Publishing Externally? Here's What You Get

Every day now, you see the question

I just upgraded my account and blog to New Blogger. Where is my Layouts template / my Label list / my link to Upgrade my template?

and you look at the blog URL (when it's included), and it's not yourblog.blogspot.com.

And the answer is always that, when you publish externally (aka FTP publishing), you don't get any of those features. New Blogger 2006 requires publishing to blogspot.com, for maximum benefit.

The New Blogger 2006 Blog*Spot servers publish the blog as the reader retrieves each page. They don't publish static HTML, they publish dynamic XML. When you publish by FTP, Blogger is copying old static HTML code to your FTP server. HTML won't get you

• Improved Archives, with multiple selectable views, and individual titles.
• New Layouts template, with GUI configured page elements.
  • Feeds.
  • Labels.
  • Linklists.
• Improved Main Page view, multi-paged, with each page limited in size by the "Show days / posts" setting.
• Improved Template editor, with scripted save and restore of template code.
• The ability to require authentication, and to designate readers, to view the blog. Any blog published by FTP is open to view by all.

What it will get you is

• Authentication by Google account.
• Labels for the posts. You can use the labels in various ways, without the Layouts template based Label page elements.
  • Make your own Label lists, from the labels shortcuts after each post.
  • Select a label shortcut after a post, and view all posts with that label, in a single page Main Page view.
• Improved Edit Posts menu, again with labels.
• The new, more stable Blogger.
• The shiny new Navbar (that you can continue to turn off).
• The continued spinner of death, when you publish (sorry, but static publishing will continue to have this).
• Your own, externally published website, that you can control (though not protect) as you see fit.
• A domain name that you can choose. This may not be exclusive to external publishing.

Nor can you have private blogs. See Settings - Publishing.

Hint: If you want to publish to an external FTP server, you will need to Set 'Blog Readers' to 'Anybody' and use a Classic Template.

Now, if the above issues are a problem for you, but you don't want your blog hosted on Blog*Spot, check out Google Custom Domains. Read my case study, and read about the possible complications, too.

Backup Your Blog - Beta

I use, and recommend, HTTrack to mirror your blog. HTTrack is very versatile, and will copy any number of blogs, or other websites, in one job, making the contents of each website accessible as if it was an online access, from any mirrored website.

Unfortunately, HTTrack mirroring may be problematic with Blogger Beta. When I started using HTTrack, I could back up a couple of my blogs in 5 - 10 minutes. I added more blogs to the backup job, and backup time went up to 1/2 hour or so, and used 100M or so of disk space. Still a neglible amount of time and disk space, considering the results.

As I started developing this blog, and especially when I started using labels in my posts, backup time and disk space increased dramatically. The last mirror that I ran was 2 weeks ago - it took 14 hours, and used 3.7G of disk space.

Today, in a comment for Backup Your Blog, I see

Well, i tried to use HTTrack but unfortunately it goes looping and tries to download over 200 MB of content, which my blog never has, as i only have 80+ posts.

I went searching for a solution, and in the HTTrack forum, I found one query, Blogger Beta Problems

i try to mirror my Blogger Beta blog but somehow there are some problems related to this task. If i just mirror it without any additional settings then it starts downloading about 200MB worth of sites, mirroring the index file many times but with different number codes (e.g. index25987.html), also there is a folder 'feeds' which keeps growing during the process, filling up quickly.

followed by

i too am having problems, only since i upgraded to beta blog. now it takes up to 90 minutes, & still is not complete, the no of files updated gets to a certain % then startes to decrease instead of increase & i am getting virtual memory errors.

I don't think that this is, necessarily, a design problem in HTTrack. I did spend some time looking thru the Options in the HTTrack job, and I am fairly certain that there is a setting in there that will be relevant to the problem. Finding that setting, though, could be easier with an HTTrack expert.

I hope that one becomes available soon.

Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta - 3

A new post starts out with wide vertical spacing. Look at what we have here, from line to line. Nice and wide vertical spacing. Clean and easy to read. The perfect look for a blog, right?

(Note): This post has been migrated to (and improved in) The Real Blogger Status: Spacing Changes In Layouts Templates #3.

Now, let's throw in a quote.

In the past, and looking at my example shown in Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta, you'd start seeing the problem here. My immediately previous article Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta - 2 suggested an obnoxiously tedious workaround to this problem, which involved surrounding each indent element, such as

<blockquote> ... </blockquote>

with an extra span set to give

<span style="line-height: 1.2;"><blockquote> ... </blockquote></span>

This was fine - it made my blog posts look neat and tidy again - but it had its drawback. It was a major pain in the ass to use - any of my blog posts, of any length, would include 2, 3, or more formatting elements, which I would have to surround each one.

So today, whilst browsing Blogger Help Group: Something Is Broken, I come across Blockquote problem w/ Minima template, with a better workaround.

Go to the Template | Edit HTML tab. In the CSS (top) section of your template code, find the post section. In this section, under the ".post p" heading, find the line that says: line-height:1.6em. Move this line to the ".post" section.

So, let's see what we have in my template.

.post {
margin:.5em 0 1.5em;
border-bottom:1px dotted $bordercolor;
padding-bottom:1.5em;
}

...

.post p {
margin:0 0 .75em;
line-height:1.6em;
}

and change it to

.post {
margin:.5em 0 1.5em;
border-bottom:1px dotted $bordercolor;
padding-bottom:1.5em;
line-height:1.6em;
}

...

.post p {
margin:0 0 .75em;
}

Move the one line of code, in red. Save, and View Blog.

Simple, but still a workaround.

• It's one change / template setup in the blog (remember if you change templates, you'll have to repeat this one change). Not one change / page element in each post, for eternity.
• When installed, you lose spacing differences in indented elements (<blockquote>, <ol>, <ul>).

The blog is neater now, but it's not as readable. Let Blogger know that this needs to be fixed properly.

Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta - 2

(Note 11/25): The below content is informational only. The problem in question is not demonstrated, because of the workaround currently in place.

A new post starts out with wide vertical spacing. Look at what we have here, from line to line. Nice and wide vertical spacing. Clean and easy to read. The perfect look for a blog, right?

But don't get used to it - what does this look like in Internet Explorer? In my previous post, Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta, I showed the problem. Maybe the advice given by Paul R will help here.

Now, let's throw in a quote.

And now, look at the vertical spacing. It's fine now, until after the unsorted list below. Nice one, Paul.

So, how did this work? Well, in the above example in my previous post, I have

<blockquote>Now, let's throw in a quote.</blockquote>

and in this post I have

<span style="line-height: 1.2;"><blockquote>Now, let's throw in a quote.</blockquote></span>

Look at my other posts, for instance. Enough! I Want To Go Back! and Beta Blogs: My 3 Week Evaluation both exhibit this behaviour.

Other folks who have observed this.

• Problem with the line space of the posts. Observed 10/17.
  
• problem with block quotes Observed 9/22.
  
• Line spacing is not the same... Observed 9/16.
  

(Edit 11/18): And today, we see the new comment (#2, below)

The fix worked for me on Firefox, but not in Internet Explorer.

DOHH! Why should this not surprise me?


(Edit 11/24):See Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta - 3 for an update, making this workaround unnecessary.


(Edit 10/17): From Problem with the line space of the posts., we find possible hope:

As a temporary fix for current posts, I (accidentally) found that if
you add <span style="line-height: 1.4;"> before each blockquote, and </span> after the blockquote, then the line spacing goes back to normal after the quote, as it is supposed to.

Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta

(Note 11/25): The below content is informational only. The problem in question is not demonstrated, because of the workaround currently in place.

A new post starts out with wide vertical spacing. Look at what we have here, from line to line. Nice and wide vertical spacing. Clean and easy to read. The perfect look for a blog, right?

Now, let's throw in a quote.

And now, look at the vertical spacing. With enough lines in here, you can see a change in post layout. The vertical spacing becomes much tighter. This looks sloppy. I've also seen this happen when you include <ol> and <ul> post elements. It appears to happen with any indentation element.

But let's try a test, per advice outlined below.

Testing.

Look at my other posts, for instance. Enough! I Want To Go Back! and Beta Blogs: My 3 Week Evaluation both exhibit this behaviour.

Other folks who have observed this.

• Problem with the line space of the posts. Observed 10/17.
  
• problem with block quotes Observed 9/22.
  
• Line spacing is not the same... Observed 9/16.
  

(Edit 11/24):See Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta - 3 for an update, and now you cannot (hopefully) even see the problem.


(Edit 10/17): From Problem with the line space of the posts., we find possible hope:

As a temporary fix for current posts, I (accidentally) found that if
you add <span style="line-height: 1.4;"> before each blockquote, and </span> after the blockquote, then the line spacing goes back to normal after the quote, as it is supposed to.

So I will test this in Spacing Changes In Blogger Beta - 2, and we will see how it works out.

Please Help Translate This

The latest post in Beta Known Issues:

Today we pushed a new version of Blogger beta that contains a significant number of bug fixes, most of them concerning issues that users reported to us. It would be too much detail to list all the specifics here but we hope they will improve your beta experience. We're continuing to work on the other issues that are listed on this blog, and if you find new ones please let us know.

I'm taking a stab here. Comments are invited.

We made a bunch of changes - we aren't sure what, nor are we sure if they will fix anything. If you see any problems, let us know, and we will continue to ignore you. We'll make more changes later, and won't tell you about them either.

Well, the BKI blog mentions the Page Element adding problem as fixed. Earlier, the “We’re sorry but we’re unable to complete your request” errors were fixed on Labor Day (but possibly not completely). Anything else anybody can see as fixed?

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This looks like more of the silence. We are now seeing Beta Known Issues getting the same treatment as Blogger Status.

Welcome to K-Mart. How may I ignore you today?

Known Beta Issues - Being Acknowleged

So this morning, I see a comment in my RBS Classic The Problem Here Is Not The Problems, It's The Silence.

...just the day after I read this very post about their silence, I found this - http://knownissues.blogspot.com/ ...A known issues page, made up by the staff. Available through the beta logon/dashboard page.

This is an improvement. It shows some effort, anyway. Let's see if it's maintained properly.

(Edit 9/13): The BKI blog, upon examination, appears to be robust both in depth (number of issues being tracked), and in breadth (blog layout). The blog has, in its sidebar, direct links to 3 key problem resolution resources.

• The Blogger Help Form.
• The Blogger Status blog.
• The Google Groups: Blogger Help forums.

All in all, a significant improvement, and complementary to the improvements in Blogger Beta itself.

Guess What?

The Real Blogger Status Beta joined the ranks of the unhappy Bloggers, but just temporarily.

In my case, it was a feed problem. I removed 2 feeds, saved settings, and it's back online.

And I reported the problem to Blogger Support. Just got a reply, which looks to be from a person:

Thanks for letting us know about this bug with Blogger in beta. You were receiving this error due to Blogger not recognizing the URL you you entered into the Feed page element as a valid feed URL. We're looking into it and hope to have it fixed as soon as possible. In the meantime, to avoid this problem simply remove this page element from your blog and it should appear correctly. We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,
Danish
The Blogger Team

Blogger Beta Design Deficiencies

Unlike actual Beta Problems, these are issues which will not prevent anybody from using a Beta blog. They will still prevent many people from migrating a current Classic blog to Beta.

• Any blog with a future needs to be search engine friendly. This involves installation of meta records into the non-visible portion of the template. Without raw template editing ability, this does not appear to be possible.
  
• The title bar, which has always been clickable to return the viewer from article view to main page view, is not provided that way. The title can be made clickable, but not cleanly so. (Edit 9/2): Apparently, this has been fixed.
  
• The biggest single deficiency is the lack of ability to edit the raw template code. The Layout GUI is nice, and a utility long needed. But GUI editing can go only so far. Any blogs which have any style will need raw template editing.
  (Edit 8/30): We now have editing of the raw template code. What we can do with it remains to be seen.
  

Keep watching here.