A simple Blogger tip by A Typical English Home for you today

A Typical English Home has done a tutorial on how to change the message in your comment form.  If you haven't done this before I recommend that you have a look at the post.  It's easy to do.

Here's a link to a tutorial on how to add an image to your header

Bonnie at A Little Unhinged  has done a good tutorial on how to add an image to your header.  I haven't tried doing this yet but should.  I like what she has done with her header.  Click here to go to her tutorial.

Google removed your blog - don't panic straight away

Google (Blogger) has on about 4 occasions now put up a message saying that it has removed my blog!  After some major stress I have discovered that they do this when there is unusual traffic to your site apparently with the motive of protecting your blog!

The best thing to do if this happens to you is first and foremost to log in to your Blogger Dashboard.  I used to do that by clicking the little B at the top of my home page but that isn't there of course if you get the removal message.  So I have now put my dashboard onto my favourites bar.  When you do click on it, it will ask you to log in and then will ask for a captcha to be completed plus your password again.  On each occasion this has restored the blog - which can be seen by the world again.

This is an absolute pain - particularly if you are in the middle of a linky party.  Once I was off the air for almost 12 hours because it happened around bed time and I didn't know until the next morning.  Arggghh!

If you ever get that message, it would be fantastic if you emailed me to let me know!

I guess I shouldn't be too critical of Google and Blogger - it is a free service after all!

The benefits of right sizing your pics

Today, I wanted to discuss with you the size of the photos you upload to your posts.

If you have a camera with lots of mega pixels and upload photos from it straight into your post, the pics will be large in terms of pixels.  This means they will look nice BUT

1                   They will tend to make your post load more slowly for your readers – who may not have unlimited bandwidth; and

2                   They will count towards Blogger's photo limit.  This means that some day, maybe quite soon, you will find yourself unable to upload photos unless you organize to pay more!

You can avoid both these consequences simply by resizing your photos to be under the size that gets counted for Blogger's photo limit.  I resize to 500 pixels but I understand the limit is 800x600.  Here is a link to an article that discusses this issue.

Do you need to declutter your home page?

Fairly soon after I started blogging I realised that my home page was getting very long because of the list of Blogs I Follow - which is one of the standard Blogger gadgets.  It is nice, of course, to give recognition to the blogs you follow but when there gets to be a long list I think it loses its effectiveness and just becomes a source of clutter.

What I did was instead of having a full list, I created several different short sidebars.  One lists the  Food Blogs that I am featuring that month.  The others list featured 4 Book Blogs and 6 Personal Blogs - those I refresh only every 2 months or so.

All you then have to do is remember to choose the blogs to add/remove each time you review your lists.

For the newbies, this is how you created a Featured Blogs List:

1. Delete your Blogs I Follow gadget (if you have one0 - you can always put it back later if you want to.  To delete this you need to be on the Layout section of your dashboard.
2. Click add a gadget.  Don't worry where it is at this stage because once you have created it you can always drag it to where you want it and drop it there.
3. Then select Blog List - give it a suitable title, choose whether to sort it by last updated or alpha (I chose alpha because that's the sort of train spotter I am).  Leave it at showing all blogs - since you will only be adding a few.  And lastly choose how to display the blogs I chose Icon and title of most recent item only.  You could choose a bigger display but I like to keep things as simple and uncluttered as possible.
4. Then you have to add the blogs you want in the list - you can either add by copying and pasting their url's in or you can click from your blog list and choose from there.
5. Finally, don't forget to click the orange save button right at the bottom of the gadget window otherwise all of your hard work will have been for nothing!

You can do sidebars for lists of your own posts a similar way but you use the Link List gadget instead of the Blog List one.

Happy blogging.

So far, so good, I think I've killed the spam!

You know how I don't like the word verification stuff - and so don't have it turned on, on my blogs.  But on my main blog, Carole's Chatter, I have been getting quite a lot of spam comments.  I think this is because some of my posts have been submitted to StumbleUpon and Reddit and this seems to attract lots of page views - and spam.

Finally I figured out how to kill the spam - without having to use word verification.  All I did was go into my dashboard in Blogger and click Settings.  Then click Posts and Comments. You will find a question "Who can comment?".  I changed from anyone to Registered User - and that doesn't let anonymous comments through.  Don't forget to click on the orange Save Settings button towards the top right or else nothing will change.

I was a bit worried that some legit comments would be stopped - so I changed my little spiel about comments to ask anyone who had trouble to email me - but all the normal comments seem to be coming through just fine.

So if the thing stopping you killing the "prove you are not a robot" thing is the spam - I think this might solve your problem.  And it really is in your blog's best interests to change to no word verification - it does put so many people off from commenting on your blog.

Good luck.

A basic guide to putting a photo/infograph into a post in Blogger – for newbies only

Ok, all you experts out there will know how to do this.  But some people who are just starting out would like to know!

So how do you go about putting a photo or graph into your post.  First you find and save your photo/graph.  I know you will be careful about saving pics that are not your own!

I tend to save onto my own hard drive – but many people use photo storing sites – and I am sure that works just fine – in fact, if anyone would like to share a tip or two about them, that would be great – you can guest post or I can link to your post.

Then you open up the window where you normally draft your posts.  Up the top of that window you will see a row of stuff.  The one with the picture frame is the one you want – I have circled it in red.

Once you have clicked on the picture frame – this is what you will see.           

I just click on choose files and it then takes you to your picture files and you just click on the one you want to use.  You will see that it also has other options for how to select the photo.

Once you have chosen your file the box at the bottom called "add selected" will come live and you just click it and there your image is in your draft post!

A photo size tip from Grandma Loy's Kitchen

Click here for a helpful little photo size tip from Grandma Loy.  She has found a way of posting pics that are bigger than Blogger's large but not so big that it goes over  into the sidebar.

Google Analytics - get it now!

I wish I had signed up to Google Analytics much sooner.  Because I was late to the party, I can only see quite recent data on traffic to the site.  Signing up for it is easy and free – I can only tell you how I did it in Blogger.

You have to have a Google account to sign up.  If you are on Blogger you will have one.

Go to the Google Analytics official site.  This is the link. 

Click on sign up now – you find it in the top right hand corner.  You put in your Google account details and then you are almost there.

Then you just follow the boxes giving your blog address and name .  You have to agree to their terms of service.

You can then get the whole code – but you don't need it for Blogger – you just copy the Web Property ID and paste it into the relevant box in the settings part of your dashboard.  It is towards the bottom of the Other tab under settings.

And once you have saved your settings you will be good to go.  Any time you want to check what is there – just go  to Google Analytics and sign in and click to see what is going on.  

I recommend that you don't do this too frequently – or you will get obsessed!  You can look at all sorts of different views/cuts of the data about your blog.  I don't use much of it but will learn more over time.

Did you know there were photo limits on Blogger? I didn't until I read this!

A big thank you to the Blue Eyed Beauty Blog for posting on the issue of photo limits on Blogger.  I am certainly going to take her advice about the size of the photos I use from now on!  Click here to see her post.

Unfollowing a blog using the new Blogger Interface

I have only just  found out how to unfollow a blog in the new Blogger Interface.  Up til now, when I found I had mistakenly followed a blog and wanted to take it off my reading list, I was  going back into the Old Blogger Interface to do it - or doing it on the blog itself by signing in and then going to Site Settings.

But wouldn't you know it, the answer is right there - look at your Dashboard - on the other side from where you see the heading Reading List there is a little wheel thing.  If you click it, it takes you to a window where you can manage your reading list.  It even says that when you mouse over the wheel.  So I should have figured this out much earlier!

Blogger following limits

Did you know that Google won't let you follow more than 300 blogs?  Well, they try to stop you, anyway.  If you have been in the habit of signing up to follow blogs by using the Add button under Reading List on your Dashboard - like I was - you will find that once you are following 300 blogs it won't let you add more this way.

But there is a way around it - and I wish I had known about it a long time ago - I would then have only used the "add" button for non-GFC sites and life would have been smooth sailing.  All you do to get around it is to follow new sites by clicking the Google Friend Connect "Join this Site" - most blogs have it and Google will just keep adding the sites merrily into your reading list even if you have more than 300.