?max-results=150"'

Repeat this for all instances of expr:href='data:label.url' that you can find. I think for the Simple template, there will be 3 instances, so the above will have to be repeated 3 times.

When done, save template and exit.