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This article is about Google accounts:  what they are- and aren't, how to access them, and what the account-names look like.  This supports another article about the relationship between Google accounts and Google-Apps accounts.


Blogger accounts vs Google accounts

Once upon a time (pre 2006), there was a tool on the internet called Blogger.   People created accounts on Blogger, and then used them to make a blog that was owned by their Blogger account.

Then Google (the company that made the search engine) purchased Blogger.   They wanted to integrate their products, so Blogger users had to change their original Blogger accounts to "Google accounts".  (Google were pretty nice about this:   they kept support old, unconverted Blogger accounts up til 2011, but have recently said that this will stop soon.) 

At the time, very few people understood the difference between Google-the-company and Google-the-search-engine, so most didn't have any idea of the power and importance of these "Google accounts".   However as the other applications available through our Google accounts grew (Gmail, Picasa-web-albums, Google-custom-maps, AdSense, AdWords, etc), this has become clearer.


Getting a Google account

To make a new Google account, you just have to sign-up for any one of the products that Google offers (Gmail, Blogger, AdSense, etc).


The sign-up screen asks you to enter an email address, and says that it "(must already exist)".  But it does not check that the email-account does actually exist.

If the product that you sign up with is Gmail (which is where Google accounts started, I think), then it makes sense that the account name is the email address.

However Google (or perhaps even Blogger:  I don't remember) decided that people would use a text-string that looks like an email address as their Google-account name - even if the email address isn't a Gmail one, and even if there is no valid email account with that address

This means there are Google accounts called Joe.blogs@yahoo.com, and similar.  There are even Google accounts with a name that is not, and never has been, a real email address.  This has caused lots of confusion and problems:

• If the email address isn't a gmail one, then changing the password of the email doesn't change the password of the Google account

• Some people don't understand that their Google account name is just a set of letters: they don't realise that they can change the email address attached to their account without changing the underlying account (Dashboard > Edit Profile, identity tab).

• Some people lost access to the email address (eg because they leave their job, or use a free service and didn't log on for 30 or 60 or however-many day).

• Some people never had access to the email address, because they used a text-string that wasn't actually an address, and Google never checked if non-Gmail addresses actually worked.

In these cases, problems happened when that email address was the only tool that the person used to identify their Google accounts.  If it's not real, or they can't access it any more, then Google can't help when they forget their passwords,etc.  So there are some blogs that can never be accessed ever again, because Google has no way of being sure who owns the Google-account that made them.

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Blogs, Blogger and Bloggers, Google Inc vs google - some basic terms

Understanding Google Apps accounts

Fixing conflicting Google and Google Apps accounts

Linking your blog and Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc

Copyright, Blogs and Bloggers

Setting up your custom domain

Auto-renewing your blog's custom domain

AdSense and AdWords - understanding the difference.

This article is about how to set up a gadget / widget in Blogger so that it is only visible on the "static" pages in your blog.

Note:  in Blogger, the words "gadget", "widget", and even "page-element" all mean the same thing - basically a bit of code that can be put into your blog without looking like code, and which does a specific thing.

I generally use "gadget", because the Page Elements tab currently says "Add a Gadget".  But they're absolutely the same.

Making a gadget that only shows on static pages:

1 Make the gadget

Do this in the usual way, using Design >  Page Elements > Add a gagdet.

2 Drag-and-drop the gadget to the place where you want it

A popular place for a gadget that is going to look like a "home page" is in the Body section, just above the Blog Posts gadget, where "Test Gadget" is in this example:

3 Edit the Gadget again

Don't make any changes to it - just maximise the window, so you can see the WidgetID, which is at the very end of the address bar at the top.

Make a note of the value.   (In this example, it's Text1).

4 Find the code for your gadget and edit the template:

Edit your template  (Design > Edit HTML)

Download a copy of the template, and put it somewhere safe.

Use your browser's text search tool (Edit / Find in Firefox) to look for the widget name that you noted in step 3.  Notice what comes after it.   In this example, it's the line for Blog1:

          <b:section class='main' id='main' showaddelement='no'>
<b:widget id='Text1' locked='false' title='Test gadget' type='Text'/>
<b:widget id='Blog1' locked='true' title='Blog Posts' type='Blog'/>

Click the Expand Widget Templates checkbox (so it's turned on)

After the expanded template has downloaded, find the widget name again.  This time it will look a bit longer (the exact details depend on what type of widget/gadget it is.)

  <b:section class='main' id='main' showaddelement='no'>
<b:widget id='Text1' locked='false' title='Test gadget' type='Text'>
<b:includable id='main'>
  <!-- only display title if it's non-empty -->
  <b:if cond='data:title != &quot;&quot;'>
    <h2 class='title'><data:title/></h2>
  </b:if>
  <div class='widget-content'>
    <data:content/>
  </div>

  <b:include name='quickedit'/>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>
<b:widget id='Blog1' locked='true' title='Blog Posts' type='Blog'>

5 Add conditional formatting:

You need to put conditional formatting code around the code for the gadget - makings sure that it doesn't go around the code for anything else!  (which is why you noted what comes afterwards in step 4)

The code to use is:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "static_page"'>

THE CODE FOR YOUR GADGET GOES IN HERE

</b:if>

The example above looks like this, when the code has been added:

          <b:section class='main' id='main' showaddelement='no'>
<b:widget id='Text1' locked='false' title='Test gadget' type='Text'>
<b:includable id='main'>
  <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "static_page"'>  <!-- only display title if it's non-empty -->
  <b:if cond='data:title != &quot;&quot;'>
    <h2 class='title'><data:title/></h2>
  </b:if>
  <div class='widget-content'>
    <data:content/>
  </div>

  <b:include name='quickedit'/>
</b:if></b:includable>
</b:widget>
<b:widget id='Blog1' locked='true' title='Blog Posts' type='Blog'>

ALTERNATIVE:

If you want the gadget to appear on every page except static pages, use is

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "static_page"'>

THE CODE FOR YOUR GADGET GOES IN HERE

</b:if>

See the slight difference:    !=     instead of   ==


NOTE:  
Copy and paste is the best way to transfer the code.  If you must type it in yourself, be very careful about what's a single quote mark and what's a double quote mark.

6 Check that it's worked

Preview your blog before you save the changes:  check that the the widget is visible.

Save the template changes, and look at your blog.  Check that

• The widget is, or is not, on static pages (depending on what option you chose)
• The other elements of your blog (other widgets, blog post titles, dates and contents) are all as you expect them - on the first screen, and on other screens too.

If anything is wrong with how your blog is working, go back to the template editor (Design > Edit HTML), and upload from the copy of your template that you made at the beginning of step 1.   This will let your blog work properly, while you figure out what went wrong.

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Related Articles

Static Pages in Blogger

Controlling what goes on the homepage

Showing a gadget only on the home-page.

This article is about how to show image-only AdSense ads in your blog.

Blogger and AdSense

It's easy to Set up AdSense on your Blog: Just go to Monetize > AdSense - and then follow the prompts to apply for an account.

Once you've been approved, it's easy to put AdSense ads into your blog:

• Design > Page Elements > Add a Gadget > Adsense - for ads in your sidebar, header, footer etc
• Design > Page Elements >  Blog Posts (edit) - for ads in between posts

But the advertisement format options that Blogger provides for are limited: you can only choose either text-only or image-and-text ads.  There is (currently) no option for image-only ads.

To guarantee that your blog displays image ads only, you need to get the ad-code from AdSense, and put it into an HTML-Javascript gadget or inside a Post (or Page)


How to display image only ads:

1  Log into AdSense with the Google-account that you use to manage your ads.   (There may be some cases where this is not the same Google account that you use to manage the blog where the ad is displayed)

2 Go into the AdSense Setup > Get Ads tab.

3  Choose AdSense for Content

4  Configure your ad:

Work through the items in the wizard to (I like to choose single-page, so everything is visible at once).   If you've chosen the Ad Unit radio button, then beside it there is a drop-down that lets you choose:

• Text-and-image, 
• Text-only, 
• Image-only.

5  At then end of the wizard, you are shown some HTML code.    Copy and paste that code.

6  Go to Blogger (with the account you use for the blog).

7  Place the ad:

• If it's going in a gadget, Choose Design > Page Layout > Add a Gadget > HTML-Javascript     and paste the copied code into the Contents field.   Save the new gadget, and drag-and-drop it to wherever you want  

• If it's going in a post, see putting AdSense ads inside Blogger posts

To request image-only for the ads that are shown at the bottom of individual posts (via Design > Page Layout > Blog Posts/edit), you would need to edit the design-template.  Instructions for this will vary depending on what template you have, and are beyond the scope of this article.   But you can put a gadget at the bottom of all the blog-posts that are shown on a screen - just make the gadget the usual way, and drag it to underneath the Blog Posts gadget

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Putting AdSense ads inside Blogger posts

Blocking categories of AdSense ads from your Blog

Stop malicious use of your AdSense account ID

Setting up AdSense on your Blog

This article is about how to change the case of the Labels in your blog.  For example, from lower to initial case ("cats" to "Cats") or even all capital-letters ("CATS").

Why change case?

When some people start using Blogger, they apply labels to posts without much thought:  they just type "cats" into the label field, and don't consider how it will look later on.   Even worse, they type in "Dogs" for the next post and "FROGS" later on.

This gives an untidy, unprofessional-looking labels gadget.

And it's a bit hard to fix:  you can change the labels on individual posts, but if even one other post has "cats" as a label, it doesn't matter how many times you add "Cats" to new posts the label will always be recorded as "cats".

The only approach I've found is to apply a unique temporary label to all posts with the value you want to change, then to delete the initial label and use the temporary label to select the posts to apply the correctly-formatted value to.


How to change the case of existing Labels

Log in to Blogger, and go to the Posting > Edit Posts tab.

Select all the posts with the label you want to change (eg "fred"), by clicking on this Label in the left-hand panel, and then clicking Select All.

Use the Label Action... drop-down menu (just above the list of posts) to:

• Give them a new temporary label that's not already in use (eg "xxx-temp") - when you have done this, they will all have at least two labels.

• Remove the label that you want to change

• Select all the posts with the temporary label

• Give them the label that you want to change to (eg "Fred")

• Remove the temporary label that you added in the 2nd step.

Warning:

Blogger blogs have a maximum of 5000 labels.   Some problems that have been raised in the Blogger-Help-Forum make me think that this is a life-time limit, and that a label is still included even if no current posts have it, though I haven't tested this personally.  I suspect that applying the procedure above will use up to three labels:  the original, the temporary one and the new one.   You may not want to use it if you think that your blog might ever reach the limit.

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Related Articles: 



Using Labels to Categorise your Blogger Posts

Posts, Pages and Navigation.

This article is about Zemanta and your blog:  what it is, how to add it, and how to delete it.

Overview

In June 2009, Google announced Zemanta - a tool for "blogging smarter", which had to be downloaded and installed into your browser.   More recently, they announced a closer integration between Google and Zemanata:  there is now a Google-hosted page where you you can choose to install Zemanta with pretty much a single click.

Zemanata is basically an assistant that sits inside Blogger while you're writing, and makes suggestions about related things (pictures, articles etc) that you might like to link to. It's fine in theory (although I'd prefer to control my own research process, and take responsibility myself for meeting copyright conditions), however I found real performance issues when I tried to use it - which is why I went looking for the removal instructions! Some people at Blogger clearly like it though, so it must have some advantages.

It's possible that there will be some more Zemanta integration coming:  eg options inside Blogger for enabling  and disabling it and setting the user-options/preferences.   But in the meantime the basic information about adding it to a blog, and removing it too, is presented here.


How to add Zemanta to your Blog

To turn Zemanta on for your blog:

• Log into Blogger with a Google account that has admin-rights on the blog which you want to use Zemanta with
  
  
• Click here to add the Zemanta gadget

• In the window that opens, choose the Blog from the drop-down list

• Click the orange "Add Zemanta" arrow.

Immediately after clicking the arrow, you are taken to the Post Editor with a new post for the blog that you selected.   There is an extra gadget showing on the right hand side of the editing window.  This gadget will be on the screen every time that you edit a post.

It's not currently available in the Page editor - but if you really want to use it while writing a Page, then just write the contents in a Post, save it as draft (ie don't publish), and use the HTML copy/paste approach described in Moving a Post from one Blog to Another.


How to remove Zemanta from your Blog

• Log into Blogger with a Google account that has admin-rights on the blog which you want to remove Zemanta from
• Open the Post Editor (eg by clicking New Post).

• In the top row of the Zemanta gadget, at the right hand side, there's a small down arrow.  Click the arrow and choose "Remove this gadget".

•  Click Ok.

Some people reported that removing it from Chrome was different:  they said that there you would not see the small drop-down arrow, but instead need to look in the browser's address bar and use the  Zemanta icon on the right hand side, which has an option to isable Zemanta for blogs.   However this clearly isn't the case now, because I just removed it from Chrome to make the pictures above.   It may be that these instructions apply if you have used some other method to install a toolbar:  in this case, you may need to go into the Control Panel and use Add/Remove Programs to remove it.

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Moving a Post from one Blog to Another

Copyright, Blogs and Bloggers

The difference between Pages and Posts

Zemanta - a tool for "blogging smarter" .

This article is about making a plan to change your Blogger template if your existing blog-template has been customised:  it covers how to make a list of the changes that have been made to your template, and using this as the basis of a list of changes to re-apply when you change templates.


Overview:

Changing your template in Blogger is easy: you just choose another template, press save or Apply to Blog (in the Template Designer), and the changes are applied. 

But if you have ever customised your template using the Edit HTML feature, then ALL the customisations are lost when you change templates.  This is fine for some changes (eg hiding things you didn't like in a particular template), but it means you lose changes that you may want to keep, eg a favicon, meta-tags, Google Analytics or Webmaster verification, Amazon Product Preview, etc - in short anything that you want to keep, no matter how your template looks.
 
If you're worried about the consequences of changing templates, you have a basic choice to make:

1  Remember what you did:
Try to remember what you've set up on your blog, and think about which of these things you want to apply in your blog-with-a-new-template.

2  Code comparison:
Compare the layout-template code for your blog with the same code from another blog that has the same template and widgets as your blog, but not the HTML customisations.  From this comparison, make a list of what customisations you need to re-apply after you change templates.

The first option is quicker and a lot easier - but you might miss something important.  Personally it's not an option I'd like to use for any blog that has "weight".

Unfortunately the second option doesn't give a 100% correct list of customisations, unless you kept a copy of your current template at it was at the time when you first applied it to your blog.   This is because Google may have upgraded their copy of the standard version of your template, but not been able to upgrade your customised version.  (See Advantages and Disadvantages of Editing Your Blogger Template for more about this).   However the list that you can make may be close enough - and I used it myself to make sure I didn't miss any details in migrating the blog you are reading now.

This article is about the second option, and how to use the results of the comparison to make a detailed plan for moving your blog from one template to another.


Applying Option 2:

Follow these steps to compare the template from your blog with another un-customised version of the template:

1  Make a test-blog which is like your Real-blog, except it doesn't have the layout-template customisations.   See Making a test-blog for more details about this: it's NOT as simple as just copying the template over.  
IMPORTANT:  If you do have a backup copy of your template from immediately after you last applied a new template to, then apply it to your test blog before giving it any widgets.  (Doing this will give you the chance of making a 100% correct list.)

2  Line-by-line, compare the template code in your test and main blogs.  For each difference, work out whether it's due to a customisation that you want to keep when you "migrate" your main blog to a new template, or something that you can leave behind.

To do the comparison:

• Get the template code for your test-blog by choosing Design > Edit HTML for it, and clicking on Download Full Template.   Save the downloaded file somewhere with a name like testBlog-Template.xml
  

• Get the template code for your main blog the same way   Save the downloaded file with a name like realBlog-Template.xml
  

• Use a text-file comparison tool to find the differences between the two files.
  Comparing two text files using Excel discusses this in more detail, and links to a tool that makes this process (a little) easier.
  
  Note that there may be some differences which aren't explained by modifications that you made to the template:  these will be due to improvements that Google have made to the template file.   You need to decide how much time to spend investigating each difference, based on how likely it is that you made it.

3  From the list of differences, write a plan of the existing customisations you want to apply to your new template, and also of any new changes that you want to make at the same time.  Put it in order of most-to-least important  (eg I usually put "load Google Analytics code" just after "apply template, because the statistics are very important to me).

3.5 (optional) Decide which new template to use, and practise the upgrade:
Use the test-version of your existing blog (the one you made in step 1), and give it the new template.  Apply the extra customisations from your list.  Possibly even copy in some posts from your main blog into it.  Test how well it works, and tweak your list of the changes that need to be made when you migrate your real blog.

4  Back up the current template of your blog.

5  Apply the new template you've selected to your blog.

5.5  (Optional)  make another back-up of your template - before you re-apply any of the customisations.    This will be the basic version that you compare against if you ever need to do this exercise again, so save it somewhere safe.  

6  Make the other changes from your plan.

7  Test your blog to see that all is well.


That sounds easy enough.   Seven simple steps to a snazzy new-look blog.   Let me know how you get on.

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Related Articles: 



Comparing two text files using Excel

Making a test-blog

Advantages and Disadvantages of Editing Your Blogger Template
 
Adding a footer section to your Layout Template blog
 
Making a shadow-blog  for testing with

Copying all your existing posts into a new blog

Copying some posts between blogs.