Blogger.com Review

Here are my thoughts on the new features.

Login

They are now switching login to Google accounts, which makes sense. So I have now created a new account with my Google login. Since I already had a Blogger account, they promised that in the future we will be able to merge the two accounts. I can't wait for more Google services integration; think of the Google Calendar, Writely, Spreadsheet...

Template Editing

It is now very easy to customize the blog template. With Page Elements it is possible to change the blog layout with simple drag and drop. Each element can also be edited individually. For example you can change all titles for each element, or even re-arrange items in posts (title, time, content, comments etc...).

It is also possible to add a footer, which is very handy for credits or third party code (I added a stat counter). Even the navbar can be customized, you have 4 colors from which to choose from, so that it blends better with your template.

Some missing features: an element for feeds. At the moment there is just one link for all posts feed, placed on the main page after the posts. I wish I could move it to the sidebar and customize it. I am sure this will be done in the future. Another cool feature would be a header graphic, which could be added in the HTML editing, but it is not available yet.

Fonts and Colors can also be changed for each item in your template. I didn't play with it because I am not good at colors, so I left the default.

If you are signed in and view your blog, you can see links to edit each single element of your template. Very cool.

Feeds

There are now 3 feeds available: blog posts, blog comments, per-post comments. The only problem is that I cannot put them in my template. My current template only shows the first one. And only atom not rss.

Backlinks

Backlinks are basically trackbacks. I still have to test it, but it is a needed addition.

Labels

Another needed addition (and one of the reasons I abandoned Blogger in the past) is tags, which are called labels here. Luckily I can easily edit the template so that it displays as tag.

Permissions

It is now possible to limit reading permission to a group of people. To me blogging is about putting yourself out for the world to see, so I will always blog publically, but it is a nice feature to have.

No more publishing...

Previously after each edit (to post or template) you had to re-publish the blog, which could take a long time if your blog was very large. There is no need to re-publish anymore, each modification is done instantly.

New Templates

I am not too familiar with the previous templates, but I did not see the promised new templates. Or did I miss them?

Conclusion

Overall an excellent improvement over the old system, but I hope they continue realease new features in the future instead of stagnate and let it become irrelevant again.

Update: some formatting problems occurred writing this post, which is really annoying. It seems the Compose doesn't work that well. Also I have no idea how to use backlinks. I posted on another blog linking to this post, but there are no backlinks. Not sure what happens there.