The Blogspot 100 - Top Blogger Sites of 2012

As a dedicated Blogger enthusiast, I'm very interested to learn more about the sites hosted on Google's free blogging platform.

So I decided to find out which popular sites are powered by Blogger to build upon the list curated in 2008 in order to find the most popular Blogspot sites (including those which use custom domains).

After gathering a huge amount of links to sites hosted on Blogger (whittled down to 350 for the final analysis) I set about scoring and ranking each site according to the following criteria:

• Pagerank
• Inbound links
• Alexa Rank
• Facebook shares
• Twitter Mentions
• Google+1s
• Google Reader feed subscribers

With the exception of Pagerank, these sites were scored in relation to each other, with each element scored on a scale of 1-350. Data for these rankings were gathered between July and August 2012.

Alexa ranking was scored first as this value is unique to each website. In instances where sites had an equal value to another, scoring would secondly depend on this Alexa score in order to give each site a unique score.

Pagerank for each site was allocated as Pagerank*10, where 0 is the lowest score and 100 (PR10) was potentially the highest.

The total possible score for each website is therefore on a scale of 6-2200.

In order of total score, here are the most popular Blogger powered sites for 2012:

1. Postsecret 

Score: 2131
PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. It began as an experiment on January 1st 2005, and has gained a worldwide following through the weekly updated website, book releases and exhibition tour.

Connect Your Blog to a Google+ Page

If you log into your Blogger dashboard today, you'll notice a new Google+ tab which can be used to integrate our blogs with Google+.

For some time, we have been able to link our blogs with a personal Google+ profile. Now we are also able to connect to a Google+ page for business, organisation or brand!

If you haven't already connected your Blogger site to a Google+ profile, go to the Google+ tab in your dashboard and click the button to upgrade:

Is Opera incompatible with Blogger?

In recent days, those using Opera to maintain their Blogger sites may have received warnings that their browser is not compatible with the platform:

According to The Register, Blogger appears to operate "just fine and dandy" when using Opera 12.0 for Mac, but after dismissing the message it re-appears.

The alert box is banished if Opera changes its user-agent string - the line of text the browser sends to a server to identify itself - and pretends to be a build of Chrome.

Back in August last year, Blogger Buzz posted details of browsers which would be supported by both Blogger and other Google platforms:

Beginning August 1st, we’ll support the current and prior major release of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis. Each time a new version is released, we’ll begin supporting the update and stop supporting the third-oldest version.

An Opera spokesman has told The Register that this is assumed to be an error and that there is discussion with Google about fixing the problem.

Are you using Opera? If so, please let us know if you've been affected by this message. Your comments and opinions are most welcome.

Create Custom Permalinks for Blogger Posts

I discovered a lovely surprise when logging into Blogger to create a post this morning: the ability to create custom permalinks for posts!

Usually when we create a post, the URL generated for the item page is based on the post title. By creating a custom URL we can use a different structure which can help posts rank higher in search engines, as well as being more user-friendly.

Farewell to the Blogger in Draft Blog (and hello +Blogger!)

The Blogger team recently posted that The Blogger In Draft Blog Is Being Retired. But don't worry if (like me) you favour using all the shiny new stuff in the Blogger in Draft dashboard, that side of Blogger is not going anywhere. Phew!

Rather than using a separate blog to post details of the new features we can try out, the Blogger Team will be posting it on the +Blogger page instead.

Be sure to add the +Blogger page to your stream if you haven't already done so. In recent weeks there's been a lot of useful posts on the page, including details of interesting hangouts and detailed information on using Blogger to its best effect.

Redirecting from Blogspot.com to country specific domains

In efforts to country specific laws, Blogger have begun redirecting blogs hosted on blogspot.com subdomains to country specific domains (ccTLDs).

For example, if you are in the UK and viewing a Blogger hosted blog which would usually have be hosted on a *.blogspot.com subdomain, you'll be redirected to *.blogspot.co.uk.

This is happening to enable Blogger to censor content on a country-specific level. For example, if the UK asked Blogger to remove  a page of content from a blog, the page would no longer be available to view by visitors in the UK; it would however be available to view in other countries.

Blogger rolling out local domains?

While creating a site for a local company on Blogger today, I noticed the blogspot domain the site is hosted on suddenly changed from blogspot.com to blogspot.co.uk.

The site can still be accessed using the dot.com url I originally created, though it's automatically redirected to the dot.co.uk version.

So far I haven't been able to find any information about this new enforcement of local sub-domains, and may only assume this is a new feature the Blogger team are rolling out.

Have any of you noticed a new local domain extension for your Blogger hosted site? Please let us know what you think about this update in the comments below.

Image credit: The Booklight

5 New Dynamic Blogger Templates for us to Preview

We can now preview 5 dynamic new Blogger template styles for our blogs which use AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3. These new templates will soon be made available for us to use as the default views for our sites, and will be customizable so we can preserve our blog's individuality.

The "Snapshot" view is an ideal choice for photo bloggers

An Official "Follow by Email" Gadget for Blogger (Easy set up for Feedburner Email Subscriptions)

Many blog readers prefer to receive updates of new posts by email (rather than subscribing in an RSS feed reader). To make it even easier for our readers to stay in touch with our sites, the Blogger Team have developed a new, official gadget: Follow by Email.

Using Feedburner technology, this new gadget offers a one-click solution for adding an email subscription form to our Blogger-powered blogs. We don't even need to sign up with Feedburner or visit the Feedburner dashboard to configure this for use in our sites!

Blogger's Forthcoming Features - New Dashboard, Post Editor, Content Discovery and more!

While 2010 was an exciting year for Blogger with the addition of the new Template Designer, Real-time stats and web fonts (to name a few of the features released), 2011 looks to be even more exciting.

At SXSW the Blogger team demonstrated two fabulous forthcoming features: an updated post editor and "content discovery". I can't begin to describe how much I'm looking forward to these new features!

Get the Blogger App for your Android Device

Blogger App for Android

Blogger have released an official Android application, enabling Android users to post quickly and easily from their device:

We are excited to announce our first version of the Blogger Android App. Using the app you can easily compose a post, attach a photo that you just took with your phone, and either save it as a local draft for later or immediately publish it to your blog - via Blogger in Draft

Android users can download the app for free from the Android Market.

Mobile Templates available for Blogger

Blogger Buster, Mobile View

Although our Blogger sites can be viewed on most mobile devices, it can be difficult to effectively read blogspot sites due to the small screen size.

To enhance our readers experience of Blogger blogs when viewed on Smartphones (and similar devices), the Blogger Team have enabled Mobile Templates as an opt-in setting through Blogger in Draft.

A New Format for Blogger Post Feeds

Blog feeds offer a means of reaching a wider audience and allow our readers to stay up to date with the latest posts.

Until recently, we had little control over how our feeds were presented using the Short or Long feed options available in our Blogger dashboards. Short Feeds display only the first 400 words, stripping that content of HTML and images, while Long Feeds display the entire blog post.

Now the Blogger team have added a third choice to the length of our feeds, which we can use to display item content in feeds up until the Jump Break in our post. This enables any HTML-based content (such as images and links) will be displayed for each feed item, with a link to read the full item on summarized posts.

Blogger dubbed the Most Reliable Blogging Service

Though I'm very busy finishing off the my ebook today, I couldn't let the day pass without posting this.

Royal Pingdom have found Blogger to be the most reliable blogging service on the web. Without question.

Of all the blogging platforms monitored, only Blogger delivered 100% uptime. Here's the full article for your perusal.

Thank you Blogger Team!

(Via Blogger Buzz)

Better Post Previews - See how your post will look to readers

After a hardworking weekend, I found an awesome treat in my feed reader this morning! Blogger in Draft today published details of the enhancements to the post preview feature of our blogs which enables us to see how our posts will look to readers:

Up until now, when we preview a post we are writing for our Blogger powered blogs, we have seen only a white, format-less version of our musings, with none of the formatting and visual style which is added by our template and CSS.

With this new feature in place, we can see preview exactly what the post will look like when published, including any style attributes generated by our template code.

Resolved! Issues with the Twitter Updates Gadget (and others)

This issue should now be resolved. I have checked the Twitter Updates gadget (plus others) on various sites, and am now assured everything should be back to normal.

I've been made aware of the issues many Blogger users are experiencing with the Twitter Updates gadget. At present, this is showing "tweets" from the user @undefined and ignores user preferences for the number of tweets to be displayed.

The same issue affects some of my other gadgets too: most notably, the Flickr, Picasa, TwitPic and Juitter gadgets.

As far as I can tell right now, this issue stems from a sudden, random error affecting any gadgets utilizing User Preferences. These issues do not seem to be affecting every blog in which such gadgets are installed.

The Blogger Team are aware of the issue and are investigating now. I'm also testing various changes to user preferences for my gadgets to see if a different solution to registering user preferences could resolve the issue for my gadgets.

I anyone is still receiving errors when using their Twitter Updates gadget (particularly if this displays tweets from @undefined's stream) please do let me know in the comments or send me an email.

Profile Avatars for Blogger Comments - Updated

Displaying avatars beside comments in our blogs has been a long anticipated feature. Today, the Blogger Team announced that this feature is now enabled for Blogger blogs, allowing us to see the profile image or avatar of those leaving comments on our posts:

Today we have extended embedded comments to display profile images next to the comments that your visitors write. Though profile images have been available with the other commenting options, we are happy to bring them to embedded comments as part of the Blogger Birthday feature series (via Blogger Buzz)

However, this feature currently seems available only to those using Blogger's default templates.

Update:  Soufiane of LeBlogger.com has kindly emailed me with a quick and simple solution for us to add the required code to customized Blogger templates! Details below.

Read More/Post Summaries Now Available in Blogger!!

One of Blogger's most requested features has been the ability to summarize our posts on home and non-item pages using some sort of "Read More" function.

I'm thrilled to announce today that the Blogger Team have now enabled this for us to summarize our posts! No more laborious editing of the post HTML or template codes is required to display only summaries on our home pages :)

Share Posts from the Blogger NavBar

Yet more treats for Blogger's 10th birthday celebrations were released for us today!

An additional button in the Blogger Navbar now enables us to share our posts via Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader and by email:

When a reader clicks the "Share" link on your blog's home page, they can opt to share the URL of your blog by Twitter, Facebook or Google Reader. On item pages, the pop-up box includes the additional option to share by email:

When readers share your blog and posts, additional parameters are added to the URL which helps you track the syndication of these posts using Google Analytics in the format "?spref=nn" where the nn part is changed to fb for Facebook, tw for Twitter or gr for Google Reader.

For example:

• http://buzz.blogger.com/2009/08/share-from-nav-bar.html?spref=tw (sharing the announcement post on Twitter)
  
• http://www.bloggerbuster.com?spref=fb (sharing the Blogger Buster homepage on Facebook)

You can then search for URLs ending with these parameters when using Google Analytics to view details of how your posts have been shared.

Of course, this new feature is only available to those who have not chosen to hide the Blogger Navbar!

If your Blogger template does not display the Blogger Navbar and you would like to make it reappear in order to use this new feature, here is what you should do:

1. Go to Layout>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard.

2. Using your browser's search function, locate the following section of code:

#navbar-iframe {
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none;
}

This should be located within the <b:skin> or <style> section of your template.

Delete this section of code, then preview your template. If all is well, the Blogger Navbar will be visible again, enabling your readers to syndicate your posts with ease. Instructions to hide the Blogger Navbar can be found here.

What do you think of the new Navbar "Share" feature?

I admire the determination of the Blogger team to roll out so many new features for this platform in just a few short weeks! The addition of this sharing feature will be useful for many bloggers, though those of us who choose to hide the navbar for aesthetic purposes will need to adopt other methods of sharing our posts.

What do you think of this latest birthday gift? Will you find this useful? Is this enough to persuade you to display the navbar again (if you have currently chosen to hide it)?

Please feel free to leave your comments and opinions below.

Improved Label Gadgets - Now Supporting Label Clouds and More!

As part of Blogger's 10th Birthday celebrations, the Blogger team have been hard at work developing enhancements and new features.

Today, Blogger launched an enhanced "Labels" gadget which now supports label clouds, and allows us to choose which of our labels are displayed within the gadget:

In April, we announced that we wanted to hear from you about your wish list for features in Blogger. Many of you said that the label gadget should be more flexible. Today we are rolling out two enhancements to the label gadget. (Via Blogger Buzz)

Blogger's Label Cloud

Label clouds are a popular way to display label lists in Blogger templates. Previously we have needed to use extensive customizations and JavaScript to enable labels to display in cloud format as opposed to a regular list, where the size of the font indicated the popularity of the label within the blog:

Adding a label cloud to your Blogger blog is now incredibly easy! Simply go to Layout>Page Elements in your Blogger template and choose to add a new gadget in the area of your choice. Select the "Labels" gadget from the "Basics" menu, and you'll be presented with a screen like this:

In the "Display" options, choose "Cloud", then save your new gadget. Now when you view your blog, you'll see your labels display in cloud-like formation, with more popular labels highlighted in larger text.

Customizing the Label Cloud

By default, the labels will be styled to fit with other elements in the same section. All labels will appear in the same color as other links in this area and size is determined by the popularity of the label, on a scale of 1-5 (where 5 is the most popular).

If you would like to style the label cloud, you can add additional CSS to your Blogger template using the following classes:

.label-size-1 a - The class of the smallest size label in the cloud
.label-size-5 a - The class for the largest size label in the cloud

Here's an example of how you could style the largest labels to get you started:

.label-size-5 a {color: #cd0000;
font-size: 3em;
text-decoration: none;
   }

.label-size-5 a:hover {
text-decoration: underline;
   }

I'll write up a full tutorial in the next couple of days explaining in more detail how the labels may be customized to your particular preferences. In the meantime, I hope these class examples will help those familiar with CSS to begin styling their own label clouds.

Choose which labels to display

The second improvement to the Labels gadget is the ability to choose which labels are displayed in the gadget.

This is an ideal solution for those who use many different labels in their blog, and find the long display or confusing navigation difficult to deal with.

To select which labels you would like to display in your gadget, add (or edit) a Labels gadget, and choose "Selected Labels".

You can then edit the list of labels and deselect any which you prefer not to be displayed:

One feature which I like best about this enhancement is that we can choose to use more than one Label gadget to differentiate between "Categories" and "Labels" - at least in the sidebar gadgets!

For example, we could title one label gadget as "Categories", and choose to display only a handful of descriptive, "category" labels as a list. Next, we could add a second label gadget named "Tags" which displays as a label cloud and shows all tags used in the blog.

Of course, this does not yet perform the same differentiation for posts as true "categories" would, but it is a good start and enhances usability for our blog readers.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I am very impressed with these enhancements to the Blogger Labels gadget as they enable us to customize the navigation experience for our readers.

I'm sure the Blogger team have even more great features and enhancements to roll out as part of Blogger's 10th birthday celebrations and look forward to reporting and explaining more about these in the coming weeks.

Feel free to let us know your own opinions and experiences of these enhancements by leaving your comments below.