Blogger for Dummies sitemap

Google Blogger begins monetization

For years I am amazed at the generosity of Google Blogger in offering millions of bloggers this free blogging platform without asking for or expecting anything in return (other than the requirement to display the navbar which is never enforced). You can do many things with Blogger including putting not only Google Adsense ads in your free blog, you can even add competing ads like Yahoo Publisher Network. You can register your own domain and use it for your blog (custom domain) and Blogger will even host it free of charge for you.

Now I think Blogger has begun to experiment with displaying ads as what looks like the first step to monetizing Blogger. Today, after publishing a post, this was what I saw:



The display of ads seems random and I don't think that happens without fail. I have noticed this before but only chose to write about it today. I am glad Blogger is not forcing us to display their advertisements on our public blogs but choses to display their ads in password protected areas like our Dashboard which only we blog owners can see.

How to set Blogger time zone

Update: Your Blogger time zone can be set via
Dashboard > Settings > Formatting
and at the 5th item is a drop down menu to select your time zone. Ignore the rest of this post.

A blogger complained that the time stamp for his post does not correspond to the time zone of the place he is posting to Blogger. If you want to change the time zone for Blogger which is tied to your Google account, you will have to change the time zone for your Google Account. Here is what you need to do:

Sign into Blogger Dashboard and click on "My Account":



At the top left section of your Google Account, if you have not yet created your Google Profile, click "edit your personal info":



At the "Edit Personal Information" page, tick [ ] Display all timezones and select your timezone.

How to remove Header borders

A blogger request help for removing the Header border (she called it title). This is easily done.

First, sign into your Blogger account (Dashboard). Then click on the LAYOUT tab followed by EDIT HTML to get to the template editor. Look for this in the template:

#header-wrapper {
width:100%;
margin:0 auto 10px;
border:1px solid $bordercolor;
}

#header-inner {
background-position: center;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
}

#header {
margin: 5px;
border: 1px solid $bordercolor;
text-align: center;
color:$pagetitlecolor;
}

Now delete
border:1px solid $bordercolor;

Preview and if satisfactory, save template.

Google account deleted, cannot access blog - What to do

A Blogger account is associated with a Google Account. Never delete your Google Account. If you delete your Google Account, your blogs will become inaccessible to you. If you have accidentally deleted your Google Account, go to Google Account Help and fill in the form as soon as possible. Then pray.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Mishka for pointing this out.

Fixed width template horizontal scroll bar

A blogger told me that some of his readers complained of seeing a horizontal scroll bar (at the bottom of the screen) while he himself found no issue. I am guessing that he must be using a fixed width template optimized for screen resolutions greater than those of his readers while he himself is using the wider screen so see no horizontal scroll bar. These are the standard screen resolutions - 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1152x864, 1600x1200 (the first figure is the width) and fixed width templates are usually optimized for one of these.

A few years ago, nearly all fixed width templates are optimized for 800x600 and visitors with 800x600 screen will see the whole width of the blog without any horizontal scroll bar while those with wider screen will likely complained of "wasted blank space" on one or both sides of the screen. This blog in fact previously used such a fixed width template (800x600) but because surfers with 800x600 screens and smaller have become a very small minority while the vast majority of surfers have 1024x768 screens and bigger. Thus this blog's template have been upgraded to a 4 column fixed width template optimized for 1024x768. Thus visitors with 1024x768 screens will see the blog fill nicely the whole width of the screen (with no horizontal scroll bar) while those with wider screen will again see "wasted blank space" on one or both sides of the screen.

However, those with smaller screen will have the part of the right side of the blog hidden and will have to use the horizontal scroll bar to view the hidden part. You can view this yourself by resizing the screen to 800x600 (view this blog with Firefox and type or copy-paste this: "javascript:top.resizeTo(800,600)"
without the quotation marks into the address bar and press the ENTER or RETURN key). This appearance of the horizontal scroll bar is considered a nuisance and web designers will try to avoid this. However, since 800x600 screens are a very small minority, I feel fairly safe to opt for template optimized for the wider screen of 1024x768.

I would suggest to the blogger to view his blog with Firefox and resize the screen to 800x600 or 640x480 to see what his readers see (type or copy-paste javascript:top.resizeTo(800,600) or javascript:top.resizeTo(640,480) into the address bar of Firefox and press the ENTER key).

Blogger for Dummies is not my main blog. Blogger Tips and Tricks is

I see that there are 35 followers of this blog on Blogger. If you happened to be a follower, perhaps you might be interested to know that while this is my first Blogger related blog, this is not my main Blogger related blog and is not updated often. The main Blogger related blog is Blogger Tips and Tricks of which the URL is http://www.bloggertipsandtricks.com/.

The reason this is not my main blog is because the URL of this blog is http://bloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/" and the original title of this blog is Blogger for Dummies as the intention of this blog is to provide easy to follow and understand information and instructions. I was told a few months after this blog was created that "for Dummies" is trademark of Wiley Publications. I thus changed the title of this blog to Dummies Guide to Blogger but left the URL alone as this blog then already has many inbound links and a good PageRank.

If you are following this blog but not following Blogger Tips and Tricks which is more frequently updated, may I suggest you add Blogger Tips and Tricks to those blogs you are following.

May I suggest you also follow me (Peter Chen @enviroman) at Twitter