I Like the New Blogger

This may be a minority opinion, but so far, I like the new version of Blogger.

I should point out that I have only the one blog under this identity, so there were no complexities like those Devilinabluedress experienced. And I have no other contributors to manage, either. But before I moved forward with the switch, I did the following:

First of all, I backed up the text portions and embedded links to all my posts before switching over.

Second, I made a back-up copy of my template with its links, etc.

The advantages of the new Blogger are:

1.) Simplicity. I can manage my posts more easily. Since I have 30+ posts in the queue, I like being able to view my posts by "draft" or "published."

2.) Detail. I have some older posts that I probably won't ever publish, but I keep them around anyway. The new Blogger lets me label them as "Pending" without my having to look at them and say "is this the one I don't want to put up?"

The new postings publish almost instantaneously, none of that delay while it kicked in-- or having to choose between re-pub of the whole thing or just the index.

Never did figure out which choice to make, so would just vary it.

I also experienced some lost posts when Blogger would freeze during re-publishing, so that's no longer a problem.

Your mileage may vary, but if you aren't complicated, then maybe you will have as easy a time as I did.

BETA Blogger WARNING

I tried to switch Devil over a few weeks back and was rejected. Today when I logged in I got a new message about switching over, so I held my breath and hit OK.

BETA Blogger did EXACTLY what I thought that it was going to do. I'm glad I prepared for it.

It merged all of my Devil blogs with a separate and previously secret blog that was listed under the same gmail account ID. It's called StarCatcher. It was a locked BETA blog. All of the profile information for Devil has been replaced by StarCatcher profile information- including the picture. All of the blogs including Starcatcher are now listed on my dashboard.

So if you have a second identity under the same email account- BE WARNED - before you switch to BETA.

I'd like to see this message spread, so if you feel like posting this on individual blogs, go ahead.

Change to new Templates

Well, I've done this as well and it was almost as easy as the change to New Blogger.

First thing I did was took a copy of my template

The second thing I did was to take a second copy of my template and just keep the parts I had added, things like the blogrolling, stats links, button links, that kind of thing.

I clicked to change template type and selected a template very similar to my previous one, then before I completely switched, I tested the preview.

At this point I was very surprised that it looked like all of my changes had been kept in the new template, and I can only surmise that this happened because as far as I could, I followed the standard already in place in the template.

I told Blogger to complete the change in template at this point, and went to have a look at the new template configuration options.

I like the idea of the new Page Elements, however I don't know if it's been built to work with IE only because I had a lot of problems placing elements in the right place, it was very bizzare and led to lots of saving of changes and refreshing the page.

Fonts and Colours is even better, it gives you a representation of changes in Colours and Fonts, it's a Shame that the colour doesn't change automatically in the view at the bottom, you're required to save the change and manually refresh the view, but still a huge improvement on the old manual coding system

And beyond all of this, you can still hand code the HTML if you want.

Moving to Blogger

The main worry I had about changing to New Blogger, was that I'd have to redo my Template.

I'm no web programmer, so the idea of putting it all back together worried me as I'm not exactly brimming over with spare time at the moment.

I went for it though, and clicked the button, after confirming my google account, it did the change and presented me with a new screen.

The new Dashboard is similar to the old one, and my Template survived.

I'm pleasantly surprised that it was so smooth and caused no problems, but I suppose that's why it's out of Beta.

One problem Alex and I did find was that even though I was removed as an Admin of SBC, I must still have been designated as the owner, so it was upgraded also. Just bear that in mind and I would suggest (And I'd guess that Alex would concur) that if you are a mod of a shared blog, make sure that someone who's an admin, but not the owner upgrades before the owner then any possible problem with admins should be covered.

Hopefully tomorrow, I may have time to move to the new Template Standards, does anyone have any advice?

Meebo Me

Has anyone tried meebo me? It appears to be a widget you embed in your blog that enables you to see who is viewing it and also chat with visitors. Anyone?

bella

The Same Old Carry On

As Mr G has announced I am now moderator of the Sex Blogger Community. As far as the blog is concerned this means “business as usual”, unless of course any of you have any suggestions that you feel might improve things around here :)

This is a community and I believe it should stay as such. A perfect example is Mr G’s previous post about the “iNotepad” software, it’s on-topic, being 100% relevant to bloggers, succinct, impartial and informative.

So all that’s left to add is to say a huge thank you to Mr Gently for starting this community in the first place and for his stewardship over the last four months.

iNotepad (Mac Software)

I don't know if this is allowed, or should be in a resources section? Alex feel free to delete this post.

I recently found a product called iNotepad completely by accident for the Mac, it was on a coverdisk on a Mac magazine and the description sounded promising.

When I first started Blogging, I typed straight into the blogger box and hit 'Publish Post' and there you go. Longer posts soon needed something different and I retreated to the tried and trusted Microsoft Word. I never felt comfortable for some reason using that, it didn't seem to flow very well, allow multiple pieces to be worked on very well and I didn't seem to have a workflow system.

iNotepad gives me the workflow system I needed, I can create folders, file things away and manipulate how things sit a lot more easily. It will publish straight to HTML if you want and it will encrypt your writings if you want. It has many, many tricks up its sleeve

Now granted I haven't been posting much recently, but it doesn't mean that I've not been writing snippets and iNotepad has made writing so much easier for me.

The only thing it doesn't do for me is spell check, but I can always run it through Word before I post it if I want. EDIT, I've just found that it spell checks as you type.

It allows you to create 20 'Notes' and/or folders in the free version, registering it will only cost about £8 though.

I recommend people to look into it if they think it will help.(And I have no connection to the product at all.)

http://www.vojousoftware.com/

Change in Moderator

Unfortunately, Real life is imposing on my time quite heavily at the moment and I currently do not have much time to invest in SBC (or GentlyGently for that matter.) I don't see this changing for the next three months at least.

For this reason, I have asked Alex to become the Moderator. This is a permanent change, not a temporary one. I'd like to thank Alex for taking this on amongst all of the other things he does. I'm sure he will take SBC far beyond my own capability.

I'll still be actively participating in SBC, and hope to learn more over time.

Switching to Beta Blogger with Multiple Blogs

That was easy. Clicked "Switch Now." The result- "We can not switch you now because some of your blogs can not be converted at this time."

There was no option for switching some blogs at a later time. It was an all or nothing option. There wasn't a lot of information about exactly what the problem was.

1. It could be a fairly large blog with pictures- the main Devil blog.
2. The number of three column blogs that I have.
3. The fact that I also have a Beta blog under the same gmail id.

Guess I'll wait until they fix more...