Fonts and Colors

In the Layout | Fonts and Colors tab, you can easily edit and customize the fonts and colors of your blog without any knowledge of HTML or CSS. (Note: Certain templates allow you to edit more elements of your blog than others.)

How do I edit the colors in my blog?

First choose the element you would like to change the color of:
Then choose the color you would like that element to be. You can either click on the color you want or enter the color hex code:

When you change your blog colors, you can view your changes in the blog preview beneath the color panel. Make sure you save your changes after you have finished selecting the colors for your blog. If you're feeling adventurous you can click "Shuffle blog colors" to randomly shuffle all of the colors already in your blog. If you don't like your changes, you can revert back to your default colors by clicking "Revert to template default."

Peek-a-boo comments

Note: This article assumes you are using a classic template (without the Layouts features).
By default, a post's comments are only displayed on the post page for that post. You can show them on your main or archive pages as well, of course, but that could get crowded. A better option might be to have a link to click on your main or archive page that will make the comments appear on that page, without having to go to the post page. Something like this:

Example Post

I'm not going to actually type a whole lot here. You can pretend it's long and interesting, though, if that would make you feel better. Just click the comment link here.
# posted by Graham @ 5:15 pm | 2 comments

Comments:

• Dude, you write the best posts. I always love reading your blog.
  by Graham's Friend @ 6:16 pm
   
• I don't know. I think they're pretty bad, really.
  by Graham's Enemy @ 7:17 pm

Similar to a previous hack, there are three parts to this feature: CSS, Javascript, and of course, Blogger template tags. So let's go through it step by step.

CSS

This is the simplest part. We need a couple classes that either hide comments or show comments, so you can just paste these two lines into your style sheet:
.commenthidden {display:none}
.commentshown {display:inline}
Your style sheet is usually near the top of your template, between the tags. If you have your style sheet in a separate file, you'll just add these lines to that file instead of to your template.

Javascript

Add the following code to your template, between the tags:

How do I control who can view my blog?

By default, your blog is completely public, and can be read by anyone on the internet. However, if you want to keep it private, you can do that, too. The setting for this is on the Settings | Permissions tab.
Under the Blog Readers heading, you'll probably see "Anybody" selected as the default. When you change this to "Only readers I choose," you'll get an Add Readers button.
Click the Add Readers button and then enter the email address of a person to whom you want to grant access to your blog. To add multiple people, separate their addresses with commas.
For each address entered, the Google Account associated with that address will be given access to view your blog. If an address is not associated with an account, that person will be sent an invitation email with a link allowing them do one of three things:

• Sign in to an existing account.
• Create a new account.
• View your blog as a guest (no account required).
  

How do I leave comments on a blog?

If someone has comments enabled on his or her blog, then you can usually find a "comments" link at the end of each post, like this:

If you click this link, you will go to the comment posting page. (Note: in some templates, this link may take you to the post page first. From there you should be able to find the "Post a Comment" link which will take you here.) The comment posting page looks like this:
In the upper left corner, there is an option to show or hide the original blog post that the comments relate to. The rest of the left-hand column contains any comments that have already been made. The profile photos of the comment authors may also display, depending on the blog's settings.
On the right hand side of the page is the space for you to enter your comment. Beneath that are the identity options. (Some of these may not be available, depending on the blog's settings.)

The options are these:

• Blogger username: Your display name will appear, along with a link to your profile and your photo (if you have one).
• Other: You can enter your name and a link to your website, without having to have a Blogger account.
• Anonymous: No identifying information is displayed. The comment is credited to "Anonymous" without a link.
  

How do I enable comments on my blog?

To enable Comments, go to the Settings | Comments tab:
Then select the Show radio button and click Save Settings:
Once Comments are enabled, several more settings appear:

Who Can Comment?

• Only Registered Users: if not logged in already, visitors will be prompted to log into Blogger before leaving a comment. If they don't have an account, they can create one.
• Anyone: anybody in the whole wide world can leave comments
• Only Members of this Blog: only members of the blog (if it's a Team Blog) can leave comments

Default for Posts

• New Posts Have Comments: by default, all new posts have Comments enabled
• New Posts Do Not Have Comments: by default, Comments are disabled on new posts, but can be enabled on a by-post basis:
  

  

Comments Timestamp Format

• The date and time that comments are left will be displayed in the format you choose here.
  

How do I delete comments?

You can delete any comment that you create on anyone else's blog, as long as you signed in to your Google Account when you left the comment. You can also delete any comments (registered or anonymous) that are left on your own blog, or on another blog for which you have admin privileges.
To delete a comment, first make sure that you are logged in to the correct Blogger account (administrator of the blog or author of the comment). Then go to the blog and find the page where the comment is listed. Next to the comment, you should see a trash can icon, like this:


Click the trash can and you will see this confirmation page, which also lists the comment for review:

What is the word verification option?

The "word verification" option can be found on the Settings | Comments tab for your blog, and it looks like this:
If you choose "yes" for this setting, then people leaving comments on your blog will be required to complete a word verification step, similar to the one presented when you create a blog:
What this does is to prevent automated systems from adding comments to your blog, since it takes a human being to read the word and pass this step. If you've ever received a comment that looked like an advertisement or a random link to an unrelated site, then you've encountered comment spam. A lot of this is done automatically by software which can't pass the word verification, so enabling this option is a good way to prevent many such unwanted comments.



http://www.google.com/support/blogger

How do I moderate comments on my blog?

The ability to moderate comments as they are added to your blog can be very handy if you want to catch any comment spam before it reaches your page or if you'd like control over the kind of messages people can leave on your blog. You can find the comment moderation setting on the Settings | Comments tab, along with all of the other comment settings:
Selecting "Always" will automatically enable comment moderation for all incoming comments on your blog. You may also choose to moderate only older comments by specifying a number of days in the "Only on posts older than" setting. Selecting "Never" will disable comment moderation for this blog.
Enabling comment moderation then drops down an email form. This lets you moderate comments via email without affecting your regular comment notification setting. It is optional, since you can always moderate comments through the Blogger interface.
So enable comment moderation from one of the first two options, enter a notification address if desired, save the settings, and wait for your next comment. All incoming comments will now go to a special "Moderate Comments" page, which you can find under the Posting | Moderate comments tab:
On this page, you will see a list of all the comments that have been created but have not yet been approved or rejected. (This list excludes any comments made by admin members of the blog.) By default, they will be

How do I use the transliteration feature?

What is transliteration?

Blogger offers an automatic transliteration option for converting Roman characters to the Indic characters used in Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu. This lets you type these languages phonetically in English script and still have them appear in their correct alphabet. Note that this is not the same as translation -- the sound of the words is converted from one alphabet to the other, not the meaning. For example, typing 'hamesha' transliterates into Hindi as:

Enabling the Transliteration Feature

To enable this feature, go to the Settings | Basics page, select Enable for the transliteration option, and select your preferred language. This setting will affect all blogs on your account, similar to the Compose Mode setting.
Next, go to your post editor and you'll see a new button.

Typing with Transliteration

This button toggles the transliteration feature on and off. (You can also use Ctrl+G as a shortcut.) When it's on, it affects the title, labels, and body of your post. The letters of a word will appear as you type them until you reach the end of the word. As soon as you type a space or a punctuation mark, the letters will be converted to Indic characters, like this:
If you prefer to do the transliteration all at once, rather than as you go, you can type your text with the transliteration button turned off. Then select all your text and click the button. Everything selected will be transliterated at once, and you can go back and edit it as desired. (Note: This only works in the body of the post, not in the title or labels.)
The transliteration will attempt to match the sounds of the letters as accurately as possible between the two alphabets. If you find that it's incorrect, however, you can fix it.

Correcting and Editing Words

Page Elements Tags for Layouts

The section of a Layouts template is made up primarily of sections and widgets. Sections mark out areas of your page, such as the sidebar, footer, etc. A widget is an individual page element such as a picture, a blogroll, or anything else you can add from the Page Elements tab. You can include any HTML you like around the sections in your template.
Each section in your template has an opening and a closing tag, looking something like this:


A tag can have the following attributes:

• id - (Required) A unique name, with letters and numbers only.
• class - (Optional) Common class names are 'navbar,' 'header,' 'main,' 'sidebar,' and 'footer.' If you switch templates later, these names help Blogger determine how best to transfer over your content. However, you can use different names, if you like.
• maxwidgets - (Optional) The maximum number of widgets to allow in this section. If you don't specify a limit, there won't be one.
• showaddelement - (Optional) Can be 'yes' or 'no,' with 'yes' as the default. This determines whether the Page Elements tab will show the 'Add a Page Element' link in this section.
• growth - (Optional) Can be 'horizontal' or 'vertical,' with 'vertical' as the default. This determines whether widgets within this section are arranged side-by-side or stacked.

A section can contain widgets; it can't contain other sections or other code. If you need to insert extra code between or around certain widgets within a section, you'll need to split the section into two or more new sections.

How do I automatically email a post after I've written it?

Each of your blog posts can be automatically sent to a given email address, using our BlogSend feature. To configure this, go to Settings | Email:
Then enter your email address:
Notes:

• BlogSend will only send email to a single address, so multiple addresses entered here will not receive the updates. If you want to send updates to more than one address, you will need to create a mailing list. You can use a service such as Google Groups to do this. Then just enter the mailing list address in the BlogSend setting.

http://www.google.com/support/blogger

Follow other blogs

With the Blogger Following feature you can keep track of the blogs you follow via your Reading List on the Blogger dashboard. There are several ways to become a follower of a blog. One of the easiest ways is to visit a blog that has added the 'Following' widget, ad then follow these steps:

1. Click the FOLLOW THIS BLOG link under the 'Followers' widget.
   
2. You'll then see a pop-up window with the options to either follow publicly or anonymously.

Privacy and permissions

By default, your blog is completely public, and can be read by anyone on the internet. However, if you want to keep it private, you can do that, too. You cna change these settings on the Settings | Permissions tab.

1. Under the 'Blog Readers' heading, you'll probably see 'Anybody' selected as the default. When you change this to 'Only readers I choose,' you'll get an Add Readers button.
2. Click the Add Readers button and then enter the email address of a person to whom you'd like to grant access to your blog. To add multiple people, separate their addresses with commas.
3. For each address entered, the Google Account associated with that address will be given access to view your blog. If an address is not associated with an account, that person will receive an invitation email with a link allowing them do one of three things:

Can I edit the HTML of my blog's layout?

Yes, just go to the >Layout tab and click the Edit HTML sub-tab. Keep in mind that Blogger's Layouts feature makes it easy for anyone to customize the look of their blog with little or no technical knowledge.
The first thing on the Edit HTML page is an option to download a copy of your template to a text file on your hard drive. We highly recommend doing this if you've made any interesting customizations to your design at all. Then, if you make a mistake editing your template, or if you just don't like the way it comes out, you can revert easily by uploading the same file again.
Next comes the actual code for your template. You'll notice it looks somewhat like regular HTML and CSS, but also includes lots of custom tags that make it compatible with our drag-and-drop layout editor, and with the font and color picker. If you want to make extensive changes to your code, you'll want to read up on these tags first:

• Page Element Tags
• Fonts and Colors Tags

You'll also see an option to 'Expand Widget Templates.' By default, each page element is shown in the code as a one-line placeholder, whose options can be set in the graphical interface on the Page Elements tab. Turning this option on will show the complete data and template for each element. The code is simpler the first way, but you have more control the second way, so use whichever option you prefer. Learn more by reading this help article:

• Widget Template Tags

Below the code, you'll see three buttons for Clear Edits, Preview, and Save Template, which do what you'd expect them to.
There are also two links referring to your 'classic template.' If you converted your blog from the older style of Blogger templates to the new Layouts version, then your classic template is the last template you used in the old system, with all your customizations. If your blog was created on the new system and has always used Layouts, then your classic template is a default, classic version of the original design you chose when you created the blog, without any customizations. The View link will show you the code, in case you just want to check up on something, or copy a piece of it for your new design. The Revert link will erase all the customizations you made in the Layouts feature and set your blog to use the old-style Blogger template again. Note that you won't be able to use the graphical Layouts interface in this mode (though you can convert back to Layouts again later).



http://www.google.com/support/blogger

How can I let people email my posts to their friends?

Email This Post enables your blog readers to share your posts with others.
Let's say a visitor to your blog just loves your post about The Secret Valor of Chickens. Now that visitor can let her friends know about your discovery by emailing out a link to your post. It's a great way to let your readers share what they've seen on your blog.
To enable this feature, set Show Email Post links? to Yes in the Settings | Basic tab in Blogger:
Here's what they look like:

Notes:

• To prevent spamming and encourage blog visits, a link is sent via email rather than the post body
• If you have a classic template, you must have the <$BlogMetaData$> tag in your Template's section, and the <$BlogItemControl$> tag wherever you want the Mail links to appear. We suggest somewhere in your "posted by" line. (Our default templates already have all the correct code.)
• If you're publishing via FTP, you'll need to republish your blog's index page in order for the links to appear.
• CSS files are aggressively cached by browsers for performance reasons. This means you may have to reload or even super-reload (using the shift key) to make links appear after you first enable them.

http://www.google.com/support/blogger

How do I change the format of the dates displayed in my blog?

You can change the date format for both posts and archive links by editing your blog settings. On the Settings | Formatting page, there are fields for Date Header Format and Archive Index Date Format. Both fields include drop-down menus that list the format options for displaying dates.

 Date Header Format:

(Date Headers usually go above your posts.)

Archive Index Date Format:

(The Archive Index is usually the list of archive links in your sidebar.)
Click Save Settings at the bottom of the page when you're done.

http://www.google.com/support/blogger

How do I post audio/music to my blog?

The Quick Answer

• Choose whether to embed audio/music from a third-party site or to host your own (podcast).
• To podcast, choose a host to store your audio files, then enable 'Link Fields' in your Settings | Formatting tab.
• Use the link field to enclose audio files in your posts.

If you'd like to put music or audio on your blog, there are many options available to you. First you'll have to decide whether you want to host your own audio files or merely embed them from an existing third-party site.

Embedding music/audio from third-party sites

If you'd like to embed a playlist or functionality from a third-party music service such as Last.fm or Imeem, Blogger's layouts feature makes it easy.

1. Visit your Template | Page Elements tab.
2. Create a new widget by clicking "Add a Page Element."
3. Choose the "HTML/Javascript" widget.
4. Enter the HTML code provided by your third-party music service into the content window and click "Save Changes."

If you can't find the necessary code, you may have to contact your third-party music service. Feel free to position the page element wherever you'd like.

How do I import and export blogs on Blogger?

The import and export features on Blogger give your content a whole new range of portability and freedom, allowing you to create copies of your own blogs as well as import them into other existing ones. Best of all-we've made this a very simple process!

Import as a New Blog

To import content as a brand new blog, click Create a Blog from your dashboard.
Then under Advanced Options, click the Import Blog Tool
Finally, choose the Blogger export file (.xml) from your hard drive and fill out the word verification. Click the Upload arrow and your new bog will be created instantly!

Import Into an Existing Blog

To import posts and comments into an already existing blog, start by clicking Import Blog from the existing blog's Settings | Basic tab.
 
Note: Your template will not be affected by the imported content.
 
Next, choose a Blogger export file (.xml) from your hard drive and fill out the word verification beneath. By default, all of your imported posts will remain unpublished until you publish them from your dashboard later. However, if you would rather have all posts published immediately, make sure to check the box next to Automatically publish all imported posts before you click Import Blog.
If you did not choose to have your posts publish automatically, you will need to manually publish them from the Posting | Edit Posts tab before they will appear on the web. You can either publish all the posts at once by clicking Publish all imported posts, or publish individual posts by selecting them and then clicking Publish Selected.

Exporting Your blog

To export your blog, simply click Export Blog from the Settings | Basic tab.
Finally, click the Export Blog button. You blog will be stored as a Blogger export file (.xml) file which can be kept as a backup on your hard drive or imported into another blog.
Note: Exported blogs are not deleted from your dashboard or Blogger.com


http://www.google.com/support/blogger

How can I edit labels on multiple posts at once?

The Edit Posts page includes options for displaying posts by label, and for applying or removing labels on batches of posts. To get there, visit the Posting | Edit Posts tab, or just click the Manage Posts link on your dashboard.
This page has all labels in use by this blog listed on the left-hand side. Each individual post also has its particular labels marked in green next to its title. By default, posts with all labels are shown.
(Note: You'll only see the labels here if you have at least one post already labeled. You can label an individual post on the posting form.)

How do I label my posts?

The Basics

When you're writing a post, you'll have a space at the bottom of the form marked "Labels for this post." Enter whatever labels you like, separating them with commas. You can also click the "show all" link to display a list of labels you've used previously. Then just click on the labels to add them.
When you publish your post, the labels will be listed with it. Clicking any of the labels will take you to a page containing only posts with that label.

Advanced Use

You can easily change the formatting used here by editing your blog's layout.