August 14, 2012

Thoughts on Blogger

I started my first blog using Blogger, way back before Google bought the place. It was a bit funky to use, back then, so I did most of my posting on my own site. But when I discovered Multiply, it was a far superior service to Blogger and it was much easier to post here than to post to my own website.

Well, with Multiply essentially shutting down, I've decided to go back and try Blogger out again. I thought I'd post my thoughts and discoveries as I go in case any of you all are interested. 

I just made a new post and was delighted that I could upload both photos and video to the post. You can also easily edit the added photos even after they've been included into your post. You can resize them with just the click of a button or move them around. Very nice. 

I also like that you can add a custom domain if you'd like. It's something that we've asked for many, many times here in Multiply-land and never gotten. 

I don't see much in the way of privacy settings, though. You can make it so that search engines can't find your blog. And you can choose not to be included in Bloggers list of bloggers. But I don't see any way to set some posts for just a certain circle of friends or anything like that. :-P 

You can include a message to people in the comment form. I assume that tells them something like, "Leave me a note!" when they go to comment on your post. Haven't tried it out yet, though. 

Commenting is a global thing - you can either turn it on for all posts or off for all posts. You can moderate or not moderate comments as you prefer. What's interesting is they also provide an option to only moderate comments after the post is 2 weeks old. So when you first post and are more likely to get a lot of feedback, there's no moderation. But once the post is a bit stale and it's possible it's hit the spammer circuit, that's when moderation kicks in.   ... nope, i take that back. now that i've got commenting turned on, it appears that i can henceforth turn commenting on or off on a per post basis. 

OK, I'm still relearning Blogger, but I'm going to post this so that people can add things that I've missed. I'll also update the post as I learn more, so don't just stick to comments but take a glance back at the original post now and then as well so see if there's anything new. 

I think Blogger will work well for me. Especially with all the new upgrades since I was here last. 

Now to figure out where to take groups....

Additions:

1 - you can set your blog to be visible to only certain email addresses. but it's an all or nothing sort of thing. either all your posts are public or all of your posts are private to these specific email addies. there's no per post settings. there's also no way to set the privacy to one of your Google+ circles. hopefully that will come because it would be much easier than the current system. 

2 - you can't upload a file (other than images) to blogger. you have to upload it to another site (like scribd.com) and then embed it. 

21 comments:

  1. Google has groups also. I haven't started one yet. Oh, and they also have "sites" which are websites.

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  2. For my groups I have preferences for Opera groups, so far. A clean appearance, some nice features, and the surrounding of a browser and email service. Very professional, and hopefully they have the groups for customers communication, not to make money. Worth checking. http://my.opera.com/

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  3. The only blogging platform I know about that I think offers that kind of thing is Live Journal.

    On WordPress as far as I know it's possible to set up a blog for just a private list, but that would be the whole blog, not a per-post setting. (Haven't looked into it, this is just what I remember off the top of my head.)

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  4. could you maybe add a comment to say when you've updated? otherwise there's no way we can know.

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  5. yes, that's true. are they integrated with G+ yet? i haven't ferreted that out.

    i did start a google group to replace the one i have here that i want to keep going, but i haven't fiddled with it yet. and the proof of the pudding is in the fiddling, right? ;-)

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  6. is that primarily for mobile devices? do you have a group you can link me to so i can see what it's like?

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  7. Yeah. I haven't had time to fiddle with sites or groups yet either. lol

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  8. yeah.

    i haven't updated anything yet. made and ate dinner instead. soon i'll hopefully be reading Kidnapped to the son as he needs to have it finished by next monday (and he likes my scottish brogue. i'd throw it up here in an audio reply but... well, no need to go there.). then i've gotta run errands and put the chickens away. perhaps later tonight. :-}

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  9. i've got four pages, so i think i've got those down on G+. i'll try to do some group fiddling later tonight as well.

    (can you add "fiddling" to a "to do" list... or is that kinda contradictory by definition?)

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  10. Don't forget about google.com/takeout too.

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  11. oh, absolutely! my to do list often includes fiddling with one of my blogs :)

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  12. :-)

    i always feel like fiddling is fun time. (unless i'm doing it for someone else. then i can count it as work time.) ;-)

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  13. ah yes. my to do list includes fun things :)

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  14. Google groups seem unwieldly and tedious to post.

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  15. *sigh* reminding me yet again that i need to get my heinie over there and figure google groups out so i can decide on them or move on to look elsewhere. ... i just don't know where else to look. :-\

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  16. I haven't looked into any of this but have the feeling someone somewhere mentioned Yuku as a good place for groups; also, someone else told me about Blogster.com as a possibility for groups.

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  17. I looked at Yuku a long long time ago. Don't remember much about it except that I didn't spend much time there.

    Still haven't gone back to look much at Blogster.

    I need to fiddle around with the Google group I created.

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  18. i finally added a few more thoughts on blogger. see above.

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  19. just decided to try out wordpress to do some comparing (since you Can upload pdfs to wordpress, apparently) only to find that dandelionwine is taken and whisperingweeds is (get this) reserved. ... RESERVED?!!!! what, what?!!

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  20. oh dear :(

    not a clue what "reserved" means.

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  21. I just posted a link to an interesting alternative, though you might not fancy it just now as WP won't let you have the names you want...

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