What Use Is the Blog Archive Gadget?

What is the Blog Archive Gadget? It is a gadget you install on your Blogger blog to show you all your blog posts organized by year and by month and by post.

Click on a year and each month that you wrote for your blog appears. Click on a month and all the blog posts for that month appear. In fact, every month and every year that you've been blogging is clickable and therefore, openable. Click yourself from the year to the month to a specific post you wrote in order to browse all your posts in the order in which you wrote them.

That's the main use for the Blog Archive Gadget. It's useful because it is complete. Just like its name implies, it's a complete archive of every post you've ever published. It's even more useful because you can use it to categorize your posts by year and by month.

As useful as that sounds, it would be easy to assume that Google uses the Blog Archive Gadget to index your site and make it available to people who are searching the web. Unfortunately, this does not appear to be so. The illusion that Google will use the Blog Archive Gadget to index your blog is the downside of the Blog Archive Gadget.

Unfortunately, I've fallen for that illusion in the past. For too long now I've depended on the Blog Archive Gadget to organize my blog. No more.

The problem with the Blog Archive Gadget? None of the links that it points to are really true links. Instead, each link it points to is actually a search result.

That's right. Whenever you click on a Blog Archive link, you are really invoking a new search. Each so-called link under the Blog Archive Gadget is really a request by the Blogger search mechanism to search your blog within a range of dates. For example, clicking on a specific month is a search for all blog posts that fall within the first day of that month and the last day of that month.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that a search engine, such a Google Search, is not going to build its search results on top of another search engine's search results. Searches derived from other searches? That makes no sense.

It appears that Blogger searches via the Blog Archive Gadget are separate and distinct from Google searches. A different search mechanism means entirely different results. Furthermore, Google is not likely to use one search mechanism in order to build the search results for another search mechanism. Translation? Forget the Blog Archive Gadget if you think it is going to improve your search results.

As a practical matter, I've learned that the Blog Archive Gadget will not help my blog to get a better search engine ranking. I no longer expect the Blog Archive Gadget to help make my blog more visible to the search engines.

In the past, I've found the YouTube search box works in much the same way. YouTube searches are very different from searching for a YouTube video under Google Search. When I can't find a YouTube video using the YouTube search box, I fall back on the regular Google Search. So often, where Youtube Search fails to find the video, Google Search succeeds. That's what I mean by different.

The same is true with the Blog Archive Gadget. It's just a search mechanism. Think of it as a search box with an unboxy look and feel.

Since the Blog Archive Gadget can do nothing but searches, it cannot possibly be used to organize your blog and to establish linking relationships between posts.

You need another linking mechanism besides the Blog Archive Gadget to tie you blog posts together. This is especially true if you want your blog discovered by the search engines. It was only recently that I figured this out.

The lesson? It's possible to assume something is happening when in fact nothing is happening.

It was a rude wake-up call for me when I discovered recently that Google was not cataloging my blog posts at all. I wrote about this problem in one of Google's product forums:

Search Box on Blogger Only Works on Oldest Posts

It was my attempts to fix this problem that led me to the understanding of what the Blog Archive Gadget really is and what it most definitely is not. Again, the Blog Archive Gadget does not help you to be cataloged by Google's Search Engine. Nor does it help your blog get better search results.

The better way? The Label Gadget. I write about this here:

15 Benefits of the Label Gadget

Blindly I was expecting the Blog Archive Gadget to do what only the Label Gadget could do for me and that is organize my posts in such a way that if Google crawls one or more of my posts, it can then crawl all my posts. Find one, you find them all. That's the essence of the Label Gadget.

In short, the Label Gadget does what the Blog Archive Gadget will never do and that is link all my blog posts together into one cohesive unit organized by topic.

I will continue to use the Blog Archive Gadget, if only to give me a sense of the chronology of my blog. That's about the only use I've been able to discover for it, really. Otherwise, in my mind at least, the Blog Archive Gadget is obsolete.

Ed Abbott

15 Benefits of the Label Gadget

This morning, I'm exploring the many benefits of the label Gadget. Here are some benefits, plus facts supporting these benefits, I've been able to gather so far:

1. The label gadget ties all your posts together that cover a specific topic. It makes your blog better by giving you better topic focus and better topic organization.
2. Posts can have multiple labels. For example, a single post on your Blogger blog can have the following labels: dogs, cats, and animals.
3. Each label is a so called permalink. Permalinks are indexed by search engines. That's probably why they are called permalinks. The term permalink implies permanence. Permalinks give your blog posts a permanent address. They also help give your blog a permanent presence on the web.
4. Perhaps a better name for labels is topics or categories. Each time you add a label to your blog, you are really adding a new topic to your blog. In other words, a new category or sub-category
5. In the example above, animals is a category and dogs and cats are sub-categories.
6. Don't get too hung up on categories versus sub-categories. The English language cares little about making a technical distinction between the two. Likewise with the label gadget. You are free to create categories and sub-categories to your heart's content. Why? Because categories and sub-categories live together and play together on the same level playing field. The label gadget doesn't know the difference—a good thing that makes the label gadget easy to use.
7. While the label gadget does not know the difference between a category and a sub-category, you do. Since you know the difference, you can easily turn your entire blog into a nicely organized hierarchy of categories and sub-categories using the label gadget.
8. It's my best guess that the combination of permalinks and a hierarchy of topics helps Google Search better understand the importance and relevance of your blog. With better understanding comes visitors that are more likely to appreciate your blog.
9. When you revisit a topic in a new post, you recycle the label (topic) by applying the old label to the new post.
10. Any number of posts can fall under one label. Got 1,000 posts that fall under one topic? All 1,000 posts can fall under the one label that describes that topic.
11. All the posts that fall under one label (topic) are gathered together and placed on the same page with a permalink supplied by Blogger for the address.
12. In effect, each label you add to your blog adds a new page to the blog. These new pages are above and beyond your blog posts. For example, a blog that has 10 posts and 5 labels has at least 15 pages.
13. Without something like the label gadget tying things together, your posts are ships in the night passing each other without one knowing about the other.
14. The label tool ties your blog together hierarchically the same way a website's navigation bar ties the website together hierarchically.
15. A hierarchical link structure is one of the most effective and time-proven techniques for getting your pages recognized by search engines.

Everything in life has an organizing principle. Planets orbit stars and starts make up galaxies. The whole universe is a hierarchy.

Without an organizing principle, your blog posts are grains of sand rubbing up against each other, but never quite establishing a relationship. The label tool establishes an organizing prinicple. When you use the label tool, you are organizing your blog by topic.

Ed Abbott

How To Delete a Blogger Account

 
I've been doing some research on
how to delete a blogger account
I inadvertently set up. Oddly
enough, you cannot do this. Here's
what Google says:

How do I cancel my account?

I was a little surprised to learn
that you cannot delete a blogger
account. I inadvertently signed
up for blogger and now I cannot
get rid of this new account. The
account is less than one hour old
at the time of this writing.

I got myself into this situation
because I could not get to my blog
under another email address. Somehow,
I got it in my head that the screen
Google was presenting me with was
on the road to password recovery.

The screen was not on the road to
password recovery. It was a screen
to sign up for a completely new blogger
account.

This is the kind of thing that happens
to me when I act too quickly and too
precipitously. Now I have two blogger
accounts, each associated with a
different email address. The old
blogger account is legitimate, the
new one is not.

Of course, there is the nuclear
option. That's where you delete
all accounts (YouTube, for example)
associated with a given email address.

I don't wish to do that. I maintain
a YouTube account for an organization
I'm associated with. For this reason,
I do not wish to delete all accounts.
If I were to do so, I would end up deleting
a legitimate YouTube account as well.

I guess I'm stuck with a dead and empty
blogger account. This blogger account
has absolutely no posts and never will.
Not only does it not have any posts,
it does not have any blogs either.

No blogs, no posts. What's the point?

Weird, huh?

Ed Abbott

Integrating Blogger Into Your Website

I've been doing some research
into how to integrate Blogger
into your website.

Here's an article:

Integrating Blogger Into Your Website

I'm researching this because I'm
trying to figure out how the URL
part is done.

How is it that Blogger is able to
work with a sub-directory as mentioned
in the article?

The author of the above article mentions
making this URL the URL for your blog:

http://www.example.com/trends/

From a techical point of view, I don't
understand how this works.

OK. OK. I just found out how it works.

Seems that Blogger will publish to your
website via FTP. Very clever!

In order for this to work, Blogger needs
the following conditions to be present:

1. You need to pick what Blogger
   calls a classic template.
2. You have to set up an FTP directory
   on the web server where your website
   is kept
3. You need to tell blogger the name
   of the FTP sub-directory and the name
   you wish to call your main page for
   your blog, for example, blog.html
4. You need to give blogger an FTP
   login

Here's where you might theoretically
place your blog on your website:

www.example.com/blog/blog.html

Of course, the above is just the
main page for your blog. Other
pages, such as individual blog
posts, will have URLs that are
automatically generated by Blogger.

These are the general ideas you need
to incorporate to publish your blog
on your website.

If I have time, I'll get more into
specifics later.

Ed Abbott

Turn Your BlogInto One Long Web Page

When I first wrote this post,
I started with a faulty assumption.

I assumed that what I wanted to do
was to stop blogger from archiving
my posts.

Why? Why put an end to archiving?

I thought archiving was bad because
it stopped all my posts from appearing
together on one page.

Now I know better. I now know that
archiving and the number of posts
per page are separate issues.

Repeat. These two things are
separate issues:

1. The archiving of posts
2. The number of posts that
   appear on your main page

Had I understood this earlier,
I would have done things
differently.

Since I thought the issue was
archiving, I decided to turn off
archiving.

Seems that Google's blogger defaults
to archiving your blog posts on
a monthly basis. At first, I thought
this was bad.

I didn't want this because my blog
posts are typically fairly timeless.

I don't use my blog to talk about politics
or anything that is topical, so why should
I archive my posts? That was my thinking.

To me, archiving implied that my posts become
less relevant over time. In my case, I didn't
think this was true.

Turning Off Blog Archiving

Here are the 6 steps I took to turn off archiving
of posts:

1. Click on View Blog
2. Click on Customize in the
   upper right-hand corner
3. Click on Settings
4. Click on Archiving
5. Choose No Archive from the drop
   down menu
6. Choose Save Settings to make
   your choice go into effect.

After following the above 6 steps, I
thought my blog would turn into one
long web page with the most recent
post at the top. That's what I thought.

I was wrong. After turning monthly
archiving back on, I looked for the
true solution.

Turns out that Blogger allows you to
set the number of posts on the main
page.

Blog Visitors Have Trouble
Navigating a Web Site

I prefer to have as many posts on the
home page as possible because many many
web visitors have trouble navigating a
web site.

This is what I find when I talk to
people.

So many people miss so many things
when navigating a site.

Better to cater to these visitors by
keeping your site dead simple. Keep
them rather than loose them or confuse
them. That's my motto.

Getting All Blog Posts
on the Same Page

Here's what I actually did to get all
my posts on to the home page of my
blog:

1. Click on View Blog
2. Click on Customize in the
   upper right-hand corner
3. Click on Settings
4. Click on Formatting
5. Find Show at the top of
   the page
6. Choose 500 posts to get
   as many posts as possible on to the
   home page of your blog

The choice of 500 posts is quite
deliberate. This is the maximum number
of posts that Blogger allows on one page.

I now have monthly archiving turned back
on because it can only help. It's just
another way for web visitors to navigate
my posts.

This is a good thing.

I also now allow Blogger to put up to 500
posts on my Blog home page. This is also
a good thing, I feel.

Since my blog is not a topical one, and
since most web visitors benefit from a
website that is laid out in a simple
fashion, I now try to keep as many posts
as possible on one page.

Most web visitors know how to scroll.
That's a fact.

What's surprising is how many people
find it clumsy to find and click on
links.

Many many people are still not very
good at this.

So, I blog with this in mind. I blog
with link-challenged people in my heart
and in my thoughts.

Ed Abbott

Moving Blogs and Consolidating Blogs

I just moved my blog to a new
blog. Thought I'd share the steps.

The first step is to export the
blog. See the previous post
to learn how to do this.

The next step is to create a new
blog. Under Google's blogger, you
can have more than one blog.

After this, you import your saved
blog at the new blog site.

Here are the steps for importing a blog:

1. Click on Dashboard
2. Click on View Blog
3. Click on Customize
4. Click on Settings
5. Clion on Import Blog

The last step, Import Blog,
brings up a file dialog. Use this
file dialog to find your saved blog
on your hard drive.

What about consolidating blogs? For
example, what if you want 3 blogs to
become 1 single blog?

First, a disclaimer. I've not tried
this. However, it seems obvious to me
that you would follow the following steps.

I'll use consolidating 3-blogs-into-1-blog
as my example:

1. Export all 3 blogs
2. Click on Dashboard
3. Click on Create a Blog
4. Import all 3 blogs into the new blog

To make sure that the above steps are
safe steps, be sure to keep all your
old blogs until you are absolutely sure
that your new blog is just what you want
it to be.

In other words, don't delete the old blogs
until you are sure you have successfully
consolidated the old blogs into a new blog.

Actually, that's a good general principle.
Any time you do computer work, try to give
yourself a fallback position. Saving the
old blogs is your fallback position.

Let yourself err. Give yourself a fallback
position whenever possible.

Ed Abbott

How to Save a Blog to Your Hard Drive

How do you save your blog?

Simple.

Do the following steps:

1. Click on Dashboard
2. Click on View Blog
3. Click on Customize
4. Click on Settings
5. Clion on Export Blog

The last step, clicking on
Export Blog, brings up a file
dialog.

The file dialog will ask you where
on your hard drive you wish to save
your blog .

After saving your blog, you can reverse
the process by clicking on Import Blog.

Why would you want to import your blog?

You may wish to move your blog to another
blogging site on the web or you may wish
to consolidate two blogs into one blog.

I'll write about the consolidation process
next.

Ed Abbott
www.WebSiteRepairGuy.com

How to Edit a Post

OK. Just discovered the easy way
to edit a post.

I wanted to be able to edit blog
posts on Google's Blogger. That's
where my blog is.

It's so easy! Why have I been doing
this the hard way?

At the bottom of each post is a pencil
icon. Where? Just to the right of the
timestamp.

Look for the timestamp at the bottom of
the post that shows you the date and
time that the article was posted.

Next, let your eye go to the right of the
timestamp. That's where you will find
the pencil icon.

Click on the pencil icon. If you do so,
you will find yourself editing the post.

Editing posts is simple once you find the
pencil that is under every post.

Of course, you need to be logged in to Blogger
to make edits and changes to your blog.

Not only do you need to be logged into to
blogger to make ediing changes to your blog,
you also need to be logged into to see the
pencil.

The pencil icon (pencil image) is invisable
if you are logged out of blogger.


Ed Abbott

How to Remove Blogger Comments

OK. This is a new blog.

It is here to help you fix
blogger goof-ups. Also, it
is here to help you learn how
to make blogger behave and do
the things you want it to do.

How do you remove comments?

Easy. There's a little trash
can icon at the bottom of each
comment. The icon is right next
to the timestamp just below each
comment.

Below each comment is a timestamp.
Look for the timestamp and then
look for the trash icon just to the
right of the timestamp.

Find the trash can, click the trash
can. That's all you need to do.

Why am I writing about this?

Well, it took me a while to discover
how to remove a blogger comment. So,
if it took me a while, maybe it takes
other people time to discover this too.

Please don't hesitate to post here if
you wish to get blogger to behave itself
and do what you want it to do.

I may not be able to answer the question,
but someone else might.

Also, blogger has a help link that you you
can click on. See the top of your screen
when you are logged into blogger. The
link, help, is found way up at the
top.

On my screeen, it goes Dashboard,
My Account, and Help. That's
the order in which the major links at the
top of the page appear.

Click on help and then do a search
on the help topic of your choice.

Blogger help is excellent! I found my answer
to my question, "How do you delete a comment?"
there.

I learned how to delete a comment by clicking on
help.

Ed Abbott