Changing the author for a published blog-post

This article explains how to change the author of a post that has already been published in Blogger.

Blogger posts and changing post-authors

When you Publish a post in Blogger, a number of features are set up for the post, as well as the contents.  These include:

• The URL / web-addresss where the post can be found
• The post date/time when it was published
• The post-author (which is now set the first time that the post is Saved, ie even before it is published.)
• The labels that apply to it.

Some of these can be changed by editing the published post.

But there are some features that cannot be altered after they are set.

In particular, Author is not changed even if a different Google account is used to edit the post - or if the original author has their permission to write to the blog removed.

This can lead to interesting situations on multi-author blogs, especially when one writer leaves the team and perhaps even deletes their Google account.   Because of this, some blog owners choose to not show the "Posted-by" - but even if it's not displayed it is handy for the administrator if they can see the correct owner for individual posts.

When someone asks how to change the posted-by (ie author) value, the simple, and correct, answer is "You can't."

But there is a way to make it look like the author has been changed, so that only the most eagle-eyed readers will be able to tell the difference.

How to change the author of an existing blog-post

In short, you need to make a new post with the same contents, and then use a custom-redirect so that anyone who tries to look at the old post (eg by following a link to it) is automatically taken to the new post.

Follow these steps:

You need to take note of several values during this procedure, which are used later on. It may good to open a text-editor (eg Notepad) before you start.


1   Look at the URL of the existing post, and note the part that is fro the single-slash after your blog's name,  For example in

http://www.Example.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-post-title   

the part you are looking for is the bold part, ie "/2012/06/my-post-title" - including the single slash a the start.



2    Edit the existing post, go to the HTML tab and

• Copy the contents (like you would if you were copying a post from one blog to another). 
• Note the value under Options > Line Break, which is either use <br> tag or Pressenter for a new line.

3    Log in to Blogger with the account that you want to use as the new post author-name.


4    Create a new post, and make sure you have the same setting under Options > Line breaks, to be sure that you get the spacing right.


5   Edit the post to be just like the old one:

• Put the HTML that you copied into in the HTML view of the new post.
• Apply any Labels or Location values that applied to the old post.
• Make the title the same as it was in the old post.
• Change the date to the same as the old post.

6   Make the URL of the new post similar but not quite the same:

• Put the value you found in 1 step into the custom-permalink field. 
• Add some text to it so that it is not the same as the original value,
  eg make "my-post-title" into "my-post-title1"

7   Publish the post and  note the part of  the post-URL from the single-slash after your blog's name


8   Set up a re-direct from the old post to the new post:

• Go to Settings > Search Preferences
• Edit the Custom Redirects
• Add a new redirection (only needed if you already have some)
• Enter the value from step 1 into From
• Enter the value from step 7 into To
• Tick Permanent
• Click the save link for this particular re-direction, and then the Save Changes button.

9   Check your blog, to make sure that the re-direction is working correctly.


10  Once you are happy that the re-direction is working correctly, delete the old post.
You will need either the existing author account, or a Google account with administrator rights, to do this.   If SEO matters for your blog, then it is good to do it as soon as you can, so you are not penalized for having duplicate content.

What your readers will see

Everyone who is subscribed to your blog's RSS-feed or follow-by-email gadget will see a new post.
(I you don't want this, turn your feed off before you start - but don't forget to turn on again when you are finished!)

Visitors who browse your blog posts will see the "old" post, with the new author, in the original place.

Visitors who try to go directly to the old post via an existing link or from search-engine results will automatically be re-directed to the "new" version of the post. Very observant ones may notice that the URL is slightly different from the original. Most won't.

A quicker way: get control of the original Author account

The method described is fiddly and tedious - especially if you want to change the author of many posts.

The only alternative that I can think of is to ask the original author if they still want the Google account  that they used to make the posts. If you are lucky they

• Don't want it, and 
• Are willing to hand the password over to you. 

In this case, you could

1. Quickly change the password (before they change their mind!), and
2. Edit their profile to the new author name that you would like to have displayed. You may also want to change some other details - and if they are using a Google+ profile and you already have one, then you should probably delete this.

This isn't a total solution, of course: no matter how you edit their profile, it will still be different to your own profile. But it may be better than nothing.

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Related Articles:

How to edit a post that has already been published

Understanding Google accounts

Copying a post from one blog to another

Giving someone permission to author posts

Changing the publication date for a blogger post

Setting the URL for Blogger posts

Why SEO doesn't matter for some blogs

Read more > Changing the author for a published blog-post

How to link posts together in Blogger

This article shows how to link from a new blog post to one that you have already written. It is part of the Blogger-Basics series.

Sometimes, when you're writing a blog-post, you want to refer to a post you wrote before.

• It means that you don't have to repeat information, and can focus on writing it really well in just one place.
• It encourages visitors to read more than one post, and doesn't bore people who already know the related information..
• It's good for SEO (encouraging search-engines to give your blog a good place in their result lists)

For example, many of the posts here on Blogger-Hints-and-Tips are about how to get other tools (eg Facebook, Feedburner, AdSense) to work with Blogger:  in general these posts describe how to get some HTML code from the "other" site, and then how to install it into your blog. Originally, I repeated the "how to install" instructions in every post - but when Blogger changed how this was done, this meant I had to update dozens of posts.  To make this simpler the next time, I just wrote one post about installing third-party code into Blogger.

Follow these steps to link two posts together

1   Write the first post (the one you want to link to), and publish it. (You cannot link to it until after you have published it.)


2  Copy the URL / web-address of the first post.
The URL will start with https:// and then have your blog's url and the post information, like this:

http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/04/adding-separator-line-between-your.html

You can see the URL at the top of the browser in the address bar, when you choose to View the post from the list of posts in the Dashboaurd. Or you could right click on the View link and choose "copy target".

3  Edit the second post, ie the one where you want to put the link.


4  Find the text that you want to put the link on, and select it.

• This is called the "anchor text", because you attach your link to it.
• It's best if you use descriptive text like "worn with a formal dress" rather than words like "click here", because they help visitors and search engines know what the other article is about).

5  Click the Link icon in the toolbar: it's the one with the word  "link" on it - or in older versions of the Blogger software, it had a pictures that looked like a chain.   It also shows the word "link" if you hover the mouse over it.

6  In the window that opens, paste the address of the other post into the Web-address field.

7  At this point you can also choose whether clicking on the link shows the other post in the same window, or in a new one, using the "open in a new window" checkbox.
(Some people think it would be good to always open linked posts in a new window - but it can be very annoying for a user if they end up with a lot of open windows. Personally, I usually make links to my own site open in the same window, and links to other sites open in a new window.)


8  Click ok

What your readers will see

When someone reads the post that you put the link into, they will see your post in the normal way. The anchor-text (ie the linking-words that you chose) will be formatted in the same way that other links in your blog are formatted.

This is true for readers who are looking at your blog through a web-browser, and for ones who subscribe to your blog by email or who read it in a feed-reader.

When they click on the link, it will be opened in the way that you said - either in the same browser or in a new window.

Linking to or from other things?

In this article, we've talked about linking from one post to another post, using text.

You can also go back and re-edit your first post, and put a link to the second one in it - in exactly the same way as described above. (If you look at some more Blogger-Hints-and-Tips posts, you will see that I use lots of an lots of links to all sorts of posts.)

Or you could put the link onto a picture instead of onto text.

Or you might want to link to an email address, so that people can easily send you a message.

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Related Articles:

Getting started with blogger

How to edit a post that you have already published in Blogger

The follow-by-email gadget: a quick way to offer email subscriptions to your blog

Why do some blog-visitors use feed-reader software

Using a picture as the link-anchor in Blogger

How to show a working email address in your blog

Read more > How to link posts together in Blogger

How to remove the numbers in blogger post URL's

This article looks at the numbers that are in web-page addresses created by Blogger, what they mean and how you can influence them.

When you first publish a post, Blogger assigns a permanent web-address (aka an URL or a permalink) to the post.  I've previously explained how you can control the words used in this hyperlink.

And a common question from people who are researching SEO for their blog is "how do I get rid of the numbers in the post-URL?".

Unfortunately the answer is not as straighforward as most people hope for.

Numbers near the start of Blogger URLS

As described in setting the content of your post's permalink, the URL given to posts publisehd in Blogger shows the year and month of the original publication date for the post. I think this is because Blogger was originally set up as an on-line diary, with a lot of the features organised around the post-date.

Today, there are ways of giving your blog a home page, showing your posts in pages, and changing the order of the posts, which let your blog be a lot more than a date-ordered web-log.

Some blogging software (eg Wordpress) lets you choose the structure of the URLs which are used, eg leaving the date out totally, or puting it after the words.

However Blogger does not currently have any way to remove the date-part of the post URLs. And I could be wrong, but my best guess is that this will not change anytime soon.

So what options are available:

If you just don't want people to know the correct month and year of the post, then you can change the date before you publish the post for the the first time. Maybe make it something non-sensical (eg 1/1/1990). (However do remember that your RSS feed will show the actual date of publication, not the assigned date).

If you have some content where any month-and-year are particularly irrelevant, put it into a Page instead of a Post - because Page URLs don't contain a date. Remember that each blog can have no more than 20 pages, and that you need to give users a way to get to these Pages. Also remember that they are not sent out in your RSS feed, so subscribers won't see the content.

The third - and least attractive - option:  accept that this is how Blogger works and that you need to live with it or switch to another blogging tool.

Numbers near the end of Blogger URLS

Blogger puts digits at the end of post-URLs to make sure that each post ever published has a unique address.

Notice that I said "ever published": if you publish a post, then delete it, and then publish a second post with the same year, month and either title or customized-URL-words, then the second post's URL will have some digits put on the end, to stop it being the same as the first one.

Once a post is published, you cannot remove the digits. The only way to avoid them is to make sure that your post-URLs are unique. So if you publish a post and notice that it has digits on the end of the URL, your only option is to delete that post, and replace it with one which has a different publication date (don't forget to copy the post contents before you delete it!)

For example, if you publish and find that you get

www.all-about-cats.com/2012-07/vegetarian-cat-food-recipes01.html

you may want to delete the post, and republish the content in a post with a different date like

www.all-about-cats.com/2012-06/vegetarian-cat-food-recipes.html

Does it really matter?

Personally I'm not convinced that having numbers Blogger URL's is a problem.

If the content is so weak, and poorly linked to by other sites and social media that the presence of numbers in the URL is affecting visitor numbers, then it seems to me that there are more important things for you to be worrying about.

On the other hand, if your blog is already popular and well-optimized, and you're looking to get the last possible bit of SEO benefit - you'd be better off using your time to write even more good quanlity, unique, content so that your exisiting subscribers visit more often, instead of fussing over something that you cannot control.

Or am I mistaken?

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Related Articles:

Setting the custom-URL for a blog post

Giving your blog a home page

Putting Blogger posts into pages

How to set the date for a post

The difference between Posts and Pages

What is RSS and why it matters for bloggers

Removing a post from your blog

Copy the contents between blog posts - and keep all the formatting.

Read more > How to remove the numbers in blogger post URL's

How to set the URL for Blogger posts

This article shows how to use the Permalink options to control the URL used for a post in your blog.

URLs and Blog Posts

When you first publish a post in blogger, an URL (called a permalink in blogger) is automatically generated for that post. It looks like:

www.yourDomain/yyyy/mm/WORDS-ABOUT-MY-POST

In this URL:

• yourDomain is either your custom domain (eg fred-fish.com) or your blogspot domain if you aren't using a custom domain at the time (eg www.blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com)
• yyyy/mm is the year and month of the post's original publication date.

Until now, Blogger chose the WORDS-ABOUT-YOUR-MY based on the title, or the first words in the post if the title was blank. They used some rules eg leaving out "the" and other common words, and putting numbers on the end so that every post has a unique URL (called a "permalink" in Blogger).

However Blogger have now provided a tool that lets you choose the WORDS-ABOUT-YOUR-POST separately from the post-title.

How to change the customisable part of the URL for a post

1  Edit the post in the usual way.

2  In the Post Settings area (currently at the right hand side of the editor), there is a section called Permalink.

3   Click on Permalink to show the options in it.

4   Click the custom URL radio button

5   Type the words that you want to use in WORDS-ABOUT-YOUR-POST into the Custom URL box

6   Click Done.

7   Finish the post, and Publish it.

Restrictions:

This is a one-time option for each post - you if you use the wrong words, or make spelling mistake, then there is no way to change it.

The only characters you can use are:

• lowercase letters (ie a, b, c ... z)
• uppercase letters (ie A, B, C ... Z)
• digits (ie 0, 1, 2 ... 9)
• underscore (ie _)
• dash (ie - )
• full-stop, also known as a period (ie .)

It looks like there is no restriction on the number of characters you can put into the URL.  For example, I was just able to make a post in my test blog, with this URL:  
http://bhat-draftarticlestore.blogspot.ie/2012/07/123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-123456789-.html
(you cannot see the post, because that particular blog isn't open for public reading.)


If the combinaton of yyyy-mm from post-date (which you can change - see Setting the Post Date) and WORDS-ABOUT-YOUR-BLOG is not unique, Blogger will leave out the last character(s), and put in numbers to make it unique.

It only applies to Posts, not Pages:  the only way to influence the URL / permalink for a Page on your blog is to choose the initial words in the page-title very carefully.   (Ref:  the difference between Posts and Pages)

Why should you bother? What words should you use?

Firstly, it's only worth changing the custom words in your post-URL  if SEO matters for your blog.

If you think the change is worth it, then you need to think about what specific words
1) accurately reflect the content of your blog, and
2) are likely to be the words that people search for.

Unless you're a spammer, there is no point in making your post url www.myBlog/2012-07/hot-and-sexy-topic if your post doesn't have any content about hot-and-sexy-topic. (And if you are a spammer, you may as well leave Blogger now, before you get kicked off anyway.)

Leave out smaller filler words like "the" "a" "and" - unless they are relevant to the post-contents. For example include "the Who" if your post is about the band called The Who, but leave it out if your post is about the cats who can fly.

Lastly, many SEO experts (self-proclaimed and otherwise) say that dashes are better than dots or underscores. Only Google and Bing know if they'are correct or not. But it's probably a good idea to use xxx-yy-aaaa instead of xxx_yy_aaaa or xxx.yy.aaaa, just in case they are.

Changing the post-title after publication

Google's help-article about the custom-permalink feature says:

"because Blogger automatically creates the URL from information from your post title, your URL would change should you decide to edit the title. This would result in broken links, and fewer visitors to your blog"

This isn't the way Blogger worked before: until now, I often published a post with one title using the words I wanted in the URL, and then very quickly edit it and change the title to the words I wanted in the title. For example, for a recent post

• the URL is  http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2012/07/html-code-for-popular-gadgets-in.html
• the post-title is now:  Where to get the HTML code for popular gadgets in Blogger

I just tried this again in my test-blog, and found that it's still true: even if you change the title, the post URL doesn't change.

Changing the custom-URL words after publication

After you have hit the Publish button for the first time, there is no way change the permalink:  if you click on the Permalink option in Post Settings, you are shown the custom value that you chose, but you cannot change it.

Your only option in this case is to:

• move the post-contents to another new post, 
• set the custom-URL that you want for the new post
• delete the original post.

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Related Articles:

How to change the date for a post

What is RSS and why it matters for bloggers

Use a private blog to get your posts right before publish them

Linking your blog and the social networks

Moving material from one blog post to another

Read more > How to set the URL for Blogger posts

How to put a gadget into a post in Blogger

This article describes how to put a gadget into a blog post / page - or at least how to make it look like you have done so.

Gadgets and Blog-posts

Previously, I've explaiend how to add a gadget to your blog. In that post, I said that the only place where you could put a gadget was one of the areas defined by your template - basically the header, footer or sidebar.

For gadgets where you get the HTML or Javascript code from somewhere else, it's easy to add the code to a post - see adding code from external sources to your blog for more information.  But for gadgets from the Add a Gadget list, there is no way to do this.

But it's fairly easy to make it look like you have put a gadget into a post or page, provided you're willing to accept the risks of editing your template.

The way to do this is by putting the gadget below the blog-posts area, putting any further post-content into another HTML-gadget under this, and then setting both of these up to only show on the specific post or page that you want the gadget to be "in".

While this is tedious, I don't expect the restriction of putting gadgets inside posts to be changed anytime soon.   (Go on Blogger ... prove me wrong!)

Follow these steps to put a gadget into a post or page:

1)   Make the post or page
Give it a title, and if there is any content that you want to put above the gadget, then add it now.


2)   Publish the post / page.
If you use a Post, remember that it will go out in your RSS feed - and it could look strange for your subscribers to see a half-written post - make sure that what you'd doing is worth any confusion that this may cause.
And if you use a Page, you may need to adjust the Pages gadget to not show it, depending on what how visitors will access the page.

Despite these side-effects you need to publish the post/page now, before the gadget is added, because you need its address later on.   So take note of the URL of your published post.


3) Add the gadget to your blog in the usual way.
Position it immediately underneath the Blog Posts gadget. Find out the gadget-ID, and keep a note of it.


4) If there is any content that you want displayed after the gadget, then

• Use the post-editor (or any other tool) to generate the HTML code for this content 
• Add an HTML/Javascript gadget:  Put the code you made into the Content field, and position the gadget immediately underneath the gadget you added in step 3.
• Note the ID of this gadget, too.

5)   Set up which page/post your gadget is shown on:

Edit your template (don't tick the expand widgets checkbox).

For both of the gadget-IDs that you noted (the one that's going "inside" the post, and the one that contains the rest of the "post"),  change the template so that they are only displayed on the Page or Post that you created in the first step.

The way to do this is very similar to only showing a gadget on your home page, except that instead of

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'> 

the condition to use is

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == "URL-OF-THE-POST-YOU-MADE"'>>

How well does it work?

I'm still testing to see how well this approach works, and what gadgets it's most suitable for.  Some, eg the Labels and Followers gadget, are likely to expand to fill the space available.   So will Search - though if it doesn't then it might be as easy to just use a custom-search-engine, which will give you the code.   AdSense gadgets will take the space required for the type of gadget you choose, but again it's probably simpler to just get the code from AdSense and put it into your post directly.

One issue I've found is that the gadget is left-aligned, and there is no way to make the "post" text flow around it if it doesn't take the entire post-width.

It may be possible to centre the gadget within the post, by putting this code around in in the template:

<div style='text-align: center;'>
<b:widget id='XXXn' locked='false' title='YOUR-GADGET-TITLE' type='Text'/>
</div>

That said, I haven't tried this yet, and there may be some extra things to think about here.   Let me know if it doesn't work, and I'll try to find a way to solve any problems.

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Related Articles:

Adding a gadget to your blog

Finding the id for a gadget 

Using the post-editor or generate HTML

The Pages gadget:  a menu bar for Bloggers

Showing a gadget on your home-page and no other pages

Advantages and disadvantages of editing your template

Putting AdSense ads into posts

Read more > How to put a gadget into a post in Blogger

Styles on Blogger's post-editor menu bar

This article shows how the styles that can be applied in Blogger's style-bar look.

What do these styles do. 

By Vishraval (Own work) [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

This week, without any announcements that I've seen, Blogger added a style drop-down to the menu bar.

I noticed it first on Thursday night (UCT) and have since confirmed that it's in both the new and old interfaces.

This small-but-important change makes it a lot easier to add SEO friendly "tags" to your blogger content.  

If you use the "header" style on some text, the HTML behind the post says

<h2>Some text</h2>

and "all" the SEO-gurus say that using H2's properly is important to rank well in search results.

However using these tags, by inserting them myself, is something I tried to do in the past, but gave up on because of issues with how  my posts looked in RSS-feed-readers and also for email-subscribers.

So I'm very interested to see how they work, and how they look for my readers.   And this post is a way to find out.


What do they look like?

The heading above this paragraph is done in my usual way, applying the largest size and bold to the text.   And this is some more text to make the paragraph look fuller, so I can get a better idea of what the headings look like.

The menu-bar in the post editor now looks like this:

This is a heading

The heading above this paragraph is done with the "heading style".   In the post-editor, it makes the heading look like it's in "larger", ie not largest, with some extra padding above and below it.

Notice that it has the same formatting as my gadget headers and post-date. I don't like this at all - am waiting to see if it's something that Blogger changes (or maybe has already changed, but can't apply to my blog because I've edited the template a lot), or whether I need to work out how to assign different styles to them myself.

And this is some more text to make the paragraph look fuller, so I can get a better idea of what the headings look like.And this is some more text to make the paragraph look fuller, so I can get a better idea of what the headings look like.  And this is some more text to make the paragraph look fuller, so I can get a better idea of what the headings look like.

This is a sub-heading

The heading above this paragraph is done with the "sub-heading style".   In the post-editor, it makes the heading look like it's in "larger", ie not largest, with some extra padding above and below it.

And this is some more text to make the paragraph look fuller, so I can get a better idea of what the headings look like.

And this is some more text to make the paragraph look fuller, so I can get a better idea of what the headings look like.  And this is some more text to make the paragraph look fuller, so I can get a better idea of what the headings look like.

The heading below this paragraph is done with the "minor style".   In the post-editor, it makes the heading look like it's bold, again with some extra padding above and below it.

This is a minor heading

• And this is some more text to make the paragraph look fuller, so I can get a better idea of what the headings look like.
• And this is some more text to make the paragraph look fuller, so I can get a better idea of what the headings look like.  
• And this is some more text to make the paragraph look fuller, so I can get a better idea of what the headings look like.

What your readers see:

That's what I'm trying to find out!

I thought about doing all this in a a test blog - where I would have needed to set up an RSS feed and an email subscription etc.   But that was a lot of work, and I figured that some of my readers might be interested in the results too.

I'll be looking at this post in my own email and in Google Reader.   But if you have any feedback on how they look in other feedreaders, I'm very keen to hear how they worked.    Ditto if you are reading this through any kind of assistive-technology software or screen reader.


Why have Google done this?

Since the new privacy policy was introduced, there's been a small-but-noticeable move towards other search engines.    In my blog-statistics, visitor traffic is coming from a wider range of places.    There's no one winner getting a lot of alternative traffic - and I certainly haven't seen more visitor from Bing or Yahoo!    But I suspect that Google have decided that a little bit of work to make our blogs more Google-SEO friendly would be a good idea.

What's why they announced the various options for "customising your search preferences" (which are nothing to do with your search preferences, and everything to do with how your blog looks in Google search results when other people search.

And I think it's why they've slipped in the style bar, while all the blogger helpers are busy trying to understand the implications of the search-preference change.

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Related Articles:



Setting up Google Analytics for your blog

What is an RSS feed reader

Adding am email-subsription option to your blog.

Read more > Styles on Blogger's post-editor menu bar

Changing the Date for a Post

This article is about how to change the date of a post in Blogger.  It looks at where the date value is found, and what format is used to display and edit it.

Where is the post date (date/time) value kept?

Each Post (not but each Page) that you create in Blogger has a date and time associated with it.

• You can see the date (but not the time) in the Posts (new interface) or  Edit Posts (old interface) tab.

• You can see the date and time in the Post Editor, by clicking on Post Options link (old interface) or the Published on link (right-hand sidebar in the new interface):

  
How to set the post date (date/time) value

To change the date (or date-time) value for a Post:

1  Open the Post in the Post Editor


2  Click the Post Options link, which is near the bottom left of the page above the Publish button (old interface) or the Published on link (in the right-hand sidebar in the new interface):

This opens up the window to show various options that apply to the post.   The date-time is on the right.

Initially, the date-time is set to Automatic:  the post will be given a date-time when the Publish Post button is clicked for the first time.

3  Tick the Scheduled option (old interface) or Set date and time (new interface), which lets you edit the date.


Understanding the Date format:

Blogger does not (currently) have an option that lets you set the format of the date that is shown in the Post Options window:  the date-format under Settings / Formatting tab applies to inside posts only.

Therefore in the old (ie pre-Sept-2011) version of Blogger the date value you will see is in American date format.  This has:

• the month value first, 
• then the day value
• then the year value

To change the date, you need to use the same order.  For example, to set the date to 3 December 2009,

• the 12 goes first
• then the 3
• then the 09 for 2009

In the new (ie post Sept-2011) version of Blogger, they've removed the need to compensate for American date formats.  

Instead, we're shown a calendar to pick the date from, and it's displayed in with the year first,  So, for example, 2009-12-03 is shown for 3 December 2009.

Unfortunately this makes choosing a date sometime in the past difficult.   For example to set the date back to 1998 (which I've had to do recently for a historic blog about a choir), you need to do a lot of clicking.   And to make matters worse, when I tried it a couple of weeks ago the selected date value wasn't actually applied.   Hopefully this is something they'll fix soon.

Why set the date?

You may want to set the date if you are giving your blog a home page, or if you want to schedule a post to go live at some time in the future.


Is any other date information kept in Blogger?

You can work out the month and year when a post was first published by looking at its URL: this contains the original publication month and year.  For example, the URL of this post is

http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2009/12/changing-date-for-post.html

The bolded bit says that it was originally published in December (ie the 12th month) of 2009.   This URL is kept even if I change the values in "Post Date and Time"   (which I'm just about to do, to show when the article was last updated).

I think it's likely that Blogger also stores the exact publication date and time somewhere too (at least, to help them resolve DMCA copyright complaints), but don't know any way to access this.

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Read more > Changing the Date for a Post

Editing published posts in Blogger

This article describes how to edit a post that has already been published in Blogger, using the new interface.

Where has the Edit Posts link gone?

Picture by RichTea
From Wikimedia Commons

Blogger's new user-interface (UI) was introduced in September 2011.   ("Interface" is just a long word for the part of Blogger that you use to do things.)

The new look has organised things in a slightly different way to the older (ie pre-September 2011) version of Blogger, and some functions are a little harder to find.

The Edit Posts link has been replaced by a list showing you all posts, and Edit links under each post in this list. These are the tools you need to use to change a post once it's already been published, for example to fix spelling errors, or add new information.


How to change a post that is already published:

Log in to blogger at http://www.blogger.com, using the Google account that wrote the post, or one that is an administrator for the blog
If you made the blog, then you are automatically the administrator for it to start with - so just use your normal Blogger account.


You can now see the Blogger Dashboard. If you are using the new interface it looks like this:

The section in the middle lists all the blogs that your account has access to.
Most people reading this article will only have one blog - at the moment - but it's worth understanding how extra ones look.


Each blog has one line in this section.   In the middle of the screen, beside the blog name, there are four icons (small pictures):

• A pencil (for write a new post)
• A stack of "papers" (for viewing your existing posts), which is right next to a drop-down arrow (for getting to the other blog -options)
• A button labelled "View Blog" (no prizes for guessing what it does!)   

Click on the stack of papers:  this opens a list of all your posts.

In the list, hover your mouse over the title of the post you want to edit.    The link will highlight (slightly) and you will see some links under the post-title. The links are

• Edit
• View  
• Share (this one only shows up if you've linked Google+ and the blog)
• Delete.

Click Edit:  this takes you to the post editor. Make the changes you want, Press the Update button at the top of the screen to save them. Job Done!


The quickedit pencil - a fast alternative

Depending on how your Post Template is set up, you may see a Quick Edit Pencil icon when you are reading a post.   If it is turned on, it will be either below the post-title, or at the bottom of the post above or below the contents. Clicking this icon takes you directly to the post-editor.

You will only see the icon if it's turned on for your blog (in Layout > Blog Posts, edit), and if you are logged in to Blogger using an account that is allowed to change the posts.

Your readers will never see it.


 Saving changes while you edit the post:

 Because you are working on a post that is already published, the "autosave" feature will not work. So if you are going to make a lot of changes, you may want to copy the post to a private or test blog.   There you can publish the post (ie save it properly) as often as you want, and no one will see the messy in-between-old-and-new stages.

 When you are finished, click the Publish button (near the top-centre of the screen)


What your readers see

Until you click Publish, the post that your readers see is the same as it originally was - no matter what changes you have made in the post editor.

If there is a post that you urgently need to "take down", then click the Revert to draft button (at the top of the screen, next to publish).   This makes the post unavailable until you next click publish:   in the meantime, anyone who tries to see it using a link will see this message:

Page not found Sorry, the page you were looking for in the blog YOUR BLOG TITLE does not exist.

Making changes to a post that you didn't write

Some people want to edit blog-posts that they were not the author of,  and which they do not have administrator access to.

The short answer is that you are not able to do this - you need to ask the post-author or blog-administrator do it for you.

However if the blog-post has copyright material, there may be some actions you can take.   And if you believe it breaks's Blogger's rules, you can report a terms of service violation.

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Blogger, blogs and bloggers: Posts, pages and screens. Basic Blogger concepts.

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Giving someone author access to your blog.

Planning changes to your blog - in private

Making a new administrator for a blog

Copyright, blogs and bloggers

Read more > Editing published posts in Blogger

Linking a picture in your post to a website

This article shows how to change a picture in your blog, so that when it is clicked, it opens another blog post, or even a totally different website.

Clicking pictures in your posts 

Previously I've described how to put a picture into a blog post.

By default, when a picture in your post is clicked, the file that is used to load the picture is opened, in a new window and at its original size.   This can encourage readers to steal photos that don't belong to them, so I've also described how to stop pictures in your blog from being "clickable".

But sometimes you may want to set a picture up so that clicking it opens up a different post, or even a whole different website.

How to change where a picture is linked to:

Add the picture into your post in the usual way.

Note where in the post your picture is - you may want to put some temporary marker-text (text that doesn't appear anywhere else, eg ZZZ) just before or after it, so make it easier to find.

Look at the HTML behind your post

• Pre-Sept-2011-Blogger:  Click Edit HTML in the top-right of the editor window 
• Post-Sept-2011-Blogger:  Click HTML in the top-left of the editor window

Find the code for your picture   (Hint - use the find-feature in your browser, eg Ctrl/f in Chrome to look for the marker-text if you used some).   It will look something like this:

<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/tkoGx2454hA/s1600-h/Inserting+a+picture.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-ufFKAr0d1qmq9aW1KZfNNsv-AbPNBP0y739vGFE5k_qh3d0L2VvpYad99hacIJ43NVQtcwTW5ABdd4rba9DLBlzz0RABme-IMzdy28SvaiCwDB_-1EG6oqf4kDwZfgylWifcOKtc5it5/s400/Your-picture-file-name.gif" />&nbsp;</a>

Notice the part in bold, ie the href="CONTENTS"

Replace this with the URL that you would like your readers to go to when they click on the picture.
For example, if you want them to be taken to Google to do a search, the code would look like:

<a href="www.google.com" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-ufFKAr0d1qmq9aW1KZfNNsv-AbPNBP0y739vGFE5k_qh3d0L2VvpYad99hacIJ43NVQtcwTW5ABdd4rba9DLBlzz0RABme-IMzdy28SvaiCwDB_-1EG6oqf4kDwZfgylWifcOKtc5it5/s400/Your-picture-file-name.gif" />&nbsp;</a>

By default, clicking the picture will take your visitor to the link you give in the same window.   But if you would like it to open in a new window, add target="_blank" to the code too, like this:

<a href="THE URL TO GO TO" target="_blank" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-ufFKAr0d1qmq9aW1KZfNNsv-AbPNBP0y739vGFE5k_qh3d0L2VvpYad99hacIJ43NVQtcwTW5ABdd4rba9DLBlzz0RABme-IMzdy28SvaiCwDB_-1EG6oqf4kDwZfgylWifcOKtc5it5/s400/Your-picture-file-name.gif" />&nbsp;</a>

Go back to Compose mode (so you don't get confused next time you edit a post)

Remove the marker text, if you used any.


Some more things to think about:  

Will your readers realise that they should click the picture?   Unless it says "click me", some of them won't - and if they're used to Blogger, they may just expect to see a larger version of your photo.   So it might be a good idea to add a caption, or even some instructions in your blog to tell them to click the picture.

Also while you're editing the code, you might also like to add some alt-text to your picture link too, to make your blog more friendly for readers who use screen-reading tools, and for search engines / SEO.


What you will see:

At some times in the past, when you added a link a picture and then hovered over the picture in the post editor, your would see a double-row of in-post editing options:

• one row had the usual options for editing pictures (which lets you set the picture size, alignment and caption)
• one row had the usual options for editing links (with options to go-to, change and remove the link.

Today, as I'm writing this post using the new-interface editor, I can only see one row of options in hyperlinked pictures - so I need to edit the HTML again if I want to change or remove the link.

But it's quite possible that this is a mistake and that you can see the two rows of options in the old-interface editor, and that it will be added back to the new one too.    Fingers crossed.


What your readers will see:

When you readers look at a picture that you have linked to somewhere, it will seem just the same as any other picture.

For example, the picture to the right of this paragraph looks just like the one one at the top of the article.  But when someone clicks on it ...

Go on, click this one yourself, to see what happens!


(Acknowledgement: public domain image from Wikimedia Commons)

---

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Read more > Linking a picture in your post to a website

Using Excel to make the HTML for the "body" of a table

This article is about how Excel's text functions can be used to make the HTML statements to put inside the body section of a table.   It's written with Blogger users in mind, but applies to anyone who needs to create a large HTML table.   Two Excel example files are provided, one using CSS and one not, which have some formatting included.

HTML table code

Previously I've described tables in your blog:  why you might want to use them, and some options for making a table,

These include using a HTML-code-generator to get the "skeleton" of the table.   With this approach, the hardest part is putting the table content (ie the words, numbers and pictures) into the correct place in the HTML, so that it appears in right cell in the table.

This is easy enough for a small table.   But if you want to make a table with  more data (eg I recently posted a book-index with 100 rows by 5 columns), it can be a little tedious.    Even if you prepare your posts in private (which lets you save frequently without worrying about auto-save), it can still be very hard to make sure that you put the right contents in the right cell.   And because Blogger's post editor doesn't handle tables well, it can sometimes do unexpected things to them,.

But there are some alternatives.

Tools for creating the "body" section of HTML table statements

I'm sure that lots of people have written custom applications that take a text file and turn it into HTML.   (Though when i googled, the first SERPs included a program for Win 3.1 / 95, which most people gave up on a long time ago!).

Many programs like Excel, Word, etc now have an option to save as HTML - so you could just use look at the file they make with a text editior (eg Notepad), and take the relevant bits.   That said, they usually include a lot of extra code, eg for fonts, layouts etc, so you may get more than you bargain for.

Commercial web development packages, eg Dreamweaver, may have table editing tools - however  many people cannot justify the cost of buying and learning them for smaller jobs.

Another option is to use Excel to manage your table of data, and use it's text-string manipulation functions to turn it into valid HTML code.   This isn't as hard as it sounds, especially if someone else does the initial formulas for you.

Excel Templates for making HTML

First version -  cell level formatting - no CSS

Second version  with CSS styles

The first template was made before I understood CSS:  it uses text-functions to put formatting code into every single table cell - though you can just leave things blank if you don't want them formatted.  It may be best to use if you don't understand CSS.

The second template uses CSS styles to format the table.   This means you can change the formatting of all the tables in your website just by changing the CSS rules, ie you don't have to edit each individual table.   The Excel file lists the  CSS styles you need to define, and the names (eg keyTableOdd for odd numbered rows) show what each style is used for.

Version 2:  the formula area is green,
the input area is yellow, and the output area is orange

To use these templates:

1  Download the template


2  Check the formatting settings in the template.  Set up CSS styles in your website if you are using the 2nd version.


3  Create table header and footer statements yourself, or by using an HTML table generator.


4  Adjust the Excel template, so that

• the number of rows and columns in the data area is what you need,
• the formulas in the output area are right for your chosen rows and columns
  
  The section below explains the types of formulas used:  you can model new forumlas (for new columns) on the current ones, and new rows can be made by copying the formulas from an existing row.

5  Put the data for your table into the data area in the spreadsheet


6  Copy the text from the output area, paste it into a text editior (eg Notepad)


7  Use the text editor's Find/Replace function to change all cases of three apostrophes in a row (ie ''') into double quotes.


8  Copy the changed text from your text editor into the "body" section of your table statement.


This sounds like a lot of work but I've found that even if a table is only 10 rows long, using a HTML-generators-spreadsheet is a lot more efficient than trying to type the values into it row-by-row.

Understanding the Excel templates

I'm assuming that you understand a little about how Excel stores data in cells, and refers to those cells by their Row/Column combination, eg "E5" - if not, check out an Excel tutorial before reading on

Also, you need to understand the ideas of copying formulas between rows, and the use of relative co-ordinates in them to make sure that each new row or column picks up the right values. Again, an Excel tutorial would be a good idea if you're not familiar with copying formulas.

As well as these general ideas, there are here are two Excel concepts that are the basis of these templates:

1   Text concatenation functions

Excel has a wide range of functions that are used to glue strings together, or to pull them apart.   Important ones used in these templates are:

= "whatever"   puts a text-string with the characters whatever into the cell
= a1 & b1   combines the text strings in cells a1 and b1   (b1 goes immediately after a1)
= "This is A1: " & a1 & ".   This is B1: " & B1 &"."

The third function combined the two first ones.   It makes a text string like     "This is A1: AahOne.   This is B1: BeeOne."

Notice that it is a bit fiddly:   there are spaces inside the text-strings, and a full-stop at the end, so that the output looks sensible.   To make it easier to read, I've put the conent that's inside double quotes (ie "  ") on a pink background.

Once you understand this type of formula, though, it's not a big jump to formulas like these which combine HTML commands and values from the cells in the spreadsheet.

="<tr class='''"&A21&"'''>"
=" <td class='''keytableID'''>"&B21&"</td>"
=" <td> " & C21 & "</td> "
=" </tr>"
=E21&F21&G21&H21

This uses a step-by-step formula creation, which makes the parts of the final statement, then glues them all together in the last formula..

2   Putting an Excel special character in the output:

HTML needs to have double-quote characters around things that should be shown as text - for example

<a href="A-FILE-URL">Anchor-text</a>

However in Excel, the double-quote is used to show the beginning and end of text strings.

At first , this may put people off using Excel,   But there is a very simple way around this:

1. Use another (set of) characters that don't appear in the table instead, and
2. Before you use the the generated code, use a text-editor (eg Notepad) to change them to the required special characters.

Other ways to make table contents

There are lots of other ways to make the table-contents HTML code.

• Using MS Access would probably be eaiser (but lots of people don't have it). 
• Using Google Docs - spreadsheets is free, but I haven't tried out the string functions yet.
• GreenLava of BloggerSentral has recently recommended Tabelizer:  I haven't used this myself yet, but it also looks promising.

What other options can you suggest?

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Why use tables in your blog

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Adding a new CSS formatting rule to your blogs' template

Putting HTML into your blog

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Read more > Using Excel to make the HTML for the "body" of a table