Official Blogger Blog

Bringing HTTPS to all blogspot domain blogs

May 03, 2016

[Cross-posted from the Google Security Blog]began

The HTTPS indicator in the Chrome browser

new setting called HTTPS Redirecthttpshttphttphttps

The new HTTPS Redirect setting in the Blogger dashboard

mixed contentspot and fixreleasedHTTPS EverywherefeedbackPosted by Milinda Perera, Software Engineer, Security

An update to the Blogger post editor to help with mixed content

April 19, 2016

Back in September, we announced that HTTPS support was coming to blogspot.com, making it possible for you to encrypt connections to your blog; since then, many of you have enabled HTTPS for your blogs. In some cases, not all of your blog’s functionality has worked over HTTPS due to mixed content errors often stemming from your template, gadgets, or blog post content.
To help spot and fix some of these errors, we're releasing a mixed content warning tool that alerts you to possible mixed content issues in your posts, and gives you the option to fix them automatically before saving.

To use the tool, turn on HTTPS for your blog, open the Blogger editor HTML view, and click Save or Publish. If the editor detects any errors they will be shown above the editor, along with the option to fix the errors found.
Happy blogging!Posted by Shweta Karwa, Software Engineer, Security.

Best practices for reviewing products you've received for free

March 11, 2016

Editor's note: This post was cross posted from the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

As a form of online marketing, some companies today will send bloggers free products to review or give away in return for a mention in a blogpost. Whether you’re the company supplying the product or the blogger writing the post, below are a few best practices to ensure that this content is both useful to users and compliant with Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Use the nofollow tag where appropriate

Links that pass PageRank in exchange for goods or services are against Google guidelines on link schemes. Companies sometimes urge bloggers to link back to:

the company’s site
the company’s social media accounts
an online merchant’s page that sells the product
a review service’s page featuring reviews of the product
the company’s mobile app on an app store

Bloggers should use the nofollow tag on all such links because these links didn’t come about organically (i.e., the links wouldn’t exist if the company hadn’t offered to provide a free good or service in exchange for a link). Companies, or the marketing firms they’re working with, can do their part by reminding bloggers to use nofollow on these links.

Disclose the relationship

Users want to know when they’re viewing sponsored content. Also, there are laws in some countries that make disclosure of sponsorship mandatory. A disclosure can appear anywhere in the post; however, the most useful placement is at the top in case users don’t read the entire post.
Create compelling, unique content

The most successful blogs offer their visitors a compelling reason to come back. If you're a blogger you might try to become the go-to source of information in your topic area, cover a useful niche that few others are looking at, or provide exclusive content that only you can create due to your unique expertise or resources.

For more information, please drop by our Google Webmaster Central Help Forum.

Posted by the Google Webspam Team

An update on Google Friend Connect

December 21, 2015

In 2011, we announced the retirement of Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger sites. We made an exception for Blogger to give readers an easy way to follow blogs using a variety of accounts. Yet over time, we’ve seen that most people sign into Friend Connect with a Google Account. So, in an effort to streamline, in the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes that will eventually require readers to have a Google Account to sign into Friend Connect and follow blogs.

As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.

We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they’ll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow.

We know how important followers are to all bloggers, but we believe this change will improve the experience for both you and your readers.

Posted by Michael Goddard, Software Engineer

Highlight the posts that matter the most

December 10, 2015

As bloggers, we all know how important it is to post frequently in order to encourage readers to come back. Of course, the more you post, the more quickly your posts slip down into the archives, making it harder for your readers to discover everything you’ve posted that they might be interested in.

To help make it easier to showcase the posts you want your readers to see, we’ve created a new gadget called Featured Post. With Featured Post, you can choose posts you’ve shared on your blog and highlight them wherever you’d like.

Whether you’d like to re-share that delicious holiday recipe from a few years back, spotlight a can’t-miss promotion you’re running, or just revive something quirky from the archives, the Featured Post gadget is a simple way to show off the content that matters most.

To try it, just head to your Layout tab, add a gadget, and select ‘Featured Post’. You’ll be able to place the gadget wherever you’d like on your blog and then choose the post you’d like to show. If you’d like to highlight something new, you can change the post you feature at any time.

Happy blogging!

Posted by Guy Ronen, Product Manager

HTTPS support coming to Blogspot

September 30, 2015

https://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2015/09/https-support-coming-to-blogspot.html2008our ads productsHTTPS Everywherehttps://www.blogger.com

mixed contentfixable by the author themselvesOfficial Google BlogGoogle Online Security BlogfeedbackHelp CenterPosted by Jo-el van Bergen, Software Engineer, Security.

Even more expansions to the Blogger template language

June 25, 2015

Recently we introduced a new set of expressions to the Blogger templating language, designed to let you customize the HTML of each post and page on your blog. We’ve gotten great feedback on them, so we figured we'd offer even more.
Now you can try out new tags, like:

b:elseif for a simpler multiple-case b:if branch.

b:switch and b:case for succinctly handling several possible cases of a variable.

b:eval for evaluation of more complex expressions involving data variables.

b:with for creating a nicer variable alias for a calculated value.

An example of customizing the markup of your blog, using the new switch tags.

If you’d like to customize your blog's template using these tags and expressions, just head to the dashboard under Settings > Template > Edit HTML. To see the full specs of the new tags or learn more, check out the help article.
Happy Templating!
Posted by Luke Bjerring, Software Engineer

Adding new expressions to Blogger templates

May 22, 2015

Blogger's template engine is powered by a flexible editing language, consisting of a set of Widget Tags which use expressions to conditionally change the output HTML for each post and page on your blog.
Using these expressions, you can customize the HTML output of your blog, to adjust the look and feel. You could, for example, show an image behind the header, but only on the homepage. Or add a flower icon, next to a post's title, if the post has the 'Flower' label.
You can customize your blog's template under Settings > Template > Edit HTML.

You can customize your template’s markup, to change the look and feel of your blog.

Previously, the expressions in Blogger's templates could

Add or concatenate values with +

Subtract values with -

Check for equality with != and ==

Compare values with <, >, <= and >=

Now, support has been added for many more expression operators, including:

Inversion of true/false values with !/not e.g. <b:if cond='!data:post.allowComments'>...

Picking between 2 values with ?: e.g. <a expr:class='data:post.allowComments ? "comments" : "no-comments"' ...

Checking if a value is a member of a set or array, with in/contains e.g. <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType in {"index", "archive"}'>...

Combining multiple conditions with and/or e.g. <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index" and data:post.allowComments'>...

Changing the order of operations with () e.g. <div expr:style='"max-width: " + (data:width + 10) + "px;"'>...

For a full specification of the new operators, see the help article. Happy Templating!

Posted by Luke Bjerring, Software Engineer

Custom domains for your blog made easy

January 13, 2015

Google Domains

Read on.

Making it easier to manage pages on your blog

February 27, 2014

Adding pages to your blog can be a great way to organize content - like ‘About me’ or ‘Advertise’ sections. To make managing pages easier, we redesigned the ‘Pages’ tab in the Blogger dashboard to make it look and feel more like something you’re already familiar with: managing posts.

The new look for the pages list on each blog

With the new design, you can:

View important details about your pages like view count and comments
Manage multiple pages at once with new selection tools
Easily see whether pages are in draft, imported, or published states

The new look for the summary of pages on each blog

Linking to your Pages

Managing the Pages Widgets for your blog is now done through the Layout UI. Multiple Pages Widgets can be added, if you want different pages linked to from different areas of the layout.

The 'Pages' widget as it appears in the list, after clicking 'Add a Gadget'

For a Horizontal list, add a Pages Widget under the Header (e.g. "Navigation Pages" below)
For a Vertical list, add a Pages Widget to a side column (e.g. "External Pages" below)

A layout with two Pages widgets, titled 'Navigation Pages' (horizontal) and 'External Pages' (vertical)

Adding external links

To add a link to a URL which is not one of your pages, when editing or adding the Pages Widget, click '+ Add external link' at the top of the 'Pages to Show' list.