Thepipbuzz

This article shows you how to put the options and controls in the Google search results page into the language that you actually speak, rather than the official language of the country you (or your Internet Service Provider) are in. Tonight I noticed that Google's search-results are still in English, but the option links and controls (eg Next-page, Images, Videos) are all showing in the Irish language (known as Galeic to some people) presumably because I'm in Ireland, and it was (until a couple of hours ago) St Patrick's day. This is nice of Google. But unfortunately many people here - yes, even thought who learned Irish at school for 14 years - don't actually speak Irish. And personally I didn't even go to school here, so I can't even say "Please may I go to the toilet" (the first Irish-language phrase learned by many an Irish child). So putting these words back into English is pretty important to me: I can guess where Images / Videos / Next ...

The Follow-by-email gadget uses Feedburner's email-subscription service.   It's very easy to add to your blog, but there are some things that you need to think about if you are using it to deliver blog-posts to your followers by email. The Follow-by-Email gadget is a very simple way to give your readers access to blog-updates by email: it delivers a message in their inbox every day that you post. But to decide if it's a good thing to use, to get good value from it, and to troubleshoot any problems, you need to understand a little more about how it works. And, since it uses Feedburner, this means understanding how Feedburner works, too. What is Feedburner The Follow by Email gadget uses a product called Feedburner to manage the list of people who have followed, ie subscribed to your blog.  Feedburner was originally a tool to enhance the RSS subscriptions that website-owners delivered - see Why RSS / Subscribe to Posts is important for your blog   for info about RSS...

This article explains the issues, and options, for putting a file into the "root directory" of your Blogger blog. If you are using certain non-Google products to enhance your Blog, they will sometimes tell you to put a file into your root-directory .   They may even tell you to use an FTP  tool to do this. Sometimes this happens when a product also gives you code to install into your blog  , This approach is used when the code is written for websites in general rather than specifically to work with Blogger: putting useful files into a place relative to the root directory makes it a lot easier to move a website from a test-address to the live one, so is a common approach outside of Blogger. Or maybe the other tool has been designed to verify that you do own the website in this way, rather than asking you to change the website code itself. How to add a file to your blog's root directory The short answer for Blogger users is "sorry, you cannot do this" . The l...

This article explains the difference between themes and templates in Blogger, Google's blogging tool. What is (was) a Blogger template How a blog that is made with Blogger is shown to a visitor is controlled by four sets of information: The posts which the blogger writes (ie the content) A user-editable "configuration file" which records the overall formatting options which the file designer and then the blogger have chosen Another configuration file, called the post-template , which records choices that the blogger has made under Layout > Blog posts (edit), but cannot be edited elsewhere.    Blogger's own software, which puts the other things together with some internal rules to make "web pages".   Bloggers cannot control the rules in this at all. Originally, the first "configuration file" was called a template .   In fact, officially it was called a design-template , to distinguish it from the post-template.   However because most peopl...

This article is about how to edit your theme in Blogger. It supports many other articles on this site, which suggest specific theme changes needed to solve particular problems.    Note that until early 2017, themes were called templates.   In practise, "edit your template" and "edit your theme" mean the same thing. In Blogger, a theme is a file which controls how your blog are displayed on the screen when someone reads it using a browser or a mobile device.   Themes used to be called templates, but were renamed "themes" in early 2017. Previously, I've looked at whether it's a good idea to edit your Blogger theme / template or not.   Because themes are the same thing as templates, the same principles apply to editing your theme. For many people, editing the theme is simply something which they need to do, because it's the only way to do what they want ( remove the attribution , show a gadget on the homeppage only , add a Facebook like button t...

This article explains how to find things (gadgets or text) in the Theme editor in Blogger. Very often when you are editing your Theme in Blogger, you need to find particular text. For example, you might need to find all places where  "</head" appears, so you can add something to the very next line.   Or you might want to find the code for a particular gadget (aka widget), so that you can put a conditional-formatting statement around it. There are now two tools you can use to find items in the Theme editor: The Jump to Widget tool if you are looking for a Widget The Find bar if you are looking for a text string. More information about using each of these is given below. How to use the Jump to Widget tool First, you need to find out the exact name for the widget / gadget that you need to find the code for.    (See Finding a gadget's name for a tip on how to do this). Then, inside the Theme editor (see Editing your Blogger Theme for how to get there), just choo...

This article is about options for showing the contents of a PowerPoint file inside your blog. Previously I've described how to load content from MS Word to your blog . But some people have material in PowerPoint (or other presentation software) files, that they want to show in their blog.   So far, I've identified three options for doing this. These approaches should work on any PowerPoint formatted presentation, no matter what tool it was prepared with - except of course if it was Google Docs in which case you go straight to option 2. Option 1: Each slide as an image Follow these steps: In PowerPoint, choose Save-as , and choose an image format (eg .png).    When the system asks if you want all slides or just the current one, choose All. Upload all the image files that were created to your blog - it's your choice whether you put them all in the same post, or one-per-post. I usually upload them firstly to Picasa web albums  or another picture-hosting ...

You can set your blog up so that no posts are shown on the main screen - provided you have used some of the other "home page" approaches to give readers other ways of getting to your content. Previously I've explained how to only show one post on the main page of your blog . But some people who want to give their blog a home page  go further than that, and don't show any posts on the main screen at all.   (Remember, the main screen is where people who navigate to your blog, rather than to posts within it, go.) This sounds like a strange thing to do - after all, blogs are about posts. But actually it's fine, provided you use some other tools to let readers move around the blog .  I've made a 150+ page blog this way, and it works very nicely because I have organised the information and used some index-pages (containing lists of bus-routes, suburbs, maps etc) with tables  that link to many other posts. How to show no (ie zero, 0) posts on the main screen Some pe...

This article explains the problems with getting valid, SEO-friendly links to images that are in Google Photos - and shows a way of doing this using Google products.   Previously I've explained how to get a URL for a picture stored in Google Photos - and the difference between Photo's "shareable links" and real photo URLs. The sort of link you get with this procedure looks like this: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0SZ4IMsIgfxygdi1Uo3TnnVggopqr3USc1SYhY3i_D8sIi_MpMXB4WaWZw1hLS9gcsIQz_alpi99spBwYmBziLSf1MW_GGVxFdnD6htIAx_auGYZLNTJNES-gbLD2SvDVJA03oiV527-y/w1006-h566-no/ There are some issues with using URLs (aka web-addresses) obtained like this: They aren't recognised as valid image file links by many online tools which ask for the URL for an image (eg phpBB, Blogger - and many others) Sometimes they stop working (I've not been able to track down exactly when, but there are reports around the internet from people who say that links ...

This article is about how you can save a  post even if Blogger's Publish button won't let you save your work. Imagine you've been working on a Blogger post for several hours.    It's finally ready: you've got the wording exactly right, everything is formatted with bold, italics and bullet-points, your pictures and links are all correct, etc.    But then your internet connection stops working.   Or you click the Publish button - and get a message like  "Post cannot be saved due to HTML errors".   You can't work out how fix the problem, and you need to stop working on it now ! This may seem like a disaster - hours of work wasted. But luckily there's a very easy way to save your work, and tools to help you diagnose problems. Saving your work and recovering it later How to save the post that you have written Switch to HTML mode (this is a tab at the top left corner of the editing window.  Select all the text in the...

This article describes making a Facebook badge to promote your page, and putting it onto your blog. What is a Facebook page This article is about how to make a badge to promote a Facebook  Page . This is an example of the "follow me" approach to linking your blog and the social networks , although for Facebook pages your reader becomes a Fan rather than a Friend. Many people are confused about when they should use each of the types of "thing" in Facebook, ie Profiles - accounts for flesh-and-blood, living, breathing, individual people Pages - for websites, brands, and organisations that don't want to approve all their Facebook members Groups -  for organisations that want to approve individual members who join (and in return, group-owners can send private messages to individual members. The most common "thing" for blogs to have is a Page - and a Badge is the tool which Facebook provides to help you to promote a Page on your blog or other website. Ho...