Blogger (service)

Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at a subdomain of blogspot.com. Up until May 1, 2010 Blogger allowed users to publish blogs on other hosts, via FTP. All such blogs had (or still have) to be moved to Google's own servers, with domains other than blogspot.com allowed via custom URLs.^[3]

History

On August 23, 1999, Blogger was launched by Pyra Labs. As one of the earliest dedicated blog-publishing tools, it is credited for helping popularize the format. In February 2003, Pyra Labs was acquired by Google under undisclosed terms. The acquisition allowed premium features (for which Pyra had charged) to become free. In October 2004, Pyra Labs' co-founder, Evan Williams, left Google. In 2004, Google purchased Picasa; it integrated Picasa and its photo sharing utility Hello into Blogger, allowing users to post photos to their blogs.
On May 9, 2004, Blogger introduced a major redesign, adding features such as web standards-compliant templates, individual archive pages for posts, comments, and posting by email. On August 14, 2006, Blogger launched its latest version in beta, codenamed "Invader", alongside the gold release. This migrated users to Google servers and had some new features, including interface language in French, Italian, German and Spanish.^[4] In December 2006, this new version of Blogger was taken out of beta. By May 2007, Blogger had completely moved over to Google operated servers. Blogger was ranked 16 on the list of top 50 domains in terms of number of unique visitors in 2007

Redesign

As part of the Blogger redesign in 2006, all blogs associated with a user's Google Account were migrated to Google servers. Blogger claims that the service is now more reliable because of the quality of the servers.^[6]
Along with the migration to Google servers, several new features were introduced, including label organization, a drag-and-drop template editing interface, reading permissions (to create private blogs) and new Web feed options. Furthermore, blogs are updated dynamically, as opposed to rewriting HTML files.
In a version of the service called Blogger in Draft,^[7] new features are tested before being released to all users. New features are discussed in the service's official blog.^[8]

Screenshot of blog post compose window of Blogger, April 2012

In September 2009, Google introduced new features into Blogger as part of its tenth anniversary celebration. The features included a new interface for post editing, improved image handling, Raw HTML Conversion, and other Google Docs-based implementations, including:

• Adding location to posts via geotagging.
• Post time-stamping at publication, not at original creation.
• Vertical re-sizing of the post editor. The size is saved in a per-user, per-blog preference.
• Link editing in Compose mode.
• Full Safari 3 support and fidelity on both Windows and Mac OS.
• New Preview dialog that shows posts in a width and font size approximating what is seen in the published view.
• Placeholder image for tags so that embeds are movable in Compose mode.
• New toolbar with Google aesthetics, faster loading time, and "undo" and "redo" buttons. Also added was the full justification button, a strike-through button, and an expanded color palette.

In 2010, Blogger introduced new templates and redesigned its website. The new post editor was criticized for being less reliable than its predecessor.^[9]

Available languages

Blogger is available in these languages: Arabic, Bengali, Indonesia, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Oriya, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese. Nepali, Farashi

Available designs

Blogger allows its users to choose from various templates available,and fully customize them. Users may also choose to create their own template using CSS. The new design template, known as Dynamic View, was introduced recently. It is built with AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3. The time for loading is 40 percent shorter than traditional templates, and allows user to present blog in seven different ways: classic, flipcard, magazine, mosaic, sidebar, snapshot, and timeslide. Readers still have the option to choose preferable views when the blog owner has set a default view.^[10] Some of the widgets (e.g. Labels, Profile, Link List, Subscription Links, Followers^[11] and Blog Archive etc.) are available for Dynamic Views. Other templates are chosen by the blogger.

Screenshot of blog post compose window of Blogger, April 2012

Integration

• The Google Toolbar has a feature called "BlogThis!" which allows toolbar users with Blogger accounts to post links directly to their blogs.
• "Blogger for Word" is an add-in for Microsoft Word which allows users to save a Microsoft Word Document directly to a Blogger blog, as well as edit their posts both on- and offline. As of January 2007, Google says "Blogger for Word is not currently compatible with the new version of Blogger", and they state no decision has been made about supporting it with the new Blogger.^[12] However, Microsoft Office 2007 adds native support for a variety of blogging systems, including Blogger.
• Blogger supports Google's AdSense service as a way of generating revenue from running a blog.
• Blogger also started integration with Amazon Associates in December 2009, as a service to generate revenue.^[13] It was not publically announced, but by September 2011 it appeared that all integration options had been removed and that the partnership had ended.^[14]
• Blogger offers multiple author support, making it possible to establish group blogs.
• Blogger offers a template editing feature, which allows users to customize the Blogger template.
• Windows Live Writer, a standalone app of the Windows Live suite, publishes directly to Blogger.
• Blogger Private Blog features: Blogger offers a private blog that can be only access by author or invited readers /authors or admins only .
• Blogger can be optionally integrated with Google+.
• Google+ comments can be integrated with blogger comments.

Blogger on mobile devices

Blogger has launched mobile applications for users with mobile devices. Users can post and edit blogs, and also share photos and links on Blogger through their mobile devices. Not only advanced mobile devices, such as smartphones, are being considered, since users can also post blogs via traditional cell phones by SMS and MMS.^[15]

Screenshot of Blogger app on iOS

The major two mobile operation systems that Blogger focuses on are Android and iOS.^[16][17] Blogger allow users to edit blogs anywhere through the app and either publish the blogs or save them as drafts. Quick navigation from posts and drafts is accessible from a list. Users can attach photos by taking a picture with a Blogger app or selecting pictures from their photo galleries. Sharing current locations on posts is also possible by tabbing My Location bar and adding locations. Users can also share photos and links directly to Blogger.

Blocking

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Blogger has been blocked for various periods of time in the following countries:

• Cuba
• Fiji
• Iran (www.blogger.com and www.blogspot.com, as well as all blogs on this platform)
• Kazakhstan
• Kyrgyzstan (www.blogger.com and www.blogspot.com, as well as all blogs on this platform are not accessible via most Internet providers because they take traffic from Kazakhstan, where they are blocked)
• Myanmar
• Pakistan^[18]
• People's Republic of China
• Russian Federation (some ISPs in 2012 blocking an IP address put into Federal List of Extremist Materials in 2011)^[19]
• Syrian Arab Republic
• Turkey (for a short period)
• Vietnam
• Yemen

Blocking of *.blogspot.com domains by keyword-based Internet filtering systems is also encountered due to the domain containing the substring "gspot."

Limitations

Blogger has the following limitations on content storage and bandwidth, per user account:^[20]

• Blog description = 500 characters. HTML mark up not supported.
• Number of blogs = 100 blogs per account.
• Number of labels = 5000 unique labels per blog (increased from the original 2000), 20 unique labels per post
• Number of pictures (hyperlinked from user's Picasa Web Album) = Up to 1 GB of free storage ( As of April 2012, disk space allocated is 5 GB^[21])
• Number of posts =There is no limit on the number of posts one can have in one blog.
• Size of pages = Individual pages (the main page of a blog or archive pages) are limited to 1 MB
• Size of pictures = If posted via Blogger Mobile, limited 300 KB per picture; posted pictures are scaled to 1600px^[22]
• Stand-Alone Pages = Limited to 20 stand-alone pages.
• Team members (those who can write to a blog) = 100 invitations per blog.

On February 18, 2010,^[23] Blogger introduced "auto-pagination", which limited the number of posts that could be displayed on each page, often causing the number of posts on the main page to be less than that specified by the user and leading to a hostile response from some users.^[24][25]
Private blogs are limited to only 100 members. A member of Blogger's staff (Brett from Blogger) recently stated ^[26] that Blogger's private blog limit is 100 readers is because

If someone wants a private blog, 9/10 it's illegal or suspicious. A few people want one for legitimate purposes like medical support, but in most cases it's to hide piracy at best and drug dealing or preying on children at worst. We have to use staff to personally monitor every one of our private blogs. They are costing us money right now and until people stop making them to spread religious intolerance or preparing arms for the violent overthrow of the government, we are not expanding the number.

Most of the blogs appear harmless. But when we review each of the user's activity on other Google networks, you will find the same people in the blog membership all have related interests and at least one of them is always of questionable legal nature at best. Smaller numbers are easier to verify that the blog is being used safely and legally.

— Brett from Blogger (2011), Blogger Support

Support

The official support channel is the Blogger Product Forum.^[27] This on-line discussion forum, delivered using Google Groups, is visited by Blogger users (of varying skill levels), and receives some monitoring from Google staff. "Top Contributors" are community-members nominated by the Google staff, who have additional rights which let them manage discussions and get direct access to the Google staff. There is likely to be a Top Contributor or other knowledgeable person reading the forum almost all the time.
A number of people, including some Top Contributors, run personal blogs where they offer advice and post information about common problems.
StackExchange's Web Applications forum^[28] has a tag for "blogger", which is used for questions about various blogging platforms, including Blogger.

See also

Internet portal

• List of Google products
• Niche blogging